Poetry Out Loud Finds: Timely Shorter Poems

These are a few poems I've stumbled across on the Poetry Out Loud website while helping students search for poems.  They're all shorter, but interesting choices for students.

"The Bloody Sire"  by Robinson Jeffers (http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/11973)
    Violence as the source of all morals.

"Chord" by Stuart Dybek (http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/30360)
    Death as music?

"All Hallows Eve"  by Dorothea Tanning (http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/243566)
    Surprising conflation of werewolves and husbands.

"Late Echo" by John Ashberry (http://poetryoutloud.org/poem/23488)
    The necessity of writing about the same things over and over.

"Coda"  by Basil Bunting (http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/177179)
    Blind repetition of history.

"Nude Descending a Staircase" by X J Kennedy (http://poetryoutloud.org/poem/17444)
    Classic surreal ekphrasis describing Duchamp's famous painting.

Several years back I found the board book Little Tree based on a poem by e.e. cummings, written and illustrated by Chris Raschka.  I have never found that book again, but I wish I could because I'd like to give it away each year.  It is remarkably sad, I think, yet sweet at the same time.  Kind of like a cuter, more festive Giving Tree.  Read it.  Or, if you can't, at least read e.e. cummings' poem below.  I think the Gothic undertones come through in the poem as well.  Still, the illustrations in the book are so wonderful, and to me they and the expanded story fit the (faux?) quaint style and geometric repetition of the poem.

"every finger shall have its ring/ and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy "

[little tree]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

little tree

little silent Christmas tree

you are so little

you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest

and were you very sorry to come away?

see          i will comfort you

because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark

and hug you safe and tight

just as your mother would,

only don't be afraid

look          the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i'll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed

you'll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they'll stare!

oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we'll dance and sing

"Noel Noel"

Margaret Atwood "Is/Not" Provides NaNoWriMo Procrastination

I just found this blog, Poetry Post, through Twitter.  It will bear more exploration in the future... meanwhile, the entry I linked here has a wonderful poem I hadn't read by one of my favorite authors, Margaret Atwood.  I haven't read much of her poetry, actually.  Mostly novels and short stories, and I'm way behind the times.  Although I did see recently that she is co-writing a zombie serial novel with another writer, which will be published online (or has been already) [Note to self: Find the link and put it on here later.]

I hope this is an accurate copy of the poem.  You know how it is, finding poems online.  You never know...

Is/Not
by Margaret Atwood

I. 
Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise
sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your surprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but against you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense.


II. 
I am not a saint or a cripple,
I am not a wound; now I will see
whether I am a coward.

I dispose of my good manners,
you don’t have to kiss my wrists.

This is a journey, not a war,
there is no outcome,
I renounce predictions

and aspirins, I resign the future
as I would resign an expired passport:
picture and signature gone
along with holidays and safe returns.

We’re stuck here
on this side of the border
in this country of thumbed streets and stale buildings

where there is nothing spectacular
 to see
and the weather is ordinary

where love occurs in its pure form only
on the cheaper of the souvenirs

where we must walk slowly,
where we may not get anywhere

or anything, where we keep going,
fighting our ways, our way
not out but through.

Is it a breakup poem?  Or is it a "grimly determined to live through the hell that we create through love" poem?  More reflection required.

However, I love some of the ideas and images:  "Permit me the present tense," "there is no outcome," and "fighting our ways, our way/ not out but through." The idea that love is an ongoing series of choices, a process, not so glamorous much of the time, but inevitable, worth it, though we cannot predict where it will take us, nor can we expect a specific reward.  And I appreciate the acknowledgement of anger.

Coming from Atwood, I like the idea that (what I interpret as) the female narrator disposes of manners, is not a saint or a cripple. She doesn't have to be saved or fixed, but on the other hand she isn't seamlessly self sufficient or a self-denying perpetual nurturer, either.  As the wife of an actual cripple, I sometimes become grumpy about running to the other end of the house for something after I'm already in bed (etc., etc.)  And then I feel guilty about being grumpy.  And then I feel stupid for being grumpy because hey, I have two legs.  But, honestly, is it realistic that a person will have the personal energy to be a saint to everyone, all the time?  I try hard to be a loving person.  Mostly, I succeed.  Except when I get grumpy.  Oh, well.  This poem acknowledges those dynamics in a relationship, or at least, that's how I read it.

