My Hero, the Outlaw of Amherst

"But why do we so badly need to have this poet paired off with someone? Why do we need to make a failure in love — and because Dickinson was single, failure is always assumed — the explanation for her art? We don’t consider “Walden” or “Moby Dick” or “Leaves of Grass” the products of amorous psychopathology. Yet the notion lingers that Dickinson’s poetry was a disturbed response to some unfulfilled need, her retirement a symptom of sickness."