embarrasingly perplexed

I'm still thinking about poetics. I think about it everyday. I've looked at the writings of certain peoples on poetics and I continue to ask myself whether I am smart enough, motivated enough, determined enough to live in a world of academia. I have trouble holding thought in my head, of holding an idea or concept in my head and keeping it there till I can grasp the next and related thought. Like in the Variants of Emily Dickenson's poetry. Or maybe I had low-blood sugar when I was reading them and when I wanted to know the meaning of a line that incorporated and reached a meaning dependent upon both variations of words or phrases. This makes sense in my mind, but others may be confused as to what I mean if they don't know that Dickenson wrote poems where certain words or phrases could be varied. One reads what one wants, but I wanted to read both variations at one time... and I thought it difficult. Perhaps embarrassingly difficult, because I've heard that Emily Dickenson's work is relatively transparent to most readers. Am I wrong? Maybe I need to take another try.

An example of a variant poem, one that I wrote for my Eng.240 class last semester:

Something Living (10.6.05: Variant Poem)

Touch stones in the James
as Allison copies our faces
She blocks the Virginia sun,
though it flashes from top of the James.

In her paint we see blobs, 5
not our faces, but blobs.
Though the James we know is still there.
I am brown, sister’s green
and the James’ a bit blue.
I dare not seek the sun. 10

Dark and deep, still I hope for
something living in those blobs?
Maybe bodies, maybe the James,
maybe little girls playing on rocks
in the blobs that Allison drew. 15


Variants:
line 1: [Touch] Touch, skip
line 2: [copies] photos
line 3: [the Virginia sun] Virginia’s sun
line 6: [but] bloody
line 9: [and the James’] and James’
line 10: [deep] messy
line 11: [hoped for] anticipated
line 13: [maybe the James] maybe James