Our poem pick this time is by Emily Dickinson, great 19th century American poet, from Amherst, Massachusetts. While her early work featured fairly traditional rhyme, Dickinson pushed her work to more experimental edges for her time and gender. I like this one because it evokes a question for me of what exactly happened twice before to bring the speaker in the poem to the brink of death. Does she speak literally of death or a figure of other losses? The last line sums up what most of us have experienced at one time or another.
My life closed twice before its close
My life closed twice before its close --
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Emily Dickinson