A life of thought

How do most people live without any thoughts? There are many people in the world, — you must have noticed them in the street, — how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning?

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

(from Letter to Colonel T. W. Higginson written by Emily Dickinson, 1870; reprinted in The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi, p. 276)