Category: Moon

Somewhat Cheesy

9/2/2025

You may have seen some of my recent posts and know that we have adopted a kitten from the SPCA – the Society of Poetic Cats of America. Her name is Emily, Emily Kittenson, and yes, she writes poetry!

I’ve posted a few poems already, and I plan to publish new poems weekly.

Her latest poem, “The Moon was but a bit of Cheese,” called to mind her favorite poet Emily Dickinson’s work “The Moon was but a Chin of Gold.”

Kittenson's poem made me wonder if Dickinson ever used the word “cheese” in any of her poetry. I checked the online Dickinson archive, and – it came as no surprise – Dickinson never used the word “cheese” in any of her poems.

On a whim, though, I ran a Google search on “Emily Dickinson and cheese,” and lo and behold, look what popped up:

There is a fictional poem by Emmett Lee Dickinson called "Exhilaration is the Cheese," which serves as a somewhat humorous, playful counterpoint to Emily's famous poem, "Exhilaration is the Breeze.”

(Hmm – doesn’t “fictional poem” sound odd?)

The hotlink took me to a page on my own site, dedicated to the life and work of Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson’s third cousin, twice removed – at her request). I am the world’s leading authority on Emmett Lee Dickinson, and this particular page includes the cheese-related poem and much, much more! It is a travelogue to our trip to Wisconsin back in 2019.

On my “Dickinson and cheese” search, I also found a 2011 post from what appears to be an inactive blog, and the entry centers on Emily Dickinson and a cheese grater. Yes, you read that correctly, a cheese grater. The piece is very interesting. Take a look, HERE.

This find is a bit odd: I also came across a menu item from The Sidewalk Cafe in Venice, California, and they offer an “Emily Dickinson Omelette.” The omelette comes with “Choice of Cheese.” Hmm…what to make of that? Most of the other omelettes – but not all – are named for famous individuals from the past, like Georgia O’Keeffe and John Denver – and I wonder why the “Emily Dickinson” provides a “choice of cheese”?

I called the restaurant yesterday to ask why, but I never got through. Maybe they were closed for Labor Day?

Tomorrow, I’ll continue with another sprinkle of cheese. Cheddar late than never, huh?

Hey, wait a minute. I just realized that the AI info I encountered called my cheesy poem “somewhat funny.”

Somewhat?!?

Smile & Say Cheese

8/30/2025

We've adopted a kitten from the SPCA (Society of Poetic Cats of America). Her name is Emily -- and yes -- she writes poetry. Are you too deeply occupied to say if her Verse is alive?

To read more of Emily's poetry, click in our archive on "Emily Kittenson" and scroll down.

The Wild Blue Yonder

8/30/2025

In yesterday’s post I shared poems of the sun and moon by Dickinson. I ended with “I watched the Moon around the House,” an account of the moon’s “stop for rest” as it travelled across the night sky, until “She vaulted out of Gaze.”

There’s a fun twist at the end, for the speaker espies the moon again at some point thereafter, this time during the day; however, being grounded “too far below,” she is unable to determine the heavenly body’s precise path.

Hmm…perhaps I should have referred to the moon as a “heavenly head” on account of Dickinson’s incredibly clever comparison of the satellite to a disembodied head sustained in the sky (stanza 4).

In either case, body or head, the speaker concludes by conceding that, additionally, she cannot understand “its advantage – Blue.”

I love that abrupt ending, the full stop “Blue” – and it is an advantageous, positive blue, not at all connected to the melancholy usually associated with “blue.” Take it one step further, and is this blue, the great expanse of sky, an infinite ethereal region beyond the stretch of air, a location of transcendent happiness – and the speaker is “too far below” to understand? #justasking

In just six syllables at the end of that poem, Dickinson has ripped my head off thinking about all of this.

LOL – in a recent post, I referenced a letter sent to Mabel Loomis Todd by someone who noted that another poet of their time, J. Whitcomb Riley, “merely helps us see the things without doing much to help us see into them.” That is not the case with Miss. Dickinson.

Now bear with me for a minute. In some dialogue from the sitcom “Frasier,” radio psychologist Frasier Crane explains to a listener, “at Cornell University, they have an incredible piece of scientific equipment known as the tunneling electron microscope. Now, this microscope is so powerful that by firing electrons you can actually see images of the atom, the infinitesimally minute building blocks of our universe.”

I think that’s what Dickinson does with her poetry. As professor and author Julia Hejduk put it, Dickinson is “a poet of incarnation—of the small, concrete, and quotidian becoming a vessel for the infinite.”

Okay, so let me get back to the word, “Blue.” In how many poems did Dickinson use the word, and what did she mean by it? I’ll get to that tomorrow with my blue – uncertain – stumbling buzz.

