Okay, are you ready for something heavy? LOL – I found a weighty and quite studious article which discusses the poem I posted yesterday, “Step lightly on this narrow Spot" (HERE). Much of the article focuses on Dickinson’s maturation as a poet following the death of her father (“Polly Longsworth suggests that although Dickinson had pronounced as early as 1862 that ‘My business is to love’ (L269), her mature voice of condolence did not develop until the death of her father”) – and in response to the Civil War and its aftermath:
“Emily Dickinson, too, sought in her postwar poetry to confront loss and pain. While many of her postwar poems are a ‘oblique’ as those now generally recognized to be reflections on the ar while it was taking place, they how her to be as deeply engaged as Whitman with the questions of how to reconcile a divided nation; how to accept loss; how to sympathize with those who have suffered; and how to make suffering meaningful in a world from which divine authority has become remote.”
And there is this:
“The war made her see herself as an American poet and as a poet of human connection.”
There is a section of the article, entitled “Acres of Seams,” which discusses at length Dickinson’s image of “seams” in grass – particularly the description of “seamless grass” in the poet’s most famous Civil War poem, “They dropped like flakes,” and “the Emerald Seams” in “Step lightly on this narrow Spot.”
“Emily Dickinson, too, sought in her postwar poetry to confront loss and pain. While many of her postwar poems are a ‘oblique’ as those now generally recognized to be reflections on the ar while it was taking place, they how her to be as deeply engaged as Whitman with the questions of how to reconcile a divided nation; how to accept loss; how to sympathize with those who have suffered; and how to make suffering meaningful in a world from which divine authority has become remote.”
And there is this:
“The war made her see herself as an American poet and as a poet of human connection.”
There is a section of the article, entitled “Acres of Seams,” which discusses at length Dickinson’s image of “seams” in grass – particularly the description of “seamless grass” in the poet’s most famous Civil War poem, “They dropped like flakes,” and “the Emerald Seams” in “Step lightly on this narrow Spot.”
 | Of the latter poem, Daniel Manheim, the author of the article, states, “These seams reappear nine years later, in a poem in which Dickinson seeks a way to measure the past without either erasing or dwelling on what was suffered.” Check the page numbered 287 in the PDF (whcih is really page 12 of the 23 page PDF) for an in-depth discussion of the poem. If you’re ready for your coffee and you’re in a quiet space for some powerful reading, check out the article, HERE. |
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