Emily Dickinson was ruined for me way back in high school, when my favorite English teacher pointed out that the bulk of her poems could be sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Despite me being a Yankee, this tune was actually imbued in my ears thanks to my Casio keyboard, which had a dozen pre-programmed Americana melodies to which the user could pair with an array of looping rhythms, like “Camptown Races” with a bossanova flair, or a disco beat for “Amazing Grace.” So whenever I lay eyes on an Emily Dickinson poem (“Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me /The carriage held but just ourselves / And Immortality”), my mind unfailingly sings it to that catchy Southern anthem, and I give up in amused annoyance.
Even the Dickinson poems that do not readily conform to the meter of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” give me difficulties, as I read them intent on making them suitable lyrics for the cursed tune. (“Going to heaven! / I don’t know when, / Pray do not ask me how – / Indeed, I’m too astonished / To think of answering you!”) Draw out some syllables, curtail others… and you can kinda make out “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”
My inability to get into Emily Dickinson may not seem like a big deal except I went to college in Amherst, majored in English, and probably squandered opportunities to meet and learn from the scholars who flock to the Dickinson homestead in Amherst, where Emily was born and lived out the majority of her reclusive life. The first time I visited the Dickinson museum with a friend, I told him about my issues with “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and Emily Dickinson. “Oh, yeah. You know, it also works with Sylvia Plath and ‘Dixie,'” he dead-panned. (Luckily I was well over my Sylvia Plath phase, otherwise she too would be ruined.)
Lately, I’ve persisted in reading Dickinson anyway. I dig on her utterly original mix of whimsy and mystery, and I’ve even grown fond of that familiar Southern cadence that echoes in my brain whenever I read her. Here is a poem that is a bit morbid, but when sang to the tune of “Yellow Rose,” is much more chipper and light-heartedly.
I wish I knew that woman’s name,
So, when she comes this way,
To hold my life, and hold my ears,
For fear I hear her say
She’s “sorry I am dead”, again,
Just when the grave and I
Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep,-
Our only lullaby.
