Wednesday, June 10, 2009

for emily dickinson (5)


for emily dickinson
exultation is the going
of an inland soul to sea,—
past the houses, past the headlands,
into deep eternity!
sung silently with tuneless eyes yr somber lyrics,
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

3 comments:

  1. 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.

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  2. agnosticism is the way to go, good for emily dickinson.

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  3. Emily had a secret love, but did not let it confined her religion.

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