#609 “I Years had been from Home”
“That I did always love”
It’s been another hot minute (or around 876,582) since I posted a new poem. That’s 20 months if anyone is counting. Most subscribers have likely forgotten that I and this project still exist. There is no judgement at all from this side of the screen. If you’ve followed me for a while, you might remember that I lost my 40-year-old son, Dewitt, in 2023 to suicide, and since then I’ve struggled to write (among other things). Yet here I am, trying again to find my words, popping my head up from under the ocean of waves that sometimes take me down, but have not yet succeeded.
Life goes on. We must also, or things begin to get really isolating, despairing, and ugly for both our remaining loved ones and us. Losing a child is HARD. Going on is HARD. Friends and family can’t fix anything or go on for you. Therapy definitely helps, but grief is a direct result of love, which does not die with death. (It’s also a relentless bitch.)
I’ve recently restarted my practice of Yoga, and my teacher shared some info on the significance of the current Lion’s Gate Portal, which opened August 8th and will remain open until August 12th. It’s known as “a period that many astrologers and spiritual practitioners associate with personal growth, renewed confidence and meaningful new beginnings”1. I spent 8-8 completing some specific rituals and meditations, and setting fresh goals and intentions. I feel like I’ve made some real initial progress. One of them is getting back to my writing.
As the universe would have it, I flipped through a couple of my Carol and Emily Project notebooks this morning, the pages of which have the first line of every one of Emily’s poems at the top, and I stopped on #549. My process is to avoid reading her poem until after I’ve finished mine, and only then do I research and analyze. In doing so, I had to believe that today’s choice was wholly synchronistic. In #549 Emily wrote that love is the point of life and, drawing on her spiritual convictions, she pointed to the immortality of both. My love for my son did not diminish or die when his physical body did. Energy (according to the law of conservation of energy) can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed or transferred from one form to another; therefore, his energy, his spirit, still lives. So here we are.
While Emily’s poem was directed at a beloved anonymous person in her life (perhaps her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson or perhaps another unidentified romantic interest), mine explores the relationship between a flower and a bee as it relates to the bee’s labor of love and survival. The outcome of the bee’s toil and gift of the flower’s nectar is the creation of the ancient, sweet elixir-like material we know as honey, which I see as an apt metaphor for love.
PS Speaking of synchronistic moments, mid-editing, I walked from my office to my kitchen/dining area to get more coffee, stopped to open the plantation shutters to let the light in, as I do every morning, and gasped with surprise when, in front of me on the outside of the screen, was a bee.
I’ll be traveling for a couple of weeks, but I hope to be back here really soon. Stay tuned. <3
Peace, Love and Poetry
1“a period that many astrologers and spiritual practitioners associate with personal growth, renewed confidence and meaningful new beginnings” thegoddesscircle.net
Hello Poetry My Old Friend
It’s been a moment, or 977,760. Many of them have been spent navigating an ocean of personal grief, an ocean I’ve been swimming in since the suicide of my 40 year old son, 1 year, 7 months and 4 days ago. Today, on my 66th birthday, after a long period of literally feeling like my relationship with words was also lost, I greeted this project again. Although that ocean is mine to forever swim in, I will hopefully raise my head above water and meet you and Emily regularly for word waltzes beginning with the first lines of the word gardens she planted long ago.
For those of you new to this blog, I started this project in 2021 and dreamt that I could complete it in one year. The universe is still laughing at me!
Today’s co-creation begins with the line, “Have any like myself”. In her original, Emily wonders aloud to the reader if they too have noticed what she has about the changing landscape surrounding her home in Amherst, Massachusetts and its relationship to one’s own changing inner landscapes and perceptions.
At this very moment in the disUnited States of America, our institutional and governmental landscapes are changing. The impacts of these changes are both personal and societal as our country’s future is created and reveals itself and we each deal with those changes in the ways we either choose, or are forced to.
”Have any like myself”
wondered how we arrived,
at this seismic chasm
attacks on Liberty contrived.
Each day brings new horrors.
Surely the dead, they shake
their bones in disbelief
at the history being made.
Pray tell what the future
holds for this country torn-
as Lady Liberty leads
a collective weep and we mourn.
CRR 12-04-24
“I Fear A Man Of Frugal Speech”
The Oxford Dictionary defines frugal as:
“sparing or economical with regard to money or food”.
I believe Emily feared a man of frugal speech due to the fact that so much could remain unknown about the person, that they might remain a mystery or even be superior in some way. Her last line states :
“I fear that He is Grand.”
