My all-time favorite poet… her verse is still very much alive.
Those happy-go-lucky types are the best.
Heaven is all we know of parting
And all we need of hell.
I’m nobody – who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then there’s a pair of us – don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
One of those poets I can see the quality of their work, but could never really get into her work.
This is about the only poem I remember from her.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12242/12242-h/12242-h.htm#Series_Two
XLVI.
DYING.
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, — and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
Dickinson hasn’t been the same for me since someone pointed out that most of her poems can be sung to “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”
Redwolf
It puts the fun back into funeral!
I’ve dodged this bullet. My wife is in charge of reading all the (insert a polite, diplomatic word for boring here) type authors. She handles the Shakespeare too.
Shakespeare - boring? Of course one shouldn’t read his plays, they need to be performed. There’s comedy, action, love stories, anything you like (just avoid the history plays).
My main awareness of Emily Dickinson comes via Woody Allen: “Emily Dickinson was wrong. Hope is not the thing with feathers. The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to see a specialist in Zurich.”
I once spent a half hour standing in front of Emily Dickinson’s house.
It was bitter cold January, and I was in Amherst to buy a concertina. At the end of the day I walked over to the Dickinson home, not far from the town center. There was nothing to see, of course. The house was closed, and the streets empty. But I stood there shivering in the lengthening shadows, imagining that extraordinary life within those walls, talking to Emily, and reciting to myself what verses I could recall. A sort of homage, I suppose, and a moving experience.
Now that The Homestead and The Evergreens have been restored and are open for public tours, I’m going to have to make my way up to Massachusetts and pay a visit myself some day.
I’ll have an abundance of free time in just a little over a year, and a nice road trip would probably do me a lot of good.
Funny Story: I was in a noisy cafeteria and the folks that I was dining with were discussing a local Shakespeare event and I get ready to say (and the whole cafeteria gets quiet all at once) so I shout, “I think Shakespeare is totally lame.” Good for me it wasn’t a real snooty place. No one said a thing. This is one of my many shortcomings what can I say.
A song from As You Like It. NOT lame.
It was a Lover and his Lass
IT was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o’er the green corn-field did pass,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
Between the acres of the rye,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
These pretty country folks would lie,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
This carol they began that hour,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
How that life was but a flower
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
And, therefore, take the present time
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
For love is crown`d with the prime
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
“You beastly knave, know you no reverence?” 
Nope, no reverence. The only adaptation of a work of Shakespeare that I like is an episode of Moonlighting (starred Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd) that was loosing based on Taming of the Shrew.
I do like Shakespeare fishing equipment. Does that count?
Well, yeah! I just finished a restoration on a 1936 Shakespeare bamboo flyrod, but just remember real men don’t use bait.
“Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.”
‘I am not a slut, but I thank God for making me foul!’ As you like it.
I am a General.
“Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.” E.D.