A WORD MADE FLESH IS SELDOM:
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN CERTAIN POEMS OF
EMILY DICKINSON AND ANGELINA WELD GRIMKE
by Elaine Maria Upton
Page 4
Dickinson's "A Word Made Flesh Is Seldom" is a complex and rich poem that suggests to me now some occasional entry of the speaker into the joys of the body.
Each one of us has tastedBesides the allusion to Christ as the Incarnated Word and the rare high achievement of language as one with experience, the poem suggests the tasting of a forbidden fruit, seldomly tasted, but seldom is not never, as we can hear a hint of in a few other poems.
With ecstasies of stealth
The very food debated(JP 1651)
Today or this noonWho is "she" that was "almost touched"? More pronounced as an entry into the body's expression of love is
She dwelt so close
I almost touched her -
Tonight she lies
Past neighborhood
And bough and steeple,
Now past surmise.(JP 1702)
Her face was in a bed of hair,Still, these instances of entry into the body are rare in Dickinson's poetry. If Grimke were reading and responding in poetry, what might she say?
Like flowers in a plot -
Her hand was whiter than the sperm
That feeds the sacred light.
Her tongue more tender than the tune
That totters in the leaves -
Who hears may be incredulous,
Who witnesses, believes.(P 1722)
