My Expressions

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Dashes, Defiance, and the Poet Within

The parlor clock ticked, its rhythm a metronome against the quiet of her room. Emily smoothed her skirts, a gesture of habit more than necessity in this solitary space.

On the table, a volume of Mr. Longfellow’s latest poems waited, a gift from well-meaning Aunt Eliza. A poet, so they said, with lines as smooth as river stones and rhymes as predictable as the seasons.

Duty whispered that she ought to read it, to admire the fine craftsmanship and the lofty sentiments. After all, wasn’t this what poetry was supposed to be? Yet, a rebellion simmered within her.

With a sigh, she reached not for Longfellow, but for the worn notebook nestled beside it. Her own poems spilled across the pages – ungainly, unrhymed, the words like startled birds taking flight.

A knock startled her. Perhaps it was Susan, come to share some small-town gossip. Or Vinnie, armed with a request for a perfectly punctuated letter. But as the door swung open, it was Longfellow himself who stood there, not in the flesh but in her mind’s eye. A phantom critic, brows furrowed as he skimmed her lines.

“This is not poetry,” she imagined him declaring, his voice echoing the dismissive reviews she’d only dared to dream of. “No meter, no elegance, not a proper rhyme in sight!”

Yet, a defiant spark flickered in her. With a boldness she scarcely recognized, she pictured herself replying, “But Mr. Longfellow, these dashes, they are the gasps between my thoughts. These fractured lines, they mirror the way the world sometimes breaks in my mind. And the slant rhymes? They are the echo of truths only half-heard, only half-understood.”

The vision faded, the room returning to its usual quiet. She glanced at Longfellow’s book, the guilt pricking less. Her poetry might be wild, untamed, and strange, but it was hers, born of a different kind of truth.

Emily Dickinson: The Rebel Within

Emily Dickinson, the enigmatic poet born in the rigid heart of 19th-century America, defied expectations in both life and verse. Within the walls of her Amherst home, she forged a realm of the mind as vast as the prairie skies.

A staggering 1,800 poems bloomed from Dickinson’s pen, but her world only saw a mere ten during her lifetime. While she shared some treasures with trusted confidantes, the lion’s share remained a secret trove. Her work – brief, haunting, and blazing with originality – bucked the polished conventions of her day.

A Grammar All Her Own

In a time when tidy rhymes and measured meter ruled, Dickinson chose a wilder path. Her dashes were not mere punctuation but gasps of breath, pauses heavy with meaning. She bent words, shaped lines, and crafted a grammar that mirrored the unpredictable rhythms of her own thoughts.

The world that largely ignored Dickinson’s genius in life was in for a posthumous shock. After her death, her sister Lavinia discovered the hidden horde of poems. The initial reception was lukewarm, critics baffled by Dickinson’s unconventional style.

Yet, time proved the ultimate arbiter. Decades later, those same quirks that once confused were hailed as the mark of a daring innovator.

Inspiration in the Shadows

Dickinson, reclusive and often misunderstood, became a beacon for misfits and rebels. Feminists drew strength from her refusal to conform, finding power in a woman who wielded words as both weapon and shield.

Artists of every stripe found kinship in her solitary pursuit of truth, her gaze fixed on the extraordinary within the ordinary.

The Bee and the Bloom

The garden was riot and hush all at once. Bumblebees, clumsy and drunk on sunlight, buzzed their ponderous song. Yet, for all the show of color and buzzing, Emily felt a stillness in the air. Sunlight lay heavy as a blanket, thick with the promise of an afternoon storm.

She knelt by the lilies, her fingers brushing rough leaves. No mere flower, this – it was a trumpet held to the heavens, painted with sunrise. Yet, the ants scrambling over the curling petals saw nothing of this majesty. To them, it was a bridge, a hunting ground, a bit of the world like any other.

Her gaze fell upon a single bee, trapped within the lily’s curved embrace. Pollen clung to its legs, a golden dust that spoke of distant journeys. It buzzed frantically against the smooth petal, unaware that its escape lay in simply turning around.

A surge of something close to pity washed over her. Was she, too, like the bee? Trapped within her own mind, buzzing against unseen barriers, blind to paths that lay in plain sight if only she would change her focus. Was her frantic scribbling of verses just another kind of pollen-collecting, blind to the greater mysteries unfolding within the garden of her soul?

A rumble of thunder snapped her back to the present. The bee, sensing a shift, now crawled free of the flower. Emily felt a pang of envy for the simplicity of its existence.

Yet, as the drops began to fall, she stood tall, strangely exhilarated. In the chaos of the storm, in the fleeting beauty washed clean, there was a wild truth the bee could never know. That was where her poems waited to be found.

