PLOG: Poetry Blog

Instrumental Compositions

5/15/2026

Yesterday’s post centered on Dickinson’s use of the word “organ.” She used it one poem – as the musical instrument, not a vital body part. I wondered how often she used other instruments in her poetry, so I looked into it. Not including “organ,” the list of instruments for which I checked is below. What do you think – which ones do you think she used? Some were not used at all, but which do you think she used most often?

The list:

Banjo, bass, bugle, cello, clarinet, cymbal, drum, fiddle, fife, flute, guitar, harp, horn, lyre, piano, tambourine, trombone, trumpet, viola, and violin.

The results are below. Don’t peek until you’ve made your guess.

The results:

Dickinson never mentioned any of these instruments in her poetry: bass (she did use the word “bass” in two poems, but not as a musical instrument), cello, clarinet, cymbal, fiddle, gong, harp, horn, lyre, piano, trombone, and viola. Most of this came as no surprise to me, but I did expect to see harp, horn, lyre, and piano. And FYI, just to be safe, I also checked accordion, concertina, harmonica, and harpsichord. I didn’t think I’d find anything on those, and I didn’t – so no surprises there.

In addition to “organ” – and the instrument used most often in her poetry (noted a bit further down the page) – here are the instruments Dickinson included in her works – along with the number of poems in which each particular instrument appears:

So which instrument did Dickinson use most often?

**drum roll please**

The answer is…the drum!

A search for the word “drum” on the Dickinson Archive generates twenty-six entries representing eleven poems; however, only six of those eleven actually include the word “drum.” For two of them, Dickinson listed “drum” as an alternate word choice, and three of them were published in “Drum Beat” magazine in 1864 (and the word “drum” appears in the archives notes about the poems).

I will add that while the word “organ” appears in only one poem, the music of an organ is referenced to in at least one other poem; take a look at lines 3 and 4 of “There’s a certain Slant of Light” (an interesting choice of words given yesterday's discussion on 'I've heard an Organ talk, sometimes"):

A few final notes:

I also checked Dickinson’s use of brass, strings, woodwinds, and percussion – the various sections of an orchestra.

In her poem “Musicians wrestle everywhere,” Dickinson describes a band “in brass and scarlet – drest.” She also used the word “brass” as an alloy of copper and zinc in “If your Nerve, deny you.”

Dickinson used the word “strings” in three different poems, but not as instruments in an orchestra.

She never used “woodwind” or “percussion.”

French Connection

5/14/2026

Before reading today’s post, try this: Read the poem below and think about what it might mean. Determine what Dickinson’s words mean to you before the possibility that your interpretation could be influenced by what is said below.

NOTE: I WILL BE TRAVELLING THIS WEEKEND, SO NO DAILY POSTS ON SATURDAY, 5/16, SUNDAY, 6/17, OR MONDAY, 5/18. I WILL POST TOMORROW, AND THEN I'LL RESUME WITH DAILY POSTS ON TUESDAY, 5/19.

So here’s today’s post:

Parlay the voo Fran-say? Alas I do not. The only two things I know how to say in French are “mow d’lawn,” for “cut the grass,” and “come and tie my shoe,” which I think is a formal way of saying “How are you?”

Why my sudden interest in French? Well, I’m about to enjoy a mostly-French weekend in Chicago. Voici le scoop (that’s “here’s the scoop” in French. I looked it up.)

I’m a classical music fan, and there are a handful of pieces for which I would travel far and wide to hear. Some examples: I visited Washington DC to hear Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto 2 (before he-who-must-not-be-named destroyed the Kennedy Center); I traveled to Pittsburgh to listen to Lang Lang perform the Grieg Piano Concerto in A Minor; and I trained up to the Big Apple to catch the New York Philharmonic’s interpretation of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture. And this weekend? I’m flying to Chicago to experience Camille Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3, the “Organ Symphony.”

I love the entire symphony, but the final movement is SUBLIME. Interestingly, I ran a search on “sublime music,” and this statement popped up: “Sublime music, characterized as blending awe, beauty, and a slight sense of terror or overwhelming power, transports listeners by tapping into the infinite and humbling them.” Well, I’m not expecting any sense of terror this weekend, but awe, beauty, and overwhelming power – yes! (If you’ve not heard this work, you can listen to the finale HERE – conducted by Gustavo Dudamel at the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris.)

