Last night, on my way home from work, I was listening in my car to a radio program dedicated to new book releases. I usually catch that program every Thursday at that time, with interesting topics, and the authors of the books often come to the radio studio as guests. Yesterday, about the day before World Poetry Day, which is today March 21, they presented a book by Jesús Marchamalo García, Dickinson y las violetas (Dickinson and the Violets). It is a short biography of the famous poetess, Emily Dickinson with illustrations. Since on the radio we can only listen, of course, everything I heard was enough for me to be glued to what they were talking about in the radio program. I didn't know much about Emily Dickinson, except that she was a poetess from the United States.
To start with, I didn't know that she was a lover of science and plants, that she was attentive to flowers and every insect that passed by them. I liked everything that I heard so much, and also it made me think about one question that I wanted to share here and invite you to do the same.
As for the plants, as a child, she already made a herbarium of more than 400 plants, and she didn't just collect, organize, and classify them by their names. She also made little collages and scenes with those dried plants. Her imagination was already awake. Well, this phrase doesn't make much sense because maybe you can't "awaken" it. Maybe you have to be born with it, with that ability and preserve it. To the extent you want to preserve this ability, you will nourish it.
I also didn't know this very important fact, which at first came as a shock to me: she shut herself away in her house for many years. If I heard correctly, she hadn't left her house for the last 25 years of her life, until her death. She preferred to stay at home, without going out. Maybe she had a flower garden and could enjoy the plants. But as time passed, she shut herself away even more; she didn't even leave her room in the end. For us right now, this may seem very, very strange and harsh. A poetess who wrote so many letters and poems, full of life, actually lived locked away in her solitude and within the walls.
The question the guest in the radio studio, Jesús Marchamalo García mentioned went something like this: Life is to live or to create?
Sometimes, with the pace of life and all the things you experience, things that fill your day and night, you don't have the time, or let's say the need, to create another world, to create art or poetry. On the other hand, if you dedicate yourself to creating, you may no longer have the time or desire to live the sometimes not-so-perfect reality; you give everything to creation. But how is it possible, then, to create experiences if you don't live them? I am sure that is where the imagination comes in, which cannot be separated from our existence. They are so connected, (imagination and real-life experiences) and they influence each other so much that it is impossible to draw a straight, strong line that defines the difference.
The thing is that Emily closed herself off from the world, into her home, and from there wrote numerous poems that many would envy. She dedicated her whole existence to writing, however, the reality is that during her lifetime, only a couple of poems were published and nothing else. The author says that perhaps her language wasn't accepted or understood at that time. Just because she lived a solitary life didn't mean she didn't have friends or a close person with whom she had a love relationship through letters and poems. She had an enormous amount of correspondence (she ordered her sister to burn all the letters she received from others, probably for a good reason). But her letters and many poems, which her younger sister found after Emily's death, survived. They were published later, after her death.
The question that made me reflect, whether life is to live it or to create is open to you too, if you want to add your opinion on this topic. Does one need to live an experience to write it down or it can be written down from the imagination and that way it comes to life? Can it be separated at all one from another? I think Emily had it both, but in her own, peculiar way. Happy World Poetry Day to everyone who writes and lives, who lives and writes, and also may we all have a beautiful spring, which starts in the Northern Hemisphere. 🌸🌼
I was reading your reflections and remembering what I have learnt and the study I have recently taken up again. I have the answer, I hope the translator is faithful to what I want to express.
All reality to be lived as experience is first created in the world of ideas as Plato said. So they are directly related and cannot be separated. If you are living something it is because it was first created in the space of the supraconsciousness and you created it with your imagination, that's why everything you imagine is possible in the world of things.
Your comment is upvoted by @topcomment
Info - Support - Discord
Thank you so so much!💗💗💗
I think the translator was faithful 😇
Although I loved philosophy when we had it in high school, I forgot many things and for example, I would not remember this idea of Plato. 😅 Thank you. When we have to play something, (I mean my musical instrument, as a soloist or with someone) we have to have it first in our mind, how we want it to sound; even more, it is not just to imagine it but to "hear" with my inner hearing, get into the music before play any key. So it has a lot of similarities with what you explained here 😉
I hope your weekend is going well, sorry for the time it took me to respond, my son is at home so we cooked and walked and cooked again haha 😂
I like to study metaphysics very much and I do it every day, I learn and improve. It has changed my life completely, that's why I know these things haha.
Don't worry, enjoy the time with him, I'm here with house stuff!😁
Mmm... that question is very deep, I think that life is how you feel you should lead it, without being forced to live it in a way that others impose on you, if it is your choice to go out into the world and live experiences or shut yourself in your own world like this writer, I think that life is a choice... 👀
You are very right; of course, everyone should have the freedom to choose how they want to lead their lives. Even the little owls. Oh, imagine what - I saw a gate with owl drawings on it, you will love it. Wait, I don't know where I put my phone hahaha 😂 but I made a few photos for you to see them 😃
Yei, I'll be waiting for those pictures 😍😍
@elbuhito 🦉, that is where you live, is it your gate? 😁
That's definitely Buhito's house haha no one will notice 😂
How beautiful, love the buhitos, I die ❤️😍🦉 Thank you!!
Wow, I was fascinated to read this, I was immediately struck by the title.... I face those kinds of questions frequently, these don't come from me, I am sure I am where I should and love to be, but people around me keep questioning how I am.... Let me explain myself as briefly as possible: 20 years ago I was the youngest national IT manager in the history of a national corporation, my life was all about travel, meetings, intense work, projects and continuous professional growth... But one day I left all that, I opted for this simplicity that I have today and that I enjoy so much, and every day I become more internal, but it seems to me also more uncomfortable for those who surround me and do not understand even if I explain a lot... But this is the way it has to be... I enjoyed reading your post, as always interesting content coming from you @mipiano teacher!...
