Linda's Literary Home

Tag: writing

  • Emily Dickinson’s “The reticent volcano keeps”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “The reticent volcano keeps”

    The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “The reticent volcano keeps” is musing on the nature of silence and secrets, transforming metaphorically a volcano into a figure of thoughtful restraint. This idea creates a paradox that challenges the nature and purpose of human speech.

    Introduction and Text of “The reticent volcano keeps”

    The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “The reticent volcano keeps” is exploring the tense relationship between divine knowledge and human awareness by delving into nature’s ability to keep secrets as opposed to humanity’s driving need to speak out and to be heard by others.

    The poem, thus, is ultimately a study in contrasts. The speaker concocts a parallel universe, in which the forces of nature adhere to perfect discretion as human beings often go off the rails by remaining loquacious and even indiscreet, as they engage loudly in mere gossip.

    The metaphorical volcano becomes the speaker’s prime example of nature’s superior restraint. Unlike explosive human beings, this volcanic force has mastered the art of keeping secrets and thus holds its ever awake strategy in blissful silence.

    The reticent volcano keeps

    The reticent volcano keeps
    His never slumbering plan —
    Confided are his projects pink
    To no precarious man.

    If nature will not tell the tale
    Jehovah told to her
    Can human nature not survive
    Without a listener?

    Admonished by her buckled lips
    Let every babbler be
    The only secret people keep
    Is Immortality.

    Commentary on “The reticent volcano keeps”

    Emily Dickinson’s “The reticent volcano keeps” creates a speaker who comments on the nature of silence and secrets. The speaker employs a metaphor of a volcano to compare the ideas of restraint to the chatty nature of humanity, whose only secret “Is Immortality.”

    First Stanza: The Volcano’s Secret

    The reticent volcano keeps
    His never slumbering plan —
    Confided are his projects pink
    To no precarious man.

    The speaker begins by metaphorically creating the image of a  volcano that keeps secrets.  There is almost a hint of personification of that geologic force, as it is described as “reticent” but capable of deliberately and consciously making the choice to keep its secrets.

    By calling the volcano “reticent,” the speaker gives it a personality with intention. Thus the volcano becomes human-like with the ability to make choices.  And its choice is to stay mum about its purpose for its activities.

    The image of the “never slumbering plan” heralds forth a disturbing tension. On its surface, the volcano seems to remain dormant, yet beneath that quiet surface rumbles a permanent, definite intention. 

    According to this fantasized scenario, the volcano is not experiencing a passive rest but instead is engaging in the restraint of wide-awake watching.  Thus the speaker is implying that actual power comes with restraint, not from revelation. 

    Stated another way:  the volcano’s power lies in what it does not say, or what it refuses to reveal about its hidden activities.  The volcano does not merely have a plan, but it also protects and preserves that plan from outside observation that would cause interference with its intentions.

    The speaker is therefore presenting the volcano as a model of perfect prudence, a power that is capable of destroying the landscape yet chooses to keep its secrets.  The speaker is implying that such choices are the result of self-control.  And that kind of self-control is to be admired.

    The speaker unveils minor details, labeling them “projects pink,” which suggest images of dawn, flowering blossoms, or a gently glowing fire.  Still, the volcano reveals these intimate secrets to no one, definitely not to unreliable human beings.

    The color “pink” brings an unexpected gentleness into the scenario of volcanic force.   The speaker seems to be suggesting that even the most dramatic natural forces contain delicate qualities hidden from view.

    The speaker portrays human beings as “precarious” because they remain basically unreliable and too fickle to be trusted with nature’s serious purposes. Human beings are deemed unworthy to be afforded information about nature’s activities.  

    So, the phrase “confided are” suggests that the volcano’s secrets exist in a state of trust. But such trust is not extended to humans, again because human beings have not proven themselves to be trustworthy.  

    The speaker has thus created a hierarchy of trustworthiness. The volcano is placed at the top of the spectrum and humanity at the bottom. The natural world, as opposed to the human world thus serves as the reliable retainer of divine secrets.

    Second Stanza: Divine Silence

    If nature will not tell the tale
    Jehovah told to her
    Can human nature not survive
    Without a listener?

    The speaker then broadens her view beyond the volcanic keeper of secrets to encompass all of nature in this conspiracy of silence. The speaker suggests that God Himself has shared secrets with the natural world.

    The phrase “the tale / Jehovah told to her” implies the intimate conversational relationship between Creator and creation. The speaker presents this scenario as a whispered confidence that remains eternally unbroken.

    By employing the name “Jehovah,” the speaker invokes one of the most sacred names for God. This raises the conversation beyond casual exchange to profound holiness and therefore deserving of absolute attention.

    In other words, the speaker is implying that nature serves as God’s confidante. Unlike the human being,  who is supposed to be God’s most valuable and honored creation but has fallen short, the natural world has proven itself worthy of divine trust and continues to honor that sacred responsibility.

    The term “tale” points to a narrative or story, most likely mythology. The speaker thus implies that God has shared His most profound stories of creation with nature, stories that remain hidden.

    The speaker presents this divine sharing as a test of loyalty. Nature has passed the test by maintaining perfect silence, while humanity has failed time and again because of its compulsive need to speak.  

    At this point, the speaker poses the poem’s poignant question: If nature can keep divine secrets, why cannot human beings behave honorably, without constantly needing to speak and be heard?

    The term “survive” suggests the strong need for listeners; it is not merely a preference but an existential need. The speaker thus implies that humans require witnesses to their thoughts to maintain their very existence.  

    Ultimately, the speaker is creating a sharp distinction between “nature” and “human nature.”  Nature is capable of self-sufficient silence, while human nature has acquired the bad habit of constant verbal interaction just to function.

    The question becomes philosophical as well as practical. The speaker wonders whether humanity’s need for an audience is weakness or simply part of its essential character as social beings.  

    The speaker implies that humanity’s inability to keep secrets stems from its fundamental need for connection.  Human beings speak because they must be heard to feel that they are living.

    The question rises to a note of near-pathetic bewilderment. The speaker remains genuinely baffled by humanity’s inability to match nature’s perfect discretion and self-contained silence.

    Third Stanza: The Moral Lesson

    Admonished by her buckled lips
    Let every babbler be
    The only secret people keep
    Is Immortality.

    The speaker concludes with nature as an instructor of ethical and moral behavior.   The image of nature’s “buckled lips,” clasped tightly, serves to castigate human compulsive loquaciousness.

    The image of “buckled lips” is also mechanical as well as organic. The speaker suggests that while nature’s silence is instinctive, it is also deliberate, making it a disciplined choice.  

    The speaker chastises “every babbler,” shaming human beings for their inability to hold their tongues. Apparently, they cannot mirror the volcano’s patient discretion or even understand nature’s faithful, enduring silence.

    The term “babbler” is especially damning, reducing human communication to meaningless chatter.  Such constant talk lacks the dignity of nature’s meaningfully purposeful silence.

    The speaker delivers the poem’s most devastating irony. The one secret that humans do manage to keep is “Immortality”—their silence about death and what lies beyond.  This final revelation transforms the entire poem’s earlier criticisms. 

    In this final irony, the speaker both condemns and redeems humanity.  Humans are babblers about everything except what matters most—their own eternal destiny and ultimate meaning.

    But what does the speaker imply by claiming that humanity keeps secrets about Immortality?  Merely the fact that most of humanity speaks and behaves without giving Immortality or what lies beyond the grave much thought.