By the way, the CSO concert is all French. In addition to the work by Saint-Saëns, the program includes Maurice Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite and Francis Poulenc’s Gloria. Then, the next day, my daughter and I are attending a matinee of Les Miz at the Cadillac Palace Theater. Ooo la la! (That’s another bit of French I know.)

Anyway, with the CSO concert approaching, I searched the Dickinson archive to see if she’d ever used the word “organ” in any of her poems, and she did – in one, “I’ve heard an Organ talk, sometimes" (the poem above).

I gotta say, though, that in exploring this poem, I found a number of analyses that differed greatly from my take on it. Remember that quote I mentioned just above from my search on “sublime music”? This one, “Sublime music, characterized as blending awe, beauty, and a slight sense of terror or overwhelming power, transports listeners by tapping into the infinite and humbling them.”

In Dickinson’s poem, I sensed nothing but awe, beauty and the overwhelming power of music that humbled the speaker in the poem. Other interpretations I came upon, though, were much darker and included more of that “sense of terror” – not necessarily from the organ music itself, but more perhaps from the memories triggered of past traumas which may have occurred within the church?

One comment I saw said, “She was probably molested by someone.” (Hmm…I wonder if the one who offered this observation meant Dickinson or the speaker in the poem?) Others spoke of additional poems by Dickinson that implied psychological and/or physical abuse endured at some point in her life.

For me, though, as a pianist, former high school and college band geek, and lover of classical music, I simply read into the poem the transformative power of transcendent music. The poem does refer to a change in the speaker, but again, I chalked that up to the deep emotional reaction to the music.

I explored one article from the National Library of Medicine entitled “The transformative power of music: Insights into neuroplasticity, health, and disease” (HERE). It discussed how music can induce changes in heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, and more – all from the emotions brought on by chords, rhythms, and melodies. The power of music connects, transforms, and heals – and that’s what I read into Dickinson’s poem. I wonder – if you read the poem first before reading any of this – did your interpretation land closer to mine – or closer to those who perceived something more troubling?

Let me know, and for now I’ll just say “la vee.” I’m to understand the French say that a lot.

Below: COMING ATTRACTIONS: IT'S GOING TO BE A THRILLING WEEKEND!

I Think I Know

5/13/2026

In recent weeks some of my posts have centered on Emily Dickinson’s and Robert Frost’s poems about butterflies. I’m not sure if I tagged them all, but certainly most can be found on my plog (poetry blog) HERE.

As I was exploring and writing about the various butterfly poems of these two poets, I stumbled upon info related to a podcast run by Christopher Lydon with an interview of Helen Vendler, an American academic, writer and literary critic (additionally, Vendler was a professor of English language and history at Boston University, Cornell, Harvard, and other universities). The podcast’s webpage includes info about the interview, and in particular, a bit of their conversations related to a very short but meaningful butterfly poem by Dickinson.

Alas, it seems as though the actual podcast with the full interview is no longer available. I clicked on a couple of different links to “listen,” but all I’d get in return was “page not found.” However, the podcast’s webpage does include some info about their discussion.

“The poem that taught Vendler how to read Dickinson,” states Lydon, “is ‘Ashes denote that fire was…’”

“For me,” he continued, “the Dickinson poem that cracks the central mystery of her theology — her devotion to King James language, her preoccupations with Jesus’ suffering and Christian ideas of resurrection and immortality, and finally her staunch unbelief — is this three-line stanza…”

In the name of the bee
And of the butterfly
And of the breeze, Amen!

Lydon continues:

“It’s a parody, of course, of Jesus’ admonition to his disciples to baptize all nations ‘in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ The three-B Dickinson version is the first fragment in Vendler’s grand selection of Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems and Commentaries. It marked for me, as I volunteered to Professor Vendler, the first of Dickinson’s endless bouts — some playful, some pitiless — with the Big Guy.”

Here's the only bit of the transcript of the interview that Lydon provides:

Lydon then mentions that the full 90-minute interview included their discussion of a dozen of Dickinson’s poems – but again, the actual interview does not seem to be available. I’ll keep looking!

