Pilgrimage of poems: I choose day

I was never much of an Emily Dickinson fan. I mean—yeah, she churned ‘em out in her little Amherst hermitage, and pushed quite the range of topics. Her poems are intense expressions, with vivid imagery; I just find it hard to get into them.

So it was interesting to me that my literary hero, Reginald Hill, built one of his Dalziel and Pascoe novels around Dickinson’s poetry. But instead of making me like her, in fact, Good Morning, Midnight kind of reinforces my disconnect from Dickinson.

Perhaps it’s because the character who’s the biggest fan of Dickinson in the novel is a self-absorbed, distant, calculating woman who pretty much destroys everyone she touches. Yes, she’s damaged goods, and suffered a terrible loss in her early adulthood. So she spends the rest of her life running through men and family like tap water, and can only focus on one single thing, being a “mother” to her youngest stepchild. Whatever the cost to anyone and everyone else, that’s what she does.

It’s interesting that one of the men she’s able to scam is Andy Dalziel, because she has just the right mix of control, nobility, dispassion and pseudo-warmth. And perhaps that’s my objection to the eponymous poem, “Good Morning—Midnight”: I just want it to get over itself.

I’m giving it to you anyway, on account of Hill, and this way I get it out of the way so we can move on to poems more to my liking.

Good Morning—Midnight—

I'm coming Home—

Day—got tired of Me—

How could I—of Him?

Sunshine was a sweet place—

I liked to stay—

But Morn—didn't want me—now—

So—Goodnight—Day!

I can look—can't I—

When the East is Red?

The Hills—have a way—then—

That puts the Heart—abroad—

You—are not so fair—Midnight—

I chose—Day—

But—please take a little Girl—

He turned away!