Off to school you go

Good luck to all the neighborhood Catholic school children off to their first day of school in their blue plaid skirts, their knee-length shorts, their white socks, and little cardigans. Off they go to geography lessons, the lives of the saints, and bologna sandwiches.

What do their parents expect to see in the photos they take of their young children shuffling nervously in the front yard, eyeing the minivan and their brand new backpacks sprawled on the side walk? Halos circling their heads? The faces of the doctors or dancers their sweet children may become? Or perhaps traces of the newborns they once held for the first time?

Good luck, little chickadees.

On your first day of school, the Dickinsonian oracle pronounces:

Best Witchcraft is Geometry
To the magician's mind -
His ordinary acts are feats
To thinking of mankind -
(E. Dickinson, 1158)

Pose and wait redux

Just like a lake, today I will be asking questions and waiting for answers as I interview one fascinating woman for a profile article I'm writing. Interviewing people can be nerve-racking. One's questions, for instance, may appear idiotic, pointless, or otherwise not well thought out, falling like overbaked scones on the coffee table. One's interviewee may be an introvert or a mime or, worse in some respects but more exciting in others, a big fat liar. Or one's interviewee's green-winged macaw might prove overly aggressive and try to break one's thumb with its nut-cracking beak. In the face of such challenges, we at Brightly suggest that, when interviewing, don't interrupt, and keep your thumbs to yourself.

The Dickinsonian oracle offers this advice:

We never know we go when we are going -
We jest and shut the Door -
Fate - following - behind us bolts it -
And we accost no more -
(E. Dickinson, 1546)

Pose and wait

Lakes pose questions and wait for answers.
What is the color of the underside? When do your lungs become heavy? Can you resist sinking?
What is the weight of the palms of your hands? How do shapes lay across water? What is the buoyancy of leaving?
What is the shade of stillness? When will the sun set? Can you wait?

The Dickinsonian oracle weighs the water once again:

I could not drink it, Sweet,
Till You had tasted first,
Though cooler than the Water was
The Thoughtfulness of Thirst.
(E. Dickinson, 816)

No more idling

The Wisconsin Idyll has come to a gentle end, with the metropolis life barging back on the scene. Wisconsin boasts of many fine features, including the following:

• dill enhanced cheese curds
• a lovely, long-earned, leaning dog named Louie
• corn; lost of corn
• hills of various gentle gradations. Though not a feature unknown in other locales, this was refreshing to a person used to the flat topography of Minnesota.
• a large silver lake, Lake Winnebago, that floats a multitude of boats and ripples attractively in the wind. There are fish in there, by golly.
• home-grown poetry in surprising places. On the announcement board of a small church appeared the following admirable injunction: aspire to inspire until you expire. Wow.

And what has the Dickinsonian oracle been dying to tell us over the past few days?

Look back on Time, with kindly Eyes -
He doubtless did his best -
How softly sinks that trembling Sun
In Human Nature's West -
(E. Dickinson, 1251)

Can you say "cheese"?

Due to an extravagant excursion into the woods of Wisconsin for poetic inspiration and some cheese, Brightly will be taking a reprieve for a few days.

Upon this romp eastward, the Dickinsonian oracle ruminatess:

Some say good night - at night -
I say good night by day -
Good bye - the Going utter me -
Good night, I still reply -

For parting, that is night,
And presence, simply dawn -
Itself, the purple on the hight
Denominated morn.
(E. Dickinson, 586)

Tip your top

The sun-splunky southwest metropolis provides the most perfect of environs for that cute little creature, the VW Beetle convertible. Round and squat, pudgy and puckish, the VW Beetle convertible scoots with abandon around the lakes, letting in the sunshine and the starlight, the kid shouts and the dog barks. The virtues of this adorable vehicle are too numerous to mention, though it runs afoul under one especially malodorous condition, namely when driving behind a dumptruck. In the summer. On a hot day. For a while. So while we at Brighlty recommend that you who are the companions of a VW Beetle convertible tip the top on sunny summery days, we also suggest you keep the lid on when tracking trash trucks.

On trash, convertible, and cuteness, the Dickinsonian oracle pronounces:

Lift it - with the Feathers
Not alone we fly -
Launch it - the aquatic
Not the only sea -
Advocate the Azure
To the lower Eyes -
He has obligation
Who has Paradise -
(E. Dickinson, 1362)

The wearing of the green

This past weekend brought a touch of ol' Eire to the Midwest, as the Irish Fair unleashed its Gaelic sports teams, Irish step dancers, and potato boilers on the otherwise Scandahoovian Twin Cities. There were many a red head to be seen, while the native dogs of Ireland received adoring pats and the verses of "The Star of County Down" drifted over the crowd. 'Twas a scene so sweet, 'twould have brought a tear to my grandmother Agnes's eye, God bless her soul.

