"Emily Dickinson's Letters" by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The following is taken from page 5 of "Emily Dickinson's Letters" by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Published orginally

in Atlantic Monthly,October, 1891

Higginson was the man who was responsible for bringing Dickinson's poetry to the

light of the world - though she sought him out herself. Of their relationship to each

other much can be said and many books have been written. The point of this post,

however, is to show that Dickinson's prose was often as inspired as her poetry,

and to hear her voice in the immediacy and clarity that only a letter from the past can

provide.

The letter follows below:

"With this came the poem already published in her volume and entitled "Renunciation"; and also that beginning "Of all the sounds dispatched abroad," thus fixing approximately the date of those two. I must soon have written to ask her for her picture, that I might form some impression of my enigmatical correspondent. To this came the following reply, in July, 1862: --

Could you believe me without? I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass, that the guest leaves. Would this do just as well?
It often alarms father. He says death might occur, and he has moulds of all the rest, but has no mould of me; but I noticed the quick wore off those things, in a few days, and forestall the dishonor. You will think no caprice of me.
You said "Dark." I know the butterfly, and the lizard, and the orchis. Are not those your countrymen?
I am happy to be your scholar, and will deserve the kindness I cannot repay.
If you truly consent, I recite now. Will you tell me my fault, frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince than die. Men do not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, sir, and fracture within is more critical. And for this, preceptor, I shall bring you obedience, the blossom from my garden, and every gratitude I know.
Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that. My business is circumference. An ignorance, not of customs, but if caught with the dawn, or the sunset see me, myself the only kangaroo among the beauty, sir, if you please, it afflicts me, and I thought that instruction would take it away.
Because you have much business, beside the growth of me, you will appoint, yourself, how often I shall come, without your inconvenience.
And if at any time you regret you received me, or I prove a different fabric to that you supposed, you must banish me.
When I state myself, as the representative of the verse, it does not mean me, but a supposed person.
You are true about the "perfection." To-day makes Yesterday mean.
You spoke of Pippa Passes. I never heard anybody speak of Pippa Passes before. You see my posture is benighted.
To thank you baffles me. Are you perfectly powerful? Had I a pleasure you had not, I could delight to bring it.

YOUR SCHOLAR.

This was accompanied by this strong poem, with its breathless conclusion. The title is of my own giving: --

THE SAINTS' REST

Of tribulation, these are they,
Denoted by the white;
The spangled gowns, a lesser rank
Of victors designate.

All these did conquer; but the ones
Who overcame most times,
Wear nothing commoner than snow,
No ornaments but palms.

"Surrender" is a sort unknown
On this superior soil;
"Defeat" an outgrown anguish,
Remembered as the mile

Our panting ancle barely passed
When night devoured the road;
But we stood whispering in the house,
And all we said, was "Saved!"

[Note by the writer of the verses.] I spelled ankle wrong."

Hope -- by Emily Dickinson

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

I Read - Analysis

This poem is actually the dedication written by Richard Peck for his autobiography, "Anonymously Yours". Whether or not this can be considered a "real poem" is an open question. Given the straight forward but bold structure and strong emotional appeal, I would argue that it is. Peck is the author of many books across many genres - largely for young readers, but also including some works that address much more adult matters. You can learn more about the author here

I Read by Richard Peck

"I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody;

I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life;

I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map;

I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material;

I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me to start packing;

I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready."

Time by Khalil Gibran

And an Astronomer said, "Master, what of time?"

And he answered:

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.

You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,

And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?

And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?

And is not time even as love is, undivided and spaceless?

But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,

And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

A Lesson in Drawing - Nizar Qabbani

My son places his paint box in front of me and asks me to draw a bird for him. Into the color gray I dip the brush and draw a square with locks and bars. Astonishment fills his eyes: "... But this is a prision, Father, Don't you know, how to draw a bird?" And I tell him: "Son, forgive me. I've forgotten the shapes of birds." *** My son puts the drawing book in front of me and asks me to draw a wheatstalk. I hold the pen and draw a gun. My son mocks my ignorance, demanding, "Don't you know, Father, the difference between a wheatstalk and a gun?" I tell him, "Son, once I used to know the shapes of wheatstalks the shape of the loaf the shape of the rose But in this hardened time the trees of the forest have joined the militia men and the rose wears dull fatigues In this time of armed wheatstalks armed birds armed culture and armed religion you can't buy a loaf without finding a gun inside you can't pluck a rose in the field without its raising its thorns in your face you can't buy a book that doesn't explode between your fingers." *** My son sits at the edge of my bed and asks me to recite a poem, A tear falls from my eyes onto the pillow. My son licks it up, astonished, saying: "But this is a tear, father, not a poem!" And I tell him: "When you grow up, my son, and read the diwan of Arabic poetry you'll discover that the word and the tear are twins and the Arabic poem is no more than a tear wept by writing fingers." *** My son lays down his pens, his crayon box in front of me and asks me to draw a homeland for him. The brush trembles in my hands and I sink, weeping.

