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URBAN LEGENDS

My two most recent posts have featured paintings by Frido Kahlo. My wife and I visited an exhibit, “Frida: Beyond the Myth,” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and I shared some paintings we saw there.

I have a final painting to share, and it’s a bit unusual – not one that is typical of what I know of Kahlo’s style. This painting, “Urban Landscape,” was painted in 1925 when Kahlo was 18 years old. The style, to me, is more a mix of Charles Sheeler – or perhaps Charles Demuth – and Edward Hopper.

The pics: Top: Kahlo; below left to right: Sheeler, Demuth, & Hopper.

By the way, I found a “Frida Kahlo Wiki,” and it included this information about the painting:

After Kahlo left the hospital where she was recovering from her bus accident, she painted this small stark rooftop scene. In this painting, we can see how Frida was learning new techniques. Witness to the change of Mexico towards an industrial area, she wanted to reflect it in her work. The structure of this painting is not naive and is a bit more complicated than previous paintings. With the simple square structures and the lack of color, Frida is able to transmit the coldness and desolation of this urban landscape.

That Wiki can be found HERE.

I don’t know through which window Kahlo peered to paint this scene – or if it were all imagined – but Emily Dickinson did pen her poetry by her bedroom window, and of course, she had no such industrial scene.

In her poem “By my Window have I for Scenery,” though, she did describe her view: “Just a Sea – with a Stem” – that is, a pine tree. The poem is below, and I wrote about it back in early June, HERE.

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Hope is that thing with feathers

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Emily Dickinson

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Rhina Polonia Espaillat

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“There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry.”

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DICKINSON AVATARS PACK

By clicking the source link, you’ll find 264 avatars for roleplay, made by myself, from Dickinson (s1-3)

Featured: Adrian Enscoe, Wiz Khalifa, Toby Huss, Hailee Steinfeld, Jane Krakowski, Anna Baryshnikov and Ella Hunt

Please check the rules

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moodboard: demiromantic emily dickinson

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Promise me somehting, Sue — Okay, promise me two things. One: That you won't move away to Michigan. And two: Thqt you'll always love me more than him.

As far as the first one goes, it's really Austin's decision. But as far as the second...

Yeah?

Well... I wouldn't worry too much about that one.

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GUESS WORK

Yesterday, I shared a painting by Frida Kahlo which I had seen at the current Kahlo exhibit at the VMFA, along with two of my favorite poems by Dickinson.

This morning I have another of Kahlo’s paintings from the exhibit, and this painting called to mind a favorite poem of mine by E. E. Cummings, “when god lets my body be.”

It also reminded me of Dickinson’s “I am alive – I guess” because of the poem’s opening lines:

I am alive – I guess –

The Branches on my Hand

Are full of Morning Glory –

And at my finger's end –

This poem is doubtful and melancholic at the start. The poet states, “I am alive,” but then the speak adds, “I guess.”

Hmm. Is she not sure she is alive? She is holding flowers after all (stanza 1), and if she huffs on a mirror, she can see proof of her breath (stanza 2).

In stanzas 3 and 4, she states “I am alive – because” – because she is not a corpse in a parlor being viewed by mourners asking "Was it conscious – when it stepped / In Immortality?"

Stanza 5 opens with the same statement, “I am alive – because” – because she is not in a grave with a tombstone marked with “my Girlhood's name – So Visitors may know / Which Door is mine” (stanza 6).

She is alive, indeed, and the poem ends in a more exuberant tone:

How good – to be alive!

How infinite — to be

Alive – two-fold – The Birth I had –

And this – besides, in – Thee!

Yes, “How good – to be alive! How infinite – the be.”

As my mother used to say, “It sure beats the alternative."

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Dickinson

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LUNA Y SOL

My wife and I visited the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts recently and toured an exhibit on Frida Kahlo, “Frida: Beyond the Myth.” Info on the exhibit is HERE.

It was fascinating to learn about her life – I knew very little about her, particularly the extent of the physical and emotional pain she endured throughout her life (including childhood polio and a near-fatal bus accident as a teenager that left her with multiple fractures and a shattered pelvis) – and following our visit, we watched the 2002 biopic about Kahlo, called “Frida,” starring Salma Hayek.

It was interesting to see the very paintings we had just viewed at the museum intertwined in the movie’s story, and to be honest, now that we’ve seen the film, I think I’d like to see the exhibit one more time before it closes.

Anyway, there was a still life toward the end of the exhibit, and I loved Kahlo’s depiction of the sun and the moon in the top left and right corners. Those depictions made me think of my favorite poems of the sun and the moon by Dickinson, and I thought I would share them today, “The moon was but a chin of gold,” and “The Sun just touched the morning.”​

Enjoy!

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If I can stop one heart from breaking…

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Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Otis P. Lord, featured in The Letters of Emily Dickinson

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THE PURLOINED LETTER

In late July, my wife and I visited Cape Charles on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (on the southern tip of the DelMarVa Peninsula), and while we were there, I visited one branch of their public library to see what Dickinson they had on the shelves.

Recent posts have highlighted some of my finds there, and two of them focused on the 2006 Oxford Book of American Poetry. I also later found the 1976 edition of this anthology online, and in one post, I made a few observations comparing the two editions.. Today, I’ll compare the Dickinson offerings between the two editions.

The 1976 edition includes 70 poems by Dickinson, and the 2006 edition has 43. I’m sure some were removed to make room for the “three times as many” poets in the later volume.

A list of poems included in each book is shown below. Those that appear in both editions are shown in blue. Green indicates those which appear only in the 1976 edition, and pink shows those that appear in the 2006 volume, but not the 1976. ​

Are there any surprises?

In blue – no. All of those poems merit selection for an Oxford anthology.

The question is, I suppose, are there any poems missing from that list?

I ran a very unscientific experiment: I Google-searched “Emily Dickinson’s most famous poems,” and 11 poems popped up. Interestingly, 10 of the 11 are on the blue list (i.e. both 1976 and 2006); only one is missing: “There is a pain so utter.” That poem is in the 1976 anthology, but it was not included in 2006.

The biggest surprise for me, though, was “This is my letter to the world.” That poem is included in the 1976 edition, but it, too, was removed in 2006, and I think that one should have remained – even if just for its historic significance:

When Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson published the first volume of “Poems” in 1890, following Dickinson’s death in 1886, the very first poem readers encountered was “This is my letter to the word.” It was listed in the Table of Contents as the book’s “Prelude.” In addition, the poem incorporates a familiar theme found in various poems by Dickinson that center on the poet’s complex views on whether or not to publish.

Other poems found in the 1976 edition but NOT in the 2006 volume – but should have been – are “I never lost as much but twice,” “If you were coming in the fall,” and “That it will never come again.”

There are also three poems in the 2006 edition that, perhaps, should have earned positions in the earlier volume: “Publication is the auction,” “The soul has bandaged moments,” “There is no Frigate like a Book.”

The only minor surprise in the 2006 edition – a poem that, perhaps, could have been omitted to make space for one I’d mentioned earlier – is “‘Go tell it’ – What a Message.”

Are there any surprises for you?