I have 6,000 words left on NaNoWriMo to meet my truncated goal of 25,000 words (see my last blog entry.)  Will I do it?  Or is writing this blog sign enough that I have capitulated?

What I Learned this Week(ish) #4

1.  I learned what "aegis" means (as I have been doing research for my Athena costume). And also "cuirass" and "chlamys."

2.  I found this amazing quote: “Sound had always been my portal to poetry, but in the beginning sound was imagined through the eye. Gradually the mouth-juice of vowels, or mouth-chunk of consonants, gave body to poems in performance. Dylan Thomas showed the way. Charles Olson said that “form is never more than an extension of content.” Really, content is only an excuse for oral sex. The most erotic poem in English is ‘Paradise Lost.’”  --Donald Hall

3. I learned that guilt can still work on a short-term scale to motivate students to be quiet and listen.

4. I found out the deal with the apps you can add to Google Drive, and they are amazing. There is an online video editing app (WeVideo) in which students can collaborate on video projects. I'm still figuring it out, but I think it will work on some of our newer school computers.

5. I learned how to make and use QR codes.  And I incorporated them into what I think is going to be a fun assignment for class on Monday:  Our Mount Olympus Mixer.  The kids attend a business mixer playing the role of an ancient Greek god, goddess, hero or ruler.  They exchange business cards with a link and QR code to an online profile of their character.  Students can create simple profiles with our class wiki, or profiles on tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Instagram... whatever!!  So excited.

6. I learned I must add John Green to a higher position on my "to read" list.

Finding my Inner Performer at the Poetry Center

I'm spending the next two mornings in Poetry Out Loud training at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Yea!

Today we spent time sharing teaching ideas, and Sarah Kortemeier led us through several simple and useful exercises to promote proper use of breath, physical relaxation and comfort, and a sense of community where we can all get over ourselves a little bit in order to serve the poem.

We spent time familiarizing ourselves with our poems (mine is "Ecology" by Jack Collom) and working on memorization.  We also had a bit of time to think about the lesson idea we will share tomorrow.

Tomorrow, after (I'm really hoping!!) some hard-core performance work and feedback, we will recite our poems on video, which will be shared online.  Yikes.  If I would have known that it might have motivated me to eat a little more carefully this summer.  I am not at the height of my physical confidence. However, if you'd like to witness our performance, it is at 12:30 at the Poetry Center.

I've got some studying to do tonight... I know about half the poem.  I wonder if the ellipticizer at the gym is conducive to poetry memorization.  I'll let you know.

Here's some further reading for me by Collom, in Exquisite Corpse: http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_9/critiques/collom.htm

Here's the poem... I am completely swallowed by the poem when I read it.  I love its rolling, lengthy sentences, his use of sound, and how the interconnectedness of the words themselves creates its own ecology of language, which underscores the idea of our unavoidable place in the natural ecologies of the planet.  I also like the spiritual overtones of the ending.  I'm sure I don't have this poem "all figured out," whatever that means.  Anyway...

Ecology

By Jack Collom

Surrounded by bone, surrounded by cells,

by rings, by rings of hell, by hair, surrounded by

air-is-a-thing, surrounded by silhouette, by honey-wet bees, yet

by skeletons of trees, surrounded by actual, yes, for practical

purposes, people, surrounded by surreal

popcorn, surrounded by the reborn: Surrender in the center

to surroundings. O surrender forever, never

end her, let her blend around, surrender to the surroundings that

surround the tender endo-surrender, that

tumble through the tumbling to that blue that

curls around the crumbling, to that, the blue that

rumbles under the sun bounding the pearl that

we walk on, talk on; we can chalk that

up to experience, sensing the brown here that’s

blue now, a drop of water surrounding a cow that’s

black & white, the warbling Blackburnian twitter that’s

machining midnight orange in the light that’s

glittering in the light green visible wind. That’s

the ticket to the tunnel through the thicket that’s

a cricket’s funnel of music to correct & pick it out

from under the wing that whirls up over & out.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Things that Need Posting

OK-- so, there are a few things that need posting.

