Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Amherst



That's a photo from Amherst, Mass., taken from this site, and those lifesize silhouettes represent Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. Their lifespans overlapped a little, and they both did live in Amherst, but never at the same time.

They never really met. That's their ghosts talking, I guess. Anyway, it reminds me of these verses of Dickinson, about a grave conversation:

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

I'm also put in mind of a song from Simon & Garfunkel that linked them prettily:

And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.

Anyway, after quoting such serious sentiments...

Masters of metaphor,
sultans of simile,
launchers of lines that soar,
Robert and Emily.

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