Friday
To end the week, I share one of Ilya Milstein’s enchanting illustrations, along with the Emily Dickinson poem that it reminds me of. We start off in a library and, next thing we know, we have been transported “lands away.”
I haven’t always admired “There is no frigate like a book,” perhaps because I heard it so often as a child. I also recall its humorous appearance in Up the Down Staircase (1967), where a first-year teacher in an urban classroom trots it out, only to discover that her students have far different associations with the word “frigate.” At the time, the lyric struck me as boring, out-of-touch poetry.
Now when I read it, I hear Dickinson’s sense of genuine wonder. How amazing that books have this power, she marvels. That literature bears the human soul appears truer to me with every passing year.
It seems a little strange for Dickinson to invoke an economic balance sheet, but given America’s obsession with money, it’s a point worth making. What’s truly important can’t be measured in dollars and cents, and the poor have no less access to enchantment than the wealthy.
One also finds frugality in Dickinson’s use of words—no Walt Whitman she—and she takes us on journeys just as remarkable as those conducted by her loquacious compatriot. Frigates, prancing coursers, chariots—everyone who wants to take this ride does so in style.
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –