This version, my second altered #593, came about as a mistake involving me not following my standard practice. Surprise, surprise. Anyone who knows me well knows I rebel against “standard practice”. It’s the antithesis of my creativity. My “somewhat of a system” calls for working on my rough drafts of a Carol and Emily poem in a numbered page composition book, after which I transfer it to the art/poem page and post. For #593, my system failed, and in December of 2021 I posted the first version of “I think I was enchanted” without writing the rough draft in the notebook. So, when I was recently inspired to write and flipping through the various first lines in my composition books, seeing that #593 was blank and having just listened to my collection of Taylor Swift songs, I proceeded to write Carol’s Version 2, which you see above.

Below is Emily’s original poem, one of three elegies written about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Much has been written about the relationship between her and Elizabeth. Scholars agree that even though they lived an ocean apart and never met, Emily was profoundly influenced by Browning’s work. Emily even kept a framed portrait of Elizabeth on her bedroom wall. (You can see that portrait when you visit the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts.) Emily’s “I think I was enchanted” poem reveals her deep and sincere admiration for Elizabeth Barrett Browning (that foreign lady) while also sharing the transformative effect that reading Browning’s work had on her (the somber girl). Her words create the imagery of divine female power and the metamorphosis of her own vision and work, no longer seeing herself as just a somber girl living an isolated life, but one who might be rebelling a bit, deeming poetry enchanting witchcraft and sanity a danger.

It seems as if Emily might have agreed with Lewis Carroll, (I know I do) when in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), the Mad Hatter says to Alice:

“You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”