Day in History 15 May – Emily Dickinson – Edward Hopper – June Carter Cash

On this day in 1886, renowned poet, Emily Dickinson died at her home in Amherst, Massachusetts at the age of 55.  Born Emily Elizabeth Dickinson on 10 December 1830 in Amherst.  She led a mostly introverted and reclusive life and never married.  Fewer than a dozen of her poems were published during her lifetime.  Those that were, were usually heavily edited to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time.  Dickinson’s poems were unique for that era as they featured short lines, no titles, slant rhyme and unconventional capitalization and punctuation.  After Dickinson’s death, her sister Lavinia, kept her promise and burned most of the poet’s correspondence.  Fortunatley though, Dickinson had left no instructions about the forty notebooks and loose sheets gathered in a locked chest.  The notebooks and loose sheets contained almost 1800 poems.  Lavinia recognized the poems’ worth and decided they must be published.  Today Dickinson is considered one of the most important poets and an important part of American culture.  One of my favorite poets.  Lately, my own poetry has been influenced by Dickinson.  Here is her poem Wild Nights – Wild Nights! (249);

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!

 Were I with thee

Wild Nights should be

Our luxury

 

Futile – the winds –

To a heart in port –

Done with the compass –

Done with the chart!

 

Rowing in Eden –

Ah, the sea!

Might I moor – Tonight –

In thee! 

The Final Footprint – Dickinson is interred in the Dickinson family private estate in West Cemetery in Amherst.  Her grave is marked by an upright stone marker. She requested Emily Brontë’s “No Coward Soul is Mine” be read at her funeral.

• No coward soul is mine,
  No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:
  I see Heaven’s glories shine,
  And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.O God within my breast,
  Almighty, ever-present Deity!
  Life — that in me has rest,
  As I — undying Life — have power in Thee!
• Vain are the thousand creeds
  That move men’s hearts: unutterably vain;
  Worthless as withered weeds,
  Or idlest froth amid the boundless main…
• With wide-embracing love
  Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
  Pervades and broods above,
  Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
• Though earth and moon were gone,
  And suns and universes ceased to be,
  And Thou wert left alone,
  Every existence would exist in Thee.
• There is not room for Death,
  Nor atom that his might could render void:
  Thou — Thou art Being and Breath,
  And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

On this day in 1967, realist painter Edward Hopper died in his studio near Washington Square, Manhattan at the age of 84. Born on July 22, 1882 in Upper Nyack, New York. While he was most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Both in his urban and rural scenes, his spare and finely calculated renderings reflected his personal vision of modern American life. 

Summer Interior

Night on the El Train (1918)

By 1923, Hopper’s slow climb finally produced a breakthrough. He re-encountered Josephine Nivison, an artist and former student of Robert Henri, during a summer painting trip in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They were opposites: she was short, open, gregarious, sociable, and liberal, while he was tall, secretive, shy, quiet, introspective, and conservative. They married a year later. She remarked famously, “Sometimes talking to Eddie is just like dropping a stone in a well, except that it doesn’t thump when it hits bottom.“ She subordinated her career to his and shared his reclusive life style. The rest of their lives revolved around their spare walk-up apartment in the city and their summers in South Truro on Cape Cod. She managed his career and his interviews, was his primary model, and was his life companion.

House by the Railroad

Hopper’s The House by the Railroad inspired the look of the Bates house in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho. The painting is a fanciful portrait of the Second Empire Victorian home at 18 Conger Avenue in Haverstraw, New York.

The Final Footprint

He was interred in his family’s plot at Oak Hill Cemetery in Nyack, New York. Josephine died ten months later. Josephine bequeathed their joint collection of more than three thousand works to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Other significant paintings by Hopper are held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Des Moines Art Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Nighthawks (1942)

On this day in 2003, singer, dancer, songwriter, actress, comedian, author, member of the Carter Family and wife of Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash died in Nashville of complications following heart-valve replacement surgery, in the company of her family at the age of 73.  Born Valerie June Carter in Maces Spring, Virginia, to Maybelle Carter and Ezra Carter.  She played the guitar, banjo, harmonica, and autoharp, and acted in several films and television shows.  Of course my favorite song that she wrote is “Ring of Fire”.  Carter won five Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Christian Music Hall of Fame in 2009.  Carter was married three times: Carl Smith (1952-1956); Edwin “Rip” Nix (1957-1966); then in 1968, Cash proposed to Carter during a live performance at the London Ice House in London, Ontario, Canada.  They married on 1 March in Franklin, Kentucky, and remained married until her death, just four months before Cash died.

 The Final Footprint – Johnny and June are buried together in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near their home in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Their graves are marked by full ledger companion markers. Other notable final footprints at Hendersonville Memory Gardens include; “Mother” Maybelle Carter, Helen Carter, Anita Carter, Ferlin Husky, Merle Kilgore, and Sheb Wooley.

Have you planned yours yet?

Follow TFF on twitter @RIPTFF