There are a number of poems that were considered by their authors be unfinished, even fragmented, including Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and some of Emily Dickinson’s mysterious two-liners. For this week we considered Dickinson's poem #1639, using it as our first two lines in a poem of our own creation:
A Letter is a joy of Earth—
It is denied the Gods—
Of course it is almost impossible to beat Dickinson at her own game, but what can we say? A poet's gotta try.
It may be Angela Ball who comes closest to imitating Dickinson’s characteristic aesthetic, two stanzas, eight lines, slanted rhymes, and lots of em dashes:
A letter is a joy of earth—
It is denied the Gods—
Its script sails slotted—
Dimly in its berth—Its sovereign words purse—
Tightly—all the while—
Till appointed hands unfurl—
And deliverance—arrive—
Emily Winakur’s staccato rhythms and cascading thoughts mirror humankind's struggle to make sense of it all: life, death, the world, the gods:
A Letter is a joy of Earth—
it is denied the Gods—
Singing stories—Death or Mirth—
announcing—like a Fraud—that Thing you did. Was it so Great—
if no one knew but for
those Gods hushed and hovering—late—
round heaven’s hearth—Voyeursof deeds and sins. To have to Pause—
unknowing—to hold paper
up to Sun—and wonder at the Flaws
and Flights that will appear—as soon as paper splits and tears
by taper’s candlelight.
Anticipation mixed with fear—
“Madame,” it says, “I write—”
Charise Hoge’s “Mollusk and Mail” completes Emily’s fragment "as Marianne Moore might have done," David says, "with the celebration of a lowly creature," one that is extremely close to my heart, the snail:
A Letter is a joy of Earth––
It is denied the Gods––
Though Godspeed may prevail
––when it is deemed a snail.Admire then the Snail––
A coiled envelope that seals
the softness of a living thing
––discerned in words––arriving.
Beth Dufford “cheated and used two of Emily’s mysterious couplets to bookend my meager whimperings in between,” and to great effect:
A Letter is a joy of Earth—
It is denied the Gods—
Like warmth before a shadow’s Birth
Eludes the sheltering frog—Let me use this Day, let it not slip—
Let me imprison it in a locket—
Let me not thirst with this Hock at my lip
Nor beg, with domains in my pocket.
Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post, with more mysterious lines and couplets and scholarly commentary from the master of poetry, David Lehman. And tune in next week for a new prompt!
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