By the way – did you catch the name of the podcast’s episode, “Whose Words These Are: Helen Vendler’s Emily Dickinson” – a not-so-subtle nod to Robert Frost. (“Whose woods these are I think I know” – a poem I shared recently in a post which touches on Dickinson’s influence on Frost, HERE.).

By the way, if you have interest in lepidopterology (that's a fancy-schmancy word for butterflies), take a look at my brother's insta account (@butterflygardan -- his name is Dan; therefore, "garDAN" instead of "garDEN"). I've told him for years to post his pics online, and he just started his account a coupla weeks back.

It's Time to Come Clean

5/12/2026

Is this the real life? Is this just parody?
Caught in a website, is this reality
Open my eyes, look up at the lines to see –
I'm so confused now, I need to figure out
Because I'm not so sure, insecure, filled with doubt, I could shout –
Any way the words flow –
Does this really matter to me, to me?

Dear reader, I have a fantastical tale to tell. However, before I proceed, I must declare solemnly that what I am about to tell you – should you resolve to read on – is highly classified information, and should you resolve to read on, I ask that you pledge earnestly to keep this information confidential.

If you cannot agree to this condition, then please, sign off and return tomorrow for my next post. If you are able to plight thy troth, then please, proceed.

As you know, I am an enthusiast of Emily Dickinson’s life and work. However, I am also the world’s leading authority on Emmett Lee Dickinson, Emily’s third cousin, twice removed – at her request. However – and this next statement contains the highly classified information which you must solemnly swear to keep secret: there was no such person as “Emmett Lee Dickinson.” He is a fictional character. I made him up along with all of the additional information on my site about him, his family, and his hometown.

On one of the pages on my site (HERE), I have further information about “distant relatives” of this fictional poet, and this particular page opens thusly:

Emily Dickinson’s grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, was brother to Lemuel Dickinson, Emmett Lee Dickinson’s grandfather. Their father, Nathan Dickinson, was born in 1735 in Hampshire County, Massachusetts.

However, if you trace the Dickinson lineage back even further, you might be surprised to find that the Dickinson family has roots in Sweden. Emily and Emmett Lee’s great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was Edvin Gunnbjörg Dikeanssöhn, a whittler and palingwright (a maker of wooden fencing).

A contemporary branch of the Dikeanssöhn family owns and operates IKEA, the home furnishings company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture (originally made out of fencing slats). The Dikeanssöhn family, though, has not forgotten their ties to the Dickinson family as they name many of their modern-day products after Dickinson family members.

On the page, I included this information about the invention of the vacuum cleaner -- and the particular cleaner/sweeper is the one shown at the bottom right in the pic below:

I share all of this information this morning for three reasons:

FIRSTLY: Yesterday I published a post (HERE) about Emily Dickinson’s use of the word “vacuum,” not about sucking up dust with a vacuum cleaner, but as “vacuum,” the emptiness of space unoccupied by matter. However, the post does include info on vacuum cleaners along with vital particulars that could very well save your life.

SECONDLY: I found this site, VacuumLand-dot-org (HERE), which states that it is a site for “Vintage & Modern Vacuum Enthusiasts.” LOL – say what? Is this real life? Or is this just parody? (Hence the opening lines to my post this morning.)

THIRDLY: On the site I found this:

By the way, this site is now on a platform called “Gather,” and you can see the comment (posted in 2017) with your own eyes, HERE.

When I discovered the comment, I was truly gobsmacked– especially when I reached the part that said, “Now researching this I found out all kinds of things about the family, which is the creator of Ikea, and also related to Emily Dickinson the poet.”
I suppose it is quite a compliment to think that this person read through my page on the Dikeanssöhn family and thought it was true, but I ask you to take a look at the page and let me know how far down you’d make it before something in your brain would begin to question the verity of the information.

I would think this info might do it for some, located not too far from the top of the page (compare the poem titles on the left “in Swedish” to the lines from Dickinson on the right):

If not that, maybe this photo’s caption would have given someone pause?

I suppose I could go on – there are plenty other examples of absurd stories and anecdotes on the page – so I’m a bit stunned that the vacuum cleaner enthusiast failed to pick up on all the clues that this information on the Dikeanssöhn family was falsk (Swedish for “false”).

