This is the final #DickinsonDaily post for about a week. I’m traveling to Chicago, and tomorrow night I’m attending the opening of an art show, “Residual Surrealisms, Part Two Thousand & Twenty Six” at the Aponte Art Gallery, “a group exhibit of artists whose work is shaped by lingering surrealist impulses.” My daughter is showcasing some of her work – not paintings – but everyday objects, some from (recent) bygone days, transformed unexpectedly by sequins and spangles into captivating artifacts of appeal and allure. I’ll post pics later.
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For today, just a quick post prompted by an object from a bygone day that I came across at home – my middle school yearbook. Within this text – the teacher who introduced me to Emily Dickinson. Here’s the story:
My 8th grade English teacher began a poetry unit by having us explore the lyrics to songs on the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album. The LP came out in October of 1969, and I believe our poetry unit was in the spring of 1970 – and how relevant and engaging was that to a teen coming of age the Hippie movement?
Below left: My 8th grade yearbook. Below center: Me. Below right: Mrs. Nader
My 8th grade English teacher began a poetry unit by having us explore the lyrics to songs on the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album. The LP came out in October of 1969, and I believe our poetry unit was in the spring of 1970 – and how relevant and engaging was that to a teen coming of age the Hippie movement?
Below left: My 8th grade yearbook. Below center: Me. Below right: Mrs. Nader
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Then one day, after covering a handful of songs from the album, the teacher, Mrs. Nader, read to us two poems – and I recall that she did not introduce them in any particular manner – she just read them:
Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality….
She read the entire poem, and I remember thinking, “WOW – who wrote that?”
Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality….
She read the entire poem, and I remember thinking, “WOW – who wrote that?”
| She hadn’t provided any info about the poet yet, and after the first poem, she read the second, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes.” Line 10, “This is the Hour of Lead,” and that spine-chilling final stanza blew me away. And that, in a nutshell, was my introduction to the Belle of Amherst.  |  |
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