    The topic of “Immortality” is left up to poets, philosophers, and theologians.  And although these groups have proffered tomes on the issue, their theories go largely unnoticed on the street.  

    The speaker would have talk about life beyond this life become more open to everyone.  She seems to feel that the one secret that humanity continues to keep is the only one that truly matters.  

    She thus would have humanity keep some of its more chatty issues to itself, reorder its thinking, and begin producing volcanic force in conversations that would truly move the culture along to a more open sharing of eternal truths.  But first, of course, she must try to influence humanity to take an interest in profundity instead of petty, chatty gossip.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “The Only News I know”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “The Only News I know”

    In “The Only News I know,” Emily Dickinson creates a speaker who offers a glimpse at the poet’s satisfying daily existence.  She demonstrates how she keeps her consciousness focused only on things of the Divine Realm, thus, avoiding those of the mundane, vulgar, physical existence.

    Introduction with Text of  “The Only News I know”

    The reality of “the news” automatically holds all manner of things that have gone wrong during ordinary life.  Accidents, illness, murders, robberies, war, deceit, political intrigue all figure in the news reports that come to one daily.  

    While these topics tend to agitate, confuse, and sadden most folks who listen to “the news,” seldom does anyone offer an antidote to lessen the pain, frustration, confusion brought about by the bad news reports that accost the citizenry daily.

    Although Emily Dickinson’s poem, “The Only News I know,” is obviously an exaggeration, it, nevertheless, dramatizes the most important topics with which the poet likes to engage: immortality, eternity, and God.   She likes to engage and occupy her thinking and musing with ethereal places and events.  And this creative thinking easily replaces the mundane and vulgar events that daily hem one round.

    The physical world is such a cold and often desolate place for sensitive individuals and once those individuals acquire some inkling of a different world, a spiritual level of existence, or an astral world, they prefer it. 

    They inquire, read, and study about the possibility of a place where the soul lives on after it leaves the gross physical encasement.  Such a place offers the individual the opportunity to live more abundantly and completely without the trammels and trappings of earthly existence. 

    The thought of a “heaven” or an astral existence gives one hope that all the unseemly events reported in “the news” are only temporary and feature only a passing blight that the pure soul must put up with but only for a while.  While the physical reality is only temporary, the soul’s reality is permanent.

    Emily Dickinson’s “The Only News I Know” consists of four tercets, or three-line stanzas that examine the glorious possibility of living in a world of everlasting beauty, with an always blissful feeling, and ever-new joy. 

    Each tercet adheres to its own rime scheme: ABC, ABA, AAB, ABC. Each line displays six syllables, except for the final line in the final tercet, which yields only four syllables.  The four-syllable line gives the poem an abruptness that further enhances the meaning of the content: the speaker makes her claims in crispness and ends with a snap.

    The Only News I know

    The Only News I know
    Is Bulletins all Day
    From Immortality.

    The Only Shows I see  –
    Tomorrow and Today –
    Perchance Eternity –

    The Only One I meet
    Is God – The Only Street –
    Existence – This traversed

    If Other News there be –
    Or Admirabler Show –
    I’ll tell it You –

    Commentary on “The Only News I know”

    In this poem, Emily Dickinson has created a speaker who reports brief glimpses of what it is like to create a satisfying daily existence.   Instead of “bulletins” from news reports on daily misery, her bulletins come from a mystical place where only joy permeates the soul. 

    First Tercet:  Focus on the Spiritual  

    The Only News I know
    Is Bulletins all Day
    From Immortality.

    In the first stanza, the speaker asserts that the only information she recognizes is that which comes from “Immortality.” She claims that she receives brief news headlines during the whole day, implying that these brief reports come to her even as she is working. 

    This speaker is more interested in mystical, that is, spiritual awareness than she is in mundane earthly things.  Thus she can easily space out the mundane and fill it with ethereal blessings.

    Second Tercet:  A Permanent Frame of Mind  

    The Only Shows I see –
    Tomorrow and Today –
    Perchance Eternity –

    The speaker then avers that the only programs or performances she watches are those that pertain similarly to things and events that are everlastingly entertaining.   She then implies that the time frame in which she experiences these blessings is permanent. She leaves open some doubt by inserting the term “[p]erchance” likely only for the sake of skeptical listeners.

    It becomes clear that this speaker entertains no doubt about her claims regarding the landscape of the soul—those topics that obtain for “Immortality” and “Eternity.”   She is not so naïve as to believe that in the physical world these qualities hold fast.  

    If that were so, she would have no need to report on such beyond-earth loci.  She could go about simply revealing all the blessings she detects from earthly pleasures.   But because earthly paradise remains out of possibility, she has to report about mystical places with figurative language, including colorful images and metaphors.

    Third Tercet:   God Alone

    The Only One I meet
    Is God – The Only Street –
    Existence –This traversed

    The speaker then reveals her startling claim, as Dickinson speakers are often wont to do: “The Only One I meet / Is God.”   And instead of further drama or explication on meeting God, she rushes on mid-line to claim that the only path she travels is that of “Existence.” This “street” is the one that she “traverse[s]” freely. 

    Her interest focuses only on being.  She leaves the idea of becoming to others.  While she experiences this great eternal present of being, she remains in a state of blissful confidence. 

    Fourth Tercet:    No Other News

    If Other News there be –
    Or Admirabler Show –
    I’ll tell it You –

    Then the speaker declares that if, in fact, she ever acquires any other significant information, she will let her listeners know about it. But her matter-of-fact declamations have made it quite clear that she does not expect such “Other News” to assail her consciousness. 

    She is aware that she is creating her own garden of verse into which she has the ability to place anything she wishes.  In her garden of creation, she can remain in her mystical state of awareness, meeting only angels and other eternal beings. 

    Every flower, every bird, every blade of grass has become endowed with the grace of the Heavenly Father, the Ultimate Reality, the Divine Being that is God.  The speaker’s dedication to such bliss becomes so full that she is urged to share her state with her audience, and she gladly complies with that urge. 

  • A Sense of Sorrow

    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem
    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem

    A Sense of Sorrow

    The darkness and vastness of the center
    Bends over the vastness of each beginning—
    Over the rivers of memory, you spread
    Rivers of sick sorrow to each end.

    The end of each vein springs blood
    And blood seeps into the water of light.
    Water finds its own reference point
    And each point fingers mud on granite.

    The mud that covers your soul
    Will shuck itself in the soul of sorrow.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “A Light exists in Spring”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “A Light exists in Spring”

    The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “A Light exists in Spring” is striving to portray a certain kind of light that “exists [only] in Spring” or very near spring.

    Introduction with Text of “A Light exists in Spring”

    Emily Dickinson’s “A Light exists in Spring” features five quatrains with a somewhat erratic rime scheme.  Each quatrain follows a fairly regular pattern of ABCB with the second quatrain offering the slant rime, “fields / feels,” and the third quatrain offering no rime at all. 

    The final quatrain again features an irregular pair of rimes, “Content / Sacrament.”  The theme of the poem focuses on a special feeling that becomes engendered in the observer as she experiences a certain kind of light.


    A Light exists in Spring

    A Light exists in Spring
    Not present on the Year
    At any other period –
    When March is scarcely here

    A Color stands abroad
    On Solitary Fields
    That Science cannot overtake
    But Human Nature feels.

    It waits upon the Lawn,
    It shows the furthest Tree
    Upon the furthest Slope you know
    It almost speaks to you.

    Then as Horizons step
    Or Noons report away
    Without the Formula of sound
    It passes and we stay –

    A quality of loss
    Affecting our Content
    As Trade had suddenly encroached
    Upon a Sacrament.

