Day Two, Part One--June 14th (26-35)

So I'm wondering if this format is useful. Basically I'm writing down my thoughts off the top of my head--occasionally I will look up a word or a type of bird or flower, but I am NOT doing any Dickinson research yet and I am not reading other people's commentaries on these poems. I think that there's something appealing about first reactions to poems, and certainly one reason for doing this was that I have read SO FEW of her poems (at least proportionally). I think that I will need to take some days off in here, because I already feel that I can't sustain this pace of reading AND writing notes all summer. Perhaps I should make Saturdays my Dickinson Sabbath.

#26 "It's all I have to bring today"
An accumulation of sound and image drives this poem.

#27 "Morns like these--we parted"
Another female bird companion for Dickinson! They often seem like "bosom companions" to use a horrifying 19th century-ism. I would say they almost seem to be lovers, but I don't think it's quite so strong. It seems to be easy for her to identify and almost become the animals and plants around her. It also seems that, symmetrically, she is quick to endow these birds and plants with human qualities. I guess I'm wondering if she really does see the human in the non-human or if it's a very concerted poetic act of hers; how much work does she have to do to make these transformations? Does that make sense? The linnet, by the way, is a bird in the finch family. Of course the linnet is more famous for flapping around on Yeats' "Lake Isle of Innisfree".

#28 "So has a Daisy vanished"
"Oozed"--my my my!

#29 "If those I loved were lost"
I wonder who Philip is--I'll have to find out.


#30 "Adrift! A little boat adrift!"
Oh god. Here go the angels exalting things: religious maudlin. On a separate note, this is a poem of split perspective. Already contradiction and paradox are emerging as heavy preoccupations of hers. This isn't a particularly fine example, so more on that later. I do love the first line of this poem. I also like that she is not afraid of guttural Nordic language like ooze and gurgle.

#31 "Summer for thee, grant I may be"
Nothing really to say.

#32 "When Roses cease to bloom, Sir"
Another short, skipping lyric. Not very interesting to me.

#33 "If recollecting were forgetting"
I always like the playful side of Dickinson. This is a better example of the paradoxical ideas that she is setting up in some poems. She loves playing opposites off of one another. However this poem is more a stylish use of opposites than a real examination of the power of contradiction.

#34 "Garlands for Queens, may be--"
Whatever. Leave that one in the recycling bin, Emily.

#35 "Nobody knows this little Rose--"
She does seem to be concerned already (look at #28) with the ease with which death takes place. It is ordinary. Thus far she has kept it at a distance from the human body though and transposed death onto flowers. Of course the flowers have been her sisters and she claimed to be a rose, so we know that she IS talking about dying, even about her own death possibly, but she hasn't yet directly addressed her own mortality. Death still takes place outside of her own body and mind so far.