I interpret a man or woman of “frugal speech” as one who says as little as necessary and/or weighs his/her words carefully before spending/speaking them, especially in non-intimate company. This type of person might appear aloof or taciturn to others at first, and is more than likely to be a thoughtful introvert. How did I come to these conclusions, you might ask? Because they describe me! I have always loved words and could often be found perusing dictionaries as a child. An avid and curious reader, I to this day, keep a litttle notebook of new words I’ve come upon, looked up, and learned. You won’t find me trying to use them in my speech to impress anyone though.
Words are cheap as the saying goes, and cheaper still when they are used superfulously by someone droning on and on about something with the obvious intention of impressing others with their “50 cent words”. In my younger days, I willingly boarded quite a few beautiful word boats only to find myself in metaphorical deserts with people whose extravagant, yet often empty words impressed and lulled me into smoke and mirrors situations.
You can Google hundreds of quotes about silence, but one of my favorites is this Arabic proverb:
Older and wiser now, I know that silence scares some people, but it doesn’t bother me. In fact, I believe it to be essential to find balance in our increasingly noisy world and I rather treasure it because there is so much to be found in it. In the outdoors we find the beautiful, awe inspiring sounds of nature and wherever we experience silence we can utilize it to begin to examine our own thoughts and emotions and increase our mindfulness and self awareness.
I’ll leave you with a parting thought that perhaps might spur you to seek your own intimate adventure with silence.
“There was a brief silence. I think I heard snow falling.” –Erich Segal
“Beauty- be not caused-It Is-“
I ardently agree with Emily that beauty simply IS, its cause unidentifiable. Of course the beauty we are both referring to (and I’m assuming, since I can’t ask her) is the natural untouched beauty of the earth and all things natural in it. But it might also be the beauty we each see through our own particular lenses that could be referenced here. The judgement of beauty is said to be “in the eye of the beholder”* therefore existing in our individual minds, and I don’t disagree.
When a tree falls in the woods and no person is around to hear the noise made, the sound still occurred and existed. Similarly, I have proposed that an unviewed object’s beauty is not lessened by the fact that it goes unviewed. Unappreciated, yes, but still, its “beauty IS”.
There are so many types of natural beauty in the world that we could begin an adventure to seek them all out, and never complete the journey, for it abounds everywhere. In my humble opinion, that’s exactly how we should live our lives though, hunting for the beauty in everything, everywhere, consciously, all the time. In some ways, and sadly increasingly, it’s actually a basic and necessary survival skill, given the fact that all kinds of ugliness coexists in our world as well.
Emily never ventured far from her home to seek beauty, but she sought it out all around her and appreciated its myriad of expressions in nature and in the written and spoken word. I think I’ll follow her example.
*Most sources attribute the first use of the modern-day expression to Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (née Hamilton) who wrote a number of books under the pseudonym of “The Duchess,” and, in her 1878 work Molly Bawn, wrote “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“I Started Early- Took My Dog-“
If you Google Emily Dickinson and ocean poems, #656 is the first search result you will get. In it, she goes on a walk with her dog to the sea. Although Emily did travel outside of Amherst during a few years of her life, by all accounts, records, and letters left behind, she never actually saw the sea. Emily did have a beloved Newfoundland named Carlo though, presented to her by her father in 1849. Her devoted and constant companion, Carlo would die in 1866 and leave Emily feeling adrift.
Although far from well-traveled and being known for her reclusive nature, Emily’s imagination and knowledge allowed her to go many places in her mind. One Hundred and thirty-two years after the first posthumous publication of her work, we are lucky to go along with her as we read her words and continue to be delighted and mystified by them.
I do live near the sea and go often. It has always been “my place”. The following is what came to me yesterday as I sat with paper and pen and watched the tide come to kiss the shore.
References:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69411/emily-dickinson-i-started-early-took-my-dog-
“Sweet Hours Have Perished Here”
Today’s first line comes from one of the earliest collections of Emily’s poetry published in 1896, 10 years after Emily’s death, by Mabel Loomis Todd, a family friend and also the mistress of Emily’s brother, Austin. Thomas H. Johnson published the entirety of Dickinson’s poems in 1955 and numbered them according to his judgment of chronology.
The original poem is just four lines and is said to be about her bedroom, where she spent most of her life and where the shadows certainly would have increased as she faced ill health in her last days.
Sweet hours have perished here;
This is a mighty room;
Within its precincts hopes have played,-
Now shadows in the tomb.
