Yesterday’s post focused on Dickinson’s “The Birds begun at four o’clock,” a simple but profound work that highlights a daily, ordinary moment often overlooked by all “except occasional man.” The poem truly conveys a sense of wonder and the sublime.
In her book “White Heat, The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson,” Brenda Wineapple suggests that Dickinson may have been inspired to write this poem – and certainly another similar poem (which I’ll share tomorrow) – after reading a passage from Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s first book “Out-Door Papers” (1863), a collection of his essays from “The Atlantic.”
In his essay “Water-Lilies,” Higginson wrote the following:
We know that Dickinson read Higginson’s book because she mentioned it in a letter to him in the spring of 1876:
It is still as distinct as Paradise - the opening your first Book -
It was Mansions - Nations - Kinsmen - too- to me –
How about that for praise?
And by the way, speaking of Dickinson’s “Kinsmen,” she wrote in letter to Higginson in April 1862, “You ask of my Companions Hills- Sir-and the Sundown-and a Dog-large as myself, that my Father bought me-They are better than Beings-because they know-but do not tell-and the noise in the Pool, at Noon.”
In a letter from July that same year, Dickinson wrote, “I know the Butterfly-and the Lizard-and the Orchis - Are not those your Countrymen?”
These passages call to mind two things:
First, her use of the word “Pool” in the line about her dog calls to mind a similar use of the word at the end of line 13 in “The Fingers of the Light”; I shared that poem a couple of days ago, HERE.
Second, the mention of the Orchis seems to anticipate lines in her letter from spring 1876 (the one where she mentioned Higginson’s book); she concludes that letter with this:
”I had long heard of an Orchis before I found one, when a child, but the first clutch of the stem is as vivid now, as the Bog that bore it- so truthful is transport….”
More about this – and that other similar poem – tomorrow. Stay tuned.
It is still as distinct as Paradise - the opening your first Book -
It was Mansions - Nations - Kinsmen - too- to me –
How about that for praise?
And by the way, speaking of Dickinson’s “Kinsmen,” she wrote in letter to Higginson in April 1862, “You ask of my Companions Hills- Sir-and the Sundown-and a Dog-large as myself, that my Father bought me-They are better than Beings-because they know-but do not tell-and the noise in the Pool, at Noon.”
In a letter from July that same year, Dickinson wrote, “I know the Butterfly-and the Lizard-and the Orchis - Are not those your Countrymen?”
These passages call to mind two things:
First, her use of the word “Pool” in the line about her dog calls to mind a similar use of the word at the end of line 13 in “The Fingers of the Light”; I shared that poem a couple of days ago, HERE.
Second, the mention of the Orchis seems to anticipate lines in her letter from spring 1876 (the one where she mentioned Higginson’s book); she concludes that letter with this:
”I had long heard of an Orchis before I found one, when a child, but the first clutch of the stem is as vivid now, as the Bog that bore it- so truthful is transport….”
More about this – and that other similar poem – tomorrow. Stay tuned.
RSS Feed
