for emily dickinson
exultation is the going
of an inland soul to sea,—
past the houses, past the headlands,
into deep eternity!
revised hymn quatrains, solidly packed & compressed with
austere metonymy, agnostic inward looking,
& fascination with death, tragic love & loss, are
not even parodic with the christian song of praise.
coolly feminine & intimate, yr prosody
whose wide interstices left by the god u excised –
in spite of yr sojourn at mt holyoke & long-term
affair with a married preacher – were so deftly filled
with oh so delicate clitoral imagery
& such selected homoerotic devices
that continue thus over linebreak after linebreak
to further feminize/immortalize yr discourse.
©Joseph McNair;2009
Emily Dickinson in an affair Hummmm, Interesting , i always thought she was a lonly person who refused to see and speak to people. Good poem, i learned something new.
ReplyDeleteagnosticism is the way to go, good for emily dickinson.
ReplyDeleteEmily had a secret love, but did not let it confined her religion.
ReplyDelete