The sentence appears first as certainty and then as hesitation. “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” It surfaces in a letter, disappears in a later draft, and returns altered, as if the words themselves were unsure whether they wished to remain. In the margins nearby, Poe has written …
In one of her letters, Emily Dickinson wrote: “A Route of Evanescence, With a revolving Wheel.” This image, later revised to the now-famous line “A Bird came down the Walk,” appears in multiple drafts and variations throughout her writing life. She tried out different phrasings for this concept of fleeting existence, from “Evanescence” to “a …
