Poem a day #23 Missing Minnesota

Another Emily-inspired poem, again stealing a first line from her. _________ Missing Minnesota Blazing in gold and quenching in purple Minnesota sunsets stretch Hudson Bay to Oaxaca Rocky Mountains to tropopause, light stratified by the lust of prairie for heaven, bright sky breaking open— purplelavenderorangepinkyelloworangered color volume amping up as sky darkens around a semi-circle [...]

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Poem a day #22 I felt my life with both my hands

another Emily-inspired poem. Read her text here. Singer/songwriter Carla Bruni performs a setting of the poem on her album No Promises. You can sample that here. ____________________ I felt my life with both my hands I felt my life with both my hands though it had been—years How civilized it was, though warm— the glacier—booming—as [...]

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Poem a day #21 They shut me up in prose

Another first line taken from Emily Dickinson. You can find her original, with excellent manuscript notes, here. Her poem keeps haunting me; it could have been written yesterday, and makes Emily real to me in a way she hadn’t been up til now. __________________________________ They shut me up in prose They shut me up in [...]

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Poem a day #20 Before I got my eyes put out

I’ve been reading a lot of Emily Dickinson, and have been astounded by the power of her first lines. She has a way of kicking open a door and bursting into the room guns blazing. Wow. (And if that doesn’t jive with the myth of Emily The Lonely Scribbler you’ve been fed, go and read [...]

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Dickinson, #330 He put the Belt around my life

from 1862, when she was writing a poem or more a day. He put the Belt around my life— I heard the Buckle snap— And turned away, imperial, My Lifetime folding up— Deliberate, as Duke would do A Kingdom’s Title Deed— Henceforth—a Dedicated sort— A Member of the Cloud— Yet not too far to come [...]

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Genius on Genius—McHugh on Dickinson’s Dash

I’ve both understood and been completely mystified by Dickinson’s use of dashes since meeting her voice in high school. Finally, FINALLY, someone makes sense of it for me, in terms of how writers can manipulate syntax to create meanings, contradictory meanings, and multiple meanings all with the same few words. from “What Dickinson Makes a [...]

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Heather McHugh on Emily Dickinson’s inexhaustibility

from “What Dickinson Makes a Dash For” in Broken English: It is not the definable (delimitable), finally, that interests Dickinson; she is drawn precisely to that uneasier thing, what can’t be said. The relative exhaustibility of a literary construction is one measure of its inadequacy to this truth; and Dickinson’s sentences and lines often seem [...]

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The murmur of a bee

The Murmur of a Bee Emily Dickinson 155 The Murmur of a Bee A Witchcraft—yieldeth me— If any ask me why— ’Twere easier to die— Than tell— The Red upon the Hill Taketh away my will— If anybody sneer— Take care—for God is here— That’s all. The Breaking of the Day Addeth to my Degree— [...]

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Fame is a bee

Fame is a bee Emily Dickinson 1763 Fame is a bee. It has a song— It has a sting— Ah, too, it has a wing.

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To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee Emily Dickinson 1755 To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

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