    Commentary on “A Light exists in Spring”

    Emily Dickinson has created a speaker in “A Light exists in Spring” who is musing upon and then striving to portray a certain kind of light that becomes visible only during the season of spring or, at least, very near that season of rebirth.

    First Quatrain:  A Particular Light

    A Light exists in Spring
    Not present on the Year
    At any other period —
    When March is scarcely here

    The speaker asserts that this light may be experienced “in Spring,” and this particular light cannot be seen at any other time of the year.  However, the speaker then reports that this light does appear just after the month of March has arrived.

    This claim, therefore, suggests that the light might also appear just before the actual season of spring has arrived.  The season of spring does not begin until the third week of March, not in early March, as the speaker seems to be suggesting.

    Second Quatrain:   Not Identified by Science

    A Color stands abroad
    On Solitary Fields
    That Science cannot overtake
    But Human Nature feels.

    The speaker now claims that it is possible to observe a certain shade of color that has descended upon the “fields.” This extraordinary “color” apparently has not been identified in nature by science.  However, human beings, according to this speaker, are capable of sensing this color without a name for or scientific description of it.

    The speaker, therefore, hints that the color of this special light does not exist at all in nature, and it is perhaps only visible to the human soul—not the mind or even the heart—as  such lights as rainbows or the aura borealis are visible to the human eye.

    Third Quatrain:  Unearthly, Perhaps Mystical

    It waits upon the Lawn,
    It shows the furthest Tree
    Upon the furthest Slope you know
    It almost speaks to you.

    This unearthly—perhaps even mystical—light with its special color may be experienced as it stands “upon the Lawn.” However, the light may also appear in trees that grow very far away and may also be gleaned from faraway, quite distant from the where the speaker views it.  The speaker now reports that this strange mystical light may seem to converse with anyone, but its language would be one only known to the soul.

    The speaker then strives to arouse in her listeners and readers an understanding that would be quite likely impossible to shape into words.  The speaker has been carried to an indescribable place within her own soul.

    This light that is capable of “wait[ing] upon the Lawn” but does not instantly pass across the lawn strongly suggests that it is capable of  halting time for a short period—possibly to allow the observer to contemplate the nature of its existence.

    Fourth Quatrain:  As the Light Passes

    Then as Horizons step
    Or Noons report away
    Without the Formula of sound
    It passes and we stay —

    That time period which comes through experiencing that special light cannot wait long and thus “it passes.”  Of course, the observer remains, that is, this speaker remains where she is while the light passes on.

    The special light thus seems to resemble sunlight after it has passed overhead around the noon hour.  Naturally, its final departure is without fanfare, although the speaker seems to have expected a sound, or some other sign to help her understand the strange feeling that this light has engendered in her.

    Fifth Quatrain:   An Inappropriate Intrusion

    A quality of loss
    Affecting our Content
    As Trade had suddenly encroached
    Upon a Sacrament.

    The speaker then asserts that she feels a kind of deep loss.  It is as if something drastically inappropriate has happened.   The speaker expresses that painful inappropriateness as the same as finding of “Trade” intruding “Upon a Sacrament.”  She feels as wronged as Jesus felt upon encountering the money changers in the temple.  

    Spiritual Clarity

    In Emily Dickinson’s “A Light exists in Spring,” the speaker has made a valiant effort to describe the ineffable.  Such a task is impossible, but it is possible to portray the feelings that this ineffable entity has engendered in the heart and mind of the individual observer of that indescribable entity. 

    Thus the speaker has remained vague about what this light looks like, but she has made it quite clear how it has made her feel, and that is her reason for creating this particular little drama.

    The speaker’s experience viewing this special light has moved her very deeply. Although she cannot portray the light’s physical nature, she can suggest the nature of the way the light has influenced her mentally and spiritually.

  • Original Poem “Frosty Fantasy” with Prose Commentary

    Frosty Fantasy

    The hill gives my legs an excuse to bend
    And my arms a chance to steady their trembling
    But my back holds firm as I negotiate each step.
    What were they thinking, my parents, who
    Built their home so far from town?
    I never wished for more than heaven.

    You, however, who grew up far from the midland,
    Kept your heart in a duffle bag, stuffed with straw.
    Sure, I’m only guessing, but you gave me the material:
    Sick laughter, sour smells clinging to your clothes,
    Boasting pride breaking your potential
    Which was poetry itself, sometimes sublime.

    But you allowed your fangs of frosty fantasy
    To make a bloody truant of your future.

    Commentarian Hat Image

    A Prose Commentary on My Original Poem “Frosty Fantasy”

    In my poem “Frosty Fantasy,” I have created a speaker who reflects upon the divergent paths of two lives: one rooted in place, discipline, and spiritual aspiration, the other undermined by self-deception and squandered promise.

    The poem unfolds as a personal address, but beneath its conversational surface lies a musing on character, destiny, and the consequences of embracing illusion over authentic growth.

    The title itself is deliberately ironic. Fantasy ordinarily suggests imagination, creativity, and possibility. Yet the fantasy explored here is “frosty”—cold, sterile, and ultimately destructive. Rather than nurturing the future, it freezes it. 

    The poem’s emotional movement progresses from the speaker’s own grounded perspective toward an examination of another individual whose considerable gifts have been compromised by pride and self-delusion.

    Underlying the poem is the conviction that talent alone cannot sustain a meaningful life. Potential must be guided by self-knowledge, humility, and higher aspiration. Without such guidance, even genuine brilliance may become an instrument of self-sabotage.

    First Stanza:  The Discipline of Ascent

    The hill gives my legs an excuse to bend
    And my arms a chance to steady their trembling
    But my back holds firm as I negotiate each step.
    What were they thinking, my parents, who
    Built their home so far from town?
    I never wished for more than heaven.

    In the opening stanza, my speaker begins with a physical ascent up a hill. The hill is not merely geographical; it serves as a metaphor for the challenges inherent in human life. Each part of the body participates in the effort. The legs bend, the arms steady themselves, and the back remains firm. This catalog of bodily responses emphasizes perseverance and balance.

    The speaker then turns briefly toward the parents who built their home “so far from town.” The question, “What were they thinking?” introduces a touch of humor and mild complaint, but the complaint quickly dissolves into a larger perspective. The concluding line, “I never wished for more than heaven,” transforms what might have remained an ordinary recollection into a spiritual declaration.

    The speaker suggests that physical distance from worldly activity may have fostered a deeper orientation toward transcendent values. The ascent of the hill thus becomes inseparable from the ascent of consciousness.

    Second Stanza:  A Portrait of Displacement

    You, however, who grew up far from the midland,
    Kept your heart in a duffle bag, stuffed with straw.
    Sure, I’m only guessing, but you gave me the material.
    Sick laughter, sour smells clinging to your clothes,
    Boasting pride breaking your potential
    Which was poetry itself, sometimes sublime.

    The second stanza shifts attention toward the person being addressed. Unlike the speaker, this individual is portrayed as fundamentally unsettled. The image of keeping one’s heart “in a duffle bag, stuffed with straw” suggests emotional impermanence and spiritual emptiness.

    A duffle bag is designed for movement and transience; it has no permanence or rootedness. The straw further implies something artificial, a substitute for genuine substance. The heart has become portable but hollow.

    The speaker acknowledges uncertainty with the phrase “Sure, I’m only guessing,” yet immediately asserts that the evidence for such speculation has been provided by the subject himself. This rhetorical maneuver allows the speaker to maintain both humility and authority.

