Emily Dickinson

Reading the book ‘Poems’ by Emily Dickinson. In the preface two of her friends describe how they found, perceived and eventually published (after her death) the poems. The description of their first perception is a poem on its own:

In many cases these verses will seem to the reader like poetry torn up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed.

As if you can feel, taste here poems from here. They are as original as the woman who wrote them. Straight from the Earth and written with the heart.

Inspiring, again and again, to stretch and challenge the openness and the boundaries of my own perception. Emily has a wide range of doors of perception.

Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson’s writing, it was not until after her death in 1886-when Lavinia, Emily’s younger sister, discovered her cache of poems-that the breadth of Dickinson’s work became apparent.

I am a fan of Emily, forever.