Poet 1/52 - Emily Dickinson - Day Three

The first poem in Part Two: Nature, has an intriguing first line, so I am beginning my voyage today with “Nature, the gentlest mother”. I am feeling very motherly today, with both children home from school on winter vacation. In fact, it’s impossible to forget, what with the occasional bloodcurdling scream of “Mommmmmmmy!” coming from the playroom. What’s childhood without the occasional epic battle with your sibling, after all?

Referring to nature as a mother feels a little overused, but it may not have been so when the poem was written in the mid-1800s. I will give Ms. Dickinson the benefit of the doubt there, particularly since the first stanza is so tender and gives me the warm fuzzies.

“Nature, the gentlest mother,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest,—
Her admonition mild”

My oldest son is autistic. I wouldn’t call him feeble or wayward, per se, but if you substitute the world disabled in there, it becomes a very loving description of parenting. This is excellent personification, probably considered sentimental by the critics, but as a mother, this metaphor is for me and my people.

After reading the rest of the poem, longer than her usual style, I am picturing Nature as a tall woman, with a bosom of soft leaves or moss, sturdy tree-trunk legs, and strong, flexible vines for arms, cradling all the creatures of the earth. I want to hug her.

This poem was fantastic enough that none of the others in Part Two: Nature really were able to stand up against it. Therefore, I will move right along to Part Three: Love .

I was surprised and pleased to discover some feminist leanings in Ms. Dickinson in her poem “She rose to his requirement, dropped” . The first stanza:

“She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife”

This is a poem of what women lose when they give up their independence and join the realm of the wives and mothers. This is a phenomenon which still exists to this day, albeit to a far smaller extent than in Ms. Dickinson’s day. The legal rights are now there for women, but there is still a nearly primal aspect to marriage and motherhood which can strip us of our independence and lay us bare to the needs of our families. I have noticed that women tend to identify themselves as a mother and/or a wife before all other descriptive labels. I have not seen this same trend in the men I know. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Ms. Dickinson also offers up the fairly standard but still clever ode to physical attraction in her poem “He touched me, so I live to know” . Some of the word choices seem awkward now (“groped” for example), but the sentiment carries well through the centuries.

And finally, “The moon is distant from the sea” , which serves as her ode to the gravity-like power a man has on a woman (or vice versa, in a variety of possible permutations, I suppose). It’s a clever conceit.

I had planned on reviewing poems in Part 4 and Part 5. I’ve run out of time, and had too much fun with Parts 1-3. Perhaps next year, she will return to the list. My overall impression is the Belle of Amherst remains worth taking the time to enjoy.

Next week: Poet 2/52 – John Keats.