Emily Dickinson Poetrry Conversation 28 September 2016

Emily Dickinson Poetrry Conversation

28 September 2016

Facilitated by Lois Kackly

Fascicle 1 Sheet 2

[Lois begins by reading from A Victorian frame of mind 1830 - 1870, by Walter E. Houghton, Yale University Press 1959]

Of all the criticisms brought against them by the Lytton Stracheys of the twentieth century, the Victorians would have pleaded guilty to only one. They would have defended or excused their optimism, their dogmatism, their appeal to force, their straight-laced morality, but they would have confessed to an unfortunate strain of hypocrisy. To understand the charge, it must be broken down into three specific counts. One, they concealed or suppressed their true convictions and natural tastes. They said the ‘right thing’ or did the ‘right thing: they sacrificed sincerity to propriety. Second, and worse, they pretended to be better than they were. They passed themselves off as being incredibly pious and moral; they talked noble sentiments and lived – quite otherwise. Finally, they refused to look at life candidly. They shut their eyes to whatever was ugly or unpleasant, and pretended it didn’t exist. Conformity, moral pretension, and evasion – those are the hallmarks of Victorian hypocrisy.

Greg reads.

I had a guinea golden—
I lost it in the sand—
And tho' the sum was simple
And pounds were in the land—
Still, had it such a value
Unto my frugal eye—
That when I could not find it—
I sat me down to sigh.

I had a crimson Robin—
Who sang full many a day
But when the woods were painted,
He, too, did fly away—

Time brought me other Robins—
Their ballads were the same—
Still, for my missing Troubador
I kept the "house at hame."

I had a star in heaven—
One "Pleiad" was its name—
And when I was not heeding,
It wandered from the same.
And tho' the skies are crowded—

And all the night ashine—
I do not care about it—
Since none of them are mine.

My story has a moral—
I have a missing friend—
"Pleiad" its name, and Robin,
And guinea in the sand.
And when this mournful ditty
Accompanied with tear—
Shall meet the eye of traitor
In country far from here—
Grant that repentance solemn
May seize upon his mind—
And he no consolation
Beneath the sun may find.
                         - J23/Fr12/M35

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/2dUX0T5CcBk ]

Victoria. It’s sing-songy, and in a way at the end, almost taunting.

Harrison. There is a great example of her exquisite sense of rhythm. And, it’s like she’s written to a friend who hasn’t written back.

Lois. There’s irony in the idea of the story having a moral.

Harrison. Mockery. She’s mocking her own emotions at not being heard.

Lois. Well, she may be mocking her own emotions, but I’m wondering if she may not be mocking some other things.

Greg. Like what?

Lois. That’s what I want you all to  ….

Judith. Well, she didn’t mind missing the pliad, but she did mind missing the robin and the guinea.

Lois. Well, the reason I handed this paper out is I thought it was germane to this poem, because “Of all the criticisms brought against them by the Lytton Stracheys of the twentieth century” whoever they are …

Victoria. The Victorian people. The Bloomsbury

Lois. Oh, OK.  “the Victorians would have pleaded guilty to only one. . They would have defended or excused their optimism, their dogmatism, their appeal to force, their straight-laced morality, but they would have confessed to an unfortunate strain of hypocrisy. To understand the charge, it must be broken down into three specific counts. One, they concealed or suppressed their true convictions and natural tastes.” The reason I jumped on this with this poem is because I wanted to hear what you all thought of this embodying this Victorian tendency to hypocrisy. Whereas she – and I don’t think it takes away from what you’re saying – that she is mocking her own sensibility in a way. But I think, in the broader sense, her intense rhythm with Victorian sensibilities, so yet she is in a way, mocking the hypocrisy of others who would not admit – who are more in tune with moral poetry, if you will. I wonder if she’s playing with the Victorian sensibility for poetry that does have a moral [I think that may be there, but it’s not her purpose.], so that a typical reader would get as far as “My story has a moral,” and they’re like, ready for it, right? [some laughter] The reader would have been ready for what Harrison called her exquisite sense of rhythm that she used to keep the reader with her, and also typifying Victorian poetry, that didn’t have any experimental lines of half-rhymes. There are no ellipsis’ in this poem; it just reads straight through. She really keeps the reader in the palm of her hand. Then, when she says My story has a moral, there’s this Victorian tendency for straight-laced morality would be ready for the kill in her [inaudible]. Because her conclusion is utter honesty, right? – in wishing revenge, or expressing unpleasant feelings toward her friend or counterpart.

