Cynthia Nixon, forever Miranda of Sex and the City but also the star of the new Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion, thinks that the late Amherst-born poet would’ve loved Twitter.
Nixon was speaking at the Berlin Film Festival, where she was promoting the new film, which is directed by veteran Terence Davies.
The thing about her was that she was able to what we call today ‘unplug’, and be selfish in the best way. But when she was plugged in, she was very plugged in. I can imagine her emailing and tweeting all day long. If virtual communication would have been as easy then as it is now, she would have derived great benefit from it.
This is probably true, not only because social media opens doors to those of us who prefer text-based communication, but also because Twitter makes for a natural vehicle for poetry, and is responsible for a kind of poetry renaissance.
Little known fact: Twitter’s mascot was actually created in honor of Dickinson’s poem “A Bird, came down the walk,” in which a bird comes down the walk and participates in blogger culture. Sample stanzas:
A Bird, came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an MRA in half,
And ate the fellow, raw.
And then, he drank a Mountain Dew
From a sponsored glass-
And then tabbed sidewise to Pitchfork
To let a Spotify Beatle stream –
A Quiet Passion was released in limited theaters on February 14.