Emily Dickinson's "As Imperceptibly as Grief"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Arts, Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s poem is by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886), an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.[2] Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's home in Amherst. Evidence suggests that Dickinson lived much of her life in isolation. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a penchant for white clothing and was known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even to leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most of her friendships were based entirely upon correspondence.[3]

While Dickinson was a prolific writer, her only publications during her lifetime were 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems, and one letter.[4] The poems published then were usually edited significantly to fit conventional poetic rules. Her poems were unique for her era; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.[5] Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends, and also explore aesthetics, society, nature, and spirituality.[6]

—Bio via Wikipedia

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson,
0:05.7	and today is Monday, August 21st, 2003. Today's poem is untitled, and so we take its title
0:15.3	from the first line. It is as imperceptibly as grief by Emily Dickinson.
0:22.5	I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it second time.
0:31.5	As imperceptibly as grief, the summer lapsed away, too imperceptible at last to seem like perfidy.
0:40.7	A quietness distilled, as twilight long begun, for nature, spending with herself sequestered
0:48.7	afternoon. The dusk drew earlier in, the morning foreign shone, a courteous yet harrowing grace as guests who would be gone.
1:00.0	And thus, without a wing or service of a keel, our summer made her light escape into the beautiful.
1:17.9	I like this meditation on the passing of summer quite a bit because of the unique way Dickinson speaks of the passing of time,
1:27.1	right from the opening line, which is one of her,
1:31.8	and this is saying something, but it's one of her most striking opening lines, I think.
1:38.3	She says that the summer lapsed away as imperceptibly as grief.
1:45.0	And it's an odd comparison at first because grief is something that is a kind of painful emotion.
1:57.0	Grief is not something that you necessarily want sticking around, though maybe you could
2:05.1	make an argument for times when grief is a cathartic or a healing experience. Nevertheless,
2:10.0	it's not a pleasant one. Whereas summer is often a thing that we enjoy, we miss it going.
2:20.2	I'm not sure if the speaker is as a particularly positive or negative view of summer.
2:30.2	They seem very dispassionate in this poem.
2:33.0	Summer is simply a thing that passes away.
2:35.4	But that simile, comparing it to the passage of grief is remarkable because grief is one of those things that you don't feel leaving you.
2:49.4	You can sense when you are grieving. you can perhaps even sense when your grief has
2:54.9	lessened, but you don't see the moment that it goes. It's one of those things that we look for it and only when we recognize its absence do we realize
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Goldberry Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Goldberry Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.