April 17, 2009

The Gift of Financial Insecurity

By ERIC G. WILSON

In 1864, when Americans were enduring the daily miseries of the Civil War, Emily Dickinson, perhaps with the nationwide crisis in mind, wrote these lines: "A nearness to Tremendousness — /An Agony procures." In a time when her entire country was grieving and desperate for solace, that verse appears to be inappropriate, even perverse. How could this young poet praise pain, and even go so far as to suggest it as a means to uplifting grandeur?

Perhaps we in the midst of our own