What thing is little?

We at Brightly ask in a rush of ecstatic exclamation, who needs breathe on such a day, the one hundred forteenth birthday celebration of the fatally inspiried, brilliant Edna St. Vincent Millay?

Millay was born in rocky Rockland, Maine, on February 22, 1892, to Cora Buzzelle and soon-to-be-kicked-out-of-the-house Henry Tollman Millay. What's the phone number of Rockford's mayor, Brian Harden, you may very well wonder.

In honor of this bright Millay day, the Dickinsonian oracle tosses this tribute:

'Twas later when the summer went
Than when the Cricket came -
And yet we knew that gentle Clock
Meant nought but Going Home -
'Twas sooner when the Cricket went
Than when the Winter came
Yet that pathetic Pendulum
Keeps Esoteric Time.
(E. Dickinson, 1312)

Unable to Use

One might consider praising them for their move into the twenty-first century, and for tyring to speed up what they themselves call "a response less prompt than we would wish." But there are reasons not to, I've recently found:

(1) one cannot tell from the subject "Your Submission" whether good news lurks in the virtual envelope or not, so that one cannot set aside, with some assurance, the bad news itself for later.

(2) one cannot feel the size of the virtual envelope itself, to see if one's virtually submitted poems themselves are returned virtually, the case being that if one could, of course, one would set aside, with absolute assurance, the bad news itself for later.

Hence, down with the rather prestigious (though, in itself, somewhat less-than-gripping) journal's new policy of responding to e-mail submissions via e-mail. Down, down with the Ken-on Rev-ew itself!

The Dickinsonian oracle offers the following insight to all of us who cannot be used, ourselves:

Which is best? Heaven -
Or only Heaven to come
With that old Codicil of Doubt?
I cannot help esteem

The "Bird within the Hand"
Superior to the one
The "Bush" may yield me
Or may not -
Too late to choose again.
(E. Dickinson, 1021)

Okie dokie

Everything is just fine.

I am not Dana or Carmen, Bette or Shane.
I am not Bode Miller, who used the wrong skies.
I am not a Republican.
I am not a member of the cast of "Dancing with the Stars."
I am not living under two feet of snow in Connecticut.

So everything's fine.

The Dickinsonian oracle may think otherwise:

Could Hope inspect her Basis
Her Craft were done -
Has a fictitious Charter
Or it is none -

Balked in the vastest instance
But to renew -
Felled by but one assassin -
Prosperity -
(E. Dickinson, 1282)

Too big to hang

Overheard in a coffeeshop.
Two middle-aged men, one reading from a newspaper.
Something about a 400-pound man who had shot two people, was sentenced to death, but a higher court overturned the ruling, claiming that he was too big to hang, that the hanging might mistakenly result in a decapitation.

So he should die, but just not loose his head about it. Or, if he should loose his head, he's sentenced to life.

Google search of "too big to hang"

I guess I'm too big to hang around you little guys.
These speakers look too big to hang on the wall.
It was too big to hang. We had to shoot it to kill it and it was a mess.
They are too big to hang in your car's rearview mirror...

And my favorite: but pigeons are too big to hang off the washing line.

On "too big to hang," the Dickinsonian oracle muses:

You cannot fold a Flood
And put it in a Drawer -
Because the Winds would find it out -
And tell your Cedar Floor -
(E. Dickinson, from 583).

True. A Flood is too big to hang.

Button up, Gertrude

We at Brightly shout from the top of our bright little lungs, "Happiest of 132nd birthdays two days late, gorgeous Gertrude!" Born at the early hour of 8am on February 3, 1874, to Amelia and Daniel Stein, Gertrude first saw the light of day in Allegheny, PA. Is it sunny or cloudy in lovely Allegheny?

In honor of Gertrude the Great's birthday, a few bite-sized buttons:

Diet Coke: Can

Suits the squat. What one winches quickest for wind-burn, sun buns with butter, more salt and then more. Chills the wind tunnel, supples the wind up.


SUV

Moon rovers moving mothers and other cakes, for instance brats bundled in bread and circuses. Transaxles highwired for trampling exhaust carpet-bombs, that one blue, that one a car park.


Cell Phone

Little kitty purrs portable, pocketwise. Envelope of sweet talk’s pollen, clings on tickled things, hears devices plot for further ringings, its jingles rubbing like the can-can, like a tire swing singing.


And the Dickinsonian oralce sends these wishes Stein-ward:

Estranged from Beauty - none can be -
For Beauty is Infinity -
And power to be finite ceased
Before Identity was creased -
(E. Dickinson, 1515)