Emily Dickinson
J1767
I took the first line and reflected on my childhood, when books and writing were personal havens for me. Long after I should have been, I could almost always be found under the covers writing or between the covers of a book, being whisked off to an imaginary place I was reading about, or coveting some snippet of knowledge I had to sneak to learn. Indeed, it was my happy place and the hours that passed on there were never mourned.
From March- August you can even spend an hour or two in Emily’s own “mighty room”, which has been preserved in the Dickinson family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Click this link for details. (It’s definitely on my Post-Covid Bucket List!)
https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/studio-session-request-form/
Wishing You A Happy New Year!
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.
– Emily Dickinson
The first stanza of this poem is one that is well known. What I get from this collection of Emily’s words is that Hope doesn’t cost a thing. Granted, the cost of fulfilling those hopes might take more than wishful thinking, but no matter our station in life, we can all afford the miniscule cost of giving another soul hope.
Because it’s New Year’s Eve, and I’ve got other projects calling my name, I’m not going to write my version of Emily’s poem #254 today. I’m going to cross over to my other blog and share my wish for all of you, that as you leave 2021 behind and enter into 2022, you take these words to heart, knowing that you were made for joy.
Peace and Love
“Before the ice is in the pools”
If you search for Emily Dickinson Christmas poems, your search won’t take too long. Number 37 is the only one I have found that mentions it.
Before the ice is in the pools —
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow —
Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!
What we touch the hems of
On a summer’s day —
What is only walking
Just a bridge away —
That which sings so — speaks so —
When there’s no one here —
Will the frock I wept in
Answer me to wear?
J#37 Emily Dickinson
Not that Emily didn’t love the Christmas season. She was known far and wide for making and gifting her famous Black Cake during the holidays. It actually sounds delicious and I’m vowing to try my hand at it next year. Here’s a link for the recipe if you’re interested but be forewarned that the baking time is 3 -3 and 1/2 hours, low and slow!
https://www.mtpr.org/arts-culture/2017-12-19/poetry-in-baking-emily-dickinsons-black-cake-recipe
I took a different path with the poem, as I always do, and incorporated a little science into mine. If you don’t remember the exact specifics of E,T,C, and P of the water cycle then now would be a good time to refresh your memory.
It’s also the perfect time for me to thank you for reading and following me on this Emily and Carol journey. Wishing you and yours all the very best this holiday season and always.
Peace and Love
“It Troubled Me As Once I Was”
191 years ago today, Emily Dickinson was born. How amazed would she be to know that her words would survive and become such a legacy to the world? As a little girl, she was the first of many poets I would come to admire and treasure, poets that would inspire me and make me marvel at the mystery of it all, as well as the magic created by mere consonants and vowels put together in just the right way to reveal entire astonishing worlds.
As we celebrate her life today, I imagine that being the introvert that she was, like me, she would at times find a celebrated public life tedious.
The first poem I ever memorized was her #600:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!How dreary – to be – Somebody!
Emily Dickinson
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
One of the many ways I relate to Emily is in the comfort found in nature, wherein lies a soothing solace, a buzzing energy, and an all-encompassing mystery that one desires fervently to live in and write about. Emily had her gardens. I have the oceans and the multitudes of life they hold. We have both found inspiration and understanding through the act of writing.
From Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which Emily attended at 16, she wrote to a friend at home,
“There is a great deal of religious interest here and many are flocking to the ark of safety.”
Emily refused to be part of the flock. For her failure to accept the veneer of things, she was dubbed by the principal of the school to be one of the “No hopers”, the group of girls who were labeled as having no hope of salvation. I would venture to guess that quite a few of my own teachers had me on a similar list.
Maria Popova in The Marginalian writes of Emily Dickinson:
“She was far more interested in the arc of knowledge as science was just beginning to bend its gaze past the horizon of old certitudes. What lay there would come to animate a great many of her spare, stunning poems — poems that illuminate the eternal, the elemental, the inevitable through the pinhole of the surprising. “
Peering through “the pinhole of surprising” or “telling it slant” is something Emily was quite adept at, as in poem #1263 she writes;
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
Being the skilled poet that she was, she didn’t seek “define” the truth, which opened the window of understanding and connection to readers who each approach it via different circuits and on their own terms. As an adult, I’ve come to understand that we do not all share the same truths, nor should we be expected to and as writer I hope to accomplish the same thing Emily did in her poems.
From an early age Emily broke with convention, not accepting the traditional role and conventions that women of her time were expected to adhere too. Veering off road like that can sometimes be a painful and solitary trek, something I can personally attest to. But doing so also allows for individuality and maximum growth, which I explore in my alteration of poem #600.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILY DICKINSON
References