Dear Phebe

by Judy Wells

178 pages, poems & prose, 6x9, paperback, perfect-bound. Cover and interior book design by Margaret Copeland, terragrafix.com. Printing by Minuteman Press of Berkeley, California.

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!”

178 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Ralph Dranow · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Dear Phebe: The Dickinson Sisters Go West, poet Judy Wells has gone in search of her paternal ancestors, and in the process written an unusual memoir, a thoughtful, engaging combination of genealogy and poetry. Wells is the great-granddaughter of the three Dickinson sisters, distant relatives of Emily Dickinson, courageous women who left the safety of 1860s New England to venture into the unknown, frontier California, to teach and find husbands. The book reads like a novel, as we progressively get to know and grow fond of these spirited women of faith, whose lives were hard in a rough, frontier society; one of them died in childbirth at age 28.

In researching the Dickinsons, Wells realizes her English protestant ancestry has formed her just as much as her Irish Catholic side. She has a light touch, and there is much humor as well as poignancy sprinkled through this delightful book.

[Wyndy KnoxCarr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Judy Wells’ Dear Phebe: The Dickinson Sisters Go West, resurrects her ancestors in a poetry and prose reimagining of her great-grandmother and great aunts and uncles’ lives, culled from a trove of letters found in the 21st Century which were sent to Phebe before and after she came West from Massachusetts. Wells’ work is an exposition of the pioneer wife’s existence after she moved to Walnut Creek in 1865 as described in family letters, but poignantly reconstructed by Wells from the 21st Century. It’s a beautiful book from Crockett, California’s Sugartown Publishing, not light, but profoundly moving in a “real-life” way. “Delia,” she has one character say, “your pride in teaching/ gives you money and power/ to change your life.” True then as now!
Not exactly “mail-order brides,” the three sisters were highly sought after helpmeets, courted by dozens of suitors. The dangers, joys and losses of their young wife-and-motherhood and maturation and in her great-uncle’s grim Civil War history appear materially in Wells’ own life as she holds her grand-nephews, Nathaniel and Damon; and then as she recites “the names of my dead in the last year.” It is all fabric of the same cloth as she bluntly observes:
“I want to accept death
though I do not accept death.
I want to be courageous
though I am often fearful.”
It makes me want to read some of her eleven other poetry books and prose, including I Have Berkeley and The Berkeley Literary Women’s Revolution: Essays from Marsha’s Salon, co-edited with Marsha Hudson, Bridget Connelly, Doris Earnshaw and Olivia Eielson.

[Mary Lynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author Judy Wells was inspired to write this book by the discovery of a collection of letters written by her great grandmother, Phebe Dickinson, (1835-1918), a pioneer immigrant in California of the 1860's. It is unique in format, including invented interviews with the Dickinson family ancestors, especially Phebe.

Phebe and her two sisters wrote throughout the years, and Ms. Wells includes prose and poems written to quote them, memorialize them, and find the humor and pain in their lives. The sisters write of finding husbands, babies born and lost, and work in and out of the home. One sister writes that with marriage , she "wouldn't have to teach any more!" Included is a poem entitled 'Votes for Women!' in honor of Phebe's vote in the election of 1912.

We are reminded that all history is a story, written and revised by each new generation. Although Emily Dickinson is discovered (by Phebe) to be a distant relative, part of the charm of this book is the thread of literacy that flows down through the centuries from the 1830's in Massachusetts, to Judy Wells, writing in Northern California, in 2018.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just delightful.