"The Icecream People" -- Charles Bukowski

the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...
 

we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
"what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I'm going in for a walnut peach sundae?"
"come on, chicken," she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a leper in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.
 


I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while...")
--those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals...
 


and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other's
arms.
 


the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.

In a Station of the Metro - Ezra Pound

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals, on a wet, black bough.

In a Station of the Metro - Analysis

Ezra Pound is most well known for his infamously impenetrable Cantos, however I brought him up today so we can have a look at another quasi-haiku. Like Salinger's haiku, which would appear almost 50 years later, Pound sought to represent something like a haiku in English. However, Pound was content to start with the haiku as his inspiration and interpret it through the artistic school of Vorticism. As he explains in his own words: "Three years ago in Paris I got out of a "metro" train at La Concorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along the Rue Raynouard, I was still trying and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but there came an equation . . . not in speech, but in little splotches of colour. It was just that - a "pattern," or hardly a pattern, if by "pattern" you mean something with a "repeat" in it. But it was a word, the beginning, for me, of a language in colour. . . . "All poetic language is the language of exploration. Since the beginning of bad writing, writers have used images as ornaments. The point of Imagisme is that it does not use images as ornaments. The image is itself the speech. The image is the word beyond formulated language. I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, "Mamma, can I open the light?" She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art. It was a sort of metaphor, but she was not using it as ornamentation. One is tired of ornamentations, they are all a trick, and any sharp person can learn them. The Japanese have had the sense of exploration. They have understood the beauty of this sort of knowing. A Chinaman said long ago that if a man can’t say what he has to say in twelve lines he had better keep quiet. The Japanese have evolved the still shorter form of the hokku. "The fallen blossom flies back to its branch: A butterfly." The "one image poem" is a form of super-position, that is to say, it is one idea set on top of another. I found it useful in getting out of the impasse in which I had been left by my metro emotion. I wrote a thirty-line poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call work "of second intensity." Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following hokku-like sentence: -- "The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals, on a wet, black bough." I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of thought. I a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective." -Ezra Pound from Gaudier-Brzeska, 1916

Untitled Haiku --- by J.D. Salinger

The little girl on the plane
Who turned her doll’s head around
To look at me.

Untitled Haiku by J.D. Salinger --- Analysis

J.D. Salinger is not generally thought of as a poet. His only attempts at publishing poetry, 15 poems he submitted to the New Yorker, were rejected and never saw the light of day. All the same, this being the one year anniversary of Salinger's death, it feels appropriate to say something about the late, great Salinger.

Like many people, I was introduced to Salinger through The Catcher in the Rye in high school, and only later in life came across his other works. Salinger is one of my all time favorite authors, and his prose knocks me out like none other. In fact, in a certain sense you could say that all of Salinger's writings are but extended works of poetry. In another more accurate sense, however, you could say that original poetry only appears two times in his books.

The first would be the haiku published as part of "Zooey" in 1957, the slim novella about Seymour's younger brother Zooey Glass. Later on in "Seymour - An Introduction" we are told by Seymour's brother that Seymour, “probably loved the classical Japanese three-line, seventeen syllable haiku as he loved no other form of poetry, and that he himself wrote—bled—haiku (almost always in English, but sometimes . . . in Japanese, German, or Italian).”

In fact, Buddy claims that the haiku published above is one he found written in Japanese on the desk blotter of the room Seymour occupied in "A Perfect Day for Banana Fish" and that it was written in “straight, classical-style haiku”.