    The subsequent images become increasingly severe. “Sick laughter” and “sour smells” create an atmosphere of moral and psychological decay. These sensory details suggest that inner disorder eventually manifests outwardly. The speaker is less concerned with literal odors or sounds than with the lingering effects of a troubled character.

    The latter portion of the second stanza introduces the poem’s central sorrow. The addressed individual possesses remarkable potential. The speaker observes that his potential “was poetry itself, sometimes sublime.”

    This line is intentionally generous. The poem does not depict an ordinary failure but the squandering of exceptional gifts. The word “sublime” elevates the subject’s capacities beyond mere competence into the realm of genuine artistic and spiritual possibility.

    Yet this praise is immediately juxtaposed against “Boasting pride.” The contrast is crucial. The obstacle is not lack of talent but an inflated sense of self. Pride becomes the force that fractures the connection between potential and fulfillment.  The speaker therefore presents a familiar but painful truth: greatness is often destroyed not by external enemies but by internal weaknesses.

    Third Stanza:  The Tyranny and Tragedy of Illusion

    But you allowed your fangs of frosty fantasy
    To make a bloody truant of your future.

    The final stanza—which is only an unrimed couplet—condenses the poem’s judgment into a single powerful image. The “fangs of frosty fantasy” transform fantasy from a harmless indulgence into a predatory force. Fangs suggest aggression, danger, and injury. 

    The fantasy has become something that bites and wounds. The adjective “frosty” reinforces the image of emotional coldness and spiritual paralysis. Rather than inspiring growth, these fantasies freeze the individual within a false vision of himself.

    The phrase “make a bloody truant of your future” is deliberately startling. A truant abandons responsibility and neglects obligation. Here the future itself becomes the truant, absent because the subject’s choices have driven it away.

    The image suggests that the future was once available but has been injured and expelled through self-defeating behavior. What might have become a life of accomplishment and creative fulfillment has instead been sacrificed to illusion.  The poem ends without reconciliation because the speaker wishes to leave the consequences visible and unresolved. The loss itself becomes the final lesson.

    An Afterthought

    In “Frosty Fantasy,” the speaker examines the painful distance between promise and fulfillment. The poem contrasts two modes of living: one grounded in perseverance, aspiration, and rootedness, the other consumed by pride, instability, and self-deception.

    The speaker’s judgment is severe but not entirely condemnatory. Embedded within the criticism is an acknowledgment that the addressed individual possessed genuine gifts, perhaps even extraordinary ones. This recognition makes the loss more poignant, not less. In fact, that loss may be designated a tragedy in the original usage of the term.

    Ultimately, the poem suggests that imagination detached from truth becomes fantasy, and fantasy detached from discipline becomes destructive. The speaker portrays a life in which illusion gradually eclipses possibility, leaving behind not the fulfillment of potential but the lingering shadow of what might have been.

  • Arna Bontemps’ “God Give to Men”

    Arna Bontemps - Poetry Foundation - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/arna-bontemps 
    Image: Arna Bontemps – Poetry Foundation 

    Arna Bontemps’ “God Give to Men”

    Arna Bontemps’ speaker makes a statement about three classifications of humankind, employing subtle but bitter irony to further his point of view.

    Introduction with Text of “God Give to Men”

    Arna Bontemps’ “God Give to Men” disguises its bitter irony in a prayer, in which the speaker seems to be asking God for certain gifts for each of three classifications of human beings: “the yellow man,” “blue-eyed men,” and “black man.” 

    The speaker’s subtle but bitter irony reveals his contempt as he actually denigrates two of classifications.  The speaker does not reveal explicitly to which classification he belongs.  Thus, readers are given some latitude to interpret the significance of each gift the speaker wishes to bestow on each class of men.

    An interesting thought experiment might include reading the poem from three different perspectives.  That is, if the speaker is a “yellow man,” what do his gifts to that class mean?   Also, if he is one of the “blue-eyed men,” how does that change the significance of each gift?   And if he is a member of the “black  man” classification, how might that impact his choices?

    The Weakness of Stereotyping 

    It should be noted that the speaker engages heavily in stereotyping for all three classifications.   Such a weakness could encourage the thought that this speaker does not belong to any of the classifications to which he is referring; for example, perhaps he is a red man or a brown man of Hispanic or Middle Eastern heritage, or perhaps he is an Indian from India.

    By stereotyping each classification of man and men, the speaker offers nothing of substance regarding each, but the question does arise regarding the possible animus he holds for certain of the classifications.

    Singular vs Plural

    Interestingly, the speaker refers to the first classification as “the yellow man,” while designating the second group as “blue-eyed men.” Then he returns to the singular for the third group. That distinction from singular for the “yellow man” to plural for the “blue-eyed men” and then back to singular for the “black man” offers an issue for interpretation. 

    Might pluralizing the “blue-eyed” indicate the speaker’s level of familiarity with that group?  Perhaps he simply finds the plural more rhythmic in its employment of pronouns.  Or perhaps, it a simple rookie mistake. Such distinctions remain for each reader to decide.

    God Give to Men

    God give the yellow man
    an easy breeze at blossom time.
    Grant his eager, slanting eyes to cover
    every land and dream
    of afterwhile. 

    Give blue-eyed men their swivel chairs
    to whirl in tall buildings.
    Allow them many ships at sea,
    and on land, soldiers
    and policemen.

    For black man, God,
    no need to bother more
    but only fill afresh his meed
    of laughter,
    his cup of tears.

    God suffer little men
    the taste of soul’s desire.

    Commentary on Arna Bontemps “God Give to Men”

    In this poem, the speaker puts on display stereotypes that he holds regarding three classifications of humankind. His evaluation of each classification becomes apparent through the gifts that he asks the Creator to bestow on each.

    First Stanza:  The Yellow Man

    God give the yellow man
    an easy breeze at blossom time.
    Grant his eager, slanting eyes to cover
    every land and dream
    of afterwhile. 

    In the first stanza, the speaker asks God to grant “the yellow man” gentle winds as he engages his “slanting eyes” observing the beauty of “blossom time.”  He then asks that this yellow man be afforded the prescience to peer into the “afterwhile.”

    The two gifts that the speaker is asking from God for the “yellow man” reveal two stereotypes that Westerners entertain regarding their Eastern brothers and sisters.  The first gift of “an easy breeze at blossom time” shows that the speaker has been influenced by Japanese and Chinese fine paintings that depict delicate “blossoms.” 

    In his second gift to the “yellow man,” the speaker is engaging the stereotype that assumes all Asians adhere to the tenets of reincarnation and karma.  He wishes God to grant this Eastern man the ability to see with his “slanting eyes” “every land and dream / of afterwhile.” 

    The magnanimity of both these gifts, however, is diminished by the mere fact that both gifts are based on stereotypes, not the individual heart-felt desire that each human being be given appropriate gifts from God.  

    But the insincerity of these stereotypical gifts becomes more than merely trivial.  The speaker is denigrating the yellow man for engaging in the mere frivolity of light sense pleasure; that “easy breeze at blossom time” thus competes with more important life-sustaining vital gifts that the speaker could have assigned the yellow man.  

    Note also that a poet writing today would be pilloried for using an expression such a “slanting eyes” to refer to an Asian individual—that is, unless that poet is of the ilk of LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka or Arna Bontemps.

    Second Stanza:   The Blue-Eyed Men

    Give blue-eyed men their swivel chairs
    to whirl in tall buildings.
    Allow them many ships at sea,
    and on land, soldiers
    and policemen.