Yellow Noise

8/29/2025

Back in the middle of the month, I shared info related to the VMFA’s exhibit “Frida: Beyond the Myth.” One of the posts focused on a still life by Kahlo that included depictions of the sun and moon, and I paired that painting with two of my favorite poems by Dickinson, “The Sun just touched the Morning” and “The Moon was but a Chin of Gold” (HERE).

Today I thought I would share two other of my favorite sun/moon poems, and due to some related language and imagery, I have two additional sun poems to throw in as a bonus!

First, the sun poem, “When I have seen the Sun emerge,” a favorite because it always reminds me of my father-in-law who each morning would proclaim exuberantly, “Another day in which to excel.”

Dickinson’s take on that sentiment goes like this:

Isn’t this a wonderful poem? The sun rises humbly from his “amazing House” each and every morning to provide us with a new and glorious day, and while the event to most goes unnoticed, the speaker of the poem (Dickinson?) sees the earth as “a Drum / Pursued of little Boys” – and what little boy or girl doens’t want to play the drums! In addition, the sun does this flawlessly – every day – without “incident of Fame / Or accident of Noise.”

Of course, “accident of Noise” would differ from deliberate and purposeful noise – say, the twittering of birds (“nature’s little poets” to Dickinson) at civil twilight – and such heavenly hubbub was dubbed “yellow noise” in Dickinson’s solemn threnody “Ample make this Bed”:

The reality that most of us view the daily emergence of the sun with outright indifference is echoed in Dickinson’s “The largest Fire ever known"; the poem is an admonition addressing our collective apathy toward a daily conflagration – the sunset:

No one clamors at this daily calamity. There is no surprise or concern. There are no reports. We just go about our business each day as the recurrent fire blazes. Ho hum – another sunset.

In addition to the daily course of the sun, Dickinson was also charmed by the orbit of the moon, and in “I watched the Moon around the House,” she described its progress through the night sky – and the image introduced in the third stanza and fulfilled in the fourth is beyond brilliant: “for not a Foot – nor Hand / Nor Formula – had she / But like a Head – a Guillotine / Slid carelessly away.”

How perfect: the image of the moon as a disembodied head sustained in the sky “By finer Gravitations / Than bind Philosopher.” After all, what do Philosophers know about life and death – and afterwards – compared to the practice of this silver, cryptic specter.

And then there’s that fun plot twist at the end: the speaker, at some point thereafter, spies the moon again during the daytime; however, being grounded “too far below,” she is unable to determine its precise path – “Or its advantage – Blue.”

I love that abrupt ending, the full stop “Blue,” the great expanse of sky – and it’s an advantageous, positive, happy blue.

Hmm…perhaps I’ll talk about Dickinson’s use of “Blue” tomorrow.

Luna Y Sol

8/15/2025

My wife and I visited the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts recently and toured an exhibit on Frida Kahlo, “Frida: Beyond the Myth.” Info on the exhibit is HERE.

It was fascinating to learn about her life – I knew very little about her, particularly the extent of the physical and emotional pain she endured throughout her life (including childhood polio and a near-fatal bus accident as a teenager that left her with multiple fractures and a shattered pelvis) – and following our visit, we watched the 2002 biopic about Kahlo, called “Frida,” starring Salma Hayek.

It was interesting to see the very paintings we had just viewed at the museum intertwined in the movie’s story, and to be honest, now that we’ve seen the film, I think I’d like to see the exhibit one more time before it closes.

Anyway, there was a still life toward the end of the exhibit, and I loved Kahlo’s depiction of the sun and the moon in the top left and right corners. Those depictions made me think of my favorite poems of the sun and the moon by Dickinson, and I thought I would share them today, “The moon was but a chin of gold,” and “The Sun just touched the morning.”

Full Moon

2/6/2025

Millicent Todd Bingham’s observation on Dickinson’s regard for nature in her book “Ancestors’ Brocades, The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson”: “Snakes and flies, grass and stones, as well as wind and rain and the rising of the moon over the Pelham hills, all were of the essence of miracle.”

In regard to that quote, I am addressing those specific seven subjects in Dickinson’s poetry: snakes, flies, grass, stones, wind, rain, and the moon.

Today’s focus: Moon

My favorite of Dickinson’s “moon” poems is “The moon was but a chin of gold.” I posted that the other day when I discussed the poet’s use of the word “stone” (one version of the poem used the word “stone in line 6, “Her Cheek – a Beryl stone” vs. “Her Cheek – a Beryl hewn”).

