(I wrote this imitation of an Emily Dickinson poem for my poetry class at DePaul and thought I would share…)
Original Poem by Emily Dickinson:
260 (288)
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Dont tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Imitation by K.C.:
140
I’m Somebody! Aren’t you?
You’re on – Twitter – too
Just like everyone else!
Shout it! #poetslikeus – we know
How fabulous – we are – Famous!
How social – like a Bird –
To share our poetry – tweeting all Day –
To the bloggers we Love!
Emily Dickinson is famous for not wanting to be famous. The poet led a very reclusive life in her family’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts. In fact, the first volume of her work was published after her death. However, that was before the Internet existed. I cannot help but wonder, if Blogs and Twitter existed when Dickinson was alive and penning poetry, would she have embraced becoming a famous poet? For with the Internet, you can still select your own society behind closed doors.
There is no other poem so telling about Dickinson’s hatred towards publicity then 260 (288), which is about “how dreary” it would be to be famous “like a Frog” always out and about telling people your name (Dickinson 1113). The content of this poem made it ripe for the picking to imitate for this project. While imitating, I did my best to preserve the original rhyme scheme and form of the poem. I strictly found a way to change the wording to reflect what I think Dickinson might have wrote had the Internet existed during her lifetime.
When Wallace Stevens claimed that poetry is actually “a very intense form of reading,” he was referring to the complicated beauty of the poetic form. Poems contain layers like an onion that must be peeled back to experience the full eye-watering scent or in the poem’s case, emotion. When reading poems over and over, the reader can derive multiple meanings. Poetry is a form of discovery and the poet only discovers it as she writes and rereads it back to herself.
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