Dear Friends,
A friend of mine gave me a book lately. It was a new edition of Emily Dickinson’s letters, just recently out. The volume itself is rather pretty, with old-fashioned flowers sprouting on the front - and just the right smallish size a book ought to be, easy to take anywhere. While I always feel a little bad snooping into dead people’s letters, I thought I’d give it a try.
I’m glad I did – it’s delightful. I’ve always been a fan of prose more than poetry, so I love learning about Emily Dickinson and seeing her style through her sentences rather than verses. If you have read her poems, her letters give insight into the mind behind them; if you’ve never read her poems, the letters open a window to such an interesting personality, with so many quietly compelling beliefs and ideas.
It seems like whenever I pick up the volume I find some very PLS-y quote that is beautiful and wise and makes me think. It certainly makes me wish my own letters were more eloquent and insightful than they usually are. :) The things Dickinson says about writing, about living, about friendship, are so uniquely and gorgeously expressed. Here are just a few to whet your appetite:
“It is also November. The noons are more laconic and the sundowns sterner…November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
“Of our greatest acts we are ignorant.”
“I think you would like the chestnut-tree I met in my walk. It hit my notice suddenly, and I thought the skies were in blossom.” (Martin Buber anyone? ;) )
“You speak of ‘disillusion.’ That is one of the few subjects on which I am an infidel. Life is so strong a vision, not one of it shall fail.”
"A letter always feels to me like Immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend. Indebted in our talk to attitude and accent, there seems to be a spectral power in thought that walks alone..."
It’s funny that Emily Dickinson seemed to live such a quiet and retired life, but the life you see in her letters is very vibrant, her world very full.
That’s what I loved most about these letters – how Emily D. is so in love with living. And, for her, to truly live isn’t to have power or to have knowledge or to be great – it’s just to feel the world around you, to be left breathless by its beauty. Even her poetry - she doesn’t write for the sake of leaving some grand legacy, she writes because it’s a channel to express her joy at living. She says that “when a sudden light on orchards, or a new fashion in the wind troubled my attention, I felt a palsy, here, the verses just relieve.”
Love from, Emily W.
A friend of mine gave me a book lately. It was a new edition of Emily Dickinson’s letters, just recently out. The volume itself is rather pretty, with old-fashioned flowers sprouting on the front - and just the right smallish size a book ought to be, easy to take anywhere. While I always feel a little bad snooping into dead people’s letters, I thought I’d give it a try.
I’m glad I did – it’s delightful. I’ve always been a fan of prose more than poetry, so I love learning about Emily Dickinson and seeing her style through her sentences rather than verses. If you have read her poems, her letters give insight into the mind behind them; if you’ve never read her poems, the letters open a window to such an interesting personality, with so many quietly compelling beliefs and ideas.
It seems like whenever I pick up the volume I find some very PLS-y quote that is beautiful and wise and makes me think. It certainly makes me wish my own letters were more eloquent and insightful than they usually are. :) The things Dickinson says about writing, about living, about friendship, are so uniquely and gorgeously expressed. Here are just a few to whet your appetite:
“It is also November. The noons are more laconic and the sundowns sterner…November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
“Of our greatest acts we are ignorant.”
“I think you would like the chestnut-tree I met in my walk. It hit my notice suddenly, and I thought the skies were in blossom.” (Martin Buber anyone? ;) )
“You speak of ‘disillusion.’ That is one of the few subjects on which I am an infidel. Life is so strong a vision, not one of it shall fail.”
"A letter always feels to me like Immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend. Indebted in our talk to attitude and accent, there seems to be a spectral power in thought that walks alone..."
It’s funny that Emily Dickinson seemed to live such a quiet and retired life, but the life you see in her letters is very vibrant, her world very full.
That’s what I loved most about these letters – how Emily D. is so in love with living. And, for her, to truly live isn’t to have power or to have knowledge or to be great – it’s just to feel the world around you, to be left breathless by its beauty. Even her poetry - she doesn’t write for the sake of leaving some grand legacy, she writes because it’s a channel to express her joy at living. She says that “when a sudden light on orchards, or a new fashion in the wind troubled my attention, I felt a palsy, here, the verses just relieve.”
Love from, Emily W.
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