Dickinson's work appears simple in its everyday context. It is striking for its accessibility and openness, making its relevance uniquely suitable to its reader. I've selected three specific poems to work with. I've selected them based on their connectivity to one another and heavy connections I've formed with them in connection with my own work. So much of her work seems to be heavily grounded in introspection, yet she is so clever and mature in the associations she makes to nature, sexuality, love, sense of self, and the emotional realm. It is this "ownness" that interests me. It is a surety which transcends loss and void and it is remarkable.
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
His oriental heresies
Exhilarate the Bee,
And filling all the Earth and Air
With gay apostasy
Fatigued at last, a Clover plain
Allures his jaded eye
That lowly Breast where Butterflies
Have felt it meet to die-
A Bee his burnished Carriage
Drove boldly to a Rose-
Combinedly alighting-
Himself-his Carriage was-
The Rose received his visit
With frank tranquility
Withholding not a Crescent
To his Cupidity-
Their Moment consummated-Remained for him-to flee-
Remained for her-of rapture
But the humility.