First of all, Tucson is going to choose its first poet laureate, and here are the procedures for nominations if you'd like to participate.  I am open to suggestion and would love to form a coalition for someone local.  We need a true poet, and a true Tucsonan:  http://www.tucsonpimaartscouncil.org/public-art/opportunities/tucson-poet-laureate-nominations/

Second of all, a teacher colleague of mine from Southern Arizona Writing Project is running for TUSD School Board this fall.  After the AZK12 Center's Teacher Leadership Institute, I am convinced that we need more teachers on school boards, and Kristel Foster is a great choice.  Check out her website and facebook page, and spread the word, and more importantly, VOTE.

Another sweet opportunity is that the deadline for Copious, an effort by Charles Zoll to recognize local artists, and if you are a Tucson poet you can have your poem put to music as part of the performance next year: http://www.copiouscollaboration.org/#!

Fourth, my children need something to do.  L is currently dancing, writhing on the floor, singing under her breath... everything except sweeping the floor, which I asked her to do.  They are getting the summer boredom, and word to the wise:  It takes proactiveness to sign your kids up for summer programs early.  They are all full or already in session at this point.  I'm screwed!  :)  It's okay, though.  We have projects to do.  But it would be easier if it weren't June in Tucson (i.e. Hell Month.)

The Pedagogy of Poetry, A Modest Proposal

We should no longer teach teenagers poetry.
1.  Most of them will never have appreciation for its finer points anyway.

2.  Education and educational spending are often currently justified based on the number of students that get into colleges and/or the types of jobs students can get and the amount of money they will make after their education (just one example).  The current buzz-phrase of the past few years has been "college and career readiness" for every student.

Poetry does not help this cause at all.  In fact, it takes away valuable time that students might spend learning to consider experimental design, to create marketing campaigns, or to weld.  These efforts are much more worthwhile to our society than the ability to lose of oneself in a book, or even in a couplet. Or, even worse, to find oneself reflected in a poem, to be inspired by the subtle, beautiful gulf between what one finds in a poem and one's own thoughts and experiences to waste even further time writing more useless poetry.

Instead, students should be productive citizens. Students must be ready to enter the economy, of which poetry is an increasingly small part.

3.  More importantly, poetry is dangerous and subversive.  Poetry allows these teen minds, unfettered by adult responsibilities, to roam free within only the boundaries of language, which really is only limited by any ostensible boundaries of human imagination.  And imagination, oh, that, my friends, is a dangerous thing.  Imagination subverts reality.  It creates new worlds.  It has nothing to do with completing assignments.  It rejects grades and all sorts of measurements.  Poetry, with its reliance on slippery metaphors and lack of empirical evidence or even, really, causal relationships, well, it allows students to simultaneously complete the assignment but subvert not only the assignment, but the idea of all assignments. To subvert the teacher. This will undo school as we know it! Why, a poem can meet the highest standards of any rubric while destroying the system that trained the teacher who developed the rubric.

As educational professionals, we cannot allow this to happen.  How can we put such a powerful weapon in the hands of those so young, so easily swayed by the wrong influences? The idea is irresponsible.

However, traditionalists in the canon will persist.  So.  If poetry must be taught, let us teach just the elements, divorced from any real meaning.  Study rhyme with nonsense words.  Metaphors should be familiar.  Images can be learned by rote.  Tropes and conceits:  write poems upholding the glory of the school mascot.  Themes:  Stick to circular reasoning and self-evidential statements.  Symbolism?  Universals, for sure.  None of this creation of private symbols-- that's where the subversiveness starts.  Once a student has the power to make a tree or a stone or a grain of sand stand in the place of anything in human experience, well, there's no telling what their writing actually means.

