Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

Os poemas de Dickinson estão entre os mais tristes que já li, as imagens líricas que ela forma de maneira simples e minimalistas são carregadas de uma melancolia sem fim, dentre os melhores traduzidos desta edição felizmente bilingue está este:

"Para as assombrações, desnecessária é a alcova,
Desnecessária, a casa -
O cérebro tem corredores que superam
Os espaços materiais.

Mais seguro é encontrar à meia-noite
Um fantasma,
Que enfrentar, internamente,
Aquele hóspede pálido.

Mais show more seguro é galopar cruzando um cemitério
Por pedras tumulares ameaçado,
Que, ausente a lua, encontrar-se a si mesmo
Em desolado espaço.

O "eu", por trás de nós oculto,
É muito assustador,
E um assassino escondido em nosso quarto,
Dentre os horrores, é o menor.

O homem prudente leva consigo uma arma
E cerra os ferrolhos da porta,
Sem perceber um outro espectro,
Mais íntimo e maior." show less

“I taste a liquor never brewed” by Emily Dickinson
I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door –
When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to show more windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!

Inebriated by poetry
"I taste a liquor never brewed" a poem by E. Dickinson

For me, this is an hymn to poetry and what is sacred about the act of writing. I read line after line as an invocation to beauty in all its natural forms until I got drunk with it, until I, the reader, was able to reach the heavens and join its inhabitants, Seraphs and Saints, along with Emily, who is writing from there.
In this sense, I guess that we, the readers who are able to share beauty through words, are rewarded with the admittance in Dickinson's house of possibility and poetry.
The poem read also as an hymn for me because of its musicality and rhyme which I became aware of when I first read the poem out loud. The way the words sang by themselves came as a surprise, and the lack of punctuation, only the dashes and the capital letters to emphasise some words, made the poem more open and infinite.
Analysing stanza by stanza, the poem starts with a reference to a certain liquor, which is a strange one, because it was never brewed and because its vastness wouldn't fit into such a huge river as the Rhine. There's also the reference to the ancient age of this liquor, because the Rhine, along with the Danube, appeared as important rivers in historical texts during the Roman Empire.
So, going forward, this strange alcohol, makes the " I " in this poem inebriated. I understand this " I " as the writer, in this case, Emily. She speaks of herself being drunk with this strange liquor, a liquor which comes from dew, air and summer days melted in endless blue skies. As I see it, in this second stanza, Emily is describing the beauty of the natural world as overwhelming, she is dizzy, intoxicated with it, and she drinks it in the inns of Nature.
And in the third stanza she stresses out this last idea even more, because the more the inhabitants of this natural world, the bee, the foxglove, the butterfly, are denied by foreign "Landlords", emphasised by quotation marks, the more she drinks of this natural liquor, the more inebriated she becomes.
As for the interpretation of these Landlords, I take it as if they were the real world, the rationality, Emily's house of prose. The ones who call the imagination back to earth and out of this world of poetry and possibility.

The last stanza is for me, the most difficult to analyse.
Emily is intoxicated by the beauty of nature and ultimately, of poetry, but she keeps drinking and drinking in it, until the whole act of writing becomes sacred. I understand that she reaches heaven in the Biblical sense, and salvation if I dare say. I'll risk it by saying that this "Tippler" might be Jesus, leaning against this sun, this shinning light, waiting for her to reach out for her destiny, her fate, her mission in life, which is to write, to become a poet.

And just another conclusion after rereading the whole thing again.
I also think, that the metaphor of liquor and inebriation is not a casual one.
If you think of men drinking in inns and socialising in the XIXth century, you might wonder how a reclusive person as Emily might view this kind of activity. Surely she might have disapproved of someone getting drunk, and this poem might also be a criticism to such behaviour and at the same time, she elevates something she finds ugly or negative to an utterly magnificent and celestial act, the act of writing, proving its capacity to transform the dull world of reality into a beautiful fan of possibilities. show less

Summary: A republication of Dickinson’s poems as first published in three series shortly after her death.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary scholar, received four poems from a women in Amherst in 1862. He returned them but kept in touch with Emily Dickinson. She continued to correspond and write poetry but never published during her lifetime. After her death in 1886, Dickinson’s sister found a box containing hundreds of her poems and thought them worthy of publication. She sought out show more Mabel Loomis Todd, the wife of a local professor who sought the help of Higginson. He edited her work, dealing with issues of rhyme, metre, line arrangements, and dialect. The two published a first series in 1890 and a second in 1891. Mabel Loomis Todd published a third series on her own in 1896.

