Morns like these -- we parted

And, whoops, I may have just broken the law.

Or so Harvard wants people to think. Once again; Emily Dickinson may be long deceased but copyright may not be. Many of her poems were not published in her lifetime, but passed to family, some of whom sold them to Harvard, making them technically holders of a yet unexpired copyright.

The thing that surprises me here is not that it might be illegal to print your own book of her poems -- which I don't have argument with, as the university has been a steward for all these years, collecting and polishing. It is that academics aren't allowed to quote within literary analysis of her works and life. Not without written permission, at least.

Which would seem to me about as pure a case of fair use as is inscribed in the law.

And it took hours, crawling through resources that had been designed for academics with a lot of time on their hands to discuss minutiae of the poems, to find that this poem saw the light of day in 1891. So I think I am safe from any Harvard Lawyers on this one.

Of course there is one more wrinkle. There's always one more. As much as I might quibble with the substantiality, edited and revised versions may still fall under copyright. Fortunately Wikimedia keeps record of all published versions, and the lines I wanted to use are unchanged.