Emily Dickinson Reading Circle 08 January 2016

Emily Dickinson Reading Circle, 08 January 2016

Guest Speaker Alice Parker

We started with a brief look at 

When Etna basks and purrs
Naples is more afraid
Then when she shows her Garnet Tooth —
Security is loud —
              -J1146/Fr1161/M705

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/O7r79Ln8xJg  ]

[ Margaret told us that a certain critic saw non-recoverable deletion in this poem, and was asked to define that term. ]

Margaret: Well, if I say “Mary ran home and cooked supper,” who cooked supper?

Answer: Mary

Margaret: Well, how do you know that? It doesn’t say that.

Answer: It’s inferred.

Margaret: That’s a recoverable deletion. In the syntactical grammar of English, you can delete something as long as you can find it. A non-recoverable deletion would indicate, linguistically, that the sentence was ungrammatical. I don’t know why this critic sees non-recoverable deletions in this poem.

Greg. I don’t see it here at all.

Alice. Security from what?

Margaret. And Naples is more afraid of what?

Answers. The eruption. The volcano.

Margaret. It’s funny – when Winnie emailed me she asked, “Did she just make a mistake, because Etna’s in Sicily and not in Naples, or was it deliberate on her part?” I thought, the volcano could be so huge that it could reach Naples. She wouldn’t make a mistake like that, would she?

Greg. Oh, she knew her geography, but I don’t think she cares about geographical accuracy.

Alice. Naples is that wonderful Greek word, synechdoche, where one thing is used to stand for the general or vice versa.

Nick. Rhythmically you couldn’t have Sicily anyway.

Someone. And they’re more afraid of the possibility than of the reality. When Etna is basking and purring they don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Margaret. And why basking? Is she thinking of a cat?

All. Cats like to bask in the sun and they purr. She knew that. Her sister had many cats.

Margaret M. But isn’t there something geothermally correct about this too? – that when it’s spewing lava it’s less dangerous than it making ominous rumbling sounds?

Barri. Would she have been inspired by something that happened at that time?

Margaret. When was the eruption? It was an active volcano, and of course she was interested in volcanoes, right? What’s the garnet tooth?

Margaret M. That’s the lava, and I’m pretty sure that it’s less dangerous then than when you have a tight cap on it which blows.

Margaret. And Margaret, are you saying that because of the last line?

Margaret M. Yes.

Margaret. Do you want to elaborate on that?

Margaret M. Well, a garnet tooth is loud compared to bask and purr, but loud is a poetic way of saying something a little bit differently. It’s a sight, but she makes it a sound. I think she does so because it almost rhymes with afraid. [general amusement]

Barri. But it’s also loud when the volcano erupts. It’s a huge noise.

Margaret. But you’re saying that security is safer – because notice the more. It’s more afraid than the security of something actually happening.

Margaret M. I think it’s the security of that garnet tooth. It’s a comparative security. You can see it, what it’s doing there. But when you can’t see anything and it’s just rumbling …

Margaret. Do you know that fits so well with Dickinson’s whole preference for anticipation over realization?

Nick. I don’t think it’s uncommon that the fear of something is often greater than the reality,

Leslie. [following up on researching the number of Etna eruptions] There are just so many eruptions. It seems that they’re becoming a lot more frequent. When Dickinson was writing, there was one in 1852, 63, 65, 79 which was after, so the biggest one seems to have been in 1863, a central crater eruption and it produced ash=fall on its southwestern flank in south-eastern Sicily, but she didn’t mind. [laughter]

Greg. Well, another poem begins “Volcanoes be in Sicily and South America,” so, she knew.

Alice reads:

What shall I do when the Summer troubles—
What, when the Rose is ripe—
What when the Eggs fly off in Music
From the Maple Keep?

What shall I do when the Skies a'chirrup
Drop a Tune on me—
When the Bee hangs all Noon in the Buttercup
What will become of me?

Oh, when the Squirrel fills His Pockets
And the Berries stare
How can I bear their jocund Faces
Thou from Here, so far?

