Imagine my surprise when I noticed a sudden surge in traffic to this site (“sudden” and “surge” are relative terms here . . .), especially since things have been less than daily here of late (State Fair, first day of school, the usual excuses). And my greater surprise yet to find that the surge was courtesy of a Literature for Kossacks post at the Daily Kos.
And a great article it is, too. It highlights some of the things that make Dickinson much more interesting than if she were just a spinster writing rhymes in a New England attic: her playfulness with words and ideas, her earthy mysticism, her–quoting Harold Bloom–”cognitive originality as absolute as William Blake’s.” Dickinson certainly does rub elbows with Blake, as well as with Rumi, Rilke, Yeats, and Bly.
Full (or partial?) disclosure on the political side: I’m a not-particularly-partisan type, having wandered all over the political spectrum for quite a while. I’d describe myself as a “Tory anarchist” if asked, stealing proudly from George Orwell: I am distrustful of privilege and power, whether political or economic, but I’m also wary of Big Plans and Grand Schemes. If pressed, I’d mumble some things about subsidiarity, the Quaker testimony of equality, and communitarianism, hoping to confuse matters. I’m a great admirer of folks like Dorothy Day and Pyotr Kropotkin, but also of Karl Popper and Hernando De Soto (the economist, not the conquistador; I’m most decidedly unimpressed with conquistadors).
In the two decades I’ve been voting, I’ve cast ballots for folks in both major parties and more than a few minor ones as well, based on how well I expected them to respect individual liberty while recognizing the common good. Lately that has meant voting Democratic, though often because the Democrat was far less bad than the alternative. This time around, I’m looking for the presidential candidate who, as Thomas Ricks suggests, has the best developed sense of tragedy. (That may have to be Obama, by default, as the only published poet in the bunch.)
So anyway–though I’m hardly an upstanding member of any party but George Orwell’s (I suppose that’s the ill-fated and marginal POUM, which sounds almost like “POEM” though it ends far worse than the usual enjambment . . .), I’m greatly appreciative of the link, and impressed with a fine piece of writing on Emily Dickinson.
Nature, the gentlest mother,
