For Berkeley poet Judy Wells, a family story hinted that she might be related to the great American poet Emily Dickinson. She set out to learn something about her father’s Massachusetts’ Dickinson ancestors and discovered a treasure trove of family letters written back and forth across an expanding nation. As poet Lucille Lang Day puts it: “ ‘Go West, young man,’ is the famous command, but many young women also heeded this advice. Among them were Judy Wells’ great-grandmother Phebe Marsh Dickinson and her two sisters, distant cousins of Emily Dickinson, who came to California from Massachusetts in the late 19th century. In Dear Phebe: The Dickinson Sisters Go West, Wells chronicles their stories in poetry and prose.”
Dear Phebe is neither traditional autobiography nor strict genealogy. In the hands of a poet as deft, humorous, and self-reflective as Judy Wells, letters and historical facts are turned into poems, and anecdotes become grist for the mill. As historian Lauren Coodley says: “This book is a wholly new form, fusing history and poetry, inspiring both disciplines.” And author Bridget Connelly comments: “I loved every twist and turn of this mind-tripping story and laughed with glee when the author ends up returning her great-grandmother Phebe's 100-year-overdue book to the San Francisco Public Library.”
Author Naomi Lowinsky describes Dear Phebe beautifully: “Wells talks to her ancestors, and her ancestors talk back to her in a compelling narrative, driven by the many surprising points of view she inhabits. Her poetic embroidery needle loops back and forth across the generations, warns her ancestors of their fates, brings them the terrible news of the 2016 election. Her needle loops across the continent between the three Dickinson sisters in California and their cousins in Massachusetts who are living wildly different lives in mid-19th century America. She even loops between this world and the next, and has it out with her 6th cousin twice removed, Emily Dickinson herself!”
