a vintage Valentine–
that says nothing of love–
or asks you if you’ll be mine.
Would Emily approve
of such utter lack of words?
Perhaps–at least–if nothing else–
she would enjoy the birds?
For the month of February, we’ve decided to focus on love poems. Emily Dickinson wrote quite a lot of them. Many of them are about death (surprise!!!). Many are not. Here’s a definition of love to get us started:
LOVE is anterior to life,
~Emily Dickinson
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.
This one seems fairly straightforward to me. Love exists before life and persists after death (oh, look, death! She worked it in. Go, Emily, go! Way to stay on brand!). Love is at the beginning of creation–is the cause of creation–and issues forth on our last breaths. Love=eternal. This tiny poem has the feel of an epigram, a wise saying encapsulated in a few well-chosen words. This seems like a good place to start–by defining our terms.
The Emily Project 