I've read lots of poets, but Emily Dickinson's poetic voice is as close to the voice in my head as can be. And I'm not superstitious, but I don't think it a coinkydink that Ms. Emily Dickinson and I share a birthday.
Yes, Emily Dickinson turns 185 years old the day I turn 40. I know, cool right!? Well maybe not to you non poetry nerds, but it is very much so to me. When I read her poetry, it feels as though we were twins, separated at conception, Emily sent into the victorian age, a white woman, to never marry and refuse to take Jesus as her personal savior when it was very dangerous to do so and to write with (mostly) no intention to publish; and Emile becoming me, born into the Sly and the Family Stone seventies, a black man, married with kids and posting to the infinite blogosphere. I'm sure it's weird of me to think, write, and actually share this. But I'm almost 40, and I get to be me.Anyway, here's an example of Emily Dickinson's rhythm, blues, funk, keen observation of detail, and the way she uses playful disorder (abstraction) to paint paradoxes of meaning on the mundane (the concrete). Check my poet soul sister out:
I’ll tell you how the Sun rose –
A Ribbon at a time –
The steeples swam in Amethyst
The news, like Squirrels, ran –
The Hills untied their Bonnets –
The Bobolinks – begun –
Then I said softly to myself –
“That must have been the Sun”!
But how he set – I know not –
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while –
Till when they reached the other side –
A Dominie in Gray –
Put gently up the evening Bars –
And led the flock away –
Beautiful.
And here's what Emile said, in my head, first thing this morning...
The voice in my head
is magic
and a greedy bastard
whipping up some tragic
inner laughter
that churns up into custard
the curd of the day
in a most discreetly
absurd way
The voice in my head
sings soprano
and rumbles low
reptillian hisses
its candle flickers
laps water like dogs
thickens in bogs
in mortified rigor
enslaved it seems
by my fears
until released
in ink tears
The voice in my head
I hear it now
but with what ear
I do not know
it listens itself
and catches its drift
and cannot unspeak
its spoken repose
without a tongue
or lips to purse
or teeth to consummate
or throat to warble
or belly to push from
or chest to vibrate
it whispers as loud
as my mind is vast
these words
right now
wind, sail, and mast
The voice in my head
given form by a pen
will speak in its silence
until it speaks again
What I know, 16 days from 40, is the voice in my head and that I can give it a name and that I can name it Emile, soul brother to Emily Dickinson.
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