And he stages a casting call for actresses, asking questions like "Miss Dickinson, do you have a problem with God?

Miss Dickinson was a deep mind writing from a deep culture, and when she came to poetry, she came infallibly.

"She loves the cottons we do for her," says Miss Dickinson.

Miss Dickinson knows her subject only too well.

"She does not see or speak," Miss Dickinson said.

"I accept what Richard Sewall said in his biography, that Miss Dickinson had three crucial love affairs with men," he said.

He found the Evergreens much as it had been during Miss Dickinson's lifetime, but the place was being disassembled.

The prickly cactus Miss Dickinson keeps on her desk in the office gives the film its name.

Like Miss Dickinson, the symbolic cactus thrives in the driest of settings.

But we don't have time to discuss Miss Dickinson.