And by the way, dear reader, this is not the one and only instance where facts and figures from my site have been picked up and shared as facts and figures. Check out this site, cleanservices.co.uk about the history of laundering (HERE):

Other sites have also picked up this Dickinson-laundry connection; for example, this one HERE:

That site includes much more info about Emmett Lee Dickinson; however, the blogger did, at one point, begin to realize that mischief was afoot:

So back to the vacuum cleaner enthusiast who, surprisingly (and/or fill in your adverb of choice), did not recognize the level of joy and whimsy I bring to the world via my waggish accounts of the Belle of Amherst's third cousin -- and, alas, she accepted my fanciful tale of the Dikeanssöhn branch of the family tree as reality. Still, what harm has been done? None, really -- plus, the avid connoisseur of cleaning collectibles has a fun and fascinating story to tell all her friends and relatives eager to see and hear all about her vacuuming antiques and artifacts.

Zuigerphobia Is Real

5/11/2026

Dear reader, my head is spinning this morning, and I am genuinely afraid. I believe I have exposed a cover-up between the residential cleaning industry and the US government, and we may not be safe in our own homes! Here’s the inside scoop:

In recent posts, I have discussed Dickinson’s use of “sweep,” “sweeps,” “swept,” and “sweeping,” and I concluded yesterday’s post with, “Hmm...what about "vacuum"? I'll cover that tomorrow -- and you may just be surprised!”

Well, at first, when I posed that question, I was being silly – my brain was thinking solely of “vacuum, to clean a room, carpet, etc., or to remove (dust, etc.) with a vacuum cleaner.” Then I checked the Dickinson Lexicon, and there it was, “vacuum” – she had, indeed, used the word in her poetry: “vacuum, emptiness of space; space unoccupied by matter.” I then ran a search to discover that Dickinson used the word in one poem, “Severer Service of myself.”

I also checked the OED for info on “vacuum” (to clean) vs. “vacuum” (emptiness of space) and discovered that the latter term has been around since the 16th century, and the former term since the 20th. Well duh, right?

The earliest usage example the OED offered up for the older term dated back to 1550 (click the image to enlarge):

The first usage example for the other was from 1922 (click the image to enlarge):

Here comes the turn to the terrifying truth I uncovered: As I was perusing the additional usage examples of “vacuum,” I spotted this:

OH EM GEE! I had no idea I was taking my life into my own hands when vacuuming around the house! Why don’t manufacturers provide vacuum cleaners with highly prominent notifications of alert:

WARNING: VACUUMING MAY CAUSE SEVERE BURNS TO ONE’S LIMBS (INCLUDING APPENDAGES AND CORRESPONDING PHALANGES) AND/OR ELECTRIC SHOCK AND DEATH BY ELECTROCUTION.

By the way, I ran a search for that info reported in the Baltimore Sun back in 1950, and from the little blurb I got, I think I did find the article; however I could not access the full story without a paid subscription:

I then searched for data concerning the number of vacuum cleaner related deaths per year, and this is when I came to realize the industry-related cover-up, certainly supported by regulatory arms of bureaucracy. Details are being hidden, and the truth is being suppressed. However, I did find dribs and drabs of information, including these headlines and links:

It gets worse, dear reader. I saw the headline below, and I was too horrified to click on the link to discover on which of the gentleman’s appendages the vacuum cleaner was “stuck."

The horrors do not end there, dear reader. I then spotted this:

At this point I'm terrified to remain in my home, and I have know I have developed a server case of zuigerphobia, an intense, irrational, and persistent dread of vacuum cleaners and the action of hoovering, derived from the Dutch word "zuiger," meaning "sucker." I believe the powers-that-be in the residential cleaning industry KNOW of the dangers associated with vacuuming, and I believe they have worked for years to stifle the truth. Take a look at the vintage ad below:

I trust that George H. Scott and Carl S. Fetzer KNEW of vacuum-related dangers as early the 1920s when they introduced the Vacuette, a "NO ELECTRICITY" sweeper -- but their efforts, I am sure, were crushed by the powerful residential and commercial cleaning syndicates.

