A Poetry Prompt from Emily Dickinson

I've just been reading a letter by Emily Dickinson to her cousins, in which she says:

"Mother was very beautiful when she had died. Seraphs are solemn artists."

I thought one part or both could make a good poetry prompt.

You might like to search the rest of the letter for further prompts: http://poem-a-day.knopfdoubleday.com/2011/04/10/emily-dickinson/?ref=poemaday_email

Interview with Derek Walcott

"To me the West Indies is a beginning society, very exhilarating with all its faults, and I do feel, as the whole world feels, that it's possible, quite possible, that Western civilization is probably suicidal in its direction, and there's no doubt that one is playing with a loaded revolver and that we live in this despair. I'm in the position where if I write a poem like "North and South," I am then entering the echo of that rhetoric in a language that I can address it to. When I am writing "Sainte Lucie" I am talking very simply to tree, sea, stone, person." Derek Walcott

Full interesting interview at https://mail.google.com/mail/?source=navclient#inbox/127cea1e34f89cdc

The Poem-A-Day site is at http://poem-a-day.knopfdoubleday.com/?ref=poemaday_poetrynl