Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter, 28May2016

Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter  Poetry Conversation

Facilitated by Lois Kackley

28 May 2016

Robert reads.

Not with a Club, the Heart is broken

Nor with a Stone --

A Whip so small you could not see it

I've known

To lash the Magic Creature

Till it fell,

Yet that Whip's Name

Too noble then to tell.

Magnanimous as Bird

By Boy descried --

Singing unto the Stone

Of which it died --

Shame need not crouch

In such an Earth as Ours --

Shame -- stand erect --

The Universe is yours. 

                   J1304/Fr1349/M517

[To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/9gSjmoC1ijI ]

Robert. It’s a Donald Trump poem.

Lois. How so?

Robert. He’s an expert in wielding the club of shame - an expert in wielding the club of belittlement.

Would you like to expand on that thought a little?

Robert. Well, it’s a vehicle of attack that you don’t notice like a club, or a stone. It’s diminishment of being through shaming, and lashing another being in a manner that shames, but doing it in a way that it’s hard to identify exactly what he is doing.

Lois. You mean where the shame is coming from?

Robert. The vehicle of attack is shaming the other person, but that Whip's Name/ Too noble then to tell – it’s hard to identify how he’s wielding that whip, the whip of shame.

Harrison. The whip is apparently small and seemingly insignificant, but it’s very powerful – from the repetition. That fits Trump very well.

Lois. So who’s the voice in this poem? Is it logical? Are there two speakers?

Harrison. I think it’s one speaker.

Lois. The whipee or the whipper?

Robert. The heart.

Harrison. It could be a third person. It could be neither the whipper or the whippee, but an observer. Kind of the angry taunt of a satirist, perceiving nefarious activity and describing it.

Lois. So you see it as a rather intellectual examination a victimizer and a victim …

Harrison. Yes. The word “shame” is key.

Lois. I think so too. I’d like to hear different thoughts on why that’s true – why shame is so key.

Harrison. One thing that’s ambiguous [inaudible] shame has two meanings. It describes a feeling that one gets from being embarrassed or exposed, and shame as a characterization of the activity itself. It’s shameful, the things that Trump does. It makes people feel ashamed. As in, “What a pity! What a shame!”

Robert. What beautiful irony in the last two lines. Shame -- stand erect --/ The Universe is yours.

Lois. I was going to hold off a little bit, in order to explore this experience that’s being described, but since you brought it up, I think we can assume that there’s a major transformation taking place in this poem by the time you get to the end. If the speaker is the one being shamed, then the final verse records quite a change in experience. Right?

Robert. I’m not sure.

Victoria. I had a problem when I got to Magnanimous as Bird/ By Boy descried --/ Singing unto the Stone/ Of which it died – I really couldn’t decipher that one.

Greg. The boy spies a bird, throws a stone at it – but the bird keeps singing. It’s a shameful thing that she’s seeing, and it’s poignant because the bird keeps singing.

Victoria. So it’s the bird that is being magnanimous in the situation of being stoned.

Greg. Yes. It’s anthropomorphizing.

Lois. Well, that in itself, I mean, to use that word, implies a shift from shame to something quite the opposite.

Greg. It’s the boy that has acted shamefully. [general agreement].

Victoria. The bird is like a martyr.

Harrison. Turning the other cheek.

Victoria. Yes. So, if one has one’s heart broken, in the Christian sense turning the other cheek and remaining loving, and not spiteful or vengeful. But as Judith was saying, in the last stanza there’s a sense of strength in that, which is what the Christian message was. Even if you’re not turning the other cheek, it’s with the power of that metaphor of turning the other cheek as you’re …

Greg. … being thrown to the lions.

Lois. Well, a lot has been written – and I’ve heard discussed over the years, of Dickinson creating a “space”. Within that space, different elements that don’t normally line up are put in place. I’d just like to – it helped me – to look at this poem in that light, where we’ve got what some would call prismatic elements – broken, Whip, tell, died, and then crouched. Those all – it doesn’t stretch our ability to follow the narrative that far, right? It’s just when we get to words like erect, and The Universe is yours, that we realize that something has gone on in this space that Dickinson has created where she’s asking us to get into – looking at this new space, as if the heart were a place where the self recognized its affinity with this bird. If we take it strictly from the standpoint that she’s re-written the gospel we can keep it on an intellectual level. But if you look at the poem more as a space that she created to describe an experience …

Victoria. If you look at it in that way, then the space is the universe. When she says in the last line that The Universe is yours, that opens it all up, and there are no constrictions on the heart, there’s no way …

Lois. … very antithetical to the line right before it, where Shame need not crouch. But I think to experience the poem fully, you have to get into that space where crouching and shame are the experiences that she’s attempting to get us to feel., and re-examine. Am I making any sense?