The are other wonderful “moon” poems, but there is one fantastic image in “I watched the moon around the house” that I would like to share – and that is found in the fourth stanza, following these lines in the third stanza, “for not a Foot—nor Hand— / Nor Formula—had she":

Tell me that image of a guillotined head sustained in the sky isn’t amazeballs (a synonym for “spectacular” offered up by Google – in addition to “striking,” “breathtaking,” “amazing,” “glorious,” and others).

I also love that final stanza – of seeing the moon during the day of blue sky; lines, which I understand, Dickinson added to the poem at a later date.

The complete poem is below:

Moonlighting

12/17/2024

Yesterday was Beethoven’s birthday, and I posted info about the Moonlight Sonata (HERE). I ended the post wondering if Dickinson had ever used the word “moonlight” in any of her poems.

Dickinson did use the word “moon” in 23 poems and “Luna” in one, but did she ever use “moonlight”?

Nope. “Moonlight” does not appear in any poems (nor does the word “sunlight”); however, the word “light” does appear in one of the “moon” poems.

Wellll….sorta. The word “lightly” appears in one of the “moon” poems – and that’s kind of close to “light,” no?

The poem is “Lightly stepped a yellow star,” and that’s as close as one gets to “moonlight” in any of Dickinson’s poetry.

Lightly stepped a yellow star
To its lofty place -
Loosed the Moon her silver hat
From her lustral Face -
All of Evening softly lit
As an Astral Hall -
Father, I observed to Heaven,
You are punctual.

This Little Light Of Mine

9/1/2024

Happy September!

I thought I’d pause from writing about the sun and the moon in Dickinson’s poems, and instead, I’d write a post about her poems that use the word “September.” But guess what? There are none (September and December are the two months Dickinson never mentioned in any of her poems).

Sooo…for today, back to the sun and the moon!

This series of posts started back on August 19th when we experienced the Super Blue Moon, and after a few posts about the moon, I shifted to Dickinson’s use of the sun. For today: How many of Dickinson’s 165 poems about the sun ALSO mention the moon.

Any guesses?

In all of the poems that mention the sun, there is only one to mention both the sun and the moon, “The sun and moon must make their haste.”

This poem does seem to suggest the awe-inspiring nature of the divine -- more so than many others of Dickinson’s works – and also the sense of “time is of the essence.” That final stanza, though, seems a bit more ominous to me, and it called to mind a passage from Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” – when the crew from the Pequod lower into the sea at night, and “in the midst of despair” and wind and squall, “Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope.”

Yes, the final stanza makes me think of “forlorn hope,” and there sat Queequeg, “holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness.”

That image is so chilling to me.

“There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.”

Is that what Dickinson is doing here?

Super Size Me

8/19/2024

Tonight is a Super Blue Moon.

When I first heard about it, I wondered how it could be a Blue Moon since today’s date is just the 19th. How could this be the second full moon in the month?

It turns out that a Blue Moon is also the third full moon in a season in which there are four full moons – hence, tonight’s “Blue Moon.”

Tonight’s full moon is also known as the Sturgeon Moon, a name given by Native Americans because sturgeon was most readily caught in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain at this time of summer.

Sooo…did Emily Dickinson ever write about a Super Blue Moon. Well, not that I know of. She never used the word “super” in any of her poems, and though she used the word “blue” in 32 poems, the word “blue” appears in just two poems with “moon” – and never together (i.e. “blue moon”). And just FYI: She never used the word “sturgeon.”

Perhaps my favorite poem by Dickinson about the moon is “The Moon was but a chin of gold” – and coincidentally, that is one of the two “moon” poems that also uses the word “blue.”

If you get a chance, go out tonight to see the Super Blue Moon! The next Super Blue Moon will not come until January of 2037.

CONTINUED...

Yesterday, in tribute of the Super Blue Moon, I checked how often Dickinson used the word “super” (never), “blue” (32 times) and “moon” (23 times), and I posted one of the two poems that includes both the words “blue” and “moon,” “The moon was but a chin of gold.” The other is “I watched the Moon around the house.”

I also mentioned that yesterday’s lunar event was also known as the Sturgeon Moon (and, of course, Dickinson never used the word “sturgeon” in any of her poems), and then @redenigma (on Counter Social) told me “it's the Barley moon, as well.”

When I explored that, I found this: ““The Next Full Moon is a Supermoon, a Blue Moon; the Sturgeon Moon; the Red, Corn, Green Corn, Barley, Herb, Grain, or Dog Moon.”

Sooo…let’s take a look at all of those words in Dickinson’s poetry:

“Red” was used in 31 different poems. “Corn” is in 8 poems, “green” is used in 15 poems, and the word “barley” is never used. “Herb” is used in one poem, “grain” is used in three poems, and “dog” appears in eight.

None of those poems (i.e., the ones that use “red,” “corn,” “green,” “herb,” “grain,” and “dog”) include the word moon.