Dear Emily

When I first fell in love with poetry, I was around 11 years old.

I remember going into the small bookstore in the center corner of the only strip mall in town. I’m not sure what the bookstore’s name was. I didn’t take in anything beyond the lit-up neon “Books” sign and the divine smell of freshly printed books luring me through the doors.

It was a magical place full of adventure and dreams— my favorite place.

I didn’t get to go often. I lived an hour away in an even smaller town. Every visit was a treat. I can still see the layout of the store, the genre areas I would always head to first, the floor that I would sit on while I thumbed through my selections, and the woman who was always working—who I now, with my adult brain, assume was the owner. I wish I could tell her how she and her store lives on in my memory.

A girl always remembers her first bookstore…

…and her first poetry book.

The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and The Neverending Story by Michael Ende were the first loves I purchased at that small little bookstore. They are worn now, but well loved and cared for. They all carry the nameplate I carefully placed on the opening page (I felt fancy), proclaiming they are a part of my lifelong library.

They are friends that I revisit from time to time. And like the best of friends, they soothe a weary soul and an aching heart with warmth, familiarity, and conversation— gently guiding me back to the parts of myself that I’ve begun to forget while on this weary journey.

Most recently, I paid a visit to my dear friend, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.

A letter in gratitude:

Dear Emily,

Your words wrap around me— a gentle hug I desperately needed, though I hadn’t realized. I saw you on the shelf while I sat huddled beneath the blanket, trying to keep warm from the cold winter air seeping through the drafty old windows.

I took you off the bookshelf and remembered…

I remembered picking you up in that bookstore years ago.

I remembered how I loved the roses on the cover of the dustjacket. I don’t think I had drawn or cared for roses before then. Now they seem to creep into many of my art pieces—maybe there is a connection?

I remembered reading your words and glimpsing the lyric nature that exists in the fabric of the world, often unseen.

Your prose is full of imagery, innovation, and uniquely your own. It spoke to me. But as I’ve aged, it speaks differently. The same words but read through a heart that has known heartbreak… well they take on a new meaning. I like to think you understood this about poetry’s capabilities.

Thank you for your gift, dear Emily.

I could go on, but I won’t. You get the point…

While I know to some these memories, this letter, this post, may seem romanticized and the simple ramblings of a dreamer, well I guess in truth they are. They are part of the foundational roots of who I am and hard-wired in the DNA of my artistic nature. So instead of fighting that, maybe I should learn to embrace it?

Let’s face it… I’m a storyteller, an illustrator, lover of the organic shapes and beauty found in nature, and an optimist of the human spirit. My work is founded in emotion and memory, lyrical, with elements of melancholy and soul searching turmoil. I want truth, beauty, and pain in it. What can be more truthful than embracing the part of me that drives the artist fire within me the most?

I’m pretty sure the poetry of my dear friend Emily had a hand in initiating that fire. But she doesn’t get all the credit.

The sparks were already there.

P.S. I promise not ALL of my posts will be this sappy. But then again… I am who I am. :)

Classic Emily Dickinson poems which you may already know, but are part of the catalyst that brewed in my younger self:

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me—
The simple News that Nature told—
With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see—
For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen—
Judge tenderly—of Me

-by Emily Dickinson, courtesy of The Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation.

Photo of Emily Dickinson | public domain | courtesy of Emily Dickinson Museum

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—'tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity—

-by Emily Dickinson, courtesy of The Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation.