Looking On

LOOKING BACK

I attended a concert of the Charlottesville Symphony last night, and the conductor announced that it was the final concert of his tenth year with the group.  He -- and I -- we're surprised that ten years had passed.  I can remember the season where he auditioned for the post; plus, I'd been attending concerts for many years before that.  Sooo...that means that for more than a decade, I've attended performances at Old Cabell Hall on the grounds of the University of Virginia, and for more than a decade I've seen that statue in front of the building facing Jefferson's Rotunda, the centerpiece of his "Academical Village" on he Lawn of the University.  All those times I glanced upon that statue, how could I have known that in the spring of 2026 I'd be writing about it in a post dated April 13, 2026, entitled "Six Degrees of Separation" -- HERE.   A connection to Dickinson led me to George Monteiro, led me to Robert Frost, led me to John Woodruff Simpson, led me to the statue of "Blind Homer and His Student Guide."

Below:  "Blind Homer and His Student Guide" -- and me!  The pics of Jefferson's Rotunda are from the view of "Blind Homer."  Click the images to enlarge.

Below:  A couple of shots before the concert.

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LOOKING AHEAD

Also yesterday, before I headed out for the concert, I completed some yard work.  At one point I was gathering dead and fallen branches in the woods behind my house, and I came upon some butterfly wings among the dead leaves (pictured at the right).  "How weird is that," I thought to myself, because earlier that morning I was working on a post for tomorrow or later in the week which includes this statement about a very famous poet's first poem:  

"Lawrence Thompson traces (THE POEM) to (THE POET'S) stay at Dartmouth College in 1892.  The poem was inspired, writes Thompson, "by a moment which had occurred late in the fall of his few months at Dartmouth, a moment when he had found a fragile butterfly wing lying among dead leaves."  

I'll fill in the deets -- that is, the title of the poem and the name of the poet -- tomorrow (or later this week), when I publish the poem -- but how weird was that?   

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LOOKING AROUND

I was searching for poems by Dickinson with the word "twilight" (I'll explain why in a future post), and I came across the poem at the right and noticed that Mabel Loomis Todd gave it the title "APRIL" when she published it in the second series of Dickinson's "Poems" in 1891. 

Lines 1 to 12 offer an inventory of the sights, sounds, and smells of springtime.  In line 2, "Tyrian" refers to the Lebanese port of Tyre, capital of the purple dye industry in the ancient world -- so a purple light, a color oft representing royalty. 

In line 3, Todd changed the word "morn" to "dawn" to afford a perfect rhyme with "lawn" in line 4.  Dickinson did not list "dawn" as an alternate word choice -- and you know darn well she knew "dawn" rhymed with "lawn" -- so she doubtlessly wanted "morn."

The poem takes a mysterious turn in line 13 -- what is it she cannot tell?  And why the furtive look?  And who is "you"?

An altered look about the hills –
A Tyrian light the village fills –
A wider sunrise in the morn –
A deeper twilight on the lawn –
A print of a vermilion foot –
A purple finger on the slope –
A flippant fly upon the pane –
A spider at his trade again –
An added strut in Chanticleer –
A flower expected everywhere –
An axe shrill singing in the woods –
Fern odors on untravelled roads –
All this and more I cannot tell –
A furtive look you know as well –
And Nicodemus' mystery
Receives its annual reply!

I'll get back to the Dickinsonian mystery in an upcoming post -- but the mystery noted in line 15 which brings the poem to its close, "Nicodemus' mystery," is noted thusly on the archive:

"Nicodemus asked Jesus how regeneration was possible (John 3.4): Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?"

In just -- spring -- when the world is mud-luscious. 

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LOOKING THE OTHER WAY

Yesterday's post (HERE) centered “The Heart asks Pleasure – first,” a work about which Mabel Loomis Todd gushed, “Oh how could Emily epitomize life so perfectly and with such bitter force! With hardly a shadow of form, this poem almost breaks my heart.”

The poem is somewhat startling in that the second stanza seems to advocate suicide -- at the will of an "Inquisitor."  Blending thoughts on this poem with the use of "inquire" in "The Soul should always stand ajar, I leaned toward the "Inquisitor" being an omnipotent being (i.e., God), but one person on CounterSocial (where I also post) commented, "I think it's probably herself? She is the inquisitor" -- and that would certainly explain why the Dickinson Lexicon includes for the word nothing beyond "Inquirer, seeker, investigator; one who inquires" -- SHE (or at least the speaker of the poem) is the "Inquisitor" who regulates the Heart, the subject of the poem.

Mabel Loomis Todd was right.  This poem breaks my heart.  And just food for thought:  perhaps this poem's theme is related to the Dickinsonian mystery I mentioned above -- with "An altered look about the hills" (along with a completely different poem I plan to share soon, "That she forgot me was the least").