The festivities also brought to mind the trip to Ireland I took last year. Here's what made the trip so memorable:
• going with my beloved, who knows everything about medieval Christianity and loves Jacob's Digestives for all the right reasons.
• being served three different kinds of potatoes with dinner, without making any special requests
• the dark but sparkling humor of the people of the west. As the car repair man said to me upon seeing the gash my partner and I put in the tiny tire of our micro-car while driving on the rugged roads of the rugged western coast (cliched, but true: the coast is rugged), "It's always something."
• seeing the faces of people who look just like my father, my grandfather, and my grandmother

At its most Irish, the Dickinsonian oracle ruminates:

Life, and Death, and Giants -
Such as These - are still -
Minor - Apparatus - Hopper of the Mill -
Beetle at the Candle -
Or a Fife's Fame -
Maintain - by Accident that they proclaim -

1826

According to The Timetables of History (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1991), in 1826:

• James Fenimore Cooper wrote Last of the Mohicans
• Thomas Jefferson died
• the Treaty of Yandabu ended the Burmese War
• Nguan Nguan edited the writings of Confucious
• Russia declared war on Persia
• Dost Mohammed became the Amir of Kabul

Today, 1826 is the number of US miltary persons killed in the current war campaigns abroad. This number appears here thanks to alert neighbors of the cloud-dappled southwest metropolis who post the changing number daily in their front porch window.

1826. Sobering.

The Dickinsonian oracle pronounces:

Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity -

Unable they that love - to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity
(E. Dickinson, 951)

Effervescence

Fabulous gal poets, the brain-wringing, brain-ringing, frame-swinging youngish, newish gal poets, sprinkle the world with effervescence. The Best American Poetry 2004 (guest edited by the raucously awesome Lyn Hejinian, NY: Scribner, 2004) includes the brightly dazzling work of Danielle Pafunda, Heidi Peppermint (now Heidi Lynn Staples, a change in name that simply breaks the heart of peppermint lovers world wide, as well as those who dream of having such a refreshing last name), and Jeni Olin. Brightly simply must flash an enthusiastic thumbs-up to all three.

From Olin's "Blue Collar Holiday"
And the thin nude branches all snow-furred
Like an X ray of infant bronchitis. Wrist-slitting stuff.

From Pafunda's "RSVP"
I won't come. I won't come
with a pretty pity present. I won't
put on my pity party dress with the special
ribbon in my pity pony tail. I won't play

From Heidi Peppermint's "Real Toads"
terrible vision. I don't think I can fall asleep
if the door is open, do you? Finally,

we bridge to word it, ticking off our

trues.

Miss Emily would flip for Peppermint, Pafunda, and Olin; thus the Dickinsonian oracle decrees:

Had I not seen the Sun
I could have borne the shade
But Light a newer Wilderness
My Wilderness has made -
(E. Dickinson, 1249)

Being vicious, circularly

We all beg for things from time to time, don't we? Remember the purple bike with the banana seat you wanted so badly when you were eight? And surely we ask questions of all sorts -- like "Why do cats purr?" and "When will the Martians return?" -- in contexts appropriate and inappropriate, maddening and marveling. So in what contexts is it appropriate to say that one "begs the question?"

Let's settle this once and for all. Begging the question entails committing an informal fallacy in which the speaker assumes in her premises just the thing that she is attempting to prove. Clever, and often useful at cocktail parties, begging the questions is a rhetorical spinning jenny, where the argument's thread goes round and round in a vicious circle.

What begging the question is not: a situation in which a certain question, like "Hey, isn't that Ingrid?", just NEEDS to be asked.

Miss Dickinson knew the difference between begging the question and having a question that was begging to be asked. Thus the Dickinsonian oracle recommends:

Lest this be Heaven indeed
An Obstacle is given
That always guages a Degree
Between Oursevles and Heaven.
(E. Dickinson, 1000)

Spinning Jenny

Invented in 1764 by Mr. James Hargreaves of the scenic west England village of Stanhill in Lancashire, the spinning jenny allowed one spinner to spin eight threads at once, a count that went up to eighty when nimble-minded improvers improved the spinning jenny at later dates. What a supremely admirable form of uniform multi-tasking. Too bad for Hargreaves, a poor weaver and father of the clumsy little girl named Jenny who knocked over his spinning wheel, thus spinning the idea of the mechanical jenny in his mind (or so the story goes): he didn't apply for a patent until 1770, when very many sneaks had stolen his idea and made many of their own spinning jennys.

I tell you this not to exhort you to hurry out and patent your fabulous multi-tasking machines (though if you have such machines and don't have patents, get going--hurry!!), but rather to confirm that there are other spinning Jennies out in the world, and that I am neither the first, nor the only one.

On weaving, spinning, girls named Jenny/Jennie, and failing to secure a patent in time to make a profit, the Dickinsonian oracle says:

The Brain, within it's Groove
Runs evenly - and true -
But let a Splinter swerve -
'Twere easier for You -

To put a Current back -
When Floods have slit the Hills -
And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves -
And troddon out the Mills -
(E. Dickinson, 563)

Could you hum a few bars?

When you're feelig down, blue, or otherwise overwhelmed by the tasks of life and all the sad trappings that go along with being an US citizen these days, there's nothing like throwing back your head and belting out a robust and rousing chorus of your own personal theme song.