This collection is based on those works but is not exhaustive. It follows four categories from the original editions: Life, Love, Nature, and Time and Eternity. It includes prefaces from each of the three series and a facsimile of “Renunciation” in Dickinson’s script from the first series. And it also includes artwork from the original publications. However it does not give indications of which poems were included in each series.

I don’t feel adept enough in poetry to offer a critical review of someone of Dickinson’s stature. So I will highlight poems from each section I particularly noticed. Under “Life,” the poems are focused on Dickinson’s observations of life, which are broad despite her secluded existence. Poem VI could be a motto with its lines “If I can stop one heart from breaking,/I shall not live in vain;.” “Hope, 1” has the memorable image of “Hope is the thing with feathers.” Finally, in an age where faith was highly prized, her “Lost Faith” observes that “To lose one’s faith surpasses/The loss of an estate.”

The poems on “Love” cover the various forms of love. “Proof” speaks of the love of God proven on Calvary. “The Lovers” captures her observations of “rosey” cheeks of two young people and staggering speech as they notice each other. Meanwhile, “The Wife” reflects the gendered expectations of the day of dropping life’s “playthings” for the “honorable work/of woman and of wife. There are poems of longing and contentment, and those attesting the loyalty of a loving friend.

“Nature” reveals her keen attention to the world about her. She writes of summer showers, sunsets, bees and bobolinks, butterflies and purple clover. Dickenson captures the deception of “Indian Summer”: “These are the days when skies put on/The old, old sophistries of June–/A blue and gold mistake.” She notices bats, rats, spiders, and their webs.

Finally, “Time and Eternity” deals with ultimate issues of death and the life ever after. Dickinson writes extensively about death, yet rarely is this morbid or maudlin. Much is informed by her own faith, that in the opening words of the first poem in this section believes “This world is not conclusion…” She observes the signs of the death of someone across the street–of neighbors in and out, of ministers and milliners and mattresses thrown out. The poet describes observing “the dying eye” “In search of something.”

She speaks of the remembrances of the dead when alive, so real, yet irrevocably confined to the sepulchre. Dickinson faces death honestly. She recourses to her heavenly hope. And in her final poem, “Farewell,” she accepts her own death. It begins, “tie the strings to my life, my Lord,/Then I’m ready to go.” A few verses later, she concludes: “Good-by to the life I used to live,/And the world I used to know;/And kiss the hills for me, just once;/now I am ready to go!”

I think part of the fascination of Dickinson’s poetry is how deeply she sees into all that really matters in life, while rarely leaving her home. She pays attention to both her human and creaturely neighbors. The poet names both the movements of her heart and the contours of her faith. and often she does all this in just a few lines. I’ll leave you with this example, number “VIII” in the section on “Time and Eternity.”

Each that we lose takes part of us ;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides. show less

⭐ Poetry | Classics | Life

Thank you to Gemini Books Group for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Emily Dickinson: Over 100 Poems on Life and Love was my first real introduction to Dickinson beyond simply knowing her name as a famous poet. This collection not only presents her poetry, but also offers insight into who she was as a person, something I truly appreciated as a first-time reader of her work.

Through this book, I learned that Emily Dickinson was a recluse who largely show more ignored the social conventions of her time, just as she ignored traditional poetic rules. Her poems are often short and concise, with the longest spanning only about two pages, yet they manage to hold immense emotional and philosophical weight. Despite remaining single her entire life, she wrote extensively about love, longing, and intimacy. She also wrote poignantly about loss, drawing from the many deaths and hardships she experienced within her family.

One poem that stood out to me in particular was:
“There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry-
this traverse may the poorest take
without oppress of toll-
how frugal is the chariot
that bears the human soul”

Learning the meaning behind her word choices deepened my appreciation of the poem. A frigate, being a ship, reminds us that no vessel can take us farther than imagination, and coursers, horses, cannot move as swiftly as the thoughts sparked by words on a page. Dickinson’s message feels timeless: imagination is accessible to everyone, and books are humble, frugal vehicles that carry the human soul without restriction.

Overall, this collection is a way to experience Emily Dickinson’s poetry while also learning about her life, beliefs, and quiet rebellion against societal norms. It’s a meaningful read for poetry lovers, students, or anyone curious about how deeply words can move us, even centuries later. show less