There is another sky 
by Emily Dickinson

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come! 

This poem is meaningful yet simplistic and easy to understand. Literally, Emily Dickinson wrote about a peaceful garden, where there were always warm sunshine, beautiful flowers and evergreen trees; a garden full of bliss. She offered Austin, her elder brother to come into her garden to enjoy the happiness together in the end of the poem.

However, in my opinion, Emily Dickinson did not merely write about a beautiful garden in this poem. The peaceful garden here represents a beautiful life that all people are yearning for, totally different from their life with sadness and hopelessness. The poem hence portrays Emily's faith and optimism in the beauty of life.

Writing for her brother, Austin, an attorney, Emily might want to show him that although there is always misery and unhappiness in the world, there is beauty as well. Through her words, Emily wanted to turn her brother away from the hectic life he was leading, to escape into a surreal forest of purity. She offered him insight by sharing her optimism, hoping that he would find hope and peace in the future, even in the rough times of his life.

The garden in this poem is the symbol of happiness. As Emily Dickinson was a religious and spiritual poet, she might be referring to the Garden of Eden, the garden of bliss. And in the Garden of Eden, unlike in our world, everything is supposed to be perfect. She, as a believer, knew that very well.

这个长一点：

Walking the Sky
by Shari Andrews
Oberon Press, 2005

Reviewed by Joanna M. Weston

Memory and links with the past are Andrews’ main concerns. She reflects on the past through the lens of the present and uses the past to illuminate the present. She has a keen appreciation of the minutae of daily life and its relevance to the human psyche. 

Andrews’ prose poems in ‘The Hour’ tell a straightforward story of an old man’s death and funeral woven round his daughter’s memories of her family and insights. The language is clear, adding to the working life depicted in the poems. 
Upstairs, her father lay slack-jawed and dreaming. The mid-afternoon light fell across the bed. The quilts moved gently up and down on his chest. His hair lay in thin white strands against his scalp. His skin was pale as the porcelain teacups hanging from their hooks. (A field she buried her face in, p.32)

The dying man is clearly drawn but the last image brings the reader back to the kitchen where the daughter stands. There is a sense of the man having been in the kitchen, having used the porcelain cups, and of having withdrawn from them. 

Later in the sequence, Andrews depicts the daughter:

As she dries the cups, she admires their gilded edges, the part they will play later in the day, her lips sipping on bands of light to hold back the delicate verge of tears. (Morning has spread itself p.35)

The daughter’s anticipation of the funeral, mixed with grief, is poignantly shown in the simple act of drying the cups. 

The more complex free verse poems occasionally reveal difficulties with grammar and particularly with commas, which Andrews uses eccentrically and occasionally in ways which cause confusion. Short of getting into a discussion of Lynne Truss’ ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’, the meaning of a phrase can be greatly clarified by the use of the humble comma, as ‘Her skirt, petals close// around her newborn legs.’ (p.12) Do the petals close or is the skirt being likened to petals? Most likely the latter, but a comma would clarify the line. 

Or ‘My arms and legs, lullabies slice the water’ (p.11). It must be presumed that the lullabies arenot knives to cut water, but rather the arms and legs resemble lullabies. Again, a comma would eliminate the problem. There are, unfortunately, several other poems where a missing comma muddies the poetry. 

While Andrews’ imagery can be strong, as ‘The sky with the sun blazing in it was like his lungs filled with light.’ (p.40) even without commas there are times when the grammar is confused and meaning lost.

I stride the spine
from river bank to river bank, a stone
engraving the walls of a cave. (The old train bridge p.16)

Either the stone or the poet appears to be carving the cave-walls, but the reference is unclear.

If only the rhythm of this sea
could calm the distant shores,
limbs on the same body
that refuse to reconcile. (Limbs on the same body, p.25)

The limbs and shores appear to be one and the same, yet ‘limbs’ appears to refer to ‘this sea’. A period after ‘shores’ would help, followed by a re-writing of the last two lines. 

Andrews’ prose poems have real merit, a depth of insight and reflection that illuminates memory and the human condition.