Harrison. Has anyone seen the TV commercial where subtitles are suggesting what the speaker is really thinking?

Lois. Yes, there was a New Yorker podcast. Have you seen that one? It was hysterical! It’s an office meeting, and they greet each other in the accepted form, and then they mumble their real feelings, and then by the end it’s total bedlam.

Harrison. Emily Dickinson was quick, wasn’t she, to take umbrage when someone didn’t’ write quickly back to her? [general agreement]

Greg. Sarah Tracy lives in infamy!

Harrison. The first stanza reminds us of “the widow’s mite,” about the woman who loses a coin, and she searches throughout the house to find it.

Greg. And the golden coin and the robin and the star in heaven also sound as romantically Victorian imagery, too.

Harrison. Almost trite, in a way.

Greg. Yeah, yeah. [some laughter]

Harrison. There’s a very funny rhyme here.

And tho' the skies are crowded—
And all the night ashine—
I do not care about it—

That I think is mocking Victorian rhymes.

Lois. Yes, she is mocking them, but her ability to mock them is only a exquisite as her mastery of it. [general agreement]

Victoria. That’s what I’m wondering, because this is such an early poem, that this is evidence of her – paying attention to how she wants to construct a poem, and at this point the experimental stuff – she hasn’t really broken into that yet.

Lois. So, you think it was a choice outside of the mimicry.

Victoria. No, I don’t think it’s a choice; I think it’s just her early development; this is her early process. She could construct a poem like this ‘til she reached a point where she had more experience, a larger scope that she wanted to pursue. I mean, this seems pretty small.

Harrison. Like Picasso developing his draftsmanship.

Victoria. Yes, exactly – developing her craft. Also, at that point in her life, a kind of immaturity of experience?

Greg. She’s twenty-seven. I was reminded by Bianchi, reading her Emily Dickinson Face to Face, she says you have to remember, these people were growing up in an incredibly Romantic period. This has that feel to it, too. There’s feeling in this.

Victoria. And she was reading all of those Victorian writers. Elizabeth Barrett Browning …

Greg. Plus Gothic novels.

Victoria. … the Bronte’s. I mean, you read Jane Eyre now, in our age, it’s still a wonderfully written novel, but it’s just so Victorian and so Romantic, I could just picture Dickinson imbibing that as a young woman.

Greg. That’s got to be why they all loved Reveries of a Bachelor so much, because that’s just saturated in that kind of … STUFF!

Lois. Well, l you know, people have remarked on the fact that Dickinson never mentioned Jane Austen, and I read a scathing criticism of Austen once, by a feminist. She felt that Austen glamorized marriage so much, and that got me to wondering if Dickinson had a similar reaction to her.

Victoria. Oh man, you could make such a big argument against that. [laughter]

Greg. Well, I understand that Jane Austen had kind of faded from the general awareness in this period.

Victoria. Yes, and then she made a come-back.

Adrianna. Austen wasn’t in the Romantic period; she was just on the cusp there. She was just finishing off the previous period.

Victoria. There was a good fifty to seventy-five years where she was – not obscure – but certainly not a popular writer.

Greg. There are parts in Pride and Prejudice I think it is, where Elizabeth Bennett really resents the way her father belittles his wife. Not a completely Romantic picture of marriage as far as I can say.

Lois. Yes, but just because these women had no recourse was kind of rooted in the sanctity of marriage.

Victoria. Maybe she didn’t look closely at Persuasion. That was her last novel and that’s probably where she most fully looks at – she was more mature then – looks at marriage in a much different way, and she’s got a lot of examples of women breaking out of the mold.

Harrison. Marriage was considered an economic institution. Women fell into their roles because to the needs of the greater society [crosstalk],

Greg. This is a poem that could easily appeared in the Springfield Republican, in her lifetime; I don’t think it did, but

Lois. You think so?

Greg. It sounds like it would have gone over pretty straight in her time [First published in Poems, Third Series, 1896]

Lois. I don’t agree. I don’t think they would have smiled at the last stanza. I think if she had left out the last four lines. That’s just my opinion. They would not have approved of the hidden agenda, let’s call it today.

Greg. Yeah, I see what you mean.

