While Emily Dickinson’s writings show her deep connection to her rural Massachusetts landscape, or terroir, she also knew the terrors of her place and time: illness; deaths of friends and family; political violence, including the Civil War; anti-immigrant sentiment; climate catastrophe and species die-offs; and increasingly centralized wealth and power.

In an 1870 manuscript (Fr 1174a), Dickinson wrote, “Contained in this short Life / Were wonderful extents,” including five variant words for “wonderful”: magical, terrible, miraculous, exquisite, and tenderest. Dickinson, of course, often included …