It’s two of our favorite stories week! First up, Alicia has the street-to-stardom tale of legendary French chanteuse Edith Piaf, while Stacie explains all the ways your English teacher was wrong about American poet Emily Dickinson.

Both of these stories first appeared on Patreon. If you would like to join our incredible Patreon community for ad-free episodes and hours of additional material every week, or to give the gift of a Patreon subscription to the Trash Panda in your life, visit www.patreon.com/TrashyDivorces.

The Oak Tree Group. Need help getting your financial house in order? This all-female financial planning firm is happy to help. Visit them on the web at theoaktreegroup.net.

Book: Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson, edited by Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith (Amazon link) Movie: Wild Nights with Emily (Amazon link)

Was famous American poet Emily Dickinson a lesbian? The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast looks at her life through the lens of the movie camera, and especially the current film Wild Nights with Emily.

In this episode we talk about:

• Different understandings of Dickinson's life
• The process of mythologizing and de-mythologizing
• The usefulness of different angles on a historic figure
• What we loved in Dickinson movies...and what we didn't like quite so much
• Movies about Emily Dickinson
  • Wild Nights with Emily
  • A Quiet Passion
  • The Belle of Amherst
• Other shows mentioned
  • Gentleman Jack
  • Drunk HIstory
  • The Little Hours (Molly Shannon co-stars)
• Books mentioned
  • Surpassing the Love of Men by Lillian Faderman
  • The Complete Poems of Emily DIckinson edited by LThomas H. Johnson
• Poems mentioned
  • "Wild nights -- Wild nights!" by Emily Dickinson
  • "Because I could not stop for death" by Emily Dickinson
  • "After great pain, a formal feeling comes" by Emily Dickinson
  • "I died for beauty" by Emily Dickinson
• This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here: Emily Dickinson

A partial transcript of this podcast is available here.

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Links to Trystan L. Bass and Frock Flicks Online

• Website: Frock Flicks
• Email Frock Flicks
• Twitter: @FrockFlicks
• Facebook: Frock Flicks

Lyndall Gordon is a senior research fellow at Oxford University, and the author of several biographies, including "Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds."

In this episode, Lucy talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her – "Hope is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson.
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Emily joined The Poetry Exchange online, via video call, for one of our 'Lockdown Exchanges' that took place as part of City of Literature - a week of conversations, reflections and connections presented by the National Centre for Writing and Norfolk & Norwich Festival.
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Many thanks to our partners, the National Centre for Writing and Norfolk & Norwich Festival for enabling this to go ahead in spite of the physical restrictions. Do visit them for more inspiration:
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www.nnfestival.org.uk
www.nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk

Please also visit Lucy's website, 'The Rainbow Poems' to discover a space dedicated to sharing a colourful array of poems:

www.therainbowpoems.co.uk

Fiona reads the gift reading of "Hope" is the thing with feathers.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)
by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Emily Dickinson, "'Hope' is the Thing with Feathers" from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode covers topics regarding suicide, suicidal ideation, and self-harm. Please take care of yourself!

On this special, mid-week edition of the Pretty Girl Pill Club podcast, Rohnie and Soph do a deep dive into all the reasons 13 Reasons Why is terrible. Spoiler alert: there are way more than 13. We wanted to make sure we took extra care in preparing this episode as it is such a heavy topic (hence the Tuesday upload). As we always say, we are not professionals, and we would love to hear your feedback on this episode. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any and all thoughts! Next week (or I guess, this week since this episode is late), we're bringing you a lighthearted good time.

FULL EPISODE NOTES AND LINKS: https://bit.ly/2CBk8pI

Instagram: https://bit.ly/2Eezpgy

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pgpcpod

DISCLAIMER: We are NOT professionals! We are just a couple of idiots on the internet with atypical brain chemistry.

“The fantasy of isolation, the fantasy of intervention: they create recluses and activists, sometimes both, in us all.” This is Brenda Wineapple on the friendship of Emily Dickinson, in my view America's greatest poet, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, editor, writer, abolitionist, activist, and soldier. During this time of a global lockdown, let's listen to Dickinson again. 

I spoke with Brenda Wineapple, author of White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, about Dickinson's remarkable assuredness, her confidence, and her decision to spend much of her life largely secluded in her father's home in Amherst, Massachusetts. In this self-elected state of being on her own, Dickinson had intense, passionate and transformative relationships, including one with the editor, writer, abolitionist and soldier Thomas Wentworth Higginson. "Are you too preoccupied to say whether my verse is alive?" was the question Dickinson laid out like a snare in her first letter to him. 

Higginson fell for this brilliant rhetorical ruse, and Brenda explains how Dickinson's remarkable friendship with a man whom academics like to relegate to the dustbin of history, or at best footnote status, is a major reason Dickinson's poetry is with us today. Brenda also explains how America has always struggled with the choice between separateness and connection, and how to understand Dickinson not as the spinster from Amherst, the victim of the patriarchy, or a forlorn recluse but as a superbly confident and self-assured poet.

"To be alive is power,/ existence in itself,/ Without a further function,/ Omnipotence enough."

Brenda is the author of a number of books, including The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877, and more .

I recorded this conversation while in Covid-19 lockdown.

The poems here are read by Anna Kathryn Kendrick.