One day soon I will investigate the deaths of Scott and Fetzer, and I suspect the accounts will be filled with mystery and intrigue.

Once word got out about the dangers associated with household cleaning, ad men for the powerful manufacturers of suctioning sweepers developed risk reduction ad campaigns to generate positive emotional responses to vacuuming. Check out the vintage ads below -- these advertisements promoted the efficiency and convenience of the vacuum cleaner, attempting to capture the aesthetic essence of household innovation in the mid-20th century. Many companies even used the likeness of Emily Dickinson to advance a more feminine and bardic approach to housekeeping -- household management as "poetry" (although Premiere Vacuum Cleaners from Cleveland, OH, quoted Byron rather than Dickinson in their 1947 ad for their Premier Duplex vacuum cleaner).

Dear reader, at this time, my nerves are frayed beyond belief. I live in a state of fear within my own humble abode.

To remedy the situation, I revisited Dickinson’s poem above and now realize that in order to take my mind off the dangers dwelling within my dwelling, I must hasten to demand server service of myself to avoid the awful vacuum. I will strive to weary my Brain and Bone – to harass, to fatigue the glittering retinue of my nerves and clog my mind to dull comfort. I have no drug for consciousness; however, I will , instead, consume my fears with a pint of Cappuccino Crunch ice cream. If more than a pint is required, then so be it.

Clean Sweep(s)

5/10/2026

In Robert Frost and the New England Renaissance, author George Monteiro made this connection between a line from Emily Dickinson’s poem “My Cocoon tightens – Colors tease” and a very well-known work by Robert Frost: “Even in ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snow Evening,’ Frost echoes this theme when, playing on Dickinson’s phrase, ‘easy sweeps of sky,’ he writes of ‘the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.’” I wrote a post about this a few days ago (HERE), and since then I’ve published a couple of posts on Dickinson’s uses of “sweeping” and “swept.” Today: “sweep” and “sweeps.”

Interestingly, after searching the Dickinson Archive for “sweep,” I had to run a separate search for “sweeps” – and oddly, both searches had errors. The “sweep” search included one poem with “sweeps,” and the “sweeps” search yielded two of the poems with “sweep.” Here's the breakdown:

The search for “sweep” yielded nineteen results representing seven different poems, six of which had “sweep” (one had “sweeps”). The search for “sweeps” generated fifteen results representing five poems, and three of those used the word “sweeps” (two had “sweep”).

I suppose I can see why the search engine has to be that specific (i.e., requiring separate searches for “sweep” vs. “sweeps”); if it were not that precise, then a search, say, for a word like “ton” might also pickup results for “tone" – along with “tongue,” “tongueless”, “tonic” and “tonight” (and yes, Dickinson did use the word “tongueless” in one poem, “Grief is a Mouse”).

By coincidence, in my daily post yesterday, I shared a “water” poem that wrapped up a series of posts having to do with Dickinson’s use of “coffee” and “tea"; now that I’m wrapping up a series of posts dealing with her various uses and forms of “sweep,” I see from the search results above that one of the “sweep” poems is also a “water” poem, “Water makes many beds,” so I’ll include that one today. However, this “water” poem is so inspirational as yesterday’s work, “Water, is taught by thirst.” No, this poem is more on the macabre side with its reflection on drowning (and by chance, by the way, I shared a post the other day about a poem by Edward Mayes that seemed to focus on a literal and/or figurative drowning, HERE).

So there you have it -- over the past few days, I've taken a look at Dickinson's use of "swept," "sweeping," "sweep," and "sweeps." Hmm...what about "vacuum"? I'll cover that tomorrow -- and you may just be surprised!

The End Is Near

5/9/2026

This post and the poems below were shared as our Featured Poems of the Week in mid-April 2026:

FEBRUARY 28th:

Press: War in Iran?

The Diapered Dotard: No, WE’RE in Iran?

Press: War?

DD: No, WE’RE, in a little diversion.

Press: Oh – so Kegsbreath and his Department of Little Diversions?

DD: It’s now the Department of Pre-emptive Strikes and Major Military Campaigns

Press: So it will be over soon?

DD: Very fast – though I’m setting no timeline.

APRIL 7th:

DD: A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.

Press: So -- you're talking genocide?

