This summer, by invitation, Ellis will read his paper at the annual meetings of the Emily Dickinson International Society a heady and unusual opportunity for a scholar of higher mathematics. It s a matter of reading technically specialized, difficult language. Of meticulously analyzing, element by element. In 70 words, Dickinson gives you a very compacted structure. She compresses a lot of ideas.
Every symbol counts.
Your task is to break out the meaning, to make sense of a dense cryptic code. By adding a last word, she can change the meaning of a sentence. . . In preparing his essay on A little east of Jordan, Ellis feels he served an apprenticeship of sorts. The essay went through 13 drafts, and cites dozens of literary sources. Nor will this be his only piece of Dickinson scholarship.