Gorgeous Nothings

Poems on used envelopes. New England frugality.

Never meant for someone. Meant for everyone.

Answering mail with verse. And remaining silent.

Crossings-out, dashes, spaces, columns, and overlapping planes.

One poem for each of fifty-two weeks.

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These two books present the later writings of Emily Dickinson – the 52 envelope poems. Click images for Amazon links.

You can also view a digital collection of these envelope poems on the Amherst College website at https://acdc.amherst.edu/browse/collection/ed

Might I but moor – Tonight – With Thee

Fast and flimsy sex and still not
able to sleep, but she has fallen –

under the covers to the other world.

I move down the cold, dark passage
where every move I make echoes twice.

I was reading about Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who prepared the first edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems in 1890. He wrote to his co-editor: “One poem only I dread a little to print – that wonder ‘Wild Nights,’ – lest the malignant read into it more than that virgin recluse ever dreamed of putting there. . . . Yet what a loss to omit it! Indeed it is not to be omitted.”

That comment made me look at the poem again and think about Emily – that virgin recluse – fantasizing in her room one night when she couldn’t sleep.

Emily’s poem:

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the Winds –
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden –
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor –
Tonight – With Thee!

Emily Dickinson

The Virus Poems

We’re writing poems about the virus pandemic,
full of quarantine, social distancing, home sheltering,
sickness, and death in numbers so large
as to be incomprehensible – oh, for poems
not of a time but for time.

My First Critics

 

Handwriting is not taught today in schools

as it was in my young schooldays

when cursive swirls were supposed to flow

from fountain pens – but my letters were slanted

wrongly and teachers criticized these early words.

The Elements of Style

 

Don’t explain too much; avoid fancy words;

do not take shortcuts at the cost

of clarity; prefer standard to the offbeat;

make sure the reader knows who’s speaking

do not use dialect; revise and rewrite.

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a found ronka poem from The Elements of Style

E.B. White is perhaps best known for Charlotte’s Web, but also contributed to the standard English-language style manual, The Elements of Style, originally written by William Strunk Jr.

She Writes

 

Across the café, she pauses her writing.

Perhaps she saw or felt me staring.

Is that a notebook, workbook, or journal?

I want it to be her poetry.

The only heat here comes from coffee.