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Emily DickinsonEmily Dickinson (1830-1886), the timid Amherst recluse, wrote bold verse, sensual, penetrating, questioning. Four-beat hymn meter was the trellis which supported the wild vine of her talent. Rampant dashes, quirky capitalizations, jarring off-rhymes made her work unpublishable in its time; I daresay that close readings of her radical philosophical and theological statements would have ensured her obscurity then as well.Many of the “popular” Dickinson poems, the ones in the schoolbooks, employ an almost saccharine girlish voice which is not typical of her oeuvre. “I’m nobody. Who are you?" quickly cloys. So do poems that seem intended to “tame” tremendous natural forces with homely tropes. The featured poem, about sunset, is in the latter category. Here, the moon and stars are gussied up in twee personifications and the Heavenly Father is accorded the attributes of a banker. Sigh. Lightly Stepped a Yellow StarLightly stepped a yellow starTo its lofty place — Loosed the Moon her silver hat From her lustral Face — All of Evening softly lit As an Astral Hall — Father, I observed to Heaven, You are punctual. 
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