Dissing Emily Dickinson

I don't know how Emily Dickinson came up, but I happened to mention to my daughter that just about every Emily Dickinson poem can be sung to the tune of The Yellow Road of Texas --and once you realize this, you can never take Dickinson very seriously.

Hearing of this, the Official Cartoonist of Wheat & Weeds sent his poetic commentary.

Emmy D.
by Sam Ryskind

Emily Dickinson, batty young lass

Stayed belled up in Amherst, Mass

And wrote her poems secretly

So that no one else would see--

     You'll hear no complaints from me.

When she died her sister hurled

All her verses on the world,

Claiming loud, and here I quote,

"Look at what my sister wrote!"

     She felt it was a cause to gloat.

Critics bored with sparkling verse

Stood in line for something worse.

Something worse her poems were;

Meter, well as rhyme, she'd slur.

     Still, she started such a stir.

Now today I find I'm vexed,

For Em'ly is in every text

And every scholar worth his bread

Has said, of course, she should be read 

     I won't...  'cause I respect the dead.