Recently – in response to last week’s Super Blue Moon – I posted two of Dickinson’s poems which use both the word “blue” and the word “moon” (though not together as in “blue moon”) (HERE), and yesterday’s selection was “I watched the Moon around the house.”
I noted that I loved the image presented in the third and fourth stanzas of the poem – that the moon was like a woman’s head chopped from a guillotine (and had “Slid carelessly away”) – but something else that jumped out at me was the eighth stanza, particularly the word “privilege”: “The privilege to scrutinize / Was scarce opon my Eyes / When, with a Silver practise / She vaulted out of Gaze.
This thought – that it was a privilege to see the beauty of the moon – called to mind the poem I’d posted earlier in the week, “The Moon was but a chin of gold.” In that poem, in the fourth stanza, Dickinson writes “And what a privilege to / But the remotest star” in the same heavens as the beautiful moon!
A little more on these two poems tomorrow, and then I'll move on to the sun! ; )
I noted that I loved the image presented in the third and fourth stanzas of the poem – that the moon was like a woman’s head chopped from a guillotine (and had “Slid carelessly away”) – but something else that jumped out at me was the eighth stanza, particularly the word “privilege”: “The privilege to scrutinize / Was scarce opon my Eyes / When, with a Silver practise / She vaulted out of Gaze.
This thought – that it was a privilege to see the beauty of the moon – called to mind the poem I’d posted earlier in the week, “The Moon was but a chin of gold.” In that poem, in the fourth stanza, Dickinson writes “And what a privilege to / But the remotest star” in the same heavens as the beautiful moon!
A little more on these two poems tomorrow, and then I'll move on to the sun! ; )
 |  |
CONTINUED...
Due to last week’s Super Blue Moon, I recently posted two of Dickinson’s poems which use both the words “blue” and “moon” (though not together as in “blue moon”): “The Moon was but a chin of gold” and “I watched the Moon around the house.”
In addition to the favorite stanzas and images I’ve already mentioned, I also love that final stanza that relates what came next in “I watched the Moon around the house”: after spying the moon through window panes at night – when “with a Silver practise / She vaulted out of Gaze” – Dickinson later “met her on a Cloud / Myself too far below / To follow her superior Road / Or its advantage—Blue.”
It seems now, at the end of the poem, she is watching the moon perched in the blue sky of a sunny day – and I also realized that both of these poems which include both “blue” and “moon” ended with the word “blue.” Nothing of significance there, but I thought it was an interesting coincidence.
I also looked into the word “privilege” – since in both of the poems she stated that it was a privilege to view the beauty of the moon. It turns out that Dickinson used the word “privilege” in 23 different poems. And guess what? Of those 23 different poems with “privilege,” only two of them mention the moon – these same two poems!
None of the other “privilege” poems jumped out at me as particularly well-known in Dickinson’s poetry, so tomorrow I’ll move on from the moon to the sun (the word “sun” appears in about 165 poems – plus four more with “sunny”) – and I’ll share one of my favorite poems about the sun!
Due to last week’s Super Blue Moon, I recently posted two of Dickinson’s poems which use both the words “blue” and “moon” (though not together as in “blue moon”): “The Moon was but a chin of gold” and “I watched the Moon around the house.”
In addition to the favorite stanzas and images I’ve already mentioned, I also love that final stanza that relates what came next in “I watched the Moon around the house”: after spying the moon through window panes at night – when “with a Silver practise / She vaulted out of Gaze” – Dickinson later “met her on a Cloud / Myself too far below / To follow her superior Road / Or its advantage—Blue.”
It seems now, at the end of the poem, she is watching the moon perched in the blue sky of a sunny day – and I also realized that both of these poems which include both “blue” and “moon” ended with the word “blue.” Nothing of significance there, but I thought it was an interesting coincidence.
I also looked into the word “privilege” – since in both of the poems she stated that it was a privilege to view the beauty of the moon. It turns out that Dickinson used the word “privilege” in 23 different poems. And guess what? Of those 23 different poems with “privilege,” only two of them mention the moon – these same two poems!
None of the other “privilege” poems jumped out at me as particularly well-known in Dickinson’s poetry, so tomorrow I’ll move on from the moon to the sun (the word “sun” appears in about 165 poems – plus four more with “sunny”) – and I’ll share one of my favorite poems about the sun!
RSS Feed
