EDJE

EDJE

Like her, the Saints retire, In their Chapeaux of fire-- Martial as she!

EDJE is an ongoing experiment in a mode of criticism that, instead of an explication of a text, offers something closer to a translation, or transformation, or reply to it.

The left column gives poems by Emily Dickinson, numbered according to R. W. Franklin’s edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Harvard 1998). The right column is by me. To learn more about the project, click here.

150

Like her, the Saints retire,
In their Chapeaux of fire--
Martial as she!

Like her the evenings steal
Purple and Cochineal
After the Day!

"Departed"--both--they say!
i.e. gathered away,
Not found,

Argues the Aster still--
Reasons the Daffodil
Profound!

Sometimes the riddle is
a Tonka toy.
Sometimes a head on fire.

The royal robes are always
Bespattered with the carmine
Of the tiny squashed bugs.

To be gathered away
Is a wondrous thing:
Never to be found,

Save by the motionless flower
Dug deep in winter soil,
Philosophizing.