In one of her letters she wrote:
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
You pretty much have to celebrate the birthday of someone who feels like that.
Happy birthday, Emily!
“There is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away…”
Umm- happy b-day, though your books are really boring, but they’re classics so they actually should be worth reading… *can’t think of anything to say*
*is just blogging here because the thread just appeared on the list*
YAY ! My first first post
Happy B-Day Emily!
Ha ha, I’ve never read any of her books…..but oh well!
many thanks to emily dickinson and her use of dashes which delights me endlessly.
Much Madness is divinest Sense —
To a discerning Eye —
Much Sense — the starkest Madness —
’Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail —
Assent — and you are sane —
Demur — you’re straightway dangerous —
And handled with a Chain —
1:
“There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away
Nor any courser like a page
Of prancing poetry.”
That’s pasted onto my RP binder. I’m going to bring it to the Kokon!
“Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me.”
YEAH, Emily Dickinson!
New feet within my garden go,
New fingers stir the sod;
A troubadour upon the elm
Betrays the solitude.
New children play upon the green,
New weary sleep below;
And still the pensive spring returns,
And still the punctual snow!
Ummm. I think? she was just *a bit* loopy. I don’t understand. If she was a poet, why is she writing that she doesn’t like poetry?
But happy birthday anyway!!!
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you a nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us—-don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
Happy Birthday Emily!
“Public Like a Frog” would make a good blogname.
Happy birthday, possiblity-dweller!
You guys should read the short story ‘Sister Emily’s Lightship’ by Jane Yolen; it is about Emily Dickinson.
Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.
Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence,—
Ah, what sagacity perished here!
Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.
Also, a less gloomy excerpt:
He ate and drank the precious words,
his spirit grew robust.
He knew no more that he was poor
nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days
and this bequest of wings
was but a book.
What liberty a loosened spirit brings!
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!â€
But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while.
Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.
Happy birthday, Emily! In honor of Mr. Coontz’s sage advice, I have moved from Stone Age Indonesia to Victorian America.
did u know that when she wrote the dashes they were all different directions, but when her poems got published they all got put like this —
yes. we had to research her in english when we read some of her poems, and this was my favorite fact.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EMILY!
Oh, I memorized one of her poems. Because I Could Not Stop For Death, I think it was?