Tag: bliss

Freedom

Pam and BrennaLeave a comment

FROM all the jails the boys and girls
Ecstatically leap,—
Beloved, only afternoon
That prison does n’t keep.


They storm the earth and stun the air,
A mob of solid bliss.
Alas! that frowns could lie in wait
For such a foe as this!

~Emily Dickinson

In my copy of Dickinson’s poems, this one is titled “Saturday Afternoon,” and I was meant to be writing it on Saturday afternoon, but, while the girls and boys have already ecstatically leapt from their jails, the teachers of said escaped inmates are still imprisoned by checklists and room cleanup and faculty meetings and report cards. So I give you this poem on a Sunday afternoon instead, as I prepare to go back to what my granddad liked to call “the knowledge mill” to finish up my remaining time so that I, too, may be free.

Bliss/abyss

Pam and BrennaLeave a comment

Is bliss, then, such abyss
I must not put my foot amiss
For fear I spoil my shoe?


I ’d rather suit my foot
Than save my boot,
For yet to buy another pair
Is possible
At any fair.


But bliss is sold just once;
The patent lost
None buy it any more.

~emily dickinson

The structure of this one is unusual–a three-line stanza followed by a five-line stanza and then another three-line stanza. What is Dickinson doing? She has such a distinctive poetic style, such a strongly Dickinsonian voice, that people joke you can sing most of her poems to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” The meter and rhythm are unmistakable.

So when she veers so sharply from her accustomed rhyme and rhythm and meter, what is she doing? What are we meant to think of this? Is she experimenting? Is the abrupt shift in meter and rhythm meant to clue us in to some hidden secret of the poem?

We’re almost halfway through the year, and sometimes I think that with each additional poem of Dickinson’s that I read and respond to, I’m getting farther away from understanding her.