!discovery 30
!PIZZA
I think you made a wise choice, not that the way you lived your busy and hectic life was wrong, but it is what you enjoy or not in a certain moment, and then act according to that. People around you don't have to understand you if they don't want haha, you will anyway have your way 😉
Thank you very much for your great answer, @jlinaresp 😊
Life can be both, it's lived experience and imagination; both. It can be about creating and living both.
Like Emily, we all have a different life and we are writing our stories differently. Not in pen and paper always but in other ways.
To me, it's what I create, how I live, what I imagine, what I dream, what I leave behind, and everything in between...
That is a very good way of combining these things, @peacefulsoul! And I also agree with your thought that sometimes stories can be written in a different way, not just with a pen. Thank you for your answer. 🤓
This is an excellent reflection, even more now that it's the International Poetry Day. As a poet myself, I would say that you need to live in order to create. Your experiences are what later will become the emotions you'll recall at the moment of your creative process. I don't know Emily very much either, but I'm sure that even in her house she lived a lot. She was surrounded by nature and she was able to see the wholeness of the universe even in little things.
Have a great day! ☺️
Experiences becoming emotions and then the creative process comes. I think this is a good explanation, well, coming from a professional it has to be the way it is. :)) Thank you for your comment, and happy weekend now, also once again congratulation on the world poetry day, with one day delay :D
Great question. I do think that many of are so busy that life is happening to us and we are not even able to create it. I have been drawn to simplicity and slowness. I am taking Thai Chi classes at the Desert Botanical Garden and both the garden with its beauty and rhythm and the ancient practice of Thai Chi have helped me slow down. Now I am asking myself. What do I want to do with this beautiful life before me? Who do I want to become? Thanks for the post and the interesting info about Emily Dickenson and knowing we can each do life differently.
That sounds like a great way to slow done our busy and fast pace of life, see the beauty around us and prepare us for everything we can experience in the future. I know you like botanical gardens when there is also a mixture with arts :D doing Thai Chi in such a place is more than perfect! Bts, the photos that accompanied this post were also taken in one botanical garden 😉
I noticed how lovely the photos were for the post!
Hi @mipiano, I didn't know this poetess, and I thank you for introducing her to those of us who didn't know her (I'm a little ignorant). Living in solitude for decades doesn't seem to me that it has to be synonymous with loneliness. You can be surrounded by people, have a great social life and feel lonely, or literally be lonely.
I think Emily Dickinson had a rich life of experiences, some in reality and some more intimate and just as real, and she expressed her love of life in her own way. I'll have to read some of her.
From here, my congratulations to all the poets of the world.
Best regards. And now yes, happy weekend.
Uff... poets and poetesses are extremely complex. 😁 They live reality as if it were fantasy, and fantasy as if it were reality... they have a drawer full of words to assemble speeches of themselves or about what they dream or imagine of others by putting on and taking off real or imaginary layers, stringing together emotions from some remote place where they have lived, or assimilating others that they are sure they will live tomorrow. Because, they are very clear about one thing: life is created with ideas, then with words, and it is felt and lived as something real, fantastically imagined, from the heart. Then everything becomes magic. 😎
I agree with something that has been said here about loneliness being too crowded at times. There are people who, even if they live enclosed in their own world, have a very rich and full life, while others, surrounded by many people, feel totally alone and empty.
Feliz día, poetisa mipiano.
Are they? 😁 I think artists, in general, feel that magic when they create, but poets and poetesses are the leaders in the "sector" haha, (sorry, this word came to me while writing the phrase and I laughed because of the choice of the word but I am leaving it this way 😂).
I agree with the thought you agree with too.
Feliz día para ti de nuevo (bueno, el día después del día de la celebración 😆) y yo no soy poetisa pero gracias 😇
😂 sector! Yes, you are. Feliz día de nuevo el día después de la celebración 😝😜
We rarely see life through the lens of others; we are dust and nothing, said Eduardo Galeano.
Thank you for mentioning this author; I have to confess that I didn't know who he was, so I checked through his name.
Amiga que lindo post para reflexionar. La poesía las plantas el sentido de pertenencia, la necesidad de vivir porque tenemos está vida, no se sabe a ciencia cierta si hay otra oportunidad. Contesto en español porque quiero regalarte mi poesía que en inglés pierde el sentido. Ayer en el norte era el equinoccio de primavera y el día internacional de la poesía. Gracias por tus reflexiones y compartir lo que escuchas en la radio sobre Jesús Machamalo García, me gustaría leer el libro. Te regalo mi poesía
Gracias te doy, poesía,
por salvarme cuando creo
que me muero, cuando veo
que mi vida ya se hastía.
Corro a tus brazos y el día
se enciende con mil colores.
Me curas con tus amores,
renazco ante tu ternura
porque en tu grácil figura
puedo espantar mis dolores.
Felicidades por el día de la poesía, @yanerkidiaz y muchísimas gracias por este regalo, tu poesía.
Siento que sí es así la poesía para los poetas y poetisas, y para los que encuentran estos matices de colores en la misma. ;)
Well, I believed in a mixing between living and creating live. That's all artists do all the Time!
Felicidades @pinero por el día de la poesía (con un poco de retraso) y sí, for an artist it is the perfect mix ;)
Gracias @mipiano... la música es la poesía del sonido... feliz amanecer!
This post was shared and voted inside the discord by the curators team of discovery-it
Join our Community and follow our Curation Trail
Discovery-it is also a Witness, vote for us here
Delegate to us for passive income. Check our 80% fee-back Program
$PIZZA slices delivered:
(2/15) @jlinaresp tipped @mipiano
Thank you 😇
Interesting reflection.
Excellent!
Thank you ;)
It is a pleasure!