TRIBUTE TO E.D.

Papercut by Guido Vermeulen, sent to Cathérine Petré, around a poem by Emily Dickinson. This is how I commented the papercut on the Art & Lit group on IUOMA (join; it's a fantastic group!)
http://iuoma-network.ning.com/group/literatureandart



Funny;
I made a papercut Wednesday (because of the positive reactions on the papercuts, I do them occasionally, almost therapeutic, they calm me down because of the concentration but hard on the wrists!). Also I wanted this to link with an Emily Dickinson poem, a conversation between life and death and that's a major theme in the oeuvre of ED as well as a classic theme in Lit. altogether.
First I made the papercut, will post the image later and then choose a matching poem:

That such have died
Enable us
The tranquiller to die
That such have lived
Certificate
For immortality

ED
Or one dead makes us accept we all have to die (bye bye ego)
But the twist is the second stanza where ED opens the door to immortality because of the life the dead has lived, and it's of no importance how long that life was.
Shocked me after I put everything together, cried a bit and made another note on the back of the papercut "thinking of Gabriel again"
One of the most powerful death poems I know:
In a + sense: Renaissance by Edna Vincent St Millay (a young girl wants to die, buries herself in a coffin under the earth but is lured back to life by the tapping rain on that same earth, Edna wrote this when she was 17)
In a more negative sense: a dead poem by Joyce Mansour that ends with the desperate cry "oh God, how lonely I am in my grave".
Mansour is a major poet by the way, Egyptian, wrote in French and part of the surrealist movement but like so many wonderful femails in that movement completely overlooked and overshadowed by her male compadres. It's a shame!
Long live TOYEN, MANSOUR, ZURN, TANNING, CARRINGTON, MAAR, MILLER and others, you are all invited to discover their art, writings, photo's and meaningful lives.

Guido