Buddy was, he claims in the story, the one who translated the poem from Japanese to English - which raises an unusual issue. One of the essential features of classical haiku is the use of "kigo" or language that denotes the season the poem is taking place. These are often difficult for foreign language speakers to pick up on, since these terms are often only tangentially related to the season itself (for example, "frog" in a haiku connotes Spring, and "moon" connotes autumn). What we can be certain of, is that none of the words Salinger uses in his haiku are "kigo" which implies either that either Buddy isn't very familiar with classical haiku structure, or that Salinger isn't. Reading on through "Seymour - an introduction" raises further issues of Buddy's reliability as a narrator, but that is the topic for another day.

The other short burst of original poetry in Salinger's prose is much more elusive. In 1947 Salinger published a short story called "The Inverted Forest" in Cosmopolitan magazine. Salinger subsequently blocked the story from ever being reprinted and it was only available on microfilm in library archives up through the decades before some enterprising soul uploaded it to the Internet. The story regards the life of a brilliant young poet named Ray Ford. Although Ford's poetry is lauded as incredible throughout the story, we never get to see any - except for one couplet.

“Not a wasteland, but a great inverted forest
with all the foliage underground.”

It's a beautiful line, made all the more beautiful by the context - the wasteland, or forest rather, is the main character of the piece, a young woman named Corinne.

Even though both these poems are very short, they convey in their brief lines the depth, melancholy and approachability of Salinger's prose. They are also both tantalizing parts of a suggested greater whole - the copious haiku's of Seymour Glass and Ray Ford's body of work - which the reader will never be privy to. In that way perhaps they represent J.D. Salinger's works most of all - works which, even before his death, were barred from readers by all means save through the tantalizing power of imagination.

A Dream Deferred --- by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Democracy --- by Langston Hughes

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

Analysis --- Democracy by Langston Hughes

This poem is another great example of Langston Hughes' deep reading of America, and another cry for it's enfranchised citizens to not simply sweep the disenfranchised into the gutter. This was a particularly bold stand to take in 1949, when Hughes released the poem, but remains relevant today in its cry for freedom.

I chose this poem because it continues on the theme of yesterday's poem, not to mention that it fits nicely with framing of the president's State of the Union address last night.

Let's look again at the universality of Hughes declaration. We know that he was a black man, born into unjust times, but though that is the source of his poem's emotion it is not bound by it. This poem's narrator stays clear of identifying himself explicitly as black, or any other minority group, and in doing so the poem becomes a rallying cry for freedom that echoes through the ages.

His language, again, is as strikingly strong and direct - so much so that there is little need for analysis. The simple lines "I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. / I cannot live on tomorrow's bread," is so simply put, and with such spare beauty, that it is surprising it has not been co-opted by hawks at large as a stirring justification for, say, military intervention in Iraq.

Just as with yesterday's poem, there is little to be said about the scansion. Hughes is primarily a writer of the vulgar, in subject matter as well as form. For meter he favors the uneven vocal patterns of everyday speech and for his verses blank rhyme interspersed with simple rhymes that lend strength to the key lines. This was a particularly unusual style to have during the time that Hughes first began to be published - in the 1920's when many modernist poets and authors were writing from the extreme opposite pole of esoteric obtuseness and high pretension (a la Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot).

We'll look at another Hughes poem tomorrow as we continue to explore his bold take on America and his position as a poet vulgarian, writing for all, that served to displease so many.

Theme for English B --- by Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

Analysis - Theme for English B

Today's posting is meant as a lead-in to the State of the Union address tonight. Langston Hughes is, not unlike President Obama, an eloquent speaker on the deep theme of what it means to be American as well as, incidentally, the son of an interracial marriage.

Born in 1902 and coming into his authorship in the 1920's, Hughes' black father meant that he was seen in no uncertain terms as "a Negro author", and this social position informed everything he wrote. Hughes is viewed nowadays as one of the predominant voices of the Harlem Renaissance, and arguably has the greatest worldwide reputation of any black writer.

Now, at the risk of revealing too much about myself, I am white man - a white dude. I hail from a world removed from the life and times of Langston Hughes. I was born in a suburb of Denver, Colorado to parents who - several generations back, came from Ireland and Poland. I like hockey. The list goes on. If ever there was a culturally/politically/socio-economically typical white dude, it is I.

And yet, the words of Mr. Hughes effect me very deeply. This goes to show that, one, Langston Hughes is a truly excellent poet - the hallmark of such being the transcendent quality of his language. But more precisely, I think we can say that Langston Hughes wasn't "a Negro author", not in the sense that he was writing as "a black to blacks about blackness". In fact, Hughes was lambasted and vilified in his day for being a black author who didn't fit into the expected role of a black author.

