I thought we’d try this once, and see the response. Sometimes online this is difficult. This is our poetry discussion. Just write what you think of the poem in the comments. We will do this from time to time. If it has a good response, we’ll do it on a regular basis. If it doesn’t we won’t. So write your comments about the poem in the comments. This is an early Dickinson poem. It’s pretty interesting that it might remind you of another famous poem she wrote.
Retrospect
by Emily Dickinson
‘T was just this time last year I died.
I know I heard the corn,
When I was carried by the farms, —
It had the tassels on.
I thought how yellow it would look
When Richard went to mill;
And then I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.
I thought just how red apples wedged
The stubble’s joints between;
And carts went stooping round the fields
To take the pumpkins in.
I wondered which would miss me least,
And when Thanksgiving came,
If father’d multiply the plates
To make an even sum.
And if my stocking hung too high,
Would it blur the Christmas glee,
That not a Santa Claus could reach
The altitude of me?
But this sort grieved myself, and so
I thought how it would be
When just this time, some perfect year,
Themselves should come to me.
To me, this is still one of the best descriptions of poetry as an art form, at least as far as its impact on the reader goes. More than any other, I feel poetry is the form through which we can experience the greatest range of emotions. I like what Marie Howe has said about poetry and complex emotional states, too, specifically that after September 11th, poetry was one of the only ways she and fellow poets found to conceptualize everything affecting them at the time.