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”
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.
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’ 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.
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”
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.”
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”
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.
O! My Belovèd Is Everywhere
—after “O Thou Blue Sky”
Where is my belovèd Lord?
Does He wait and watch behind
The veil of sky?
Does He draw the blue curtain
Around Himself to play
Hide and seek with us?
O! My Belovèd is everywhere!
Behind the sky, in front, above, below,
On all sides.
A rent in the blue fabric of sky
Could no more reveal my Belovèd
Than a gash in a vein reveals the heart.
O! My Belovèd is everywhere!—
Playing hide and seek.
Come out, my Belovèd,
Come out of my heart
And play with me openly.
Emily Dickinson’s “Could live – did live”
Emily Dickinson’s speaker in “Could live – did live” is speculating about the possible inner motivation that urged on the heart of an individual acquaintance who has now died. He did live, she insists, but what drove him?—This man, who seems to have maintained such an even-minded temperament.
Introduction and Text of “Could live – did live”
In Emily Dickinson’s “Could live – did live,” the speaker is speculating about the inner life of an individual who has died. Because she refers to the deceased as “he” and “his” in the lines, “Through faith in one he met not, / To introduce his soul,” it is safe to assume that the individual is a man or boy—more likely a man because of the nature of the information offered by the speaker.
The dead man has experienced enough of life that the speaker, who has observed at least periodically the man living his life, has acquired and retained enough information to make certain assumptions about how he thought and felt and what his inclinations might have been.
As Dickinson is wont to do, in this poem, the poet is playing with English grammar. She is employing the conditional mood of verbs. In the opening two lines, she juxtaposes the conditional mood use with the indicative mood emphatic; thus, she moves from “could live” to “did live.”
That the poet added her own emphasis to the emphatic “did” further highlights her play on the language. In modern print, the emphasis is shown by italicizing—”did“—while in her handwriting, Dickinson shows that emphasis by underlining–”did.”
Could live – did live
Could live – did live –
Could die – did die –
Could smile upon the whole
Through faith in one he met not,
To introduce his soul.
Could go from scene familiar
To an untraversed spot –
Could contemplate the journey
With unpuzzled heart –
Such trust had one among us,
Among us not today –
We who saw the launching
Never sailed the Bay!
Commentary on “Could live – did live”
The speaker in this Dickinson gem is offering a somewhat clipped observation about the possible inner life of an individual male acquaintance who has died. She has observed at least enough of the individual’s comings and going that she remains capable of forming an opinion about him.
Interestingly, what the speaker claims about the possible inner life of another more than likely remains even more on target about her own station in life.
First Stanza: Conditional Speculation
Could live – did live –
Could die – did die –
Could smile upon the whole
Through faith in one he met not,
To introduce his soul.
The speaker begins by contrasting the difference between the conditional and the indicative moods. She states elliptically that someone had been able to live —”could”—but then adds immediately that he did, in fact, live.
The first proposition is stated with the conditional mood auxiliary verb “could,” and the second half of her statement features the emphatic form “did” of the indicative mood “live.”
In the second line, she repeats the conditional vs indicative moods again with the opposite of “live.” Thus she is reporting that someone who could have lived, did, in fact, live, and then this same individual could have died—because he lived, of course—and he, in fact, “did die.”
By playing with the grammar of the language, the speaker indicates that her own solemn mood may be moving her to speculate and to postpone her grieving for this individual. But then she launches another conditional mood “could smile,” as she reports the level of the deceased’s faith.
The deceased was able to smile upon the whole bewildering commotion of life and death likely remaining quite neutral about any deep meaning those puzzling acts might hold; he, at least, possessed some level of faith to be able to hold such a smile, and his soul thereby has remained an entity without dedication to a higher consciousness. The speaker, however, is merely reporting, not judging.
Second Stanza: Remaining Conditional
Could go from scene familiar
To an untraversed spot –
Could contemplate the journey
With unpuzzled heart –
Returning again to the conditional mood, the speaker continues to report on the deceased’s ability to face the various vicissitudes of life. His temperamental state seems to have remained somewhat even-minded whether he was moving in “familiar” territory or venturing out to parts unknown.
The speaker asserts that the deceased “could go” and was also able to “contemplate” his travels without his “heart” becoming puzzled, or likely even frazzled. The speaker is offering only her interpretation of how the deceased felt; thus the continued employment of the conditional mood remains operative and most appropriate.
While her uncertainly is not paramount, she, nevertheless, does not wish to sound as though she can make any final pronouncement about how the deceased went about his life and his days upon planet Earth.
She knows that too deep a speculation would ultimately amount to judging. She does imply that she likely would not retain such an even-minded ability throughout her puzzling sojourn through life and death.
Third Stanza: Trust and Faith in Life’s Inner Turmoil
Such trust had one among us,
Among us not today –
We who saw the launching
Never sailed the Bay!
The speaker finalizes her speculative evaluation of the deceased’s inner mental/heartfelt state by asserting that his trust, which did not rise to level of faith, was as she has thus far described. He was “among us,” and today he is no longer “among us.”
The speaker then concludes by remarking that although “we,” the living, have been able to observe the manner in which the deceased passed his days, we cannot know for certain how his experience actually shaped and formed his deep heart’s core and ultimate mental state.
While we may have observed, an observation is not the actual experience. The deceased is the only one who has “sailed the Bay”; his friends, family, and acquaintances merely caught certain glimpses of his “launching.” They remain in state of “should, would, could” as far as the deceased’s inner life is concerned.
The speaker offers an observation, however, that may be quite accurate, but in the long run, the accuracy is in her own self-revelation, not necessarily in that of the target of her report.
