They healed my heart

“I have a request to make of those who read Empty Shells. If any friend surmises he has discovered the author he will be courteous enough to keep my secret. I have left out a great many poems that would have betrayed my identity, and put in none that I have cause to fear. Why then publish? I have no right to count on a long life and I am not willing to be ‘edited, revised, and corrected.’ On the other hand, I feel towards my poems as many women do towards their weak children; and treasure them because if they were conceived in grief they healed my heart. After the first smart of a new loss was softened, next to writing my greatest comfort was reading; and I did not then seek great authors. Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe were naught to me:  I sought minor Poets — of whom I dare hope to be one. Could I but be a like comfort to some simple, sorrowing hearts I should feel my life-griefs had not been in vain.”

Opal, 1874

Poetry

There is a pleasure in the pathless words…
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet can not all conceal.
—Byron

The words are lovely, dark and deep.  —Frost

I went to the words because I wished to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of language.  —Thoreau

In the words we return to reason and faith.  —Emerson

Come to the words, for here is rest.  —Muir

Literature does not grow wild in the words.  —Burroughs

I put my heart to school in the words.  —Van Dyke

In the words is perpetual youth.  —Emerson

Whose words these are I think I know.  —Frost

We are not out of the words yet.  —Keyes

Terri Guillemets