    For the “blue-eyed men,” the speaker asks that God give them skyscrapers with office equipment, as well as mighty navies and armies with “soldiers”  as well as “policemen.”   Again, as with the yellow man,  the speaker employs a mere stereotype to designate which two gifts he thinks God should grant.  The first gift that God should grant the blue eyes is the comfortable chairs in office buildings that are tall. 

    The speaker is presenting the stereotype that blue-eyed men are materialists who work in offices with “swivel chairs” in “tall buildings.”  The second gift of vast military force and police officers again stereotypes the “blue-eyed men” as interested only in power and force. 

    By honing in on these two particular gifts instrumental in the use of force, the speaker reduces those men with blue eyes to power hungry monstrosities.  As this classification is much less of a protected class in the 21st century, the poet writing today could get away with much more invective stereotyping even than this one.  

    Third Stanza:   The Black Man

    For black man, God,
    no need to bother more
    but only fill afresh his meed
    of laughter,
    his cup of tears.

    The speaker then asks God’s gift to the “black man” be nothing special—just let him laugh plenty and cry as needed.  This classification dictates that it suffer the other classes to precede it, as this classification remains humble.    But the humility remains a mere façade as the bitter irony of the speaker’s requests has demonstrated his scant knowledge of all three classifications. 

    A stereotype can describe only a surface level of qualities, for example, the notion that black people all have rhythm and love watermelon and fried chicken becomes ludicrous after observation of real individuals forming this classification.   Yet, less obnoxious stereotypes are just as insidious, as they stand in for individual knowledge and mask ultimate reality.

    Fourth Stanza:   Suffering Their Desires

    God suffer little men
    the taste of soul’s desire.

    The fourth stanza consists of only two lines that ask a generalized gift from God.   The speaker wishes that each man of each classification “suffer” “the taste of soul’s desire.”  Essentially, the speaker is asking God make sure each of these “little men” are afflicted with whatever punishment they deserve for entertaining the desires that they hold.  

    The speaker has assigned each classification of human beings a “soul’s desire,” but that desire has been determined by a very biased speaker, who holds bitter contempt for his other-racial fellows.

    Asking God to grant each group of mankind their wishes, the speaker assumes that the yellow man wants to experience pretty flowers and contemplate the after life and that the blue-eyed men wish to accrue wealth and power.

    However, black man needs nothing at all; he remains so humble that all he wants is just to laugh and cry as he sees fit.  Thus the speaker is also implying that heretofore the black man has been denied his ability to laugh and cry according to his dictates.  But now through his humble prayer, the speaker hopes that God will give these well-deserved gifts, and then all will be right with the world.

    Reaping Bitter Fruit

    Readers likely wonder what may be the significance of race for the black poet Arno Bontemps.  The following poem by Bontemps is one example that demonstrates the poet’s attitude toward race:

    A Black Man Talks of Reaping

    I have sown beside all waters in my day.
    I planted deep, within my heart the fear
    That wind or fowl would take the grain away.
    I planted safe against this stark, lean year.
    I scattered seed enough to plant the land
    In rows from Canada to Mexico
    But for my reaping only what the hand
    Can hold at once is all that I can show.
    Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields
    My brother’s sons are gathering stalk and root,
    Small wonder then my children glean in fields
    They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.

    The speaker in the Bontemps “The Black Man Speaks of Reaping” portrays black labor as vast, careful, but undercompensated; the speaker’s harvest is stolen by others, leaving descendants to glean only bitter, inherited injustice.  

    While Bontemps did not spout bitter personal hatred toward his fellows of other races—as did LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka—Bontemps did often decry the limitations he perceived that were placed on the black race.  He then often expressed his bitterness with irony and satire.  

    In “God Give to Men,” Bontemps has crafted a speaker, who is demonstrating a bitter attitude directed toward the races of men not his own, and although the piece engages subtle irony, it loses its heft because of the focus on stereotypes.

    Painting of Arna Bontemps  - Betsy Graves Reyneau, 1888 - 1964 https://www.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.67.79
    Image: Painting of Arna Bontemps  – Betsy Graves Reyneau, 1888 – 1964

  • James Weldon Johnson’s “Mother Night”

    Image: James Weldon Johnson - Portrait by Laura Wheeler Waring https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.67.40
    Image: James Weldon Johnson – Portrait by Laura Wheeler Waring

    James Weldon Johnson’s “Mother Night”

    The speaker in Johnson’s sonnet, “Mother Night,” likens his own existence and protection to that of the planets—all are created and protected by the same Divine Entity.  Thus his soul remains a spark from the Original Divine Flame.

    Introduction with Text of “Mother Night”

    James Weldon Johnson’s “Mother Night,” a Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet, metaphorically dramatizes night as the calm union of the soul with the Oversoul or the individual self with Divine Self.

    The speaker, influenced by Eastern as well as Christian philosophical tenets, draws a parallel between the conflict of day and night in the cosmos and his own struggle with the pairs of opposites in his earthly sojourn.   This sonnet’s form offers polished Petrarchan rime-scheme:  ABBAABBA in the octave, and CDECDE in the sestet.

    Mother Night

    Eternities before the first-born day,
    Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
    Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
    A brooding mother over chaos lay.
    And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay,
    Shall run their fiery courses and then claim
    The haven of the darkness whence they came;
    Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way. 

    So when my feeble sun of life burns out,
    And sounded is the hour for my long sleep,
    I shall, full weary of the feverish light,
    Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt,
    And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep
    Into the quiet bosom of the Night.

    Commentary on “Mother Night”

    All creation is protected by its Creator, Who performs in various guises somewhat like a mother bird, who protects her progeny.  Nighttime is the time for rest, peaceful contemplation, and retreat from the hustle and bustle of day time activities.

    Thus, nighttime may be perceived as a protecting entity that offers solace and comfort to those in need and those who wish for such qualities in their lives.

    First Quatrain:  Existence Was Brooding before the First Created Day

    Eternities before the first-born day,
    Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
    Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
    A brooding mother over chaos lay.

    Like a brooding mother, that is, a mother bird who is sitting on her brood of eggs and then who continues to protect and keep them warm as baby birds, “Calm Night” kept watch over the unmanifested entity until the first-born day, before the first planets were created and hurled into activity: “ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame.” 

    The mature planet of the sun is like a bird that is now flying off on its own, after having been tenderly nurtured by its mother.

    Mother Night tenderly nurtured the growing cosmos that ultimately resulted in planets and people. Johnson’s metaphoric Night represents the non-vibratory realm of reality where nothing is manifested, and only the mind of God exists in that vibrationless realm.

    There is no creation only a peaceful possibility, a potential. Until God chooses to create beings to populate His cosmos, He simply broods like a mother over chaos. 

    Here the term chaos does not refer to our modern usage of confusion and disorder but to infinite formlessness. The term originates from the Greek Khaos, indicating a dark void from which the gods originated.

    Second Quatrain:  The Projection of Light as It Creates the Cosmos

    And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay,
    Shall run their fiery courses and then claim
    The haven of the darkness whence they came;
    Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way. 

    The second quatrain describes the plight of whirling suns as they “blaze and then decay.” Those planets of fire will eventually burn out and after they do, they will return “[b]ack to Nirvanic peace.” 

    The speaker employs the term Nirvanic, adjectival form for “Nirvana,” the Buddhist term for God-union, which is “Samadhi” in  Hinduism, “Salvation” in Christianity, and “Fana” in Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.