'Twouldn't afflict a Robin—
All His Goods have Wings—
I—do not fly, so wherefore
My Perennial Things?
                           - J956/Fr915/M430

[  To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/ncpI_ELXDDs  ]

So “What can I do when the summer troubles?” So it’s “I,” she’s upset by some thought. What’s going on in the seasons is affecting her. I love “From the Maple Keep” – Keep in the sense of a strongbox or something that you keep things in, and the maple trees keep the maple syrup.

Margaret. Couldn’t she possibly be identifying herself with winter?

Alice. Oh, I hadn’t gotten that far. She has so many wonderful poems of winter.

Margaret. And the Robin. “I dreaded that first Robin so” What can winter do when summer and spring and fall are active. Where am I? What will become of me? Then at the end, I do not fly.

Greg. Wherefore is “why.” “Why my perennial things?”

Alice. Oh, here’s the one I was looking for. Let me just read it if you’re thinking about her relationship to winter.

'Twas here my summer paused
What ripeness after then
To other scene or other soul
My sentence had begun.

To winter to remove
With winter to abide
Go manacle your icicle
Against your Tropic Bride.
                       - J1756/Fr1771/M685

That would bear out what you’re saying about her identification with winter.

Nick. In that last line at the end, she’s wondering what it would be like at these other seasons. Winter troubles me, and I wonder wherefore my perennial things, but what will I wonder and so on when I’m troubled in these other seasons. I see it as a four season poem, and that she’s really depressed. The one thing I keep hearing about is what she’s feeling. I mean, that’s what poetry’s about, it’s feeling. It’s not about analyzing with the left brain. Sorry Margaret [laughter]. But what is she feeling and what does this all lead to and I think she’s really feeling depressed, maybe alone, and she’s wondering “Am I going to be depressed in the summer, am I going to be depressed in the fall?” As I am now, and wondering, what is the point of all these things.

Alice. This certainly isn’t a spring poem or a summer poem in the sense of rejoicing and of creation. She’s rejoicing in a sense, but they also hurt her. She feels this stab when the birds begin to sing in the morning, and what will become of me? What do I have to hang onto. Where’s my context?

Margaret. That is something all we human beings share – we ask “What is our purpose in life?” – and that is something that the other creatures that we share the world with don’t have. They’re sufficient unto themselves, they live their lives. Look at Beau [a dog]; he knows exactly who he is.

Burleigh. But our own personal perennial markers are more – I mean, the animals are migrating for food, for warmth – the first thought that I had was fall and going back to school, and holidays. The animals don’t have that.

Barbara. What makes me sad about this poem is thinking about perennial things, I think of plants that come every year and robins return every year, although they’re not necessarily the same birds but the cycle – and the sadness for me is that there isn’t going to be any replacement for me when I’m gone. I’m not perennial. So she could be thinking that she’s not going to be here every year to see this cycle, and that may be why she’s a little wistful.

Margaret. And why she’s identified herself with winter – because winter is the symbol for death, right?

Sandy. Maybe her perennial things are her poems.

Nick. If that’s so Sandy, and I can well see that in here, then I think she’s asking, “What the hell is the point of all these things I’ve written?” – because that’s a very common question for a writer. I’ve just finished a biography of Thomas Hardy, one of the greatest poets in the English language and nobody reads him. How many here have read more than two or three poems by Hardy? Some - most poets, from the sixties until now think he’s the greatest English poet.

Margaret. Oh Donald Hall says The Transformation is his favorite poem.

Nick. But that is a very common thought for all writers

Sandy. And all creative people. “Is it going to outlast me?”

Alice. I think that is a very self-centered viewpoint, and I think that this whole poem is about something much broader. I don’t think she considers to herelf that she specifically is not going to be here. Her existence in the whole [?] of humankind is like that of a bird. All you can do is live in the time that you’re in.

Margaret. I think that you’re all right, that the tone of this poem is not a joyous one.

