Dear Visitor,
Each year, the Massachusetts Center for the Book asks Bay State students to write letters to authors about works that have made an impression on them. We thought we would do the same – writing a letter to you about our "favorite poem."
We were drawn to this poem in the earliest days of Massachusetts Center for the Book, when we were asked to participate in a "Humanities on the Hill" day at the Massachusetts State House. The event, sponsored by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, honored Robert Pinsky for the wonderful program he established while serving as Poet Laureate of the United States. The "Favorite Poem Project" asks readers to articulate why particular poems speak to them. The responses tell us as much about the readers as about the poems they cite.
Here then, is our favorite poem, written by Emily Dickinson, the "belle of Amherst" as she is sometimes called. We refer to the poem by its first line: "There is no frigate like a book."
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
– Emily Dickinson
In just eight lines, this poem speaks volumes about the power of books to take us places. Books are the frigates and coursers of imagination. They "give us wings," as the Library of Congress says.
And the poem reminds us that access to books is fundamental. For if books are going to be, as we know they can be, a meeting place and a common ground for discussion of our shared hopes for life in this Commonwealth, then we must make certain that our circle of readers is continually expanded and that books are available for all who seek them. Only then can we say, with the same certainty as Dickinson's speaker, " this traverse may the poorest take without oppress of toll."
Sharon Shaloo
Executive Director
Massachusetts Center for the Book