Having a personal theme song can help you deal with a number of different conundrums. For example, it can help you choose between frozen corn and frozen peas in the freezer section of your local grocery store; it can help you make it to the end of the block on an especially difficult morning shuffle (see previous post, "Run run as fast as you can," for details about this use of the theme song); it can help you affirm that it is a beautiful day in the neighborhood when you're just not convinced; it can inspire you to find the perfect end words for your current sestina; and humming a few bars can help your partner find you in a crowd.

If you are a song writer, you may choose to write your own theme song, though don't expect others to join in when you sing it in the park. Otherwise, you'll need to adopt a song from someone else. My current theme song is Veruca Salt's rigorously awesome "Seether". You just can't stop the seether. If you hear me singing, don't join in. This one's mine, mine, mine.

Miss Dickinson obviously had a number of theme songs. Today's Dickinsonian oracle offers up the following ditty:

She dealt her pretty words like Blades -
How glittering they shone -
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone -

She never deemed - she hurt -
That - is not Steel's Affair -
A vulgar grimace in the Flesh -
How ill the Creatures bear -

To Ache is human - not polite -
The Film upon the eye
Mortality's old Custom -
Just locking up - to Die -
(E. Dickinson, 458)

Bel-Gazou

Ah, dear readers, we are one day late in honoring the death of Colette, who breathed her last pretty prattle on August 3, 1954 at the grand age of 80. This passage is from her 1922 My Mother's House (NY: The Modern Library, 1995, p. 134):

Three shells, like flower petals, white, nacreous, and transparent as the rosy snow that flutters down from the apple trees; two limpets, like Tonkinese hats with converging, black rays on a yellow ground; something that looks like a lumpy, cartilaginous potato, inanimate but concealing a mysterious force that squirts, when it is squeezed, a crystal jet of salt water; a broken knife, a stump of a pencil, a ring of blue beads and a book of transfers soaked by the sea; a small pink handkerchief, very dirty.... That is all.

How lovely, the small world of a radiant child. And such language: shells petals; rosy snow; limpets like Tonkinese hats; squirts when squeezed, blue beads... soaked by the sea... handkerchief, very dirty.

So here's to you, Bel-Gazou, and the rosy snow of your fluttering.

From one fabulous gal to another, the Dickinsonian oracle salutes Colette thusly:

Were it to be the last
How infinite would be
What we did not suspect was marked
Our final interview.
(E. Dickinson, 1165)

Rain wishes

Those of us in Brightly's writer's offices send rain wishes out to the universe, intent, glossy, please-don't-let-it-be-a-dry-90-degrees-today wishes. These wishes may appear Saran-wrapped or accompanied by biscuits. Amelia the cat's wishes will likely be sardine shaped, though don't be surprised if you experience these wishes as showers of kitty kibble. Amelia is especially fond of kibble, not only for obvious reasons of feline nutrition, but because it rhymes with "dribble," which is a useful rainy word that often gets the showers going.

Kibble, kibble,
dribble wish,
send the rain,
send the fish.
~ a poem by Amelia the cat

Miss Dickinson loved rain, as any good cat will, and so the Dickinsonian oracle announces:

We thirst at first - 'tis Nature's Act -
And later - when we die -
A little Water supplicate -
Of fingers going by -

It intimates the finer want -
Whose adequate supply
Is that Great Water in the West -
Termed Immortality -
(E. Dickinson, 750)

To be a sonnet

Thought I generally believe that personality tests are no more than expressions of one's affinity for the flourishing of the ego, the evolvement of the super ego, or the involvement of the id, this one is fun: What poetic form are you?

I am, in turns out, a sonnet (at least today) who, were she not a sonnet, would be heroic couplets (the exact number of which remains unspecified).

Though graced with a formality all her own, Miss Dickinson would surely shudder at the pernicious effects of such confining classification. Thus the Dickinsonian oracle pronounces:

Baby -

Teach Him - when He makes the names -
Such an one - to say -
On his babbling - Berry - lips -
As should sound - to me -
Were my Ear - as near his nest -
As my thought - today -
As should sound -
"Forbid us not" -
Some like "Emily."
(E. Dickinson, 198)

Big blue

Brightly wants to extend a warm and applause-riddled welcome to the newest addition of its author's reference book collection, the big, blue, beautiful Webster's Enclyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Deluxe Edition (New York: Random House, 2001), all 2,230 thin-as-onion-skin pages. Special features include a terrific definition of the word "corban," a slightly scary illustration of a senorita wearing a mantilla, and a new words section that includes definitions of (and pronunciation assistance for) "dental dam," "Derrida," and "doula." This is a dictionary a girl can love.

As all you language freaks must admit, this is cause for celebration. Hip, hip, hurrah! (p. 905).

In jubilation (a feeling of or the expression of joy or exultation, p. 1035, just after "jubilatio" and just before "jubilee"), the Dickinsonian oracle pronounces:

The words the happy say
Are paltry melody
But those the silent feel
Are beautiful -
(E. Dickinson, 1767)

Okay, so the Dickinsonian oracle pronounces SILENTLY in julbilation. Think hip, hip, hurrah!