Sublime

Emily Dickinson’s beautiful poem is called Wild Nights – Wild Nights!, and combines two elements of which I am inordinately fond: punctuation, and the theme of finding, at long last, a soul mate.

The poet has to be able to create symbols that are muted and yet undeniable. The poet, above all other writers, must know how to edit out the extraneous, received, repetitious, and misleading.

We must be careful here. Poetic plots do not deal in generalizations (‘people usually get up in the morning’); they make statements about what a particular individual does at a particular time (‘Bill got up this morning’).

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

satyr."

Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed, 270 My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest My Admirable butterfly! Explain How could you, in the gloam of Lilac Lane, Have let uncouth, hysterical John Shade Blubber your face, and ear, and shoulder blade?