Nick. The agony is with the perennial. Not the future, not the past, because it keeps coming around and she’s still feeling it.

Greg. I can hear a sorrowful tone in the poem, but still it’s beautiful. [general agreement]

Margaret M. I think all of us have had this experience, especially if you love nature. There are times when you cannot reach that love. You can’t feel it. That first line, “What shall I do when the summer troubles, instead of when the summer’s here or something….

Margaret. Well, I hate to get back to something that might not be broad enough, but for me, iconicity is the motivating force for all art, including poetry, and iconicity is that attempt to identify with the world – to make the connection between being and the world, and that the world and you are apart and all those subliminal sensory and emotional experiences that you have and you’re not aware of are what come through in the arts. And those experiences are what make a part of the world. If you lose that sense of trust and faith that’s possible, then you get into this kind of tone, where you lose it for a minute. … the first line gets right to Margaret’s meaning, it asks, “What shall I do when the summer troubles,” it doesn’t say that it does it all the time.

Greg. A little off the track here, but, I think if the poem had begun with the second line, that would be a non-recoverable deletion. “shall I do” could be guessed, but other possibilities would still exist.

Margaret. Alice, how would you set “Drop a tune on me?” It seems that that would be something that you would want, but now it’s troubling.

Alice. Oh, I don’t think so. I think she’s affirming that everything that’s out there is just beautiful, and it’s that distance from her – how she relates to that.

Margaret. To me, What shall I do when the Summer troubles and What shall I do when the Skies a'chirrup are parallel.

Greg. After she masters the robin in I dreaded that first Robin so, she has the line Not all Pianos in the Woods/ Have power to mangle me. The music in the woods would have been painful.

Alice. Oh, and there are other poems about the birdsong – the dagger in the heart.

Leslie. I’ve been wondering if “Thou” refers to God. If you’re religious and you believe that God has created nature in symmetry where everything evolves in a cycle that is repetitive and sometimes troubling but that it has its place, and her response to that is “Where are my perennial things?” Where’s my cycle, where’s my place vis a vis nature?

Greg. Try reading it as if it’s to you. I love it that way.

Margaret. What I love about it is that this is a perfect example of a multiply recoverable deletion. You can read it as Thou being God, or summer …

Greg, But it’ recoverable grammatically, but if the poem began with the second line, you would not be able to recover anything grammatically. Yeah, we don’t know who Thou is; it could be anybody. It’s whoever you want it to be.

Margaret. I want to get back to wherefore. I want to know why she chose that word.

Greg. In an early poem she asks, Wherefore mine eye thy silver mist/ Wherefore Oh summer’s day?

Margaret. In Johnson 489 [Franklin 476] she has Who saw them—Wherefore fly? That’s interesting. We pray—to Heaven is the first line.

We pray—to Heaven—
We prate—of Heaven—
Relate—when Neighbors die—
At what o'clock to heaven—they fled—
Who saw them—Wherefore fly?

Is Heaven a Place—a Sky—a Tree?
Location's narrow way is for Ourselves—
Unto the Dead
There's no Geography—

But State—Endowal—Focus—
Where - Omnipresence—fly?

                          -J489/Fr476/M237

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/zo-r60zaXjk ]

Nick. Well I’m going to be interested to see what you do when every line has the first beat on the first syllable.

Alice. That’s no problem.

Nick. Yes, but it’s atypical. The natural beat in English is iambic. ba-BOM ba-BOMN ba-Bom

Greg. Double double toil and trouble. [laughter]

Alice. The next poem we’re going to do is 1789 in Franklin [Johnson 1764]

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows,—
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night’s delicious close.

Between the March and April line—
That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
Almost too heavenly near.

It makes us think of all the dead
That sauntered with us here,
By separation’s sorcery
Made cruelly more dear.

It makes us think of what we had,
And what we now deplore.
We almost wish those siren throats
Would go and sing no more.

An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear,
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.
                         -J1764/Fr1789/M690

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/HVw3BEEzmp4 ]

Margaret. There’s a lost manuscript that was published in the Republican in 1898, attributed to Dickinson.