The Proper Poet and the Rebel

The parlor clock ticked, its rhythm a metronome against the quiet of her room. Emily smoothed her skirts, a gesture of habit more than necessity in this solitary space.

On the table, a volume of Mr. Longfellow’s latest poems waited, a gift from well-meaning Aunt Eliza. A poet, so they said, with lines as smooth as river stones and rhymes as predictable as the seasons.

Duty whispered that she ought to read it, to admire the fine craftsmanship and the lofty sentiments. After all, wasn’t this what poetry was supposed to be?

Yet, a rebellion simmered within her. With a sigh, she reached not for Longfellow, but for the worn notebook nestled beside it. Her own poems spilled across the pages – ungainly, unrhymed, the words like startled birds taking flight.

A knock startled her. Perhaps it was Susan, come to share some small-town gossip. Or Vinnie, armed with a request for a perfectly punctuated letter. But as the door swung open, it was Longfellow himself who stood there, not in the flesh but in her mind’s eye. A phantom critic, brows furrowed as he skimmed her lines.

“This is not poetry,” she imagined him declaring, his voice echoing the dismissive reviews she’d only dared to dream of. “No meter, no elegance, not a proper rhyme in sight!”

Yet, a defiant spark flickered in her. With a boldness she scarcely recognized, she pictured herself replying, “But Mr. Longfellow, these dashes, they are the gasps between my thoughts.

These fractured lines, they mirror the way the world sometimes breaks in my mind. And the slant rhymes? They are the echo of truths only half-heard, only half-understood.”

The vision faded, the room returning to its usual quiet. She glanced at Longfellow’s book, the guilt pricking less. Her poetry might be wild, untamed, and strange, but it was hers, born of a different kind of truth.

Emily Dickinson: The Rebel Within

Emily Dickinson, the enigmatic poet born in the rigid heart of 19th-century America, defied expectations in both life and verse. Within the walls of her Amherst home, she forged a realm of the mind as vast as the prairie skies.

A staggering 1,800 poems bloomed from Dickinson’s pen, but her world only saw a mere ten during her lifetime. While she shared some treasures with trusted confidantes, the lion’s share remained a secret trove.

Her work – brief, haunting, and blazing with originality – bucked the polished conventions of her day.

A Grammar All Her Own

In a time when tidy rhymes and measured meter ruled, Dickinson chose a wilder path. Her dashes were not mere punctuation but gasps of breath, pauses heavy with meaning. She bent words, shaped lines, and crafted a grammar that mirrored the unpredictable rhythms of her own thoughts.

The world that largely ignored Dickinson’s genius in life was in for a posthumous shock. After her death, her sister Lavinia discovered the hidden horde of poems. The initial reception was lukewarm, critics baffled by Dickinson’s unconventional style.

Yet, time proved the ultimate arbiter. Decades later, those same quirks that once confused were hailed as the mark of a daring innovator.

Inspiration in the Shadows

Dickinson, reclusive and often misunderstood, became a beacon for misfits and rebels. Feminists drew strength from her refusal to conform, finding power in a woman who wielded words as both weapon and shield. Artists of every stripe found kinship in her solitary pursuit of truth, her gaze fixed on the extraordinary within the ordinary.

The Bee and the Bloom

The garden was riot and hush all at once. Bumblebees, clumsy and drunk on sunlight, buzzed their ponderous song. Yet, for all the show of color and buzzing, Emily felt a stillness in the air. Sunlight lay heavy as a blanket, thick with the promise of an afternoon storm.

She knelt by the lilies, her fingers brushing rough leaves. No mere flower, this – it was a trumpet held to the heavens, painted with sunrise. Yet, the ants scrambling over the curling petals saw nothing of this majesty. To them, it was a bridge, a hunting ground, a bit of the world like any other.

Her gaze fell upon a single bee, trapped within the lily’s curved embrace. Pollen clung to its legs, a golden dust that spoke of distant journeys. It buzzed frantically against the smooth petal, unaware that its escape lay in simply turning around.

A surge of something close to pity washed over her. Was she, too, like the bee? Trapped within her own mind, buzzing against unseen barriers, blind to paths that lay in plain sight if only she would change her focus. Was her frantic scribbling of verses just another kind of pollen-collecting, blind to the greater mysteries unfolding within the garden of her soul?

A rumble of thunder snapped her back to the present. The bee, sensing a shift, now crawled free of the flower. Emily felt a pang of envy for the simplicity of its existence.

Yet, as the drops began to fall, she stood tall, strangely exhilarated. In the chaos of the storm, in the fleeting beauty washed clean, there was a wild truth the bee could never know. That was where her poems waited to be found.

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Find Hope & Resilience in Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”

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