A SHORT MEMOIR
 
back to main WRITINGS page * In fifth grade I fell in love with words. I loved everything about them: the way they sounded, the way they looked, all the puns, word games, homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, anagrams … everything. I began reading the dictionary with a simple plan: go from A to Z. I figured that this would take about two years but it would be worth it: by then I’d know every word there was. It didn’t turn out that way, however, because I quickly got bored with all those common words like ‘ace’ (geez, who doesn’t know that word?) and all the words I didn’t think I’d ever need like ‘accordion’. I mean, why would I ever need a word like accordion? * * In sixth grade I fell in love. In a roundabout way, we were introduced by my very kind, and very large, sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Phillips. (Funny, I never learned her first name.) You see, socially speaking, sixth grade was my worst so I and several other social misfits would stay in during recess and hang out with Mrs. Phillips. She, being in her heart of hearts a teacher, took advantage of our self-imposed sequestration to introduce us to the enchantment of describing things in other than plain terms: poetry. One day, Mrs. Phillips was talking with Judy (who was awfully cute) and Dwayne (who liked Judy so I didn’t like him much) so I wandered over to her desk, alone, where there was an opened book. It was upside down but I managed to decipher the name Emily Dickinson. (Hmm, I thought, Dickinson sort of rhymes with Mikkelsen.) I walked around the desk so the book was right side up—it was the teacher’s desk so you weren’t supposed to touch anything—and read these lines: Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. I experienced a profound and mysterious sensation, as if I had been given a clear view without an explanation of what I was looking at. I wandered around the room a few minutes then went back and reread the poem. I still couldn’t figure out what was going on with me: my thinking, like my view, was clear but I couldn’t quite grasp exactly what I was thinking about. So I just reread the lines again and again and again until I had them memorized. Then it all came to me. I had entered a special world. The way Emily wrote—so few words, so many meanings—was so different from anything I had ever read before but it was so inexplicably familiar too. It was as if I had always walked forward into the fog without ever noticing that it had completely evanesced at my sides and in back of me, and now, for the first time, I had turned to look. I fell madly in love with her. So much so that when I discovered, a few years later, that she had died in 1886, I actually experienced a sharp, almost palpable, loss. We would never share words. Her poems were all I would ever have but, as I soon learned, they were all I would ever need. ... back to main WRITINGS page back to SITE MAP back to SITE MAP for KHALIN, LACEE, JASMINE BUT THEY’RE REALLY GREAT WORDS! ( excerpts ) by DWIGHT BERNARD MIKKELSEN copyright © 2003 NotesLinger Arts * * * That night, after dinner, I hunkered down and got serious with Mr. Webster. By Sunday afternoon I had found three words—undulating, lingering and sumptuous—that satisfied my needs, my poem’s needs: they were big and sounded good and poetic. Now all I had to do was fit these good sounding big words into a poem and I would have a great poem. I thought about it for a while and decided my poem would be about a breeze because ‘breeze’ sounded, well, poetic. I wrote The Breeze went by, Undulating but not too strong, Lingering and Sumptuous, For the next person to come along. This, I was certain, was a great poem. It had to be: there were three good sounding big words in only four lines! I even made ‘Breeze’ and ‘Sumptuous’ start with capital letters even though they weren’t at the beginning of lines. (Emily did that.) I decided my great poem needed to look really good too so I talked my older brother into allowing me use his brand new light blue Sears portable typewriter. Scores of typewriter paper and one and a half rolls of typewriter ribbon later—I had never typed before—I had a perfect copy of my great poem. I was reading it over and over—ever impressed with my big words—when my brother walked in. ... * * * * The next day, I was so eager for Mrs. Phillips to proclaim me Emily’s poetical equal that I handed her the poem as soon as I got to school. She read the poem, smiled—both her cheeks and both her eyes, behind those thick glasses, were so big and round—and said, “Very nice, Dwight! I like it.” and handed it back to me. Very nice. Hmmm… ‘nice’ isn’t as good as great. Not even close. This wasn’t the reaction I had expected but my enthusiasm returned quickly: I figured she probably just said that so the other kids wouldn’t feel bad about their poems. During the first recess—the first meeting of the day for our social misfit and poetry society—I expected Mrs. Phillips to take me aside and proclaim my genius, but she didn’t. My hope for distinction dimmed. During lunch—we misfits brown-bagged it and ate in the classroom—I approached her. “So what do you think about my poem?” “Well, I’d like to ask you a few things about it.” I followed her to her desk. ... * * * * * * Sometimes, all these years later, when I’m walking, even in a crowd, I’ll silently recite and mark my steps in time with one of Emily’s poems. Sometimes, when I feel a breeze, I’ll marvel at how she could take such a common occurrence and with so few words send me into special worlds. Sometimes, when I smell cut grass or watch a baseball game, I’ll close my eyes for a few minutes and escape into one of those special worlds. Sometimes, after I’ve read one of her poems, I’ll just read it again and again and again and again. And sometimes, I’ll just think about Emily and wonder if she would have loved me too. I like to think so.