text: ~*~emily dickenson a lesbian~*~? i heard from a few sites that emily dickenson was a lesbian..has anyone else heard this at all? it's an idea that's been around for while.   there is no unambiguous evidence.  she never married, she was reclusive, and wrote passionate letters to the woman who eventually became her sister-in-law, susan gilbert.  she wrote her letters even when she lived next door, lots of them -- three times as many as she wrote to any other person.  the language in the letters has been dismissed as typical of the 19th century, but it goes deeper.  dickinson refers to her as an "absent lover" whom she wanted to hold and kiss, and calls herself "susan's idolator [who] keeps a shrine for susan."  she not only expreseed desperate grief at being separated, but got "hot and feverish" (in her words) at the prospect of seeing her again.  these letters (nearly 300 of them) and the obvious role that susan played as her muse have been added to such poems as:  her breast is fit for pearls, but i was not a `diver' - her brow is fit for thrones but i have not a crest. her heart is fit for home - i - a sparrow - build there sweet twigs and twine my perennial nest.  and this poem, believed to describe a sexual encounter:  wild nights--wild nights! were i with thee wild nights should be our luxury!  futile--the winds-- to a heart in port-- done with the compass-- done with the chart! rowing in eden   ah, the sea! might i but moor--tonight-- in thee!   ...have led many scholars to admit the possibility that she had least had lesbian feelings, whether or not she ever acted on them.  others, of course, feel that they have to "protect" her legacy and keep it free from even the suggestion that she might have been a lesbian.