Monday, January 23, 2023 Me and Emily Dickinson

Back in 1995, I mentioned to my mother-in-law that I enjoyed the poetry of Emily Dickinson. She and my father-in-law promptly gave me a book comprising ALL of her poetry for my birthday. This turned out to be 1,775 poems spread over 716 pages. I had no idea she was such a prolific poet! At that time, I only knew one or two of her poems. In college I had come across her poem about pain and had almost sub-consciously memorized it, little knowing how often I would return to those words in coming years.

Pain – has an Element of Blank –
It cannot recollect
When it begun – or if there were
A time when it was not –

It has no Future – but itself –
Its Infinite contain
Its Past – enlightened to perceive
New Periods – of Pain.

If you’ve ever been in prolonged times of pain (emotional or physical), you get it. At any rate, I loved the book, but other than picking it up occasionally and looking at random poems, I didn’t do much with it.

In March of 2018, I decided to read through the book from beginning to end. Why? I’m not sure. I had more time for such things and had recently developed more of an interest in poetry. So, why not?

At first, I just picked it up now and then, reading one or two at a time, jotting down notes and impressions in the margins. The first poem was a whimsical Valentine’s Day poem written in 1850 when Emily was just 20 years old. As I kept on, page after page, I learned to keep my phone at hand so I could look up words and phrases that were unfamiliar and write the meanings down. If I particularly liked a poem, I marked it with a heart. Sometimes her words were so inscrutable, the only notation was a question mark.

After 3 years of meandering slowly through this gigantic tome, I’d only read around 300 poems, so I decided to buckle up and turn up the speed. By August of 2021, the new goal was 3 poems a day and I began writing the date by the poem. I found a blogger who was writing about ED’s poetry, one poem at a time and would sometimes consult her blog (The Prowling Bee) if I was at a complete loss to understand the meaning of a poem.

By June of 2022, I’d read almost 900 poems and was 59% of the way through the book. I did some complicated math (ha ha!) and realized that if I wanted to finish by the end of 2022, I needed to read through 2 pages of poems per day. Challenge accepted! If there’s a poetry-reading speed limit, I think I was breaking it.

Even with missing days here and there, I was on schedule. I had my morning routine: Bible reading and then Emily Dickinson. Although she was still inscrutable sometimes, I began to feel like I was hearing her voice and learning to know her. She’s notorious for writing about death and dying and has developed an undeserved reputation for being gloomy. But au contraire! She wrote about sunrises and sunsets, seasons, trees, birds, flowers, bees, butterflies, far away lands, volcanoes, mountains, hope, dreams, unrequited love, friendship, and a surprising number of poems touching on Biblical faith. Sometimes I thought perhaps she was a sister in Christ; other times I was certain she had rejected the gospel entirely. Her poetry is often whimsical, witty and winsome (you’re welcome for the alliteration). She became a social recluse and some of her poems reflected that. She had a gift for seeing and observing the world around her and using just the right combination of words (and hyphens) to make you see things in a new and fresh way.

I could have finished by the end of December in 2022, but as I got closer to the end, the pace slowed, almost unconsciously. I was dragging my feet, not wanting to come to the end of this book, this daily conversation with Emily. On January 16, 2023, however, the journey came to an end.

When I started this adventure, I thought it would be more of a slog. I thought I’d be glad when I finished. Instead, I’m actually entertaining the idea of starting again at the beginning. Oh, but that’s insane. I’m definitely NOT going to do that. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to do that. I probably won’t. I might not. Nothing is certain.

If you’ve read this far, here’s the fun bonus part. My father-in-law was pruning through some of his books a few months ago and offered to let us look through them. Imagine my amazement to discover that my mother-in-law had purchased the same book at the same time for herself! She passed away about 10 years ago, so I can’t ask her now if she ever read it, but I was so delighted to see the book (a friendly face!) that I brought it home with me. If any of you dear readers would like to take the Emily Dickinson Challenge, or if you’d just like to have this book on your own bookshelf, let me know. I will find a way to get it to you.

This post has an element of blank, it cannot recollect, when it began or if there was a time when it was not…it might disappear in the morning.