Harrison. Yeah. This person is experiencing shame [ inaudible ]

Lois. In other words, if you can come through it –

Victoria. Yeah.

Lois. If you can come through it, the universe will be yours, but she just opposes the extraordinary opposite of feeling that the universe is yours – that is the absolute opposite of crouching in shame, is it not? [general agreement] But she’s taken it out of an intellectual realm of what it takes to be a Christian, or how to be a good person [laughs] right? You can just make a list. Dickinson makes lists, but she makes lists of elements that aren’t easily absorbed in the same thought experience – in the same poem experience.

Harrison. What bothers me is that I absolutely agree with what you’re saying, the role of shame in this poem being reassured that, get through it and the universe will be yours … on the other hand, you can take the other definition of shame, which is the act of doing it, then the it’s the boy that owns the universe, not the victim

Lois. So you’re taking the word shame as active, the person doing the shaming.

Harrison. That kind of bullying is shameful, “what a shame.” There are all these horrible things going on in the world, and she’s saying they’re going to win out. On the one hand she’s saying they’re not going to win out, at the same time she’s saying that they are. … hard to tell which one to accept.

Robert. The tone of the poem, for me, is deeply pessimistic. Shame need not crouch in this world. Shame can stand erect, because someone who knows how to manipulate shame … [general expressions of sudden enlightenment]

Lois. Oh for heaven’s sake.

Buleigh. I’m leaning that way too. I think she’s shaming shame, saying don’t bother to crouch, go ahead and stand up. I think that maybe the whip is shame, and that she’s been shamed.

Lois. Am I hearing you describe this poem as a parody of an egomaniac?

Robert. No, I think I experience this poem as maybe somewhat ironical but as a rather dark commentary on the role that shame plays in the world.

Lois. How can anything be any darker than shame? If what you’re saying is true, she’s going a step beyond the experience of shame, and exalting it. [several disagree, and say that she’s shaming shame rather than exalting it.]

Burleigh. Think of that first line, Not with a Club, but almost barely perceivable. Shame can be just in a look. It doesn’t even have to be spoken.

Lois. But the recipient has to be fertile ground for shame to let a look create that …

Jeff. The lines that no one’s talked about and that I lite on are lines 7 and 8. Yet that Whip's Name/ Too noble then to tell. She’s saying the whip’s name is noble?

Lois. The Magic Creature is too noble to tell the name of the whip. That’s how I read it.

Victoria. Yeah.

Lois. Which is so Dickinsonian it’s not even funny.

Victoria. Right.

Burleigh. That’s curious, what you point out.

Lois. If anything’s being exalted here, it’s the human heart that gets whipped – in the guise of this bird that got destroyed by the boy. And that’s another thing, you know. The boy. She could have said that some rich billionaire threw a stone at this bird. That would be a totally different narrative, right? But she doesn’t’. There’s a certain innocence even in the source of the injury.

Jeff. Yeah, I just can’t see this as Donald Trump at all. To me, he’s the guy with the club. She’s talking about this subtle whip that is too fine even to see.

Lois. Exactly

Greg. “She dealt her pretty words like blades.”

Lois. Yeah

Ellen . It can be like gossip, too.

Lois. Yeah, it can. That’s exactly the point. You can’t narrow it down to one …

Jeff. And if line 8 is anything like the way I read it, the whip’s name is Too noble then to tell – nothing – I mean Donald Trump is zero.

Greg. I like what Lois said, that the Magic Creature is too noble to tell the name of the whip.

Jeff. Oh, I see.

Greg. That’s what makes sense to me, though syntactically it’s pretty deceiving.

Lois. That’s a perfect example of how she has this space, where she doesn’t want to rely on the syntax that you might take for granted. She wants you to feel the parts being played.

[interlude]

Jeff. That’s a dark line, In such an Earth as Ours, It’s not all good here.

Harrison. It reminds me of her poem, Apparently with no surprise, where the flower is decapitated by the frost “In accidental power.”

Victoria. “For an approving God.”

Lois. In thinking of your response to the poem, “shaming shame,” I’ve heard it said that, as a quick response to this poem, some people read it as “I’m proud of not being ashamed of myself.”

[inaudible]

Judith. When it says The Magic Creature too noble to tell [inaudible] its name. I see that as her not only rising above the experience of shame; she rises above the shamer.

Lois. But its an internal rising above. It’s not something you talk about over the breakfast table.

Harrison. “Where the meanings are.”

