Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes Comments
First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
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Of the voice- Does Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer also do the readings? To hear the poet himself recite this poem would be a treat. And as I just saw him reciting his poems with accompanying visual rendering of them as the cartoons. It might stack 'em up like cord-wood the blue-haired ladies with fits of the vapors, yes. And so an even more rarer treat it might then be...
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this poem today along with the interesting comments below. You made my day, PH! Thanks for choosing this poem as the 'poem of the day.'
it reminds me of William Butler Yeats; A Coat let us all go about naked
Well put, Frank. Billy Collins was a great man, but I think he might have dabbled in drugs. And how does he know so much about 19th-century undies anyway?
You just can't get much more sacrilegious than this. Disrobing Emily Dickinson. Please! But on one matter I'm sure you're right: there were sudden dashes / whenever we spoke Let's not try to envision Emily stark naked, but rather wearing a flowing white night gown with Chantilly lace and holding a single candle against the dark. Her eyes sparkle, she speaks barely above a whisper, and the floor is wavering beneath her feet. The halo around her brow has one wicked little flame.
I like the way this poem asks you to consider Emily's sexuality, and if that is too complex for you, Collins satisfies with a 3 easy references at the end.
Billy Collins' work is inspiring to say the least and this is by far my favourite of his poems. I adore how he writes and conveys his thoughts, so wonderfully lighthearted and almost innocent. Undressing Emily Dickinson is obviously as hard as understanding her can be. I love the reference to her own works: 'how there were sudden dashes whenever we spoke. ' I shall never tire of reading this exquisite piece of poetry!
As Code Master's Putting Billy Collin's Clothes Back On says, Collins, like a lot of modern poets and artists, has only a tepid respect for the great poets of the past. They love to speak of them with an inappropriate familiarity, a boorish irreverence: Billy Shakespeare. They are louts. Collins too. And what human truth is he exploring here? Rarely does he explore the human condition the way Dickinson did. He should spend his time reader her rather; he might learn something about poetry.
If that's exquisite, what is Frost's After Apple-Picking, Sacred Scripture? Most of Collins' work is not an attempt to expose for us a truth about our human plight, no. What he does is fantasize about something that could never happen, and then he drags some cheap meaning out of it. I could write a thousand of his poems a day: I woke up one day to find myself a hot dog/But not any hot dog; I was a frank at a ball game/ And I could smell the peanuts being sold next to me... Blah, blah, blah.
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7/24/2025 8:06:48 PM # 1.0.0
I love the audacity of Billy Collins! His imagination takes him wherever he wants to go and that is just what imagination should do-allow the mind to soar! Billy is my favorite contemporary poet for the reasons I have put down. Billy Billy, Rock on!