Bits & Bytes: No Frigate Like a Book

Following in the tradition of covering poets, novelists (and now songwriters...if you missed it, check Ken Jones’s great post last Friday covering some lyrics by Loudon Wainwright III), this week I’m revisiting an old Emily Dickinson favorite.

We’ve been talking about trends and changes in publishing a lot lately, and we keep coming back to questions of accessibility and around reaching the every computer users – no matter their level of experience. I’ve been thinking back to some of the earliest poetry I ever learned. Bear with me…there is a connection coming. I was pretty young when I discovered Emily Dickinson and years later I marveled at the depth of her message that I’d been able to connect to at both a beginner, and then as an English major, a more “advanced” level. The hope is that we can find continue to find ways to ensure there is a title or series that meets that individual user wherever he or she stands in the spectrum of computer use. Here is one from Ms. Dickinson.

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!