Lois. “Where the meanings are,” precisely. But it changes your life. That’s why I said at the beginning, I think this poem describes a transformational experience. Now, the blessed college professor who introduced me to Dickinson said this poem was about a boy that killed a bird. [general amusement]. And, you know, I just really didn’t say anything, but, I didn’t really buy it. ….I think the reason this poem works is that there’s this discrete narrative that we can identify with. In fact we identify so much with the narrative, I think, even though it is within this internal space, that it’s easy to overlook the emotional meaning that she undertakes to describe.

Judith. What I wonder is, was this last stanza here in the original poem. In one place I looked the poem did not include this last stanza. That was in the 1924 edition.

Greg. Oh, they just took it out. That’s why

Judith. Or, did she go back and write it later?

Lois. In the 1924 edition, it was highly edited. They took out things they didn’t think were fitting.

Ellen. Is there any evidence that she ever went back to the fascicles and changed any of them?

Greg. Yes. Even years later – different writing implements’ – changed penmanship – Yes. The question that Judith raises is that there might be a copy of a second version of this poem. We’d have to check the variorum for that.

[interlude]

Harrison. It [the final stanza] kind of reminds me of Donne’s Death be not Proud. Shame do not crouch. Death thou must die, and shame thou must be shamed.

Lois. Death as Donne wrote about it (I haven’t read a lot of Donne) – I think the significance is some of the poignancy in this poem is in this internal universe, and the self-discovery through the heart’s recovery – its own identity and its own nature. If we had another hour it would be fun to talk about what precipitated the addition of that last verse.

Jeff. Can I ask you a question about Cris’ new book? [Emily Dickinson’s Poems as She Preserved Them, by Cristanne Miller] Does that contain every version of every poem? Because, I looked up the poem Sweet hours have perished here/ This is a timid room, and she has one of the versions in there, but I couldn’t find the other version – This is a mighty room.

Harrison. She puts in the version that she believes Dickinson last preserved.

Lois. She explains some of that, if you grab a copy, some of the finer points of what she put in. If she had put in every version of every poem, you couldn’t have gotten it in here. That’s why the variorum is three volumes, I guess.

[Robert reads the poem again]

Robert. I just want to say, I experienced a slight change in intonation based on our discussion.

Lois. You know, I just noticed too, Jeff, in that too noble then, I think that word “then” is what tips us off to it, linguistically, the Magic Creature being the one that’s too noble.

Greg. Yeah, that’s a good point.

Lois. It puts it in a kind of reflective state.

Harrison. Too noble then to tell, therefore too noble to tell.

Lois. Alright. On the next poem.

Ellen. We should all look at a picture of a bobolink before reading it.

Victoria. I listened to the bobolink’s song. There are two men who have done a series of films that record the bobolink. They have such a remarkable song. It’s not just one. It changes.

[Ellen plays bobolinks songing on her phone]

Victoria. I think we don’t have so many bobolinks now, because we don’t have so many open meadows. That’s what they like. Now we’re more aware that bobolinks nest in the ground – in pastures – so now some farmers are waiting to mow until the middle of July so they can be sure the fledglings have gone.

Judith reads:

The Way to know the Bobolink
From every other Bird
Precisely as the Joy of him-
Obliged to be inferred.

Of impudent Habiliment
Attired to defy,
Impertinence subordinate
At times to Majesty.

Of Sentiments seditious
Amenable to Law-
As Heresies of Transport
Or Puck’s Apostacy.

Extrinsic to Attention
Too intimate with Joy-
He compliments existence
Until allured away

By Seasons or his Children-
Adult and urgent grown-
Or unforeseen aggrandizement
Or, happily, Renown-

By Contrast certifying
The Bird of Birds is gone-
How nullified the Meadow-
Her Sorcerer withdrawn!
                             - J1279/Fr1348/M516

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/3t1h_1SAEu4] 

Robert. No boy’s going to descry that bird. [general amusement]

[?]  Habiliment. I’ve never heard that word before.

Harrison. Clothing, attire.

Lois. Alright. We’re talking about an outer appearance in the first couple of stanzas, right? The first hint we get of an internal condition is with the word impertinent.

Greg. What about Joy? Isn’t that an internal condition?

Harrison. Obliged to be inferred.

Robert. From the song.

Lois. Yeah, this is a better example of these elements within the – there’s not a description of a bird out in a field, or what he’s doing, or where he’s going, right? We’re asked to know a bobolink.

Burleigh. I was just looking at the line Attired to defy, and I think about how Dickinson attired herself to defy. [general amusement]

Ellen. It’s only the males that are attired to defy. The females are drab.

Judith. But she’s cross-gender! [laughter]

Jeff. This reminds me of her description of Austen, especially that poem about the Jay – No brigadier throughout the year/ So civic as the jay, and she’s really talking about Austen. It has that same sense that it’s sort of her hero. That one was way late, too. I think maybe he was already into the affair with Mabel Todd when she wrote that.

