Called Back to the Future

Today mark’s the 138th anniversary of the death of poet Emily Dickinson.  Because Miss. Dickinson could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for her at the age of 55 in the year 1886.  Her last letter, written on her death bed, was to her cousins, and the letter consisted of just two words:  “Called back.”

“Called Back” is etched into her tombstone in West Cemetery in Amherst, MA, where she is buried beside her parents and sister.  

In presentations I have made about Dickinson, I have often discussed the Top Ten themes prevalent in her poetry, and of course, the most common theme is “Death” – followed by “Death,” “Death and Pain,” and “Death and Grief.” 

LOL.  Yes, I’m being tongue-in-cheek.

My complete Top Ten list of Dickinson’s most common themes is as follows:

1. Death
2. Death
3. Death and Pain
4. Death and Grief
5. Nature
6. Death
7. Death and Immortality
8. Death and Eternity
9.  Joy
10. Identity of One’s Self​

Flowers and birds come next.

Because “death” is featured so prominently in Dickinson’s poetry, I thought that in the coming days I would present my Top Ten poems of death and grief.

By the way, back in 2017, I attended an observance of Emily Dickinson’s 187th birthday at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, and at that event, literary critic and poet Sandra Gilbert explored ten of Dickinson’s poems of death and grief.
 
Below is the list of poems presented by Gilbert (NOTE:  I definitely  missed one because  in my notes, I only had  nine of the first lines.)

​* There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House
* How many times these low feet staggered
* That it will never come again
* Two swimmers wrestled on the spar
* If I may have it, when it’s dead
* Because I could stop not for Death
* I felt a funeral in my brain
* I heard a Fly buzz when I died
​*Under the light, yet under

Tomorrow I’ll start my Top Ten.