I looked up poems by Dickinson which include the word “January,” and in my exploration I came upon an interesting site I’d not seen before, “Love & Conquest, The Erotics of Colonial Discourse in Emily Dickinson’s Poems & Letters" (HERE). It appears to date back to 1998, and it’s connected to something called “The Classroom Electric, Dickinson, Whitman & American Culture” (HERE) I’ll look into and report back on that connection soon.
The introduction to the “Love & Conquest” site opens with the following statement:
“In a surprising number of poems and letters, many of which were sent to her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson, Emily Dickinson invokes Brazil, Peru, Veracruz, the Bahamas, India, and other ‘exotic’ places. Sometimes Dickinson uses these place names to describe the advent of spring, sometimes to describe a spiritual state, and sometimes to speak of love.”
Interestingly, the poem I had landed on for today – one with the word “January” – is an example of one of Dickinson’s poems with an exotic place named to denote the coming of spring, “A Drunkard cannot meet a cork.”
In this short, humorous poem, the speak encounters a fly on a January day and revels at its significance – spring will soon be here!
“In a surprising number of poems and letters, many of which were sent to her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson, Emily Dickinson invokes Brazil, Peru, Veracruz, the Bahamas, India, and other ‘exotic’ places. Sometimes Dickinson uses these place names to describe the advent of spring, sometimes to describe a spiritual state, and sometimes to speak of love.”
Interestingly, the poem I had landed on for today – one with the word “January” – is an example of one of Dickinson’s poems with an exotic place named to denote the coming of spring, “A Drunkard cannot meet a cork.”
In this short, humorous poem, the speak encounters a fly on a January day and revels at its significance – spring will soon be here!
What early signs of spring get you a bit tipsy? ; )
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