Greg. I’m glad you mentioned that poem, too, because these poems about birds often have this playful language in them. It’s almost like she’s trying to capture something about the bird. She’s obviously having fun with language in this poem. She’s having fun with the words themselves. She does that in that poem and I think to some extent One of the ones that Midas touched, about the oriole, and Before you thought of Spring, about the bluebird. They all have that …

Don. Well the birdcalls do that.

Jeff. As a matter of fact, the very last stanza here, it is like the last stanza in the Jay poem
His Character — a Tonic —
His future — a Dispute —
Unfair an Immortality
That leaves this Neighbor out —
That sounds so much like
How nullified the Meadow-
Her Sorcerer withdrawn!

Victoria. There’s a lot of legal language in this poem. Seditious, to law, heresies,

Jeff. Right – subordinate, impertinence,

Victoria. Nullified, contract …

Lois. So, she’s commenting on someone, something. What do we gather? What is the comment? In the other poem she’s sort of poking fun at Austen. Is she poking fun in this poem? I agree that it does have a similar tone. Do we want to explore the source of her amusement? ….. impudent Habiliment – I’m trying to think of what someone could have on that I would find impudent.

Greg. Something really inappropriate

Lois. The styles today are quite impudent [laughing] now that I think about it. Attired to defy, it’s like every generation, we look at their clothes, and it’s a defiance, isn’t it.

Burleigh. Mable [Mable Loomis Todd] was attired to defy when she wore black. … What does Puck’s apostasy mean to people? I have no clue.

Robert. A fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream – he defied traditions and just went his own way, lighthearted and independent.

Lois. Heresies of transport . Apparently she saw something in the way the bobolink flitted about that reminded her of …

Jeff. You know, this poem – and I’m sure that, among the guides, the people who saw THAT FILM [A pre-screening of Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion], a couple of weeks ago – is one exhibit among thousands of how wrong that film got her. Her sense of humor and her delight in the world around her. First of all, I think she just loved that name, bobolink. The language of that word is just wonderful. It just gets her off on – it’s a gas – and that’s what’s going on here. And, that film portrayed her as this tortured individual who really couldn’t make up her mind without the help of some screwball from the hills, Miss Buffam – Oh, don’t let me get started. [laughter]

Victoria. I agree with you, Jeff. I think it’s just a Puckish, playful …

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church --
I keep it, staying at Home --
With a Bobolink for a Chorister --
And an Orchard, for a Dome

Playful, fantastic, fantasizing language.

Lois. So, Extrinsic to Attention – What do you think of that? I take it to mean totally numb to attention. Totally indifferent. Joy being too interior a thing for him to be concerned about what he looks like.

Greg. That’s a good description of herself.

Lois. Aha! Aha! [general amusement] …. He compliments existence/ Until allured away. What does that mean?

Ellen. He puts a flourish on everything.

Victoria. Enhances … he just makes life a whole lot better. When you hear her poems she makes life a whole lot better. She’s our little bobolink. 

Ellen. Is it possible, given the erratic spelling back then, that she meant complement with and “e” as opposed to an “I”

Someone. Could be.

Lois. By Seasons or his Children. Until allured away/ By Seasons, right?

Harrison. Or unforeseen aggrandizement/ Or, happily, Renown-. In other words, he stops singing when he’s lured away. One of the things he can be lured away by is fame.

Lois. Aha! [general acknowledgement]

Jeff. The language throughout this us French-derived Romance. The words are formality, and aggrandizement is the granddad of them all. It’s just a series of these pretentious words. Seditious, impudent, habiliment, impertinence, just one after the other, you know, for its obvious effect.

Lois. So, does this last stanza carry through with this description of this perfectly delightful element in life? And we have a little hint from Harrison that the Renown has gotten the attention of this bobolink.

Greg. The last two lines of the poem about the oriole are Behold his lost Aggrandizement/ Upon the Apple Tree. [One of the ones that Midas touched Fr1488]

Robert. Those last three lines are like a memorial service.

The Bird of Birds is gone-
How nullified the Meadow-
Her Sorcerer withdrawn

Harrison. Elegic.

Lois. So, are you hearing that one of the ways to know the bobolink is not only by his multiple characteristics, but by how different things are when it’s gone.

Robert. I guess that’ll be true every moment, yeah.

Lois. That would be true of humans, too, right?

Greg. Yeah, because the joy is inferred. That kind of brings the human being’s reaction into the picture.

Robert. Following up on Victoria’s comment – it is interesting - we don’t actually see bobolinks around much but I went on a paddle some time ago and we came upon this big meadow on an island, and it was covered with bobolinks. I stayed here for an hour or two, it was such an exciting experience. The absence of it speaking from that direction.