{"id":8007,"date":"2022-09-05T06:40:50","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T13:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=8007"},"modified":"2022-09-05T06:40:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T13:40:53","slug":"reading-dickinson-with-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/reading-dickinson-with-dad\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Dickinson with Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-8007\" data-postid=\"8007\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-8007 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p>Dad had taken two falls in the house in the space of a week. He was somewhat physically fine but shaken up mentally. After multiple visits to doctors, his condition is simply old age. Transitions need to be instigated, perhaps sooner than later. I think it&#8217;s going to be much harder than I anticipated. I&#8217;m not sure where my own life is headed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We were sitting in the living room a couple days after the second fall, and Dad was reading a collection of all Emily Dickinson&#8217;s 1775 poems. I&#8217;d bought the edition for $2 at a library sale to cheer him up. Dickinson is his favorite poet and he can recite dozens of her poems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He chose poem 896 for me to read aloud, her classic about a snake in the grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I butchered the first few lines and started over. Dickinson&#8217;s dashes, line breaks and capitalization can trip you up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I read the poem and we discussed its reality and metaphor, its obvious qualities and opaque ones. We discussed the book&#8217;s excellent introduction. We discussed Dickinson&#8217;s life and the myths about her poetry (such as the one that she didn&#8217;t want to be published and all her writing was a secret).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our conversation about Dickinson lasted half an hour. I then retired to the deck and 95-degree heat, but not before Dad thanked me for my attention and the robust discussion of an American poet.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dad had taken two falls in the house in the space of a week. He was somewhat physically fine but shaken up mentally. After multiple visits to doctors, his condition is simply old age. Transitions need to be instigated, perhaps sooner than later. I think it&#8217;s going to be much harder than I anticipated. I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8009,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8007"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8011,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8007\/revisions\/8011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}