Sunday, March 1, 2015

Kaiser, Saturday Evening Post, March, 1943
Dear March — Come in —
How glad I am —
I hoped for you before —


Put down your Hat —
You must have walked —
How out of Breath you are —
Dear March, Come right up the stairs with me —
I have so much to tell —


I got your Letter, and the Birds —
The Maples never knew that you were coming — till I called
I declare — how Red their Faces grew —
But March, forgive me — and
All those Hills you left for me to Hue —
There was no Purple suitable —
You took it all with you —


Who knocks? That April.
Lock the Door —
I will not be pursued —
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied —
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come


That Blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame —

~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)


12 comments:

  1. Love this!

    Emily Dickinson wrote so many poems that I don't know all of them.

    PS: No feel of spring here today. No, indeed. The dreaded wintry mix. As long as we don't lose electric power, we'll be fine.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Never forget "IN like a lion, OUT like a lamb."

      March ushers in the Season of Hope and Renewal. EASTER often occurs in March. I'm not sure if it does this year or not. Do you know?

      Delete
    2. Emily was in one of her very rare whimsical moods here. I love it when she exposes her capacity for charming fantasy and merriment. I've always wished I could have known her personally. I'm very sure we would have been the best of friends.

      I like to think I might have made a difference in her life if we'd had the chance to know each other. As it it stands,of course, it is SHE who has made a difference -- much for the better -- in mine.

      I think I could have loved her if we'd been contemporaries. Whether she would have returned the compliment, I don't know. Her standards were very high.

      She was famous for her gingerbread, you know. The recipe is shared in The Belle of Amherst -- one of the best things to come out of the American Theater in the last century. It certainly gave the incomparable Julie Harris her greatest opportunity to shine, and shine she did. I can never think of Emily without thinking also of Julie Harris's memorable, deeply touching evocation of Emily' spirit.

      Delete
  2. Hello, FT. I've been very quiet lately, I know, but I still come here and usually enjoy your daily offerings, even when I don' say anything. That illustration you found fits the spirit of the poem so well it's amazing. The picture came almost a hundred years after the verse, and the artist probably wasn't thinking of Emily Dickinson at all at the time, but there's a bright, fresh, kind of bold look about it that works really well with the breezy spirit of the poem.

    Helen Highwater

    ReplyDelete
  3. "The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad – at least not so mad as it was in March." -Alice (Lewis Carroll, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland")

    ---

    Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited
    If you consider my merits are small
    Etiolated, alembicated,
    Orotund, tasteless, fantastical,
    Monotonous, crotchety, constipated,
    Impotent galamatias
    Affected, possibly imitated,
    For Christ's sake stick it up your ass.

    Ladies, who find my intentions ridiculous
    Awkward, insipid and horribly gauche
    Pompous, pretentious, ineptly meticulous
    Dull as the heart of an unbaked brioche
    Floundering versicles feebly versiculous
    Often attenuate, frequently crass
    Attempts at emotion that turn isiculous,
    For Christ's sake stick it up your ass.

    Ladies who think me unduly vociferous
    Amiable cabotin making a noise
    That people may cry out "this stuff is too stiff for us"-
    Ingenuous child with a box of new toys
    Toy lions carnivorous, cannon fumiferous
    Engines vaporous- all this will pass;
    Quite innocent, -"he only wants to make shiver us."
    For Christ's sake stick it up your ass.

    And when thyself with silver foot shall pass
    Among the theories scattered on the grass
    Take up my good intentions with the rest
    And then for Christ's sake stick them up your ass.


    -t.s. eliot, "The Triumph of Bullsh*t" (Inventions of the March Hare)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, well, well! THAT certainly is a Show Stopper, ain't it? };-)>

      Thank you for this humbling experience that has added so much to my vocabulary already overstuffed vocabulary -- or WILL if I can ever manage to assimilate all of it.

      Rather I should thank Thomas Sterns Eliot, IF indeed he wrote that. I imagine he probably did, but do tell me, was it published in his lifetime?

      By the way, it might interest you to know that I, myself, realized at a very tender age that –– as I indelicately put it –– The World Rotates on An Axis of Bullshit.

      We want to see Lewis Carroll's work as childish fantasy. I think, however, that in Truth he was introducing young Miss Liddell to an all-too-realstic vision of what the world is truly like -- in essence.

      Don'T YOU feel like a guest a The Mad Hatter's Tea Party every time you listen to the News?

      Delete
    2. "Inventions of the March Hare" is a posthumous collection of his youthful works. Whether this poem was published prior to that, I cannot say.

      Delete
    3. Thersites,
      How do you know so much "stuff"?

      Delete
    4. Google. I didn't know any of this, either.

      Delete
    5. Google is an extremely useful tool IF you know what you are looking for. In many ways it could be compared to a well-constructed piano. An instrument with astonishing possibilities, BUT you have to know which keys to push down and you must learn o to it in rhythm in order to produce music. Too many use Google the tiny toddlers approach a piano. They BANG on it with their little fists and produce nothing but irritating cacophony.

      It takes real TALENT to use Google intelligently, selectively and artistically.

      Delete
  4. Of course it wasn't published during his lifetime. That would have been "madness"! ;)

    ReplyDelete

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