DD: Genocide? Only the fake news could come up with something like that. I'm a doctor -- I fix things -- and we’re nearing completion of my core strategic objective of the war.

Press: Oh, so we are at war?

DD: No. We have a thing called a war, or as I would rather say, a military operation. It's for legal reasons, and we’re nearing completion of my short-term excursion. Kegsbreath now heads up the Department of Short-Term Excursions.

Press: And the core strategic objective was to....?

DD: To open the waters that were open before they closed because we did not got to war.

Press: So…when will the war be over?

DD. Very shortly. We’re having ongoing discussions – the war will disappear – just like that – in say...about two weeks.

**sigh** Watching the Commander-in-Sleep oversee his war-not-war in Iran is like watching a panicked squirrel crossing a ten-lane super highway! With that thought in mind, I have posted Emmett Lee Dickinson's poem "Lies insufficient to the press" as one of our Featured Poems of the Week. Dickinson's poem inspired his third cousin Emily to pen her poem "Light is sufficient to itself," our other Featured Poem.

By Emmett Lee Dickinson:

Lies insufficient to the press –
That we can plainly see
And so we’re had by Jingo Pains
All hours of the Day.

There is no Comprehension –
No strategy for War
A Squirrel on a ten-lane Highway
Precisely, what’s in store?

By Emily Dickinson:

Light is sufficient to itself –
If Others want to see
It can be had on Window Panes
Some Hours in the Day.

But not for Compensation --
It holds as large a Glow
To Squirrel in the Himmaleh
Precisely, as to you.

Irrational Thoughts

5/9/2026

Due to a parallel between Dickinson and Frost (discussed HERE), I decided to take a look at Dickinson’s use of “sweep,” “sweeps,” “swept” and “sweeping.” I shared poems with “sweeping” a couple of days ago (HERE), and today I have a quick look at “swept.”

A search of “swept” on the Dickinson Archive generates twenty entries, representing eight poems:

All things swept sole away
Grief is a Mouse –
Like brooms of steel
Like Rain it sounded till it curved
Me prove it now – Whoever doubt
Of all the sounds despatched abroad
The Winters are so short –
To her derided Home

At two lines, “All things swept sole away” is one of if not the shortest poem by Dickinson, (there is a one line fragment included in some editions of her poetry):

All things swept sole away
This – is immensity –

As far as I can tell, this poem was first published in the 1931 volume Letters of Emily Dickinson edited by Mabel Loomis Todd. The two lines are part of an 1881 letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Later, the work was published as a stand alone poem in Thomas Johnson’s 1955 edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. It also appears in R. W. Franklin’s 1998 The Poems of Emily Dickinson and in Cristanne Miller’s 2016 Emily Dickinson’s Poems as She Preserved Them. In Miller’s edition, the poem appears in the section entitled “Poems Not Retained” with the footnote, “Sent to TWH c. 1881.” Miller also includes the endnote, “Follows ED’s comment, “It is solemn to remember that Vastness – is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it –”

Here's the page of the letter with the lines to Higginson in Dickinson’s handwriting:

You can see the complete transcript of the letter in Dickinson's handwriting HERE.

However, in every volume of Dickinson’s letters, the lines are shown as being indented – as if Dickinson included the lines as a poem.

In the handwritten transcript of the letter, though, the two lines are not set off at all – they just appear as the additional lines of the letter.

What do you make of this? Do you think the lines constitute a separate poem? And what do you make of the lines themselves?

Let me ramble here for a minute:

Dickinson’s profound but paradoxical statements reminded me of a debate I had years ago with my eighth grade math teacher. It was a heated discussion which centered on the fact that an infinite space can have boundaries. At the time, I was a non-believer, and it blew my mind in later years when I realized my teacher had been right all along.

Dickinson’s lines and this middle school memory also called to mind a bit of dialogue from “Bart the Genius,” the second episode of the first season of “The Simpsons.” In this episode, Bart is thought to be “gifted,” so – at Principal Skinner’s delight – he is transferred from Springfield Elementary School to the Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children, where his Learning Coordinator picks up on a previous lesson:

Ms. Mellon: And now we can continue our debate from yesterday. When we left off, Calvin and Tanya were arguing that free will is an illusion.