    The speaker cleverly plays by punning “whirling suns,” whereas sun puns son. With God as Mother Night, Her suns (sons) will “run their fiery courses” (live their passionate lives) and then recede back into the arms of the brooding mother or God. 

    First Tercet:  The Individual Self as It Careens Toward Oblivion

    So when my feeble sun of life burns out,
    And sounded is the hour for my long sleep,
    I shall, full weary of the feverish light,

    The sestet then shifts from the cosmos to the speaker himself, a son of the night mother. The speaker vows that he will react to his death a certain way, but he does not clarify that way yet, but merely sets up the conditions for his final claim. 

    As his life comes to an end, as he knows that it “is the hour for [his] long sleep,” he will be fully aware that his life is ebbing.

    Second Tercet:  Faith That Leads the Faithful toward Their True Home

    Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt,
    And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep
    Into the quiet bosom of the Night.

    And the speaker will “[w]elcome the darkness without fear or doubt.” His strong faith and intuition allow him to realize that his soul is going home. 

    This speaker has mused long and hard upon the profundities that puzzle every thinking brain.  He has contemplated what science has discovered about the nature of the created Cosmos.

    The speaker has likewise compared the knowledge  of scientists to that of the tenets of religion and philosophy.  And the result of his in depth study now allows him to formulate a pathway to Divine Reality.  

    This prescient speaker has come to understand that his own soul is simply a spark of the Divine Flame, Who has fashioned out of chaos a marvelous entity of joy, peace, hope, and love.

    This speaker’s eyelids may droop, but his soul is ever ensconced in the omnipresent protection of the beautiful mother, the Mother Night—who parallels the Blessèd Divine Reality—who will throughout eternity continue to brood over and fiercely guide and guard her beloved son.  

  • James Weldon Johnson’s “A Poet to His Baby Son”

    Image: James Weldon Johnson - https://www.green-wood.com/event/the-autobiography-of-an-ex-colored-man-110-years-later/
    Image: James Weldon Johnson

    James Weldon Johnson‘s “A Poet to His Baby Son”

    The poet James Weldon Johnson has created a speaker whose baby son gets a wild-eyed stare that can look “through the ceiling of the room, and beyond,” leading the father to suspect that he might have a budding poet to contend with.

    Introduction with Text of “A Poet to His Baby Son”

    James Weldon Johnson’s speaker in “A Poet to His Baby Son” offers a tongue-in-cheek complaint that his baby son might be contemplating becoming, like his father, a poet.

    A Poet to His Baby Son

    Tiny bit of humanity,
    Blessed with your mother’s face,  
    And cursed with your father’s mind.

    I say cursed with your father’s mind,
    Because you can lie so long and so quietly on your back,   
    Playing with the dimpled big toe of your left foot,   
    And looking away,
    Through the ceiling of the room, and beyond.
    Can it be that already you are thinking of being a poet?

    Why don’t you kick and howl,   
    And make the neighbors talk about   
    “That damned baby next door,”
    And make up your mind forthwith   
    To grow up and be a banker
    Or a politician or some other sort of go-getter   
    Or—?—whatever you decide upon,   
    Rid yourself of these incipient thoughts   
    About being a poet.

    For poets no longer are makers of songs,   
    Chanters of the gold and purple harvest,  
    Sayers of the glories of earth and sky,   
    Of the sweet pain of love
    And the keen joy of living;
    No longer dreamers of the essential dreams,   
    And interpreters of the eternal truth,   
    Through the eternal beauty.
    Poets these days are unfortunate fellows.   
    Baffled in trying to say old things in a new way   
    Or new things in an old language,   
    They talk abracadabra
    In an unknown tongue,
    Each one fashioning for himself
    A wordy world of shadow problems,
    And as a self-imagined Atlas,
    Struggling under it with puny legs and arms, 
    Groaning out incoherent complaints at his load.

    My son, this is no time nor place for a poet;   
    Grow up and join the big, busy crowd   
    That scrambles for what it thinks it wants   
    Out of this old world which is—as it is—
    And, probably, always will be.

    Take the advice of a father who knows:   
    You cannot begin too young   
    Not to be a poet.

    Commentary on “A Poet to His Baby Son”

    The speaker’s baby son gets a wild-eyed stare that seems so penetrating that it can look through things.  The speaker playfully then muses that the kid might be demonstrating qualities that could lead him to becoming a poet, like his father.  The speaker appears to be somewhat dismayed by that thought, for he is concerned about the current trend in poetry’s emphasis on non-poetic subjects.

    First Stanza:  A Distressing Possibility

    Tiny bit of humanity,
    Blessed with your mother’s face,  
    And cursed with your father’s mind.

    In the opening three-line stanza, the speaker is having a little talk with his infant son. He calls the baby boy a “[t]iny bit of humanity” and describes him as looking like his mother but thinking like his father. The speaker is happy with the first quality but distressed over the second.

    Second Stanza:  Poetry as a Curse

    I say cursed with your father’s mind,
    Because you can lie so long and so quietly on your back,   
    Playing with the dimpled big toe of your left foot,   
    And looking away,
    Through the ceiling of the room, and beyond.
    Can it be that already you are thinking of being a poet?

    The speaker is so distressed over the fact that the baby has his “father’s mind” that he calls the child “cursed” with that quality, repeating that lined in both the opening stanza and the second.

    The speaker then begins his exposition of the reason for thinking the baby  may be cursed. Before dropping the bombshell though, he relates that the baby can do baby things like lying quietly for extended periods on his little back, while playing with toes.  These are a little-baby activities that the speaker finds charming.

    But the speaker also senses a musing quality in the baby’s stare; the little one seems to be staring with such contemplation that he can see through the “ceiling” and “beyond.”  This searching stare suggest to the poet that his baby is contemplating becoming a poet when he grows up.

    Third Stanza:   Anything but Poetry!

    Why don’t you kick and howl,   
    And make the neighbors talk about   
    “That damned baby next door,”
    And make up your mind forthwith   
    To grow up and be a banker
    Or a politician or some other sort of go-getter   
    Or—?—whatever you decide upon,   
    Rid yourself of these incipient thoughts   
    About being a poet.

    The speaker then rhetorically queries his son, suggesting that he “kick and howl” and annoy the neighbors to get them to exclaim and swear because of the unwelcome noise.  Such behavior he suggests would ensure that his son might decide to be a enthusiastic individual and become some professional such as a “banker” or even a “politician.”

    The speaker insists that no matter what the kid does, he should never ever consider the notion of becoming a poet.  Because the father is a poet, he would know all of the disadvantages that profession can confer.

    Fourth Stanza:   The Modernist Bent

    For poets no longer are makers of songs,   
    Chanters of the gold and purple harvest,  
    Sayers of the glories of earth and sky,   
    Of the sweet pain of love
    And the keen joy of living;
    No longer dreamers of the essential dreams,   
    And interpreters of the eternal truth,   
    Through the eternal beauty.
    Poets these days are unfortunate fellows.   
    Baffled in trying to say old things in a new way   
    Or new things in an old language,   
    They talk abracadabra
    In an unknown tongue,
    Each one fashioning for himself
    A wordy world of shadow problems,
    And as a self-imagined Atlas,
    Struggling under it with puny legs and arms, 
    Groaning out incoherent complaints at his load.

    In the longest stanza, the speaker details his reason for dissuading his son from becoming a poet. The poet/speaker is decrying the modernist bent of poets. 

