Brenna and I were just settling down to a rainy afternoon conversation about a love poem which expresses, well, something less than love, when something marvelous happened. Two worlds intersected.
We are writing a daily blog about Emily Dickinson poems. The Slowdown, U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s daily poetry podcast, features an Emily Dickinson poem today. So, on this rainy day, we invite you to pull up a comfy chair, pop in some earbuds, and close your eyes for five minutes of what amounts to, basically, a guided meditation in poetry.
You can listen to today’s episode of The Slowdown here.
I like to see it lap the Miles—
And lick the Valleys up—
And stop to feed itself at Tanks—
And then—prodigious stepAround a Pile of Mountains—
And supercilious peer
In Shanties—by the sides of Roads—
And then a Quarry pareTo fit its sides
And crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid—hooting stanza—
Then chase itself down Hill—And neigh like Boanerges—
Emily Dickinson
Then—prompter than a Star
Stop—docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door—
The Emily Project 