Emily Dickinson’s and 陳英毅’s flowers: literary work

Emily Dickinson’s garden was her refuge, sanctuary, and the inspiration for her poetry.  Her flowers were metaphors of her own self or religious emblems.  Seeing her tulips and hyacinths came back every spring, signifying the Christian mystery of death and resurrection.  We read “Did you ever know that a flower, once withered & freshened again, became an immortal flower,--that is, that it rises again?  I think resurrections here [in her garden] are sweeter, it may be, than the longer and lasting one.” in a letter she wrote at the age of 21.

I came across a post in Facebook by my cousin, 陳英毅 (an ophthalmologist and a well known photographer of professional caliber) whose work with a title of “re-birth or new birth” (新生)—see photo below—is currently on display (May 1 to May 31) at the Cultural Center in Taichung, Taiwan.

The photo shows a delicate white flower growing from a crack of the rough and rusty metal door.  The hard, jagged, vulgar metal, representing the bygone past, is in stark contrast to the ethereal beauty of the flower, delicate and refined yet with a robust and vigorous future.

The way 英毅 takes his picture is the same way Emily wrote her poems; both are art/literary work.