    These modernists do not compose songs of beauty, such as those of “the gold and purple harvest.”  They avoid remarking and making any references to “the glories of earth and sky.”  These poets seem to avoid taking note of their environment.

    But worse still is that these modernist poets are no longer interested in exploring and dramatizing love with all of its joys and sorrows.  They no longer compose songs devoted to revealing the joy just living can offer.   They seem to have ceased dreaming about essential realities.    These new poets avoid interpreting”eternal truth / Through the eternal beauty.”

    Instead of all these endearing qualities that have infused and sustained poetry and poetry lovers for centuries, these new poets have become “unfortunate fellows.” They have become confused and display only befuddlement stammering out ” old things in a new way.”

    The poet describes the claptrap of modernist poetry:  They speak a kind of magician logic in a made-up language.  They are no longer individuals with self-determination.

    These modernists are fabricating a word-salad world of “shadow problems.”  They represent themselves as “a self-imagined Atlas” “with puny legs and arms.” They bitch and moan about their victimhood.

    Fifth Stanza:  Not a Good Place for Poets

    My son, this is no time nor place for a poet;   
    Grow up and join the big, busy crowd   
    That scrambles for what it thinks it wants   
    Out of this old world which is—as it is—
    And, probably, always will be.

    It is then for the reasons spelled out in stanza four that the poet proclaims that in the current environment and with unhealthy, nasty trend, it is simply not a good time nor place to become a poet.v

    He suggests to the infant that he grow up and join the genuine activity of trying to be successful in acquiring what the needs and want, trying to have actual achievements, instead of bemoaning the lie of predetermined failure.  The speaker asserts that this world will always be this same old world.  And this poet/speaker’s experience tells him that it is not currently a place for a poet.

    Sixth Stanza:  The Voice of Experience

    Take the advice of a father who knows:   
    You cannot begin too young   
    Not to be a poet.

    Finally, the poet/father/speaker admonishes the baby son to follow his warning because it is coming from “a father who knows.”  He then cleverly turns his phrasing: “You cannot begin too young / Not to be a poet.”

    The Trend of Victimology in Poetry

    This poem is playful, yet serious. The speaker is only musing on the possibility that his son is contemplating becoming a poet, but he uses the poem as a forum to express his dismay at the way poetry was becoming a cesspool of victimology and self-aggrandizement at the expense of truth and beauty.  This poet was living during the period of time that saw identity politics beginning to take hold of the arts.

    For my own take on art’s decay through post-modernism please visit, “Poetry and Politics under the Influence of Postmodernism.”

  • Original Short Literary Fiction: “Transformation through the Ages: Two Letters to Myself”

    Image-Created by ChatGPT inspired by the text
    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the text

    Speculative Literary Fiction Alert!
    This text is speculative literary fiction.
    It does not depict any real person or actual event.

    Original Short Literary Fiction: “Transformation through the Ages: Two Letters to Myself“

    The process of aging asks us to move from one version of ourselves into another—slowly learning how to carry memory, change, loss, wisdom, and time within the same person.

    Dear Older Me,

    I’m writing to you from age twenty, which feels impossibly young and impossibly certain all at once, right on the edge of adulthood. Everyone keeps telling me that life will change me, but I still wake up every morning believing I will somehow remain recognizable to myself forever. I wonder if you remember feeling that way.

    Lately I’ve been thinking about aging—not in the dramatic sense of illness or endings, but in the quieter sense of becoming someone new over time. I look at photographs from just a few years ago and already feel strange about them. 

    The girl in those pictures is me, but also not entirely me anymore. Her worries were smaller. Her body was different, plumper, rosier, full of some kind of strange awareness.  But her understanding of herself was unfinished.

    I wonder what it’s like for you now, at nearly ninety, carrying six plus decades of former selves inside you.

    Do you still feel connected to me? Or do I seem like a distant relative you remember fondly but imperfectly?

    People talk so much about youth as though it’s the truest version of a person, and aging as though it’s some slow departure from that truth. But I’m beginning to suspect that every age is temporary, and every version of ourselves eventually becomes a kind of memory.

    That thought frightens me sometimes.

    I notice already how language changes around age. Adults speak of young people with nostalgia, impatience, envy, and tenderness all at once. And young people speak about aging as though it’s something abstract—something happening to other people. Yet every day we are all moving quietly toward another stage of ourselves.

    I wonder what it feels like to look into the mirror at eighty plus. Do you still recognize your expressions even if the face has changed? Do you still feel young somewhere underneath everything time has altered?

    I’ve also been thinking about photographs and memories. Right now, my room is full of snapshots from childhood, school dances, birthdays, awkward haircuts, and vacations that already feel far away. I can’t imagine ever wanting to hide those versions of myself, even the embarrassing ones. But I wonder if, by your age, those images begin to feel less like evidence and more like archaeology.

    Do old photographs comfort you, or do they ache?  I hope you’ve kept them all anyway.

    I hope you understand that the younger versions of yourself were not mistakes. I hope you speak kindly about us—the insecure teenager, the reckless twenty-year-old, the exhausted middle-aged woman trying to hold everything together. I hope you see all of them not as separate people, but as chapters in the same long story.  Most of all, I hope you haven’t become embarrassed by change itself.

    Right now, growing older seems terrifying because everything around me celebrates beginnings and quietly fears decline. But perhaps aging is not a process of disappearing. Maybe it’s a process of accumulation. Maybe the older face simply carries more life within it.  If you could tell me anything from where you are now, I think I’d want reassurance that becoming older does not mean becoming less.

    I hope you still laugh easily.  I hope you still feel wonder.  I hope you still believe your life mattered.  And I hope, somehow, that you are grateful for me too—for this young girl standing at the beginning, trying so hard to understand time before she has truly lived it.

    Love,
    Your Former Self

    Dear Former Self,

    Your letter arrived like a voice carried across water—young, searching, and achingly sincere. I read it slowly, not because age has made me slower, though perhaps it has, but because your words reopened rooms in my memory I had not visited in years.

    Yes, I remember you.  More importantly, I remember being you.

    At twenty, you believe identity is something you must discover once and then defend forever. What age eventually teaches is that the self is not a monument. It is weather. It shifts continuously—sometimes gently, sometimes violently—and survives through adaptation rather than permanence.

    You ask whether I still feel connected to you. I do, though not in the simple way you imagine. You are not buried beneath the years; you are woven through them. I still recognize your idealism, your sensitivity, your fear of being forgotten or diminished by time. Those things remain, though softened now by experience.

    And yes, there are moments when I look into the mirror and feel startled. Aging happens so gradually that you scarcely notice it while living through it, and then suddenly you catch sight of your mother’s face in your own reflection, or your grandmother’s hands resting in your lap.

    The body changes first in obvious ways. The knees complain. The spine stiffens. Sleep becomes lighter. Faces hollow and soften simultaneously. But the deeper transformation  is stranger: the realization that inside the aging body, consciousness remains largely untouched by chronology.

    I am eighty-nine, yet some mornings I still feel eighteen until I stand up.  That is one of the great hidden truths of aging: the young self never fully leaves. She simply becomes surrounded by additional selves gathered over a lifetime.

    You asked whether old photographs comfort or ache. The answer is both.  Photographs become less about appearance and more about vanished worlds. You stop focusing on how pretty you once were and begin noticing who is no longer standing beside you. An old picture can break your heart because time is visible there in a way it never feels while you are living it.

    But keep the photographs anyway.  Keep all of them.  One day you will treasure the evidence that ordinary afternoons once existed at all.

