I’ve mentioned in passing that I was reading Genevieve Taggard’s 1930 The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson this spring. The busy schedule of this project, and life in general, slowed my reading-rate, but I thought I’d share a few brief thoughts about it after I finished it. Once I read about this book, I … Continue reading The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson by Genevieve Taggard
I once thought that one of the marvels of Emily Dickinson is that she was able to create such revolutionary poetry without any supporting circle of fellow writers. She had poetic heroes: Shakespeare, Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but she never met them. Well, it turns out there’s a bit more to her story. Last … Continue reading Poppies on the Wheat. Before 1890 the most famous woman writer from Amherst wasn’t Emily Dickinson.
Here’s someone that notes that the sublime Randall Munroe of ekcd.com had some fun with Emily Dickinson. Her post also reminds us of the Gilligan’s Island theme connection. I do like that Munroe has fun with the possibility that Emily was a bit of bad-ass, which the poetry says she was. This video has … Continue reading Bonus Emily Dickinson links
The great thing about Emily Dickinson and her around 2000 poems is that there’s always one you haven’t experienced yet—and just this week over at the Interesting Literature blog I saw this Dickinson spring poem. “May-Flower” has Dickinson doing her most subtle music to accompany her most Blakean attention. Just like it says itself: it’s … Continue reading See Emily Play: May-Flower
I’ve been looking forward to this Emily Dickinson biopic since I first heard of it a few months back. I acknowledge the difficulty of making a film about writers, particularly if the film wants to give due weight to their writing, the least cinematic of art forms—but just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it shouldn’t … Continue reading Wild Nights with Emily
If Emily Dickinson had no real models for the revolutionary poetry she developed, she did have other poets she could look to. We know from her letters that one of them was Emily Bronte. English author Emily Bronte and her two sisters Charlotte and Anne all wrote poetry and then novels, but Emily seems to … Continue reading Emily Bronte’s Hope
Did you find yourself agreeing more with H.D. or William Carlos Williams in Thursday’s audio piece taken from Williams’ Kora in Hell? If I was to survey listeners, I’d be surprised if Williams wouldn’t win far more applause. Being that it’s his book, and he controls what H.D. presents before he responds, it wasn’t really … Continue reading More on that exchange published in the prologue to Kora in Hell
I’m going to return to an old favorite of this project, a poet who helped change modern English poetry and yet is largely forgotten: F. S. Flint. Long-time readers (or those of you that have taken a stroll through the archives here) might remember the highlights. Born in 1885 a London slum kid for whom … Continue reading A Song of Change
Between revising my recording setup and spaces and some travel, I’ve been away from being able to create new audio pieces for much of the past month. I’ve missed that, and I hope you have too, though I have been able to put together a few new things in the midst of this. I was … Continue reading A few updates, and why fewer new audio pieces so far this summer
The state I live in, Minnesota, has a reasonable list under “claims to fame.” Lots of lakes, a funny accent, Prince, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis* and Bob Dylan. And bugs. It may be all that water, Some of the Twin Cities sits on what was once marshland, and even when it forgets that, the … Continue reading The Fly
