{Dwayne Betts}
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory
As he defeated - dying -
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I like how she applies "forbidden" to the dying soldier's ear (because the triumph he hears through it is forbidden to him), and "agonized" to the strains of triumph (whether because he hears them through agony, or because they cost an agony to those who are actaully earning them).
Do you know the date on this? In particular, had the Civil War actually begun? This doesn't seem to depend on more than an abstract understanding of war (not a knock, of course).
There is no poet I despise more than Emily Dickinson. She is the Anti-Poet. A giant hack mixed with a heavy does of anachronism. I can't believe anyone could read that nonsense and not want to stab themselves. Repeatedly. What is the draw? I don't get it.
I'll post another poem today. Then my last post - and I hope you enjoy them both. As for Dickinson as a poet - I think she's fly. And I think she has the memorable lines that say something that need to be said - think about this Much madness is divinest sense/ to the discerning eye. That's a dope couplet - but more than that the poem it comes from is just on point, telling in a short space what of the risks of being willing to stand out.
But on Dickinson as a poet - I'm not here to be her defender. I will say that you can read one of a thousand books written on her and then quip with those writers. They'd probably even engage you in the argument. I think you'd lose. But it all depends on what you go to poetry for.
4th of July Med-
Itation
Freestyle Vino
COMPOSITION!
my 2 cents of being
IN RELATION
WITH A UNIVERSE
OF COLOR
BURST OF BLOSSOM MAN-MADE THINGS AS WELL POW!
EASY PEASY
PARA VIVIR
Adoration
Convocation
Variation
Striation
JAZZ
No. 1
It’s LEMONADE
(the whole thing should be centered but hard to get the effects here, Happy 4th)
jW
I used to feel similarly and it annoyed me when I asked my American lit students to flip through the 8 lb. textbook and choose a poem that their group could analyze for the class and they always chose her poems because they were short, ignoring far richer stuff--Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Julia Alvarez, et al. Then, amazingly, they had trouble with these short little gems like "Hope is a Thing with Feathers" or "Because I Could Not Stop for Death." So together we'd deconstruct each line, each word usage--and a funny thing happened: There was a whole lotta something behind what appeared to be a whole mess of nothing.
Her poems are like those homes that from the front facade look small, but the lot behind it runs deep. Remember this woman shunned fame, feared critics, and kept it all in a shoebox for years until it was discovered posthumously.
She's not my favorite, but when you take it apart and reassemble she's got the messages on point in few words. Kind of like Hemingway, who I never got either, but I liked his succinctness even if I'd rather read the wordy Faulkner.
You know who you NEED to have here is Wanda Coleman. Ever read Aptitude test? I've seen people just about fall out of their chairs. Same with Charles Bukowski, although he also has penned some very tame poems, as well. Like this one:
____________________________________________________________________
The meek have inherited
if I suffer at this
typewriter
think hoe I'd feel
among the lettuce-
pickers of Salinas?
I think of the men
I've known in
factories
with no way to
get out--
choking while living
choking while laughing
at Bob Hope or Lucille
Ball while
2 or 3 children beat
tennis balls against
the walls.
some suicides are never
recorded.
how not hoe (LOL)
Richard Wilbur mentions this poem in his excellent article about Dickinson, "Sumptuous Destitution".
Here's some sumptuous destitution from Wilbur, the final stanza of Hamlen Brook:
Joy’s trick is to supply
Dry lips with what can cool and slake,
Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache
Nothing can satisfy.