that april

Today is April 1, and I am woefully underprepared for National Poetry Month. I've been sick for a week and was supposed to be in Houston with Lucy this weekend, so I feel a little bit like time has gotten away from me. But it's still April, and that means poetry. As always, there will be one poem per day (ish) between now and April 30.

To kick us off, here in 2023: Emily.

Dear March - Come in -
How glad I am -
I hoped for you before -
Put down your Hat -
You must have walked -
How out of Breath you are -
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest -
Did you leave Nature well -
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me -
I have so much to tell -

I got your Letter, and the Birds -
The Maples never knew that you were coming -
I declare - how Red their Faces grew -
But March, forgive me -
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue -
There was no Purple suitable -
You took it all with you -

Who knocks? That April -
Lock the Door -
I will not be pursued -
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied -
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come

That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame -

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "Dear March - Come in -" (1310). I always feel like I'm posting unfinished poems with Dickinson, which is pretty fair from an editorial standpoint. I take my Dickinson from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, ed. by R. W. Franklin, which is a reading edition and thus has no notes, but the editorial history of Dickinson is absolutely fucking fascinating, and there's a brief summary here.

possibility

In thirteen years of posting poems, I have posted very little famous Emily Dickinson. She wrote so many poems that it's not actually that hard to post non-famous ones, but the truth is that the famous ones are sometimes famous for good reasons. I really love this poem. 

I dwell in Possibility –

A fairer House than Prose –

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "I dwell in Possibility," #466, in this case from the R. W. Franklin edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson, via Poetry Foundation. Emily Dickinson is a metaphysical poet; fight me.

the heart convulsive learns

It's an Emily day, don't you think?

The Heart has narrow Banks
It measures like the Sea
In mighty — unremitting Bass
And Blue monotony

Till Hurricane bisect
And as itself discerns
It's insufficient Area
The Heart convulsive learns

That Calm is but a Wall
Of Unattempted Gauze
An instant's Push demolishes
A Questioning — dissolves.

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "The Heart has narrow Banks," Poem 960, 1865. In this case, from the R.W. Franklin edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).

Citing Dickinson is notoriously difficult, because both her manuscript history and her print history are fascinating and complex; she also wrote seven zillion poems. For those interested in manuscript studies and textual scholarship and lyric poetry and Dickinson, I highly recommend Virginia Jackson's Dickinson's Misery.

the reticent volcano

It has been a while since I posted any Dickinson, and I have had this poem stuck in my head recently. No reason why, exactly, but Dickinson does that. Also I really love this one.

The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.

If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her,
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?

Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be.
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "The reticent volcano keeps," no. 1748, or no. 107 from "Part One: Life" in The Complete Poems, 1924.

some gala day

Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning’s flagons up,
And say how many dew;
Tell me how far the morning leaps,
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadths of blue!

Write me how many notes there be
In the new robin’s ecstasy
Among astonished boughs;
How many trips the tortoise makes,
How many cups the bee partakes,—
The debauchee of dews!

Also, who laid the rainbow’s piers,
Also, who leads the docile spheres
By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite,
Who counts the wampum of the night,
To see that none is due?

Who built this little Alban house
And shut the windows down so close
My spirit cannot see?
Who’ll let me out some gala day,
With implements to fly away,
Passing pomposity?

~Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), XXXIX, "Bring me the sunset in a cup", from "Part Two: Nature", Complete Poems, 1924.

Happy Earth Day! I never quite know how I feel about Emily, but I like this one. Meanwhile, it is kind of a beautiful day.

of bronze and blaze

My favorite Emily Dickinson nature poem is about winter, and it's not quite right for my mood, today. So:

Of bronze and blaze
The north, to-night!
So adequate its forms,
So preconcerted with itself,
So distant to alarms,—
An unconcern so sovereign
To universe, or me,
It paints my simple spirit
With tints of majesty,
Till I take vaster attitudes,
And strut upon my stem,
Disdaining men and oxygen,
For arrogance of them.

My splendors are menagerie;
But their competeless show
Will entertain the centuries
When I am, long ago,
An island in dishonored grass,
Whom none but daisies know.

~Emily Dickinson, CIX, "Part Two: Nature," Complete Poems, 1924.

heaven unexpected came

I'm a little in love with the world today.

A something in a summer’s day,
As slow her flambeaux burn away,
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer’s noon,—
An azure depth, a wordless tune,
Transcending ecstasy.

And still within a summer’s night
A something so transporting bright,
I clap my hands to see;

Then veil my too inspecting face,
Lest such a subtle, shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me.

The wizard-fingers never rest,
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes its narrow bed;

Still rears the East her amber flag,
Guides still the sun along the crag
His caravan of red,

Like flowers that heard the tale of dews,
But never deemed the dripping prize
Awaited their low brows;

Or bees, that thought the summer’s name
Some rumor of delirium
No summer could for them;

Or Arctic creature, dimly stirred
By tropic hint,—some travelled bird
Imported to the wood;

Or wind’s bright signal to the ear,
Making that homely and severe,
Contented, known, before

The heaven unexpected came,
To lives that thought their worshipping
A too presumptuous psalm.

~Emily Dickinson, LXIII, from Complete Poems, Part Two: Nature, 1924.

It's not really summer yet, and tomorrow it's supposed to begin cooling down a little -- I think there's more spring rain on the way -- but today the flowers are blooming, and the sun is shining. It's glorious. And I love it here, in the spring.