Yesterday I shared Dickinson’s poem “To make Routine a Stimulus” and commented on how she had the gift to embrace the familiar and see in it a source of inspiration and wonder.
Along these lines, in an article titled "An Acrostic Window on Emily Dickinson’s ‘I dwell in Possibility’”, Julia Hejduk described Dickinson as “a poet of incarnation—of the small, concrete, and quotidian becoming a vessel for the infinite.”
Remarkably, in April 1862 (HERE), in response to a letter from Thomas Wentworth Higginson where he asked her age, Dickinson replied, “You asked how old I was? I made no verse-but one or two-until this winter - Sir-”
How interesting that the poet (31 years old at the time) implied her “birth” occurred as she began writing poetry, when – with striking ability – she merged the mundane with the momentous.
In that same letter – of April 1862 – Dickinson wrote, “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-”
Three months later she wrote Higginson again (HERE). “My Business is circumference” she avowed, and added “I know the Butterfly-and the Lizard-and the Orchis - Are not those your Countrymen?”
Along those lines, Mabel Loomis Todd’s daughter Millicent Todd Bingham observed 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 (to Dickinson) were of the essence of miracle.”
TBH, much of what I read about and by Dickinson reminds me of Frank Lloyd Wright’s affirmation, “I believe in God, only I spell it Nature” (as an aside, I also saw this quote from Mother Teresa and thought of Dickinson’s desire for solitude: “We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls”).
Hmm. Perhaps I have veered off track a bit, so let me redeck my sails (to mix a couple of metaphors) and circle back to Dickinson’s ability to see miracles in even the most common lives by sharing lines from the poet herself:
No Life can pompless pass away –
The lowliest career
To the same Pageant wends its way
As that exalted here –
How cordial is the mystery!
The hospitable Pall
A "this way" beckons spaciously –
A Miracle for all!
Along these lines, in an article titled "An Acrostic Window on Emily Dickinson’s ‘I dwell in Possibility’”, Julia Hejduk described Dickinson as “a poet of incarnation—of the small, concrete, and quotidian becoming a vessel for the infinite.”
Remarkably, in April 1862 (HERE), in response to a letter from Thomas Wentworth Higginson where he asked her age, Dickinson replied, “You asked how old I was? I made no verse-but one or two-until this winter - Sir-”
How interesting that the poet (31 years old at the time) implied her “birth” occurred as she began writing poetry, when – with striking ability – she merged the mundane with the momentous.
In that same letter – of April 1862 – Dickinson wrote, “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-”
Three months later she wrote Higginson again (HERE). “My Business is circumference” she avowed, and added “I know the Butterfly-and the Lizard-and the Orchis - Are not those your Countrymen?”
Along those lines, Mabel Loomis Todd’s daughter Millicent Todd Bingham observed 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 (to Dickinson) were of the essence of miracle.”
TBH, much of what I read about and by Dickinson reminds me of Frank Lloyd Wright’s affirmation, “I believe in God, only I spell it Nature” (as an aside, I also saw this quote from Mother Teresa and thought of Dickinson’s desire for solitude: “We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls”).
Hmm. Perhaps I have veered off track a bit, so let me redeck my sails (to mix a couple of metaphors) and circle back to Dickinson’s ability to see miracles in even the most common lives by sharing lines from the poet herself:
No Life can pompless pass away –
The lowliest career
To the same Pageant wends its way
As that exalted here –
How cordial is the mystery!
The hospitable Pall
A "this way" beckons spaciously –
A Miracle for all!
RSS Feed
