This weekend I'm determined to not be swept away by all the terrible stuff going down in our country. I'm fleeing, actually, to poetry and other ecstatic things.
I'm listening to the first of this intriguing series on the Poetry Foundation website called A Change of World.
I'm reading Emma Cline's novel The Girls. It's a bit creepy, but to be honest, I haven't been able to stick with a novel in months.
I'm also into this poem:
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
And now We roam in Sovreign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him
The Mountains straight reply -
And do I smile, such cordial light
Opon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it’s pleasure through -
And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master’s Head -
’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s
Deep Pillow - to have shared -
To foe of His - I’m deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -
Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without - the power to die -
Emily Dickinson
and listening to this poem by Billy Collins which, whether you look at it as a seduction of Emily's mind or body, is terribly sexy and just sets a good tone or tune or --- (as Emily would do)
Readers, what are ya'll doing this weekend?
