How did it get to be November already? Tempus fugit! Yep, it's true. Time flies and fruit flies like bananas*!
Anyway, before November slips away, I thought I’d check on the number of poems by Dickinson which include the word “November." There are three of them: “How happy I was, if I could forget,” “The night was wide, and furnished scant,” and “The day grew small, surrounded tight.”
Since Daylight Saving Time** has just ended and darkness will fall an hour earlier tonight, I thought I would share that last poem, “The Day grew small, surrounded tight,” for the opening lines describe precisely what we will experience this evening.
Anyway, before November slips away, I thought I’d check on the number of poems by Dickinson which include the word “November." There are three of them: “How happy I was, if I could forget,” “The night was wide, and furnished scant,” and “The day grew small, surrounded tight.”
Since Daylight Saving Time** has just ended and darkness will fall an hour earlier tonight, I thought I would share that last poem, “The Day grew small, surrounded tight,” for the opening lines describe precisely what we will experience this evening.
 | I love all the images in the poem, but particularly those in the first two pairs of lines. Today will, indeed, grow small, only to be “surrounded tight / By early stooping Night,” and the afternoon will, one hour earlier, be “in Evening deep / Its Yellow shortness dropt.” There is a fourth poem that does not use the word “November,” but Mabel Loomis Todd named it “November” when she first published in 1891 in the “Second Series” of Dickinson’s “Poems” – and that is “Besides the Autumn poets sing.” |
 | I LOVE the opening image of this ode to autumn, that we – betwixt*** summer and winter – are at a point “A little this side of the snow / And that side of the Haze.” There is another image in this poem that jumped out at me that I found to be very surprising. Does anything jump out at you? I’ll get to what I’m talking about tomorrow.**** ;-)  NOTES: *Did Dickinson ever use the word “banana” in any of her poems? Nope. **"Daylight Saving Time" (without the "s") is the correct term, as it refers to the practice of saving daylight, not "savings." "Daylight savings time" is a common but technically incorrect variation, often used in casual conversation because "savings" is frequently used in other contexts like "savings account." ***How often do you get to say “betwixt”? Not often enough – so I thought I’d throw it in there!. |
****Don’t you just love cliffhangers? The term "cliffhanger" is said to have originated with the serialised version of Thomas Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes (which was published in Tinsley's Magazine between September 1872 and July 1873), where a character is literally left hanging from a cliff at the end of a chapter
RSS Feed
