Flying Poetry by Zhihui

"A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day."

"My hair is bold like the chestnut burr; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves." -- Emily Dickinson

Hmm..sounds familiar? Heard that somewhere before but never knew who said it? She was Emily Dickinson, again one of the poets of my choice. Reading Dickinson's poetry can sometimes feel like peering in on a private correspondence. Her poetry is both simple and complicated, but they are at all times poignant to the mind. Many of Dickinson's poems are untitled, perhaps due to the reason that she died before she could decide to print them.

Yet, when reading her poems, I often feel that the lack of titles contribute more to making her poems more cohesive and generally, linking them all into a big story of her thoughts towards life. "After Great Pain" is the poem that ultimately led me to find out more about this wonderful poet. Somehow, her words in this particular poem provide a remedy for one's feelings of depression.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Ttombs -
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round -
Of Ground, or air, or Ought -
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone -

This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -

[Emily Dickinson, no. 341]

go to: http://www.kutztown.edu/faculty/reagan/dickinson.html

Along with Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson was one of the 2 great American poets of her century. But unlike Whitman, who refused to stop publishing, Dickinson hardly began. Hidden away in her lifelong Amherst home, she wrote a staggering number of poems - nearly 1800 - of which only a few were published in her lifetime.

Dickinson was the classic introvert, shy of human contact but possessed of a deep and dramatic inner life. Small events unleashed torrents of poetry, full of reflection and feeling though lacking in concrete detail. We can only guess at the "great pain" that inspired this poem, which is still one of her best-known.

back to Archives