    You fear that aging may mean becoming less. I understand that fear because our culture speaks of aging almost entirely in the language of loss. Loss of beauty. Loss of relevance. Loss of strength. Loss of possibility.

    And yes, there are losses. I will not lie to you about that.  You will lose people you cannot imagine living without.  You will lose certain ambitions.  You will lose versions of your body that once felt effortless.  But aging is not merely subtraction.  It is also refinement.

    At twenty, you experience life intensely because everything is new. At ninety, you experience life intensely because you finally understand how temporary everything always was. A simple morning light across the kitchen table can move you to tears. An ordinary conversation can feel sacred.  Youth burns brightly, but age glows.

    You asked whether I still laugh easily. I do—more easily, in fact. Young people often believe seriousness gives life meaning, but age teaches the opposite. Much of survival depends upon learning when to laugh at yourself gently.

    And wonder? Yes, wonder remains too. Perhaps even more so. The older you become, the more miraculous existence itself begins to feel. Not because life becomes easier, but because you finally understand how improbable it always was.

    As for whether your life mattered: meaning does not arrive as a grand declaration. It accumulates quietly through small acts of love, attention, endurance, forgiveness, and presence. A meaningful life rarely feels monumental from the inside.

    You hoped I would be grateful for you.  I am.

    I am grateful for your impatience, your hunger for understanding, your belief that life must contain something beautiful and true. You carried us forward. Without your courage to begin, I would never have arrived here with so much tenderness intact.

    So let me leave you with this:

    Do not spend your youth mourning age in advance. Become fully each version of yourself when it arrives.

    The frightened girl, the ambitious woman, the joyful grandmother—they all belong to you. None of them are failures of the others. They are simply the many forms a human life must take in order to become complete.

    Love and blessings,
    Myself Now

  • Emily Dickinson’s “There’s something quieter than sleep”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “There’s something quieter than sleep”

    Emily Dickinson’s “There’s something quieter than sleep” dramatizes the speaker’s reverence for the mystery of death, portraying it as a sacred and nearly mystical transition beyond earthly experience.

    Introduction and Text of “There’s something quieter than sleep”

    Emily Dickinson’s “There’s something quieter than sleep” features four minimalist quatrains that progress from observation to meditation. The speaker contemplates the stillness surrounding death, yet she approaches the subject delicately, refusing crude or noisy emotional excess. 

    Dickinson’s characteristic dashes and slant rimes contribute to the hushed atmosphere, while the speaker’s use of euphemism reveals both awe and uncertainty before the soul’s departure from its physical encasement.

    The poem’s spiritual atmosphere recalls Paramahansa Yogananda’s teaching that death is merely “a sleep of forgetfulness” before the soul awakens again in divine consciousness. 

    There’s something quieter than sleep

    There’s something quieter than sleep
    Within this inner room!
    It wears a sprig upon its breast –
    And will not tell its name.

    Some touch it, and some kiss it–
    Some chafe its idle hand –
    It has a simple gravity
    I do not understand!

    I would not weep if I were they –
    How rude in one to sob!
    Might scare the quiet fairy
    Back to her native wood!

    While simple–hearted neighbors
    Chat of the “Early dead” –
    We – prone to periphrasis,
    Remark that Birds have fled!

    Commentary on “There’s something quieter than sleep”

    The speaker contemplates death as a solemn but peaceful mystery whose stillness transcends ordinary sleep and earthly sorrow.

    Stanza 1: Deeper Than Sleep

    There’s something quieter than sleep
    Within this inner room!
    It wears a sprig upon its breast –
    And will not tell its name.

    The speaker opens by comparing death to sleep, yet she quickly insists that death possesses an even greater silence. The “inner room” suggests both a literal chamber where the deceased lies and the inward spiritual realm where the soul retreats after leaving the body. 

    By refusing to name the condition directly, the speaker creates an atmosphere of reverent uncertainty, as though ordinary language cannot fully contain the mystery before her.

    The “sprig upon its breast” likely refers to a funeral flower or symbolic greenery placed upon the body. Such imagery quietly evokes immortality because evergreen branches traditionally symbolize eternal life. 

    Paramahansa Yogananda frequently taught that the soul remains untouched by bodily death, affirming that spirit “cannot die because it was never born.” The speaker appears instinctively aware that what lies in the room is not annihilation but transition.

    Stanza 2: What Some Do

    Some touch it, and some kiss it–
    Some chafe its idle hand –
    It has a simple gravity
    I do not understand!

    The speaker now observes the behavior of mourners gathered around the deceased. Some touch the body tenderly, while others attempt to warm the “idle hand,” as though reluctant to accept the final stillness. Their gestures reveal humanity’s instinctive resistance to separation and mortality.

    Yet the speaker remains fascinated less by grief than by the strange dignity surrounding the dead. 

    The phrase “simple gravity” conveys both physical stillness and spiritual weight. The body no longer participates in earthly activity, yet it seems surrounded by a quiet authority the speaker cannot explain. 

    Dickinson’s speakers often encounter realities that intuition senses more deeply than reason can analyze, and here her speaker admits openly that death possesses meanings beyond intellectual understanding.  The stanza also reveals the speaker’s restraint. 

    Rather than indulging in emotional display, she studies the scene with contemplative wonder. That attitude resembles Dickinson’s many poetic riddles, in which truth emerges indirectly through symbol, suggestion, and silence rather than declaration.

    Stanza 3: Shy Fairies

    I would not weep if I were they –
    How rude in one to sob!
    Might scare the quiet fairy
    Back to her native wood!

    The speaker gently criticizes loud mourning, suggesting that sobbing is almost discourteous in the presence of death’s delicate mystery. Her use of the term “quiet fairy” transforms death into a shy spiritual visitor rather than a terrifying destroyer. The fairy imagery softens the scene and presents death as something ethereal, elusive, and perhaps even benevolent.

    By imagining that noisy grief could frighten the fairy away, the speaker implies that death deserves calm reverence instead of emotional chaos. The image resembles ancient folklore in which supernatural beings vanish when approached too aggressively. Dickinson’s speaker thus elevates death into a sacred event requiring inward stillness.

    The stanza also reflects the speaker’s intuition that the soul belongs ultimately to another realm, the “native wood.” The earthly body merely hosts the spirit temporarily before it returns to its true home. 

    uch an idea harmonizes with Yogananda’s teaching that the soul journeys through many states of existence while remaining eternally connected to Divine Spirit. 

    Stanza 4: Euphemism and Evasion

    While simple–hearted neighbors
    Chat of the “Early dead” –
    We – prone to periphrasis,
    Remark that Birds have fled!

    In the final stanza, the speaker contrasts ordinary language with poetic circumlocution. The “simple-hearted neighbors” speak plainly of the “Early dead,” employing conventional social terminology without reflection. The speaker, however, admits that “we” prefer “periphrasis,” or indirect expression.

    Instead of saying someone has died, the speaker remarks that “Birds have fled.” The bird symbolizes the departing soul escaping the confinement of the physical encasement. 

    Dickinson often employed birds as emblems of transcendence, freedom, and spiritual aspiration. Here the image beautifully transforms death from grim cessation into graceful departure.

    The stanza closes the poem on a note of mystery rather than despair. The speaker never claims complete knowledge regarding death, but she senses that the soul’s leaving resembles flight more than extinction. 

    Like many Dickinson speakers, this speaker balances uncertainty with spiritual intuition, allowing poetry itself to gesture toward ineffable truths, which ordinary speech cannot fully express.