Barri. You said the second stanza wasn’t her wording. I have it written down here.

Alice. Too heavenly does not sound like Dickinson

Margaret. Too heavenly, that’s right.

Barri. Sauntered was an atypical usage.

Greg. Saunter is the word Thoreau used. He wouldn’t go on a hike or a walk; he’d saunter. She might have picked that up from him.

Nick. Reginald Cook wrote about Henry David Thoreau; it’s called “A Concord Saunterer.” In fact in his essay on walking he describes his saunters.

Esther. My mother always used to tell me, “Get a move on Esther, don’t saunter. [laughter]

Greg. The word doesn’t have quite the merry ring for you then, does it. [laughter]

Nick. Henry argues in his essay on walking that if you’re not sauntering, you’re not appreciating where you are.

Margaret M. None of that power walking for him.

Alice. I like saunter here because the minute she says It makes us think of all the Dead we’re right into melancholy, and then saunter picks you up right away from that.

Margaret. “with us here.
”

Alice. Yes, you’re back in the present, and the presence.

Margaret M. I just think this poem is The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,The maddest noise that grows.

Margaret. Now that Bari has thrown that doubt into my mind, I’m not even sure that this is a Dickinson poem.

Alice. You’re not sure?

Greg. I think some of it is, anyway. The March and April line?

Margaret.. I may have been edited, and we just don’t have the original manuscript.

Esther. At night’s delicious close. That sure sound’s like her [general agreement]

Alice. Yes, [?]that endless hour before dawn, and then the birds awaken you even before the light changes.

Margaret. Magical Frontier is very much Dickinson, the way she uses magic – magic prison.

Greg. Who else but her, after contemplating all the wonders of nature, would remark, “It makes me think of all the dead?” [laughter]

Nick. And the sirens, right? She compares them to the singing of the sirens.

Margaret M. But she could be thinking of the dead. Thou could be someone that died.

Margaret. It’s interesting that she identifies Magical Frontier with Separation’s Sorcery. … and you know, I’m beginning to think that it was edited, because look at the rhymes. They’re too good. [meaning exact].

Alice. But I do like Any ear can break a human heart.

Margaret. Exactly. It reminds me of Not with a Club the heart is broken. I used to use that when we were playing hearts. [laughter].

Alice. To get us out of this broken heart feeling, we have to go to a spring poem, and I couldn’t help but thinking of A little madness in the spring.

A little Madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King,

But God be with the Clown —

Who ponders this tremendous scene —

This whole Experiment of Green —

As if it were his own!
                       - J1333/Fr1356/M586

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/eUyzhTx6Et0 ]

Sandy. I did a painting of it. It’s a combination of a trillium, because that’s one of the first flowers; it’s a diptych, and the other side is a partridge drumming, because I think that’s the maddest sound in the wood [laughter]. It’s like a chainsaw going off.

Barbara. Alice, when you’re working with poems to set them to music, do you ever consult with Margaret about variants?

Alice. I should. I love variants, and there was something in that poem about heavenly hurt where I went and looked up everything, but most of the time, I don’t worry.

Margaret. The reason I like the variants is that I don’t trust the editors. Sometimes they’re right, but I like to choose my own to understand the poem. That happens with A little madness, and also He preached opon breadth, where she has so many variants for To meet so enabled a Man.

Alice. I want to move on to Brooks of Steel

Like Brooms of Steel

The Snow and Wind

Had swept the Winter Street —

The House was hooked

The Sun sent out

Faint Deputies of Heat —

Where rode the Bird

The Silence tied

His ample — plodding Steed

The Apple in the Cellar snug

Was all the one that played.

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/v6mixq0zQOI 
See also "Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry," by 

Greg Mattingly, p 193 ]

This is 20 below zero, after the ice storm, and everything is silent. The house was hooked. There’s and interesting word.

Greg. The shutters. They’re fastened with hooks.

