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Tell the Truth but tell it slant--
Anonymous
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Anonymous
[quote]Mr_Sin said:
Though the technical side of her poetry is lacking, grammar, punctuation etc. including the unneccesary capitalization of words.
The technical side of her poetry isn't lacking. That's simply how she wrote. She capitalised certain words to give them emphasis. After she died her manuscripts were edited - replacing the dashes with commas, re-arranging words to establish a more coherent rhythm - for publication, as she was told during her lifetime that her work could never be printed because her style was too strange, or at least anti-tradition. But this was how she intended her poems. This was her style. Everything she did in the composition of her work she did for a reason, not because she was ignorant of language.
As to your question, I think I'd rather have the blow softened for me by the truth-teller, than be dazzled into blindness
.
Though the technical side of her poetry is lacking, grammar, punctuation etc. including the unneccesary capitalization of words.
The technical side of her poetry isn't lacking. That's simply how she wrote. She capitalised certain words to give them emphasis. After she died her manuscripts were edited - replacing the dashes with commas, re-arranging words to establish a more coherent rhythm - for publication, as she was told during her lifetime that her work could never be printed because her style was too strange, or at least anti-tradition. But this was how she intended her poems. This was her style. Everything she did in the composition of her work she did for a reason, not because she was ignorant of language.
As to your question, I think I'd rather have the blow softened for me by the truth-teller, than be dazzled into blindness
.
If the blow was softened then I'd just crumble, but if it was told head on then I'd just fight back regardless. Lucky, lucky damned me has had a situation where it was/is both a hammer blow and subtle knife.
Sometimes the message is more important than the presentation and box its wrapped in.
Sometimes the message is more important than the presentation and box its wrapped in.
Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Well a very interesting thread...and thank you Jack once again for putting in so much of your insight into the pattern of Emily Dickinson's works. To be very frank with I have not read too many poets in my life-time so far, even though I am looking forward to. And I think frankly, that I believe like Emily in the above piece where she is talking about certain truths to be flashed gradually. Because this is ma personal experience and I have come across such situations and I think that such a truth will create fruitful results and is less hazardous. A sudden blanket of truth blinding everybody and with confusion is fatal.
Anonymous
Consider yourself lucky, Mr. Sin, he usually just leaves a silly, snobby remark as a way of preceding his longer responses. Oh, and thanks for clearing up the misunderstanding; I think it was just that word "lacking" which threw me off.
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ok, it never coming.
but here are the notes:
dickinson:
with dickinson, IMHO, you have to depend on the kindness of strangers.
her poems are very complex riddles that even people who have studied her
for years are constantly surprised at: "If you think you finally understand
one of the damn things — you don't." - Michelle Staffer
---------------
'intellectual' or 'emotional':
dickinson is a good example for the egg-brain and bleeding-heart thread as
she makes it very obvious that you need a brain to get to the emotion.
i.e.: "gotta have the tin-man to help the scare-crow"
---------------
truths to place in 'fast' column:
"that yellow stuff in your glass isn't beer"
truths to deliver slowly:
quantum physics
lies to deliver slowly:
state budget
truths to never deliver:
"your poem sucks"
ok, it never coming.
but here are the notes:
dickinson:
with dickinson, IMHO, you have to depend on the kindness of strangers.
her poems are very complex riddles that even people who have studied her
for years are constantly surprised at: "If you think you finally understand
one of the damn things — you don't." - Michelle Staffer
---------------
'intellectual' or 'emotional':
dickinson is a good example for the egg-brain and bleeding-heart thread as
she makes it very obvious that you need a brain to get to the emotion.
i.e.: "gotta have the tin-man to help the scare-crow"
---------------
truths to place in 'fast' column:
"that yellow stuff in your glass isn't beer"
truths to deliver slowly:
quantum physics
lies to deliver slowly:
state budget
truths to never deliver:
"your poem sucks"
Anonymous
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" don't necessarily need a 'brain to get to the emotion' "
speak for yourself.
straight foward index:
"Success is counted sweetest" - no way josé
"I dwell in possibility" - ha! you gotta be kidding
"The Wind-tapped like a tired Man" - ok, maybe this one
"She wrote 1,775 poems across her life time and yet only 7 were published, damn shame."
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damn shame for whoever was alive then, lots more published now.
no problem for her, she got to write them.
Anonymous
I like that poem where she writes about someone dying in the house across the street and it's not a big deal. Or the one where the fly buzzes.
me too, the fly buzz one is a fav.
from an old post of mine:
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Re: I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died
Down here on the gulf coast, I expect I'm going to be hearing a mosquito.
When I first read it I thought: Damn, here I am trying to meditate, get
ready for the big trip, when this irritating fly comes along. But years
later I realized that the fly was dying as well and what a lovely pair
we'd make; maybe traveling companions. Who says we die alone!
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p.s. one common interpretation is that the fly is emily's soul.
there are many variations on that... Benét has the soul look
something like a moth in 'The Devil and Daniel Webster'
Here's the poem:
I HEARD a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,—and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
-Emily Dickinson
