Let’s be honest about Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). She isn’t that good a poet. Her poetry is always precious and often outright cloying.
How, then, explain her elevated place in American letters? In terms of artistic myth, she’s a soul mate to Vincent Van Gogh. Neither received the slightest recognition while alive, and both were only brought into wide public view through the posthumous efforts of a devoted sibling. It’s this discovered-after-death factor that largely explains Dickinson’s hold on the English teachers who today promote her work so vigorously—academics who almost all have their own desk drawers full of sensitive poems that no one will publish but that they hope will someday be discovered and wildly praised after they leave the scene—like what happened with Emily.
In my Songs of Wall Street book, I parody two Dickinson poems—"I Never Met Al Gore" (originally, "I Never Saw A Moor"), and "I Tanked on Options" (originally "I Died For Beauty"). Here, reaching back into this website’s rich vein of Dickinsonia, I offer a Wall Street rendition of another of her best-known works, "If I Could Stop One Heart From Breaking." This poem expresses the poet’s view that by helping one "fainting robin" get back into its nest, she will have shown her life was not lived in vain.
A fainting robin? Good grief! Let me out of this poetry workshop. I’m having an attack of the vapors.
If I Could Keep
One Client Happy
If I could keep one client happy
I shall earn my commish;
If I endure his constant snivels
His need to bitch,
Or help one struggling tel.com
Out of its self-dug ditch,
I shall earn my commish.
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