A New Purpose

There is a new purpose for this blog, which will revive the poor neglected thing.

This blog will now host a reading journal for a class in American Literature. So, welcome all my readers to my thoughts on literature from Whitman, Dickinson, and after the American civil war. To start out my semester how I liked, I memorized two of the assigned poems by Dickinson:

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, -- you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.


Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth's superb surprise;

As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind,
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.

I've been acquainted with these poems for a long time and I love them. I like her philosophy of Truth and Sense. (Though, I will not say that is her only philosophy: she can contradict herself, she is full of multitudes.)