Eustace Gay, the Literary critic of the Philadelphia Tribune, wrote this about Hughes' early book of poems Fine Clothes to the Jew in 1927:

"It does not matter to me whether every poem in the book is true to life. Why should it be paraded before the American public by a Negro author as being typical or representative of the Negro?"

Mr. Hughes was roundly abused by many other black critics for similar reasons throughout the early part of his career. His poems and writings were seen as reinforcing negative stereotypes of African-Americans already held by "white" America. Come the 1960's, Hughes was abrogated by black critics for an entirely different, but not unrelated, reason.

"Regrettably, in different poems, he is fatally prone to sympathize with starkly antithetical politics of race," wrote Laurence Lieberman on the 1967 work Panther and the Lash, "A reader can appreciate his catholicity, his tolerance of all the rival—and mutually hostile—views of his outspoken compatriots, from Martin Luther King to Stokely Carmichael, but we are tempted to ask, what are Hughes' politics? And if he has none, why not? The age demands intellectual commitment from its spokesmen. A poetry whose chief claim on our attention is moral, rather than aesthetic, must take sides politically."

From beginning to end, critical naysayers took issue with Hughes. So much so, in fact, that Lindsay Patterson, a novelist who served as Hughes's assistant, believed that Hughes was "critically, the most abused poet in America. . . . Serious white critics ignored him, less serious ones compared his poetry to Cassius Clay doggerel, and most black critics only grudgingly admired him."

So why has Hughes endured as one of America's most popular poets? That is a question I can only answer in a personal light. Hughes has always been beloved for the ordinary way he speaks of the uniting beauty of humanity. Indeed, during the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read.

Hughes may have been a black author, writing for his times to address the gross injustice in racially divided America, but he did so always by turning to underlying factors that unite all people. He called attention to America's madness of racial segregation and bigotry by remarking in simple terms on our gorgeous humanity, and the humble pride we can find in our shared American identity.

Given the recent happenings in America, and President Obama's recent call for all Americans to look past their ideological differences and unite in that same concept of shared humanity, this poem seems quite apt.

The narrator's voice in the poem is so personal and identifiable that it makes it easy for us all to see ourselves in him, no matter where our differences may lay. Whether we are Black or White or Republican or Democrat or Arabic or whatever - "[you are] a part of me, as I am a part of you. / That's American."

David Crennen

"The mother" -- analysis

This poem deals with challenging subject matter, to say the least, but I decided to post it today for a couple reasons.

First, dealing directly with subjects we can't speak about freely is one of most important roles poetry can play in our lives.

The caliber of the poet was also an important consideration. This isn't screed, or a rant taking one side or another of a very contentious issue, this is an eloquent outpouring of emotion from a deeply conflicted woman. The poem never tries to "score points" for a particular point of view. Instead, it struggles to work out on paper (or in voice) just what the speaker feels.

It begins conflicted and ends more conflicted after engaging in tortured bouts of self-contradiction and self-condemnation. Brooks makes the words feel like they are being thought out even as they are written down - her style bordering on stream-of-consciousness.

But what are we left with? Why did our poor, tormented narrator write this poem if she doesn't even know how she herself feels? The answer is that she does in fact know how she feels, she makes it clear in her final, sweet stanza. She is filled with love. She is conflicted, confused and regretful, but most of all she is filled with love, and so she wrote this - a love letter to her children that she no longer has.

This poem has been used by both sides of the abortion argument, and understandable so. No matter what camp you consider yourself a member of, the deep love Brooks writes of speaks to us all.

Incidentally, Gwendolyn Brooks herself never underwent abortion. Her writing on this topic shows the deep pathos that she brings to all her poetry.

Although this poem is about abortion it doesn't take sides. Instead it expresses in great eloquence the author's deep uncertainty.

the mother

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Welcome to the Great Poems Blog!

Welcome to the Great Poems blog - your bedrock-solid website to the fleet breeze of the Twitter feed. Updated daily!

Here you will find all the poems I post on the Twitter feed in their entirety (along with all the formatting that Twitter can't provide, oh joy!). We'll also feature some pithy analysis to help make heads or tails of our ever-confounding friend, the poet.

Poetry is not meant for dry academia but needs to run and beat in the breasts of the lively and agitated - so please comment on the poems as often as the fancy strikes you. You have my promise that I, at least, am listening. (Promise not extended to spam bots.)

Enjoy your stay,

-David Crennen