tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post4657868168521568398..comments2024-03-27T11:02:20.107-07:00Comments on the prowling Bee: 'Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notchSusan Kornfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05384011972647144453noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-51023892383485613002023-08-20T07:09:57.432-07:002023-08-20T07:09:57.432-07:00“Dickinson indeed uses the second person, as if sp...“Dickinson indeed uses the second person, as if speaking directly to the reader.”<br /><br />She does, in a way she has not before. I don’t recall another poem where ED so obviously and completely switches person from first to second, that its, “I”, “me”, and “my”, to “you” and “your”. <br /><br />Reversing the switch, which is how ED may first have written ‘Twas like a Maelstrom’, the poem becomes even more ghastly:<br /><br />'Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch,<br />That nearer, every Day,<br />Kept narrowing its boiling Wheel<br />Until the Agony<br /><br />Toyed coolly with the final inch<br />Of my delirious Hem —<br />And I dropt, lost,<br />When something broke —<br />And let me from a Dream —<br /><br />As if a Goblin with a Gauge —<br />Kept measuring the Hours —<br />Until I felt my Second<br />Weigh, helpless, in his Paws —<br /><br />And not a Sinew — stirred — could help,<br />And sense was setting numb —<br />When God — remembered — and the Fiend<br />Let go, then, Overcome —<br /><br />As if my Sentence stood — pronounced —<br />And I were frozen led<br />From Dungeon's luxury of Doubt<br />To Gibbets, and the Dead —<br /><br />And when the Film had stitched my eyes<br />A Creature gasped "Reprieve"!<br />Which Anguish was the utterest — then —<br />To perish, or to live?<br /><br />ED paints the blurry space between sanity and madness on par with Shakespeare.<br />Larry Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02810899482852120751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-9874795878332118952023-08-19T14:33:42.587-07:002023-08-19T14:33:42.587-07:00How could “you” drift so close to madness without ...How could “you” drift so close to madness without letting go, dragged over the edge by the current of the brain, especially if “you” believe that swimming upstream is equally painful and hopeless? Are “You” Hamlet, determined “to set things right” before you die, or Ophelia, who dies without hope? <br /><br />In 1862 ED wrote Higginson she chose to sing poetry to survive, but her scars leave excruciating poems such as ‘Twas like a Maelstrom’, along with a gamut of 1300+ other yet-to-be-borns. Maybe she didn't want to disappoint her fanclub for centuries to come.<br />Larry Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02810899482852120751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-69287521778518439722020-08-20T06:20:06.864-07:002020-08-20T06:20:06.864-07:00I’m with Lyndall Gordon on this one. This is a p...I’m with Lyndall Gordon on this one. This is a perfect picture of the epileptic, waiting in agony for what she knows is coming, but doesn’t know when. When the maelstrom/goblin/executioner does inevitably return, it ravages its victim nearly to the point of death before it finally let’s go and the seizure is over, leaving its wrung-out victim to recover, terrorized by the spectre of its inevitable and unpredictable return. A terrible way to live - haunted by founded fear. Pphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01023162636086533197noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-54966447641163448462013-03-13T21:08:07.303-07:002013-03-13T21:08:07.303-07:00Yes, I can see it. Typical for her to work round a...Yes, I can see it. Typical for her to work round and round at an idea, delving, working it out... I'd not known about that poem, "The Whole of It." Thanks you for this insight. <br /> Not for Dickinson the hospice with morphine.Susan Kornfeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05384011972647144453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-1163313828381736812013-03-13T18:59:04.270-07:002013-03-13T18:59:04.270-07:00That last line sure reminds me of her poem about t...That last line sure reminds me of her poem about the mouse on its slow way to death in the teeth of the cat ("The Whole of It): "'Tis life's award to die, contenteder if once, than dying half, then rallying, for consciouser eclipse." Very simlar poems, maybe?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com