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JM Kenyon

  • Last seen 1 day ago. Member since February 14, 2006.

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  • on I felt a cleaving in my mind by Emily Dickinson, on December 17, 2007
    I get the idea of missing information from this poem. It's like those times when you know you know the answer, you know what you want to say, it's right on the tip of your tongue but your brain just can't retrieve the words...

  • I had no time to hate, because
    The grave would hinder me,
    And life was not so ample I
    Could finish enmity.


    Life's too short to entertain hatred, especially since hatred has a way of becoming all consuming and destructive (murderous actually).

    Nor had I time to love, but since
    Some industry must be,
    The little toil of love, I thought,
    Was large enough for me.


    No time for love, no place for love... but I suspect that love found her even though she wasn't seeking it and held her for a time... a mere moment in the span of a lifetime.


  • I think perhaps Emily Dickinson was imagining what life could have been for her as a wife, perhaps, in a lonesome moment, trying to stay optimistic about her state seclusion.

    Though I feel a kinship with this particular poet, I have a family and cannot remain secluded from the world. I guess, I feel as if I know what it is like to want to be alone and yet to find that loneliness too intense at times.

    It is in those times I find myself writing "hopeful, optimistic" verse.

    So, I don't think this poem was written or directed to anyone in particular; not to a love, for a love or about a love but for herself; to remind herself that her muse (which I imagine very, very important to her) and Loneliness were her best friends. I don't think the moments when she wanted someone and needed someone around were ever quite powerful enough to drive her out of her seclusion.

  • I don't think it is that Emily Dickinson didn't understand love. My guess is that this poem was written by a mature poet that has come to accept that Love is subjected to the conditions of Life and Life is ever changing.

    I know the things that are tucked in my own drawers (physically and mentally), if I did not still love these things, I'd have thrown them away, they are reminders of what was precious; letters, pressed flowers, momentos and trinkets, words and actions to hang emotions on... a treasure to me... insignificant junk and boring drama to those who cannot know the sentimental value.

    Eventually we will have to let everything go at some time... the drawers in my heart, mind don't hold memories of anything that I do not want to know again.