And irony must be slashed from the curriculum at once.  If young people get control over it, there will be no way to assess their work.  Who will be to say whether they are kidding or not?  If poor grammar, violence, accusations or inappropriate language can be written in the name of an ironic effect, students are liable to begin taking risks they have never taken before, to be brave, bold and brash, to machete their way into new territories of idea and image... even to create the most sickening slander of the very teacher who must read the writing.  Worse, awash in irony, metaphor, and the concept of a speaker separate from the poet, a teacher will be truly bewildered, and, really, powerless to do much about it without stifling the young artist, which any good teacher would never, never do purposefully. 

In fact, the good teacher must cheer the young poet forward, set her ego aside and take it all like an idiomatic man.  The teacher has been the character foil to thousands, and thousands more to come.  It's part of the martyrdom of the job, perhaps.  Part of why English teachers burn out and resort to grammar worksheets.

And so, in the interest of creating a humane environment for teachers and janitors and cafeteria workers (who, unfortunately, also bear the brunt of teen irony and recklessness), poetry must be stopped.

What can one person do for the movement?  Rein in your irony.  Eliminate all but the most banal metaphors.  Purchase corporate-created curriculum geared toward standardized assessment.  Nothing is too much to protect the mental health and economic futures of our children.  (Oh, and ourselves, of course.)

The End of April (Or, the middle of January)

The other day on my "O.P.P." blog (Other People's Poetry), I posted the poem "The End of April." Today I was reflecting on why that poem tore my own heart out.

Ten years ago this January, I was five months pregnant, teaching high school, and wearing maternity clothes. All my students knew I would be having my first child in May. I was seeing the midwives regularly, and was hoping to try for a birth center birth (instead of the hospital). I still remember when I discovered I was pregnant. A couple of weeks after September 11, 2001, I was coming home after school each day exhausted. I kept thinking to myself, "What's wrong with me? Wow, these terrorist attacks must have really affected me more than I thought." Well, right after my birthday I took a test and realized why I had been feeling so sleepy.

In mid-January, my husband and I went for the five-month sonogram. So far I had had a healthy pregnancy and hadn't had any problems besides staying awake at 4 in the afternoon. His mother had wanted to accompany us, fascinated as she is by any kind of medical procedure, but we had refused. This was our first baby and we wanted to share these times just the two of us. I lay in the dark on the examination table, and Rich sat beside me. The technician placed cold jelly on my belly, and then the ultrasound, slid it around looking here and there, we heard the heartbeat and saw the heart beating, and very soon with the technician's guidance we could recognize on the screen in front of us limbs, a spine, hands and feet... the head. "It looks like ET!" I said lightly. The technician was somewhat quiet, and searched around some more. Then asked us to wait a moment while she went and found the doctor.

Rich and I wondered if anything could be wrong. I think we sensed something was wrong. A thousand years later the doctor entered what suddenly felt like a very claustrophobic dark space. I don't even remember whether the doc was a man or woman, but he/she showed us the baby's torso, spinal cord and head again, and showed us that the top of the head was not shaped correctly, that it should be rounded.

The baby had no top of his skull. He had a condition called anencephaly, which means that part of the spinal cord does not close up at all. No skull would form around the crown of his head, which meant the baby was, according to the doctor "100% incompatible with life." He/she said that this was a certainty-- there was no guesswork about whether the baby might live outside of the womb, only guesswork about whether the baby would go full term... what decision we should make next... the knowledge that the wriggling life inside me was... well, there is so much that I've written about this, finally, ten years later. It's only been in the last year I could bring myself to do it. My feelings seemed so maudlin (because they are), too maudlin for good poetry. I'm trying, though. But I'm very uncertain about sharing it here.

The rest of that story, at least right now in my life, is not for this blog. However, when I read "The End of April" those little wings, for the thousandth time, tore me apart. Such a sad poem for a springtime poem. In the poem, I imagine that the baby bird has simply grown out of its shell and left the nest, but the missing crown of the shell... ouch.

O.P.P.

You and your dirty minds.  Other People's Poetry.  My last blog entry featured a poem by Robert Bly.  Although I have friends who regularly share O.P.P. on their blogs, I haven't really done that.  I prefer to use this as a space to share my own work.  For some weird reason, it's motivating, and I write when I otherwise might not.  It's actually led to a lot of writing that doesn't end up on the blog as well, which is great.