Victoria. It’s not a Christian-hearted thing to say. [laughter]

Lois. That’s what was so un-Victorian about it.

Harrison. It shows her skill at running verses that sort of play with the same idea. Variations on a theme. Two of my favorite poems that are constructed so perfectly in that way are I would not paint a Picture – different kinds of art and sensibilities, and The Brain is wider than the Sky.

Lois. It’s a comparative. She plays with comparatives. I keep coming back to the imagination here while she nurses this grudge. These verses all exemplify various themes on that same purpose.

Adrianna. What’s I kept the "house at hame.?”

Lois. Kept the house at home. It’s a quote of Robert Burns and she wanted it to rhyme. She couldn’t have said it without the reader being familiar with Burns, I don’t think.

Adrianna. Are there any variants in this poem?

Greg. I doubt it, because in the early ones there aren’t any. The first five fascicles, I think, have no or almost no variants.

Victoria. So, what does that mean? What does that indicate?

Greg. That’s one for your thesis. As she wrote she developed. Her practices changed, I suppose.

Lois. I notice that she used quotes for "house at hame," but she did not use it for I sat me down to sigh, from his poem, “Despondency.”

….

Harrison reads.

There is a morn by men unseen --

Whose maids upon remoter green

Keep their Seraphic May --

And all day long, with dance and game,

And gambol I may never name --

Employ their holiday.

Here to light measure, move the feet

Which walk no more the village street --

Nor by the wood are found --

Here are the birds that sought the sun

When last year's distaff idle hung

And summer's brows were bound.

Ne'er saw I such a wondrous scene --

Ne'er such a ring on such a green --

Nor so serene array --

As if the stars some summer night

Should swing their cups of Chrysolite --

And revel till the day --

Like thee to dance -- like thee to sing --

People upon the mystic green --

I ask, each new May Morn.

I wait thy far, fantastic bells --

Unto the different dawn!
                      -J24/Fr13/M36

[To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OZyemAs-AU]

Lois. Just to note, Chrysolite is a gemstone mentioned several times in the Bible, including Revelation. Dickinson tells Higginson “For prose, Mr. Ruskin, Sir Thomas Browne, and the Revelations”

Greg. Yes, in the New City of Jerusalem, which is God’s Kingdom, which will come down to earth, one of the foundations of the wall of that city is Chrysolite. That’s her Gem Chapter.

Victoria. I looked up the gem, what it looks like, and in my old, beautifully illustrated Webster’s. They have an illustration for Chrysolite, and it’s a translucent pale green.

Harrison. In that poem about heaven, where she’s a little girl, and she’s cutting her feet on the stones …

Greg and Victoria together.

What is -- "Paradise" --

Who live there --

Are they "Farmers" --

Do they "hoe" --

Do they know that this is "Amherst" --

And that I -- am coming -- too --

Do they wear "new shoes" -- in "Eden" --

Is it always pleasant -- there --

Won't they scold us -- when we're homesick --

Or tell God -- how cross we are --

You are sure there's such a person

As "a Father" -- in the sky --

So if I get lost -- there -- ever --

Or do what the Nurse calls "die" --

I shan't walk the "Jasper" -- barefoot --

Ransomed folks -- won't laugh at me --

Maybe -- "Eden" a'n't so lonesome

As New England used to be!
                           -J215/Fr241/M105

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/zz9-9hcNOsc  ]

Victoria. Oh! But do you know what I always thought Jasper meant? Not the stone, but to “Walk the Jasper” was to act like a fool. Clowning around, acting like a fool, dopey. So, I think she means, “I won’t clown around and make a fool of myself.”

Greg. Wow, I never heard that. Where’d you get that?

Victoria. When I did that painting and I looked up that poem I looked up Jasper, and that was one of the meanings. I’m sorry I can’t tell you where I found that.

Greg. That’s something to hunt down.

Victoria. But it fits, doesn’t it?

Greg. I’m pretty sure Jasper was another foundation stone in the New City of Jerulalem.

Lois. Well, what is the morn by men unseen? Is it the New Jerusalem already?

Greg. Oh, I think that’s the afterlife.

Lois. What is the tone of this?

Greg. She’s sorry for her departed friends – these birds who have flown. The maids who no longer walk the village street – she misses them.

Lois. So, is this a kind of self-comforting exercise, to imagine he departed being …

Greg. … and where they’ve gone? Unto the different dawn? Like thee to dance -- like thee to sing --. I want to be where you are.

