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.

Poet 1/52 - Emily Dickinson - Day Two

I am returning today to Emily Dickinson. The poem and piano piece from Sunday (“The Heart Asks Pleasure First”) left me feeling a little tenderhearted. Having the advantage of some familiarity with her works, today I will be perusing some of the more cerebral, less emotionally wrenching poems.

Part One of "The Complete Poems" contains yet more of Ms. Dickinson’s most well-known poems, including “Much Madness is Divinest Sense”, “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed”, “I’m nobody! Who are you?” and “Hope is the thing with feathers”. They are famous and well-known for a reason.

I’m going to skip past them, simply because they are well-known and beloved. I am such a rebel.

Instead, I'll begin with a poem that I forgot I knew: “The soul selects her own society”.

"The soul selects her own society

Then shuts the door;

On her divine majority

Obtrude no more.”

I particularly like this poem because I tend to be a little antisocial. I think it's anxiety or shyness. It takes me awhile. Once I care about somebody (once they have been "selected"), they are in solidly and it takes emotional dynamite to remove them. Opening the door to that society (and the older you get, the less knockers there are), is hard to do. Perhaps I fear vulnerability? I'm not sure. But this is how I am. Like Ms. Dickinson, I could probably live easily with just my family off on some estate, communicating with the world only by letter (email/facebook). It's probably healthier for me that this is not an option.

I find the title of this next poem, “I had no time to hate”, ironic, because it seems like no matter how busy we get as a society, or even as a family, there is always time to hate something or someone. I'm not saying it's appropriate, but it'd be naive to pretend it doesn't exist.

"I had no time to hate, because

The grave would hinder me,

And life was not so ample I

Could finish enmity...

Much as I like the optimism, I feel compelled to point something out. The average life span has now at least doubled, if not tripled, since this poem was written. Speaking exclusively from a time management vantage, that's really not a concern anymore. You've got plenty of time. Modern medicine has marvels, and not wearing a corset constantly helps too, I'm sure.

We are also living in a highly social, crowded world. I'm sure it would be very easy to avoid hating your immediate family and the servants on your estate. Living in isolation, you can effectively, select your own society (see what I did there?). Most of us aren't doing this, however. We are living in large groups in communities, many members of which do. not. know. how. to. drive. the way my husband thinks they should.

The existence, alone, of 24 hour news networks also makes it far easier to hate, and gives us more knowledge of people in the world who are available, even if long-distance, to direct our enmity towards.

Second stanza:

"Nor had I time to love; but since

Some industry must be,

The little toil of love, I thought,

Was large enough for me."

See, we always find time for things we want to do. This is why I haven't finished repainting my sons' playroom but I am up to episode 74 of Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix. But beware, Ms. Dickinson, beware. Love doesn't always work out well or easily. You have told us this before.

I chose the poem “For each ecstatic instance” from the first line index because the first line made me want to read the rest of the poem. If it were simply called "Balance" or "Harmony", I probably wouldn't have clicked and read it. Well-played, Ms. Dickinson, well-played.

“For each ecstatic instant

We must an anguish pay

In keen and quivering ratio

To the ecstasy.”

I can do ratios. I had algebra lovingly beaten into my head. 1:1 ecstasy to anguish. Got it. I even agree with it. I am a big fan of the cosmic balance theories. I am a Virgo. Justice, harmony and all that stuff appeals to me. I am also a mother. Heartache exists in that condition, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the sheer wonder and joy of it all. Becoming a mother was the most joyous and amazing blessing of my life. Learning that my oldest son is autistic was one of the greatest sorrows and has certainly provided me with great moments of anguish (to borrow Ms. Dickinson's word). We don't sit around everyday as a family moping and Eeyore-ing, but autism is always there, always a part of our lives, no matter how much we may try to ignore it, like that one roommate in college who you just can't get along with but can't fight with because you still have to live together at the end of the day and the semester's almost over anyways.

I am particularly struck in this first stanza, by her brilliant word choice in using "keen". Multiple meaning words for the win!

keen- adj. 1. finely sharpened, as an edge; so shaped as to cut or pierce substances readily.

2. sharp, piercing, or biting

keen - noun. 1. a wailing lament for the dead

keen - verb. 1. to bewail or lament by or with keening

I love the English language, and I love poets who know how to use it well.

For my next adventures with Ms. Dickinson, I will be exploring Part Two: Nature and Part Three: Love. I'm sure there won't be several hundred excellent poems to choose from given those topics.

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.