Back at the start of the month, I posted the one poem by Dickinson that uses the word “July,” and in exploring that work, I stumbled upon a site called the Parlando Project (info HERE).
After that I checked into Dickinson’s use of the word “opera” in her poems, one of which was “I cannot dance upon my toes. I wrote about that HERE – and I mentioned that the poem had been included with a letter to her mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
There are over 70 letters available that Dickinson sent to Higginson, and those letters included about 100 poems.
She first wrote to Higginson in response to an article he wrote in The Atlantic in April of 1862. The letter opened, “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?” and she included four poems.
That year, she wrote to him again later that month, once in June, once in July, and then in August, and it is the August 1862 poem that included “I cannot dance upon my toes.”
I wish the letters from Higginson to Dicknson existed, because obviously they discussed her writing style, as this letter– with two additional poems – opens with
“Dear Friend,
Are these more orderly? I thank you for the Truth –
I had no Monarch in my life, and cannot rule myself, and when I try to organize my little Force explodes, and leaves me bare and charred –
I think you called me ‘wayward’. Will you help me improve?”
I love how Dickinson refers to her determination to write poetry and her potency with words as her “little Force” – and what it force it was! She wrote about her abilities, “there's a noiseless noise in the Orchard - that I let persons hear .” Good lord, when I read that my head just about exploded!
Later in the letter she says about her youth, “When much in the Woods as a little Girl, I was told that the Snake would bite me, that I might pick a poisonous flower, or Goblins kidnap me, but I went along and met no one but Angels, who were far shyer of me, than I could be of them, so I hav'nt that confidence in fraud which many exercise.”
I LOVE that line, “I hav’nt that confidence in fraud which many exercise.” (OMG, she’d be in utter disbelief if she were here today to witness what is going on politically -- with DonOLD Trump's many fraudulent claims and MAGAt gullibility).
When you have time, read the complete letter. It’s HERE.
After that I checked into Dickinson’s use of the word “opera” in her poems, one of which was “I cannot dance upon my toes. I wrote about that HERE – and I mentioned that the poem had been included with a letter to her mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
There are over 70 letters available that Dickinson sent to Higginson, and those letters included about 100 poems.
She first wrote to Higginson in response to an article he wrote in The Atlantic in April of 1862. The letter opened, “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?” and she included four poems.
That year, she wrote to him again later that month, once in June, once in July, and then in August, and it is the August 1862 poem that included “I cannot dance upon my toes.”
I wish the letters from Higginson to Dicknson existed, because obviously they discussed her writing style, as this letter– with two additional poems – opens with
“Dear Friend,
Are these more orderly? I thank you for the Truth –
I had no Monarch in my life, and cannot rule myself, and when I try to organize my little Force explodes, and leaves me bare and charred –
I think you called me ‘wayward’. Will you help me improve?”
I love how Dickinson refers to her determination to write poetry and her potency with words as her “little Force” – and what it force it was! She wrote about her abilities, “there's a noiseless noise in the Orchard - that I let persons hear .” Good lord, when I read that my head just about exploded!
Later in the letter she says about her youth, “When much in the Woods as a little Girl, I was told that the Snake would bite me, that I might pick a poisonous flower, or Goblins kidnap me, but I went along and met no one but Angels, who were far shyer of me, than I could be of them, so I hav'nt that confidence in fraud which many exercise.”
I LOVE that line, “I hav’nt that confidence in fraud which many exercise.” (OMG, she’d be in utter disbelief if she were here today to witness what is going on politically -- with DonOLD Trump's many fraudulent claims and MAGAt gullibility).
When you have time, read the complete letter. It’s HERE.
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