Good Nature

My wife and I have just returned home from a visit to Racine, Wisconsin.  What’s in Racine, you ask?

Well, it turns out that all of those Kringles you see in Trader Joe’s are made in Racine.  Who knew?  But that’s not why we went there (although we did purchase a Pumpkin Caramel Kringle at the O & H Danish Bakery – “THE” bakery for Kringles – and it was DELICIOUS).

No, we went to Racine to take two tours of properties designed by Frank Lloyd Wright: Wingspread, the home of Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., the president of S.C. Johnson, and his family; and the campus of S. C Johnson, a family-owned multinational corporation that produces a wide range household cleaning supplies and other products.

I’m a BIG fan of Wright’s architecture. Wright has eight buildings on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites, and I have seen all eight: 

1. Unity Temple in Oak Park, IL.

2. Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago.

3. Taliesin in Spring Green, WI.

4. Hollyhock House in Los Angeles.

5. Fallingwater in Mill Run, PA.

6. Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House in Madison, WI.

7. Taliesin West in Scottsdale, AZ.

8. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in NYC.

Two other properties were nominated for inclusion on the list. Of the two, I’ve seen Price Tower in Bartlesville, OK, but not the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, CA (one of these days I’ll make it out there).

So why all the Wright stuff on my daily dose of Dickinson post?

I have always seen a connection between Wright and Dickinson and their love of nature.  Frank Lloyd Wright famously stated, "I believe in God, only I spell it N-A-T-U-R-E," a line that reflects his deep connection to the natural world, viewing it as the manifestation of a divine presence and a constant source of inspiration for his work and life. I see the same reverence for nature in Dickinson’s poetry. 

Plus, Wright created a new and distinctively American style of architecture, and Dickinson created a new and distinctively creative form of poetry.  One early review in the “Boston Courier” proclaimed, “it is necessary at the start to declare the grounds upon which it is to be judged as if it were a new species of art,” and another review in the “Boston Budget” concluded, “They are poems of such extraordinary intensity, insight and vividness, and an almost equally startling disregard of poetic laws, that the reader will find himself pursuing almost a new language.”

So how often did Dickinson use the word “nature” in her poetry?  I’ll get to that tomorrow.  For now, I’ll conclude by sharing her poem “‘Nature’ is what we see.”