Take all away from me, but leave me Ecstasy,
And I am richer then than all my Fellow Men -
I'll it becometh me to dwell so wealthily
When at my very Door are those possessing more,
In abject poverty -
Description,
Emily Dickinson’s favorite thing to do was garden. There is nothing like sticking your fingers into the dirt of the earth, softening it like kneading dough, pulling weeds and roots to prepare it for seeds and plants. When she is talking about ecstasy she not only is talking about bodily orgasmic pleasure, but her deep appreciation for nature and the land. She actually never made any money in her life time but it didn’t matter, she didn’t need it, and she never married, but she didn’t need that either. She may have had some sexual affairs with men or women but it was her garden, her poetry, and herself, “richer then than all my Fellow Men”, gave her ecstasy. I pity the poor man that has to hire a gardener for his property.
The second image is from Gustave Courbet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Courbet He painted “Origin of the World” which is a painting of a vagina that now hangs in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. Of course a poem on ecstasy would take me back to Paris.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Origine_du_monde
