Thursday, May 6, 2010

Enigma





Detail, The Composite Marks of Fascicle 19. Ben Jervin


Sometimes considered an enigma herself, Emily Dickenson gives us a spiritual biography in her poetry.
In her deliberate exfoliation of the quotidian, she grazes the kernel of the unseen. At once personal and universal, brooding and ecstatic, her poems are the product and practice of a lifetime act of love. "My business is to love," she explains. "My business is to sing."

Upon her death, Emily Dickinson's family discovered 40 handbound volumes of nearly 1800 of her poems, or "fascicles" as they are sometimes called. These booklets were made by folding and sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and copying what seem to be final versions of poems in an order that many critics believe to be more than chronological. The handwritten poems show a variety of dash-like marks of various sizes and directions --some are even vertical!


Here is one I have chosen for this week’s OSI prompt, enigma:


I found the phrase to every thought
I ever had, but one;
And that defies me,--as a hand
Did try to chalk the sun

To races nurtured in the dark;--
How would your own begin?
Can blaze be done in cochineal,
Or noon in mazarin?

Emily Dickenson


And for my 100th post, and in a dry season with my writing, here's a fumbling try to chalk the sun:


Green mango love

Your avid thirst
the nectar
of my knees
we are made
for love

7 comments:

SandyCarlson said...

A beautiful interaction in that haiku. Thank you for such a sensuous, beautiful piece.

jmsjoin said...

She was something and that is all quite thought provoking. I wonder if anyone has tried to decipher those marks?

TomCat said...

That's hardly chalking the sun, Gabrielle. Happy Mothers Day!

Cloudia said...

"In her deliberate exfoliation of the quotidian, she grazes the kernel of the unseen."


Awesome!!!!


Aloha from Hawaii


Comfort Spiral

Maithri said...

Your words like
amber dripping hair
in the sunlight

Call fire from the sky,

Much love, M

JP/deb said...

wonderful post & poem ... and, thank you for sharing that Emily Dickenson poem, I had not read that one.

xx,
JP/deb

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