Poet 1/52 - Emily Dickinson - Day One

As a female who was raised in Massachusetts, I do own the obligatory greatest works collection of Emily Dickinson. It is currently sitting on a bookshelf in my sons' playroom. However, it is a little scary in there right now with the post-Christmas toy and game explosion. I will likely have mommy-explosion and start cleaning and yelling (simultaneously), so I am better off just avoiding the whole area for now.

Instead, I turned to the interwebs. Project Bartleby is an excellent source for the work of authors in the public domain (read: they've been dead a really, really long time). Project Bartleby has the 1924 edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, replete with 597 poems. That's probably about 577 more poems that I'm willing to read. This particular volume is organized into 5 sections: Life, Nature, Love, Time and Eternity, and The Single Hound. One a day should be about right. There is no point in being contrary, so I will start in the Life section.

Emily Dickinson was not in the habit of naming her poems. They are mostly referred to by first lines. The first poem of the book happens to be an old favorite of mine: "Success is counted sweetest". This is so easy it feels like cheating.

" Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need "

Is it irony that she uses or just sharp realism? I have always found this sentiment to be true. When we had an apartment, we wanted a house. We have a house, yet we strive for a bigger one, with more land and a pool. Humans are, by nature, ambitious. It's the goal you don't reach that means the most to you. Or put it this way: $1,000,000 in lottery winnings means more to someone who was living in poverty than to, say, a Kennedy or a Rockefeller or a Hilton. Sing it, sister.

There's a poem in this section that was particularly meaningful to me years ago, back when love was a new and fascinating feeling and heartbreak could bring me (temporarily) to the brink of despair. It is called, "The heart asks pleasure first", and reading it as a semi-mature adult still makes me clutch a little. Here is the first stanza:

"The heart asks pleasure first

And then, excuse from pain

And then, those little anodynes

That deaden suffering;"

The second stanza speaks directly to the depths of human misery. Go ahead, click over and read it. The name of this poem is also the name of an achingly beautiful piece of music from the movie "The Piano". This is, I think, the nature of love, rushing heedlessly to the heat of the fire and then complaining of the burns. Maturity reminds me of the healing balm of time.

It also makes me feel profoundly grateful to be settled, to be loved and to love in return. You couldn't pay me enough to go through the drama of dating ever again.

I will return to Ms. Dickinson later. It's time to go kiss my husband and take the banana bread (new recipe 1/52) out of the oven.