Ian: If you ask me humankind has freedom, a freedom fraught with paradoxes. Freud shows how childhood shapes our subconscious mind, but this helps us to think for ourselves.

Ms. Mellon: Very good, Ian. Does anyone else have an example of a paradox?

Boy: Without law and order, man has no freedom.

Girl: If you want peace you must prepare for war.

Ms. Mellon: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, it seems the smartest child in the class is also the quietest. Bart, what other paradoxes affect our lives?

Bart: Well, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

Ms. Mellon: Well, I guess that would be a paradox too. (chuckles) Thank you, Bart.

So let’s get back to Dickinson's lines:

It is solemn to remember that Vastness – is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it – All things swept sole away / This – is immensity –

* If Vastness is an expanse created by “the Shadow of the Brain which casts it,” doesn’t the existence of a shadow imply that there is more; therefore “vastness” is even more vast than the vastness imagined by the brain which created the vastness? (See: “The universe is wider than our views of it.” ~ Henry David Thoreau)

* If all things are swept away -- thus creating immensity in the sense of vastness – then, on the other hand, if all things are gathered, is the immensity created greater or lesser than the immensity of the immensity of all things being swept away?

Allow me to go off on another tangent:

If one individual has a bucket with every possible integer in it, another individual has a bucket with every positive integer (we’ve “swept away” the negative ones), and a third individual has a bucket with every even positive integer (we’ve swept away the negatives and the odd positives), which person has the greatest number of integers in their bucket? If we sweep even more integers, does the immensity in the bucket remain as immense?

And get this: Did you know that it is believed that the digits of pi contain every possible finite sequence of numbers? Therefore, somewhere in that vast, immense string of numbers is my social security number {and yours too} and my Citibank Mastercard number {and yours too) -- along with every other possible number.

Yikes – has my morning’s post become a bit too irrational? Let me refocus. The question at hand involves Dickinson's 1881 letter to Higginson: Should the lines "All things swept sole away /This – is immensity" be thought of as a stand-alone poem?

Not My Cup of Tea

5/8/2026

Today’s post follows up on some unfinished business from a recent post on Dickinson’s use of the word “tea” in her poems. When I checked the archive for “tea,” twelve entries popped up representing five different poems; however, one of the five does not include the word “tea.” Instead, the search picked up the word “tea” in the corresponding notes for the poem, “Not all die early, dying young,” but the lines themself are tea-less.

The odd thing was that the publication notes for the poem made no sense; here’s the statement:

“LH (1951)” refers to the book Emily Dickinson's Letters to Dr. and Mrs. Josiah Gilbert Holland, a volume of letters edited by Theodora Van Wagenen Ward and published in 1951. But what the heck does “The tea in” mean?

Here’s a funny bit: I was sitting in a library the morning I discovered this perplexing statement, so I asked a librarian there if “The tea” were some sort of publication jargon with which I was unfamiliar, but she was just as confused as I was – so I emailed the folks at Harvard Library, and just yesterday, I heard back:

“Thanks, as always, for reporting errors in EDA! It appears that a substantial amount of text was dropped for the Publication History. I’ve noted this in my list of future corrections. I can’t figure out exactly where the text was cut to create “tea”, so this is only a guess. The correct text should read:

PUBLICATION: Letters (1894), 177, from the Holland copy (B), as though part of a letter; also LL (1924), 261; and Letters (1931), 171. LH (1951), 72, from Letters (1931). Poems (1955), 716-17 (A summarized, B summarized, C principal); CP (1960), 461 (C). MB (1981), 1072 (C), in facsimile. (J990)”

Sooo…as you can see, the info includes all of the publication specifics (albeit in abbreviated form), and there’s really nothing to do with “tea” at all.

By the way, the post about Dickinson’s poems which include “tea” is HERE.

On a whim, I thought, “Okay, I’ve checked coffee and tea, so what about juice?” No surprise. Dickinson never used the word “juice” in any of her poems. I then checked “water.” Well, “water” generated sixty-two entries on the archive – and the way the “new and improved” archive works, it will take me some time to figure out exactly how many different poems this represents. For now, let me leave you with this beautiful poem, and ask, “By what are you taught?”

By the way – I just love that final line. Magnificent.

