Repeating History

I know this post is incredibly late; My mind and body are both still getting used to being in school and working at the same time and I've been a little under the weather. But I guess it's better late than never...

So excuses aside, I found it very interesting that in class on Tuesday, most people enjoyed Dickinson's "They Fall like Flakes" as opposed to "It Feels a Shame..." I was on the opposite side; I really enjoyed the latter. I don't know, I guess I felt more emotion and connection on Dickinson's end. I'm a poetry writer as well as a poetry lover, and I tend to lean more toward those pieces that evoke and/or relay more emotion than not. I'm generally not a Dickinson fan but I must say that I liked this poem of hers particularly.

After reading and re-reading this piece, talking about it in class, and then thinking about it afterwards, I got a bit of a revelation: "It Feels a Shame" can easily be applied to present day, and a little bit of my own personal feelings. Now I know this is not a place for political soapboxes or anything like that, but I kind of see a parallel to Dickinson's feelings toward The Civil War and my own personal feelings toward The Iraq War that's going on now. Like Dickinson, I don't know that I am content with knowing that there are soldiers dying "in pawn for Liberty" while we sit here and wait for the war to end. I watch the news and wonder, is it all worth it? Just as Dickinson probably thought as she read the newspapers during her own time. I find it amazing how history repeats itself and that a crazy recluse (as I tend to look at Dickinson) would have shared similar sentiments about a similar situation as I do.