Alice. Where rode the bird. In the sky – the bird isn’t there now – there was silence. The only place that’s warm is the cellar, where the apple is turning into cider.

Bari. Can you talk about those last lines? I’m looking at the image of the apple in the cellar and there’s something I’m not getting here.

Greg. I looked up the word play in her dictionary and it is defined there as “Rest; relax; enjoy leisure; take a break from labor”

Margaret M. Didn’t they store apples in some matrix?

Margaret. My father always stored apples on a frame that had air underneath it. They have to be cold.

Nick. When I stored apples in a New England farmhouse – it had a stone foundation – I wrapped each apple in paper and stored them in a box – as long as they’re not touching one another.

Alice. The next poem is 465 in Franklin [Johnson 656]

The name — of it — is "Autumn" —
The hue — of it — is Blood —
An Artery — upon the Hill —
A Vein — along the Road —

Great Globules — in the Alleys —
And Oh, the Shower of Stain —
When Winds — upset the Basin —
And spill the Scarlet Rain —

It sprinkles Bonnets — far below —
It gathers ruddy Pools —
Then — eddies like a Rose — away —
Upon Vermilion Wheels —
                         -J656/Fr465/M233

[  To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/92z39XKeoX8 ]

Margaret. There is a variant. She has tip the scarlet rain, with tip followed by a mark – I don’t like to use the word dash – I’m thinking of your silences, Alice. In line ten, instead of gathers, she has stands in, also followed by a mark. Interesting, again she’s separating that from ruddy Pools. Oh, and she also has a variant of gathers ruddy – makes vermillion followed by another mark, then for the last line And leaves me with the Hills.So, she was obviously working on the whole poem, not just an odd line

…

Nick. She refers back to the first stanza with that last line. I guess the only way we know what the marks look like is to look at the manuscripts.

Margaret. Yes, and they’re all on line now, at Amherst College special collections, and at the Houghton library at Harvard University. … Do you want to talk about spaces in this poem? You said it was noisy.

Alice. There’s so much action in this poem. The name of it is Autumn is passive. The hue of it is Blood – when blood spills that’s obviously [?]. And the artery upon the hill – the artery flows very red up on the hill and Vein along the Road, veins are blue, purple, asters? – in the fall, along the road? Great Globules, wonderful syllables!

Margaret. And spill the scarlet Rain – all those leaves coming down.

Alice. It sprinkles Bonnets far below, that the first human element if we are thinking humans with bonnets on, or maybe it’s the flowers, or mushrooms or something. And Then eddies like arose away-

Several. That’s like the petals falling in a progression

Leslie. I was very troubled by this poem. This poem is very troubling to me. The first two stanzas make me feel like I’m in a battleground – like a battle of the Civil War, and I look around and see just blood and corpses everywhere, and to me it was just so dark.

Greg. I wasn’t going to mention it but it has been interpreted as a Civil War poem.

Nick. Well then what are the Vermillion Wheels doing?

Margaret. Langer [Suzanne K. Langer (1953. Feeling and Form. New York: Charles Scribner’s)] has a statement that unless the artist is actually dealing with conflict of tone and emotion, and in some cases they are – they’re in conflict, there’s only one tone. And from a cognitive point of view, if you’ve missed that tone, you’ve missed the poem. So, coming back to the difference between Leslie’s idea of The name of it is Autumn, and Alice’s putting it into the context of noise and everything else – before the silence – one could perhaps say that in this particular poem that Dickinson herself, as a poet, was feeling a certain conflict – the conflict between the absolute headiness of autumn – everybody comes here to see the wonderful foliage – and yet we know that it presages winter, and so there’s always a conflict in fall. Then you start thinking of the heaviness that Leslie sees – she could be thinking both, she could be ambivalent. So the rhythm of the poem, and the choice of words could be saying two different things. They are, I suppose.

Sandy. It’s deceptive at first when you read through it.

Margaret. The first line says that the name of it is Autumn – but what is it really? It’s not what we think of when we think of Autumn