Anyway, here's a little O.P.P. to help you get through the day.  It is National Poetry Month, after all.

The Origin of Order   By Pattiann Rogers

Stellar dust has settled.
It is green underwater now in the leaves
Of the yellow crowfoot. Its vacancies are gathered together
Under pine litter as emerging flower of the pink arbutus.
It has gained the power to make itself again
In the bone-filled egg of osprey and teal.

One could say this toothpick grasshopper
Is a cloud of decayed nebula congealed and perching
On his female mating. The tortoise beetle,
Leaving the stripped veins of morning glory vines
Like licked bones, is a straw-colored swirl
Of clever gases.

At this moment there are dead stars seeing
Themselves as marsh and forest in the eyes
Of muskrat and shrew, disintegrated suns
Making songs all night long in the throats
Of crawfish frogs, in the rubbings and gratings
Of the red-legged locust. There are spirits of orbiting
Rock in the shells of pointed winkles

And apple snails, ghosts of extinct comets caught
In the leap of darting hare and bobcat, revolutions
Of rushing stone contained in the sound of these words.

The paths of the Pleiades and Coma clusters
Have been compelled to mathematics by the mind
Contemplating the nature of itself
In the motions of stars. The patterns
Of any starry summer night might be identical
To the summer heavens circling inside the skull.
I can feel time speeding now in all directions
Deeper and deeper into the black oblivion
Of the electrons directly behind my eyes.

Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mind
Has been obligated from the beginning
To create an ordered universe
As the only possible proof of its own inheritance.


Pattiann Rogers, “The Origin of Order” from Firekeeper: Selected Poems. Copyright © 2003 by Pattiann Rogers. Source: Poetry (December 1982).

End of April  by Phillis Levin

Under a cherry tree
I found a robin’s egg,
broken, but not shattered.

I had been thinking of you,
and was kneeling in the grass
among fallen blossoms

when I saw it: a blue scrap,
a delicate toy, as light
as confetti

It didn’t seem real,
but nature will do such things
from time to time.

I looked inside:
it was glistening, hollow,
a perfect shell

except for the missing crown,
which made it possible
to look inside.

What had been there
is gone now
and lives in my heart

where, periodically,
it opens up its wings,
tearing me apart.


from The Afterimage, 1996
Copper Beech Press, Providence, RI
Copyright 1996 by Phillis Levin. All rights reserved.

Did I Miss Anything?   byTom Wayman

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

   Everything. I gave an exam worth
   40 percent of the grade for this term
   and assigned some reading due today
   on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
   worth 50 percent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

   Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
   a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
   or other heavenly being appeared
   and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
   to attain divine wisdom in this life and
   the hereafter
   This is the last time the class will meet
   before we disperse to bring the good news to all people
   on earth.

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

   Everything. Contained in this classroom
   is a microcosm of human experience
   assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
   This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
   gathered

but it was one place

And you weren’t here


From Did I Miss Anything? Selected Poems 1973-1993, 1993. Harbour Publishing   Copyright 1993 Tom Wayman.

Recommended Reading List from Poet Colleague Christopher Nelson

Chris and I used to teach together at Catalina Foothills High School.  His passion for poetry sparked many young minds there.  He took time off to pursue his MFA, and is currently teaching at University High School in TUSD.

I'm happy to get my hands on this list:
Christopher Nelson's Recommended Readings

And while you're at it, check out his impressive blog, including interviews with many contemporary poets:
Under a Warm Green Linden

His web presence is so much more focused than mine...  :)

NaPoWriMo Day 6 The Drunk Rails

This seems like it could be expanded, especially if I get a copy of Eduardo Corral's poetry collection.

The drunken tirades

on the porch of Starbucks
turn our heads

he rails through

the poetry reading 

over to the west

just round the corner

we turn our heads away

from the feature

to make out the words

of the freakshow

a chorus to the culture on stage

reminding us

to contribute to the cause

and save what we can.