Adrianna. It’s funny she says, I ask, each new May Morn, and she died in May.

Lois. OK, so, is this rhetorical? Is she saying  “I never saw such a wondrous scene.?”

Harrison. Rhetorical, I would say.

Lois. So, where is she seeing this?

Harrison. In her imagination; in her memory.

Lois. So, she’s explored by her own vision, kind of.

Harrison. Yeah.

Greg. Christians call the afterlife “the new day,” the dawn of a new day. That’s the different dawn. She hasn’t seen it yet. None of us have. We’ve never seen this wondrous scene that she’s imagining … but she wants to.

Lois. Adrianna picked up on the fact that the month of May being the month that Dickinson died in.

Adrianna. [inaudible] and what she was thinking – the green – each new May morn.

Harrison. And she talks about the pain of spring …

Greg. I dreaded that first Robins so….

Lois. So you think she’s drawing on her emotions with earthly spring to describe what she wants – an afterlife.

Harrison. Yes.

Greg. There is another poem where she expresses a similar wish; it’s I had no Cause to be awake —/ My Best — was gone to sleep —, She writes, I looked at Sunrise — Once —/ And then I looked at Them —/ And wishfulness in me arose —/ For Circumstance the same —. Same idea. She wants to join those that have departed her.

Harrison. There’s a poem about birds singing in the spring …

Greg.

The Birds declaim their Tunes —

Pronouncing every word

Like Hammers — Did they know they fell

Like Litanies of Lead —

On here and there — a creature —

They'd modify the Glee

To fit some Crucifixal Clef —

Some Key of Calvary —

Harrison. Litanies of Lead. That’s right. You hear the birds in the spring and it’s painful. People who have died and are gone.

Lois. Well, the tone of this poem is very different, isn’t it. It’s as if she’s refusing, in a way, to be caught up in the loss – attempting not to focus on what I’ve lost, and at least attempting to focus on what they’ve gained.

Greg. That’s a good comparison.

Lois. It avoids and differs from what I often hear, among the so-called religious, who want to talk about how much better it’s going to be. This poem somehow avoids that kind of sanctimonious strain.

Greg. “They’re in a better place now.”

Lois. Yeah, yeah.

Judith. She’s definitely thinking of an afterlife in this poem; or maybe she’s hoping. It seems there’s more certainty than in other poems.

Lois. It does have that emphatic tone, doesn’t it. Gambol is a kind of a game, isn’t it?

Greg. To gambol is to kind of frolic about, isn’t it?

Lois. OK. So it’s just an everlasting freakin’ holiday. [laughter]

Victoria. It’s just one big party. [more laughter]

Lois. Here to light measure. It’s strange she uses “here;” I mean, she’s really trying to be there. She’s really trying to imagine herself there. She doesn’t say “there to light measure.” HERE.

Greg. And she gets us there, too, by doing that, I think.

Judith. It almost makes you want to go there. [laughter]

Greg. Careful! Careful! We’ve lost many members that way! [laughter]

Harrison. Be careful what you wish for.

Judith. I’ll wait.

Greg. You do find those expressions of certainty more in the early poems, don’t you. Yet certain am I of the spot/ As if the Checks were given

Harrison. Yeah, really. The two poems do seem to fit together – the first two poems.

Lois. Very good. I’m glad you mentioned that because I wanted us to think about that but I’ve not been sure about how to bring that into the conversation. … There’s almost a biographical description, isn’t there? – on how she sees herself in the best light – dancing, walking around town – in the woods. It’s almost biographical. Even Dickinson can only call upon images that are part of her. As she attempts to know what it would be like to be in heaven, she draws on the best of her own biographical experience. That’s why I’m saying that, if we want to read between the lines a little bit to get some biographical information on Dickinson, it’s right here.

Greg. Even psychological, in a sense, because it tells you what she values – what would be heaven to her. “I went to Heaven/ It was a small town.”

Lois. Just like Amherst. I like that she includes the woods - Nor by the wood are found. The woods are not part of heaven, right? The woods are something you have to leave back in Western Massachusetts.

Greg. Nothing in Revelation about woods, I don’t think.

Victoria. Well, it was pretty logged over by then, don’t you think? [laughter]

…..

