Happy Birthday, Emily

Emily Dickinson was born today in 1830, in Amherst Massachusetts. Self-described as "small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut burr; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves," Dickinson was reclusive, cut-off from the townsfolk not least because she was agnostic and never went to church; she found the steady stream of visitors to her widowed father's house, where she lived, "tedious". (Aha! An introvert, too ...)

She wrote more than 1700 poems, and although it took until after her death, she is now regarded as the first great lyric poet of America, and one the great American poets ever.

Martha Dickinson Bianchi wrote of her:

As light after darkness, Summer following Winter, she is inevitable, unequivocal. Evasion of fact she knew not, though her body might flit away from interruption, leaving an intruder to “Think that a sunbeam left the door ajar.”

Herewith a couple of her poems:

AT half-past three a single bird
Unto a silent sky
Propounded but a single term
Of cautious melody.

At half-past four, experiment
Had subjugated test,
And lo! her silver principle
Supplanted all the rest.

At half-past seven, element
Nor implement was seen,
And place was where the presence was,
Circumference between.


BEFORE the ice is in the pools,
  Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
  Is tarnished by the snow,

Before the fields have finished,
  Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
  Will arrive to me!

What we touch the hems of
  On a summer’s day;
What is only walking
  Just a bridge away;

That which sings so, speaks so,
  When there’s no one here,—
Will the frock I wept in
  Answer me to wear?

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