P.S. Is tirade a verb?  I need to look that up. 
P.P.S.  Okay, I looked it up.  Not a verb.  Revisions made.

Haiku, What the Heck.

I've been playing around with haiku a little, hoping it would get me through a tough week and warm me up for writing poetry with my high school students.  These below are freshly baked... yet perhaps too soon from the oven for consumption?  I like them enough to put them out there, though. 

I have been reading up on haiku a little, and only recently discovered that the whole 17-syllable rule in English is a complete myth.  But I think they are actually more difficult to write when the rules are lifted. 



smooth curve of coffee cup
before the blunt edge of day



silly goose
loyally defends
even the blackbird.



The grass bows,
The field is a sea,
yet firmly rooted.



small ecology:
doll clothes, crayons, laundry, books
her habitat



pomegranate tree
so thin of stem and leaf
such rich juice



stone set in hillside.
weather wears incrementally;
avalanche shatters.

Planning For Ekphrasis Poetry

Whenever I have a lot of papers to grade, I find some other way to occupy my mind.  Something that is urgent, creative, fun...  usually planning my next units.

I'm not sure exactly how it will work out, because I want to cover various poetic forms and techniques at the same time, but I want to teach poetry through its relationship to other art forms, and somehow I found out that there is a word for this:  Ekphrasis.  A work of art based on another work of art.  Fantastic concept!

I've started a small Diigo collection of websites I am tagging "ekphrasis" for use in my unit.  I would love ideas!

Poetry about Art.
Art about Poetry.
Poetry about Music
Music about Poetry
Poetry about Other Poems & Lit.
Poetry & graphic novels
Related Topic: broadsides  (Drooling to do broadsides!)

Links for Use in Ekphrasis Poetry Unit

List of Possible Works to Use:
"My Last Duchess" Robert Browning
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" John Keats
Pictures at an Exhibition Mussorgsky
"Green Light and Gamma Rays" by Thylias Moss
Iliad-- description of Achilles' shield
"The Man With the Hoe" by Edwin Markham based on painting by the same name by Jean Francois Millet
"Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies, A Sestina for the Douanier" by Sylvia Plath (based on Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies by Henri Rousseau

Emily Dickinson and Tucson's Big Read

Many of my classes will be participating in one form or another in The Big Read, sponsored by Kore Press and NEA.
The Big Read is a program through National Endowment for the Arts, and this year the featured poet is Emily Dickinson.  Many other organizations are partnering up throughout the fall, including the University of Arizona Poetry Center, to put together an incredible run of events.  Teens may be especially interested in Logan Phillips' Slamming Emily writing and poetry slam workshops.  Logan visited my classroom last year, and really connected with my students and inspired them to write some great poetry.

Emily Dickinson at age 16

Many students are totally unfamiliar with Dickinson's work, and others may stereotype her as an old maid and a hermit writing old-fashioned poetry, but Emily Dickinson was a pre-modern poet, bending and breaking the rules of the poetry of her time. Though she lived in 19th Century Massachusetts, her voice is modern and always surprising. Together with Walt Whitman, she is credited with helping develop a truly American poetic voice. However, I see her as having a more individual voice, especially seeing that her poetry was not widely recognized until the middle of the 20th century.

Below, find a list of some poems which may help engage you with her work. Her poems are categorized by number and title.  The poems were not originally titled, but are conventionally given a title using the first line. The capitalization and punctuation of the titles is true to the original-- Dickinson was known for her unconventional use of punctuation and capitalization. In early volumes of her work, editors changed the capitalization and punctuation to their tastes, but the poems are now treasured for these idiosyncratic details.  Below the poems is a list of Emily Dickinson resources I've collected.

I will continue to revise this page as I find new resources.

 

Selected Poems:

I measure every Grief I meet
Because I could not stop for Death
I heard a Fly buzz
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
There's a certain Slant of Light
The Soul unto itself
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--

Fantastic Video:
Emily Dickinson – Her True Self from Flash Rosenberg on Vimeo.

 

Emily Dickinson Links

Emily Dickinson Links