12-18-2015, 06:24 PM
(12-18-2015, 02:21 AM)rowens Wrote: Emily Dickinson's poems are hard to parody because one half of her style is self-parody and parody in general. The other half is high seriousness. She was like South Park for self-conscious old maids. In order to take her seriously, you have to take her seriously; the second part is sometimes hard.
Yes, she's always winking at herself, and by extension, encouraging us to wink at ourselves as well.
I like the "South Park" analogy; I always think of her as a trickster god. The thing I love most about
her is her playfulness; the second, that she's a wickedly good riddler.
I take HER very seriously and I join her in finding her product quite amusing.
(And yes, Leanne, she DID keep a lot of things hidden in her drawers.
)While I was fearing it - it came -
But came with less of fear
Because that fearing it so long
Had almost made it fair.
There is a fitting - a Dismay -
A fitting - a Despair
'Tis harder knowing it is due
Than knowing it is here.
The trying on the utmost
The morning it is new.
Is terribler than wearing it
A whole existence through.
Above is my very own interpretation (which words are capitalized, left out, and various dash/punctuation
thingees) of her poem taken from her original hand-written manuscript. It's not something I'd do all the time,
but is sure is fun to do it three or four times. What I find surprising is how many of those upper-case letters
ascribed to her are actually lower case. (Also a LOT of them dashes are actually periods and some of them
are missplaced crossings of "t"'s !!!) Anyway, if anyone's interested, high-resolution images of her manuscripts
can be found here: Emily Dickinson Archive
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions