WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Poetry Fix: I Taste a Liquour Never Brewed

Episode Date: June 20, 2026

In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read Emily Dickinson's "I Taste a Liquour Never Brewed." It's a poem about getting drunk on the beauty of the universe...which the poet believes has fundamental, eschatological importance.

Welcome to the Poetry Fix on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Erica Kaiba, bringing you your weekly fix of poetry from across time. Today we're reading Emily Dickinson's I Taste a Liquor Never Brood. This very first line sets us up to expect all the delightful weirdness that we usually find in the work of this poet. Dickinson continues to boast that this liquor comes from tankard, scooped in pearl, and that not all the Frankfurt berries yield such an alcohol. So now we're all wondering what Emily's drinking and where we can get some. And in the second stanza, she tells us,

Innebriate of air, am I, she declares, and debauchy of dew. It turns out that Emily Dickinson is getting drunk off of the summer air. Now before you write off Emily as just being strange, I want you to imagine stepping outside on a hot summer day and walking past a lilac bush or a magnolia tree. The weather is humid, so the scent of the fall. flowers stays on the air, and it's thick enough that you feel like you're drinking it. And there's a sense of wellness that overtakes you in that moment.

Whatever you have to deal with in life, the beauty that you find in the summer atmosphere eclipses it for a moment. The beauty is this external thing that acts on you and makes you feel just good. Hmm, almost like alcohol. Dickinson continues the image, describing herself as reeling through endless summer days from inns of molten blue. I imagine her as running through a field and stumbling, since she's reeling, and then falling on her back and staring at the molten blue sky,

imagining it as the inn where she gets her summer liquor. The initial publishers of this poem called it the May Wine, but Emily herself never gave the poem a title independent of the first line. And I think calling this a poem about May Wine kind of misses the point, because in the third stanza Emily flips our expectations and declares that she's going to get drunk on the air even after summer has passed. As the seasons change, Emily declares that she's still going to be around, out-drinking the bees and butterflies as they get driven out by the landlord of autumn.

And in fact, even as winter arrives, which she describes as serif swinging their snowy hats, she's still going to be found leaning against the sun in her drunken ecstasy. There's a spiritual dimension which emerges in this last stanza that encourages us to reread the poem. in that new light. We're told that saints run to their windows to see the little Tipler, Emily. Now where are we getting these saints from? We thought we signed up for a cute poem about spring and now there's this odd eschatological dimension that crops up in the very last lines. There's this big push to the end of all things, the end of the poem, the end of the year with the arrival of winter, and it is implied the end of the world as seraphs and saints

arrive on the scene. At the center of all this is the poet herself, drunk on the world's beauty. She's implying that there's something deeply, fundamentally important about this attitude that she's taken towards the world, this choice to soak up the pleasure of existence. With all that said, let's dive in. I taste a liquor never brewed by Emily Dickinson. I taste a liquor never brewed from tankards scooped in pearl. Not all the Frankfurt berries yield such an alcohol. Innebriate of air, am I, and debauchy of dew, reeling through endless summer days,

from inns of molten blue. When landlords turn the drunken bee out of the foxgloves door, when butterflies renounce their drams, I shall but drink them more, till seraphs swing their snowy hats, and saints to windows run. To see the little tip, Hippler, Leaning Against the Sun.

You've been listening to The Poetry Fix with Erica Kaiba. If you enjoyed this episode, consider following The Poetry Fix on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. And if you have any poems you want to see in a future episode, email your suggestions to The Poetry Fix at gmail.com. Join me next week and we'll be reading La Fontaine's The Oak and The Read.