It's become inevitable.
It's time for the parting of the ways.
Emily Dickinson,
we're through.
After being assigned to read all 1,789 poem in Emily's corpus in the last month,
I've got an extreme case of metrical fatigue.
Too much meter.
It pounds relentlessly like mallets in my Grinchy head.
Each poem loses all meaning and becomes nothing more than a tell-tale heart that I wish I could shove under the floorboards.
No offense meant to Emily.
I appreciate her just because my professor admires her so much.
When she dies, I think my professor and Emily will be instantly bosom friends,
sitting in a quaint corner of heaven, recording couplets.
.
.
.
.
.
But Emily and I are not friends.
I was about one bee or butterfly poem away from being put over the edge.
Emily, it's been real.
I'll see you when I compass Paradise -
Could this professor be, perhaps, Cynthia Hallen? I know she sure loves Emily...
ReplyDeletewhat kind of class are you taking?
ReplyDelete& i'm starting to feel that way about wordsworth, but i've only had 3 classes of him so far.
but don't you feel a little sense of accomplishment for reading everything an author produced?
Haha I love this. I guess I haven't read enough of her poems to feel the need to bash my head metrically against a wall. And I didn't know you had a blog either! I'm your newest follower :)
ReplyDeleteOh, Rachel--you make me laugh. :) I felt the same way after translating Julius Caesar's first book de Bello Gallico. And we just read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar for class... Yeah, Brutus, I might have stabbed Caesar too.
ReplyDeleteLol Ariel I don't know you, but thats hilarious. Rachel, I've been wanting to tell you for a while (ever since I watched Much Ado About Nothing with Emma Thompson): Denzel Washington is the ONLY man on earth who can make iambic pentameter hot. Jus sayin
ReplyDeleteLaughed until my eyes watered! Fighting Dickinson with Seuss and Poe! I like it.
ReplyDeleteI know this is WAAAAAAY overdue, but I just saw this blog post and it made me so happy. You are good. You have captured an entire term in a simple little post. I guess I should be glad I never got through more than 50 of her poems at one time . . . I didn't end up reading them all, obviously. That is quite and accomplishment for you, though :)
ReplyDelete