Emily, rhyming quatrains on Emily Dickinson Options

[JustDaniel]

Emily

She's influenced the style of my verse
often epigrammatic and terse.
Nineteenth century poet of note
hardly published a thing that she wrote.

Amherst, Mass... 1830 she came
I get courage myself from her pen.
As I've splashed in her ink now and then
I've deLighted myself in the rain.

Brother Austin, Lavinia too...
how their bond with young Emily grew
Sisters both stayed at home all their life
and next-door Austin moved with his wife.

So austere in their Calvinist home
but from Dickinson-faith she would roam
yet a transcendent One would remain
at the heart of her soul's broad terrain.

She began writing verse in her teens;
all we have are sweet shared in-betweens
innovative, exuberant notes
of affection to friends. How she dotes.

Humor, anecdote, somber reflection
with inventiveness for their inspection.
Correspondents would not give her back
near as much as she gave; ‘twas a lack.

Then her poetry-friends introduced
Barrett Browning, whose "..Vision…" induced ^*1
her distinction, bloomed female ambition
maturing her own intuition.

Our fastidious writer withdrew
from most social engagements and grew
reticent when religious revival
pressured her more inside for survival.

Her love-interest secret, called “Master”
many letters, but quiet disaster.
Not succumbing to anguish, “The zeroes
taught us phosphorus.” She joins our heroes.

Forty booklets she gathered, by hand
sewn together and bundled, unplanned.
Death by stroke... they were found ‘neath her bed
or we’d not know what churned in her head.

“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” she wrote;
“Are you—Nobody—too?” ends the quote. ^*2
All her loneliness words touch the masses
even more as poetic time passes.

Daniel's Personal Post Script:

Marshall Lee was my Dad’s name you see,
and my Mother would oft scream at me
“When your Dad’s home, you will get the dickens!"
… did, and kept it, so now the plot thickens:

Simmered Dad’s name and “dickens” in stew:
I became M Lee Dickens’ son too!

© MLee Dickens’son 2020
Daniel J Ricketts


^*1 https://genius.com/Elizabeth-barrett-browni...poets-annotated

^*2 https://poets.org/poem/im-nobody-who-are-you-260

[JustDaniel]

Thanks for your good wishes, Sylvia. My visit was a good one, and I was able not only to see one of my brothers probably for the last time but was also able to travel to Yakima, WA on the other side of Mt. Rainier (three hour drive through the only pass usable because of fires in the area) to spend time with my uncle and aunt on the occasion of their 65th wedding anniversary.

Thanks for your preliminary comments about my "Emily"... and I hope that you'll enjoy it's post-script for info on my pen name too! deLightingly, Daniel