Discerning historians have long suspected creativity in the arts and creativity in the sciences to be related in some mysterious way. This book attempts to dispel the mystery by analyzing the works, and the working methods of an artist and a scientist of acknowledged genius - the poet Emily Dickinson and the theoretical physicist Willard Gibbs. The comparison is given force, not only by the analysis, but also by the similarities in their lives and surroundings; both were products of the late nineteenth century mini-renaissance that flowered briefly in New England. In the end, the boundary between the "two cultures" begins to fade, and theoretical physics emerges as a form of poetry.