A Clean Sweep

5/7/2026

SPOILER ALERT: I swope off on a bit of a tangent down below, but hey -- the info I shared is as vital as it is nugatory!

Yesterday’s post included this bit of info from George Monteiro’s book Robert Frost and the New England Renaissance about Frost’s poem “Blue-Butterfly Day”:

"It is altogether fitting, therefore, that Frost, his mind on midwinter, sees his butterflies flurrying down like snowflakes to ‘freshly sliced’ graves in the April mud. For Frost, fragility sems to equate butterflies with snowflakes. Even in ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snow Evening,’ Frost echoes this theme when, playing on Dickinson’s phrase, ‘easy sweeps of sky,’ he writes of ‘the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.’”

Also in yesterday's post I noted that Dickinson’s phrase “easy sweeps of sky” is line 8 of “My Cocoon tightens – Colors tease,” one of Dickinson’s butterfly-themed poems I’d written about earlier in the week.

Below left: Robert Frost's "sweep of easy wind and downy flake" in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Below right: Emily Dickinson's "easy Sweeps of Sky" from "My cocoon tightens -- Colors tease."

Finally, I closed yesterday's post with, “Tomorrow I’ll take a closer look at sweeping in Dickinson’s poetry" -- so let's get sweeping!

I ran several searches on the Dickinson Archive:

“Sweep” generated 19 entries representing 7 poems, 6 of which include the word “sweep.”

“Sweeps” brought up 15 results representing 5 poems, 3 of which include the word “sweeps” (vs. “sweep”).

“Swept” yielded 20 entries representing 8 poems, all of which include the word “swept.”

“Sweeping” produced 8 entries representing 3 poems 2 of them include the word “sweeping”; one of them has “sweeping” as an alternate word choice for the word “trailing.”

Additionally, from the Dickinson Lexicon, I looked up the ways in which Dickinson used the words “sweep,” “sweeps,” “swept,” and “sweeping” in her poetry:

That very first statement is certainly chock-full of options to pick from, no? Are there any surprises there for you?

Before getting into Dickinson's poems, I thought I'd take a look at that "OE form of swope" in the OED and report on some of what I found..

The first entry for "swope" (below on the left) was, indeed, related to "sweep." On the right is a usage from the 1200s, and it seems to have something to do with "swoping" to get rid of pet odors! LOL!

The next entry connected "swope" to "soap," and on the right is one example of usage from the 1400s describing "waisching with oyl and swope." However, most of the OED usage examples showed the word as "sape," "saep," "saip" or "sope." The first example with "soap" was from 1687 -- and it's sounds like whoever was making the trades really wanted (and probably needed) soap! LOL.

The next definition of "swope" was related to making a "swap." -- but take a look at that usage from the 1300s on the right -- looks like someone made a questionable swap! LOL. Next, take a gander at that example from 1577 (NSFW?). Hmm...I wonder was being swapped there in the darke.

Yet another entry for "swope" showed it as a variant of "swoop" -- and check out that use from 1698 -- those must have been some ferocious hawks!

The final entry for "swope" relates the word to drinking, and it mentions "a sup" -- but, interestingly, not "a sip." Also, none of the usage examples show the variant, "swope." However, take a look at that example from the mid-1500s which uses "sope" and discusses a smoky ale. Did you catch from volume's name from which the statement was taken? LOL. Now that's the kind of knowledge we can all use!

I did encounter a few other surprises with the Lexicon's definitions for Dickinson's use of "sweep," but I'll get to those tomorrow. For now, let's take a look at her use of "sweeping," a term found in two poems, “A single Clover Plank” and “The bustle in a house.” One other poem, “Like Men and Women Shadows walk,” showed up in my search of the archive; however, the word “sweeping” was not used in the poem; instead, it was written on the page as a possible alternate choice for “trailing” in line 4.

In “The Bustle in a House,” “sweeping” is used in a typical fashion – associated with cleaning – but metaphorically speaking in dealing with grief following a death.

In “A single Clover Plank,” the wind – described as “The Billows of Circumference” – was “sweeping” a bee away. Fortunately, a bit of clover idly swaying in the gust saved the bee, who escaped the “harrowing event” without as much as uttering an “Alas.”