Lois. Do you think the birds that sought the sun are the birds who flew too close to the sun? – an image of Icarus? She’s using the annihilation reference to place down in Paradise, is she not? – getting rid of the annihilation –

Harrison. What does Distaff mean, actually?

Greg. It’s used in spinning yarn. In hand weaving it’s used together with a spindle.

Harrison. the birds that sought the sun are the ones that flew too close to the sun, and they’re also birds that flew south to seek the sun.

Lois. In the stanza where she says Ne'er saw I such a wondrous scene, she really hasn’t given us a wondrous scene except in terms of behavior.

Victoria. Well, she tells us later – the stars some summer night –

Greg. Well, she’s told us about keeping a seraphic May, with dance and game, that’s a wondrous scene.

Lois. Yeah, that’s the wondrous scene – what people are doing.

Harrison. It’s mostly pretty light, in tone, as you said. There’s a foretaste here of the way she changes things at the ending – the different dawn! There’s a finality about it. “Dots on a Disk of snow." The D sound. She talks about joining the fun, and she makes it in the end about immortality.

Victoria. I wait ‘til the day that I will be called to that fantastic place. – that great Dell.

Greg. I love that line, I wait thy far fantastic bells.

Harrison. Fantastic is a good word. It’s kind of a fantasy in a way. If it’s not seen it’s a fantasy, and it suggests that the other might be a fantasy as well.

Greg. Hm. Wow.

Judith. Oh that’s really – whoa! – somewhere else. YOU JUST TOOK US FROM THE FUN TIME! [laughter]

Harrison. Party Pooper.

‘’’’’’’

Lois reads the final two short poems.

As if I asked a common Alms,

And in my wondering hand

A Stranger pressed a Kingdom,

And I, bewildered, stand

As if I asked the Orient

Had it for me a Morn -

And it should lift its purple Dikes,

And flood Me with the Dawn!
                         -J323/Fr14/M37

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to  https://youtu.be/F-6_wT833Rs  ]

She slept beneath a tree
Remembered but by me.
 I touched her cradle mute;
Put on her carmine suit,—

                                                And see!

Lois. I have a note here that Mable titled this poem “The Tulip.”

Adrianna. Carmine is a color.

Victoria. It’s a red, tinted more toward the blue.

Greg. One of the variants in the first poem is “And it should lift it’s purple dikes and shatter me with dawn.” The first two poems dwelt on the theme of loss. This one is the opposite, isn’t it. She’s got it!  She has it! All she asked for was a common Alms, and Bam! I still remember Marilyn Nelson reading this.

Lois. What was memorable about it?

Greg. It was passionate.

Lois. Well, this could be anything but just a moment of ecstasy at the gift of life itself, or the discovery of her ability to create. For the reader, you fill in your own blank, don’t you? It sends you into a place of humble awe.

Greg. Yes! That’s a good word – awe, it’s unasked for and unexpected.

Lois. Unimaginable until you have it.

Greg. You don’t have to fill in anything, really. It’s an expression of extreme gratitude, I guess.

Lois. Flood Me with the Dawn! Maybe it’s a poem abut how it felt to witness a dawn.

Victoria. An actual sunrise.

Greg. It’s coming from the east – the Orient.

Harrison.

Will there really be a "Morning"?
Is there such a thing as "Day"?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like Water lilies?
Has it feathers like a Bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Men from the skies!
Please to tell a little Pilgrim
Where the place called "Morning" lies!
                                 - J101/Fr148/M87

[To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/ZANrIfip7ps ]

Judith. Have you ever heard it sung? It’s beautiful. It’s been set to music.

Greg. Harrison may not want anyone to remember this, but I once heard him speculate that that poem is about insomnia,

Harrison. Oh yes.

[Hilarity ensues]

Judith. NO! YOU’VE RUINED IT! [more laughter]

Harrison. It’s probably three o’clock in the morning, and she’s wondering, will there ever be a morning. That’s how you feel. [laughter continues.]

Lois. So, we’ve had a satire on morality, an attempt to imagine what it would be like in heaven, a sunrise or just a simple expression of ecstasy, and a tulip. Any common theme?

Greg. This puzzles me. I’m not sure what the recognition of the foot is.

Harrison. The foot rocking the cradle. That’s how you rock a cradle – with your foot.

Greg. Wow. OK. Now – are the last two lines an imperative? – or is the last line an imperative? It reads like it.