"The Mushroom..." (by Emily Dickinson)


My entry for this month's Nibblefest Art Contest (NFAC) (~the theme for December being 'Mushrooms') is an original acrylic painting on a sheet of canvas, permanently mounted to a thin, 5" x 8.5" section of old, found wood. My entry "The Mushroom..." is signed and ready to hang, and features a tribute portrait of the venerable 19 century American poet, Emily Dickinson. ..........

The mushroom is the elf of plants,
At evening it is not;
At morning in a truffled hut
It stops upon a spot....

(As goes the first stanza of an untitled poem by Emily Dickinson)


I love this playful little poem (the whole of which is featured on my blog) by Emily Dickinson. With its four additional stanzas not included here, it's wonderful to recite aloud, thanks to its rhythm and cadence and tongue-twisty wording -- all of which she was such a master of. Miss Dickinson was herself as much an enigma as the mushroom she so poetically describes. An expressive composer of over 1700 poems, she never actually received wide recognition within her lifetime. An intensely private person, she instead became known more for her near reclusiveness and penchant for wearing all white than she ever did for her writing. It was only after her death, when her secret stash of writings was discovered by a relative, that the astonishing scope of her work was finally revealed.

Emily Dickinson never married nor had children, but we can all agree she gave birth to a legacy of another kind: an incredible body of poetic verse, that continues to speak to us today nearly two centuries later. Thus I portray Miss Dickinson in this, my tribute portrait, in a dress of white, and cradling a mushroom, my own symbol for her vast poetic talent and productivity, as one might hold a child (with the first several lines of her lovely untitled 'Mushroom' poem handwritten above).....

I journaled about my entry -- for more information about this piece, and to read her poem in its entirety, please visit my blog: http://art-of-patience.blogspot.com/