Dear friends,
Firstly, thank you — it is always a joy to read your responses. I read everything, and occasionally get to react or reply, but I’m traveling these weeks, so I make sure to read, but don’t get time for the hearts or the witty ripostes.
I have been thinking of Emily Dickinson this week (it is a rare enough week when I am not thinking of her). She died on May 15th, 1886, at the age of 55 (she would have been 56 later that year, in December). The cause of her death was Bright’s disease — an old term for nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys — with which she had suffered for two and a half years. She was laid in a white coffin, with three kinds of flowers: a vanilla scented heliotrope, a lady’s slipper orchid, and a knot of blue field violets.
(As I was writing this I wrote “violents,” not “violets,” and heard Emily Dickinson laugh from the space in between time and eternity where she now resides.)
Her longtime friend and sometimes editor Colonel Higginson read a Brontë poem Emily had loved at the short funeral service, held in the family library. Then, following a request made by Emily Dickinson herself, she was not driven to the burial ground in a carriage, but rather, carried through fields of buttercups to the family plot at West Cemetery on Triangle Street.
Carried through fields of buttercups.
Her final letter — which was to her cousins Frances and Louise Norcross — was short, and written in the month of her death. “Little Cousins. Called back. Emily” is what it says. And “Called Back” is inscribed on her grave, together with her name and dates.
The poem that Higginson read at the short service? It was Emily Brontë’s “No Coward Soul Is Mine.” This beautiful poem, addressed to God (or Time, or Eternity, or Love, or That Over Which Death Has No Dominion) speaks through religious devotion, but also casts creeds aside. Here’s how it ends:
Though earth and moon were gone And suns and universes ceased to be And Thou wert left alone Every Existence would exist in thee There is not room for Death Nor atom that his might could render void Since thou art Being and Breath And what thou art may never be destroyed.
You can read the full poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
Ireland’s oldest woman just died. Nell Hynes — she was 109. Last December, on her birthday, she credited her long life to hard work, no smoking or drinking. But we are also in times of terrible deaths. Every day, I read of vicious deaths in Gaza, the West Bank, Ukraine, Sudan, and all the other places you wish I had put on the list. Hate-fuelled deaths: murders of women, murders of Jews, murders of trans people, murders of asylum seekers, murders of Black and Indigenous people. Deaths from diseases too — Ebola in the DRC and elsewhere — and the worries about reduced funding for research into treating and/or preventing these and other diseases. All those funerals and grieving families and friends. My god.
One of the strange things about being alive is that death is part of it. But — we hope, we hope, we hope — that everyone could have a good death, or, at least, a good enough one. Emily Dickinson’s life was cut short, but, in the scheme of terrible things, some may say it was a good enough death. I wish I lived in a world where deaths could be good enough. I do not.
Of course, after a sentence like that, the conviction deepens: do what I can to make it more like that world.
The question this week? What is a good enough death you have been around? It is never easy. It is often painful. But amidst that, the creativity of people can make commemorations meaningful, and gestures and companionship can sometimes help.
The Latest from Poetry Unbound
You can also listen at poetryunbound.org or wherever podcasts are found.
Poetry in the World
A list of my events: Online and in the U.S. (Rhinebeck, NY; Santa Fe, NM) , Ireland (Borris), Scotland (Iona), and England (Kettering)
I’ll be joined by brilliant journalist Olivia O’Leary for a reading and conversation on my new book of poems, beginning at 3:45 p.m. (For registration info, click on the date heading.)
June 27–July 3, Iona, Scotland
Krista and I will be leading a week of conversation (with some musical guests) on Iona, an island off an island off the west coast of Scotland. It is filled, but if you want to be on the wait list, you can email the Saint Columba hotel by clicking on the title just above here. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
August 9–13, Santa Fe, New Mexico
I’m leading a four-day intensive workshop at Modern Elder Academy called “Poetry as a Common Language”. We’ll read, write, and discuss poems on finding and deepening connection. (For more information, click on the date heading.)
August 27-30, Kettering, England
I’m absolutely delighted to be returning to this year’s Greenbelt Festival, a gathering of arts, activism, and belief in England, beginning. (For registration info, click on the date heading.)
I’ll be leading evening worship alongside Nadia Bolz-Weber and Doug Gay as part of the Festival of Preaching, beginning at 5:30 p.m. (For registration info, click on the date heading.)
I’ll be leading a virtual craft intensive on poetry and desire through Poets House, beginning at 6 p.m. ET. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
For the eleven years I lived there, my mother always said she wanted to die in the living room (ah, the irony) of my hilltop home, looking out at the Green Mountains and Lake Champlain. However, her last illness took place in North Carolina where she grew so weak she could not travel. Nine days before she died, she paid a fortune to have an ambulance transport her, it took them 19 hours, from North Carolina to my Vermont living room. Hospice put a hospital bed and oxygen in that room, taught me how to care for her, and for nine days my mom, Toby (my gentle Labradoodle) and I listened to Bach and watched the Greens. The sunrises. The changing colors of water and sky. The red geraniums in the window boxes. I administered so much morphine and held her--her hand or body. Toby and I slept on the couch adjacent to the bed. She died at 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday. It was agonizing and good enough.
Hello all. My sister died by suicide during Covid. She had bipolar disorder and had been suffering for a long time. I've resisted the 'released from pain' frame; it feels too small for her. But she was someone who deeply touched many lives, and as I went through her papers, I came to think she knew something about what she needed. Whether that counts as 'good enough' I still don't know. Carrying my remembrances of her feels like carrying her through that field of buttercups. She was beautiful, fierce, and aching. Your line, Pádraig, “One of the strange things about being alive is that death is part of it.” That sentence is reverberating in my bones. We’ve lost more than I knew I could bear, and I'm aware now that death is no longer something happening elsewhere or to others. My sister walked into that truth before I was ready. I'm still catching up to her.