EDIS, Amherst Chapter, Poetry Conversation 24 December 2016

EDIS, Amherst Chapter, Poetry Conversation

24 December 2016

Facilitated by Lois Kackley

Fascicle 2, Sheet 1

The conversation was preceded by a discussion of the physical appearance of the fascicles in general.

Lois. The first poem, starting out There is a word, and then the second one, through lane it lay, and then the third and fourth poems are less abstract, and a little more objectively a story, or a description. Then, the last two are not particularly abstract either, but, here’s how I read this: “Snow Flakes” and Santa Clause at the center of this fascicle forms what Hegenbotham refers to as a center that occasionally acts as a style. The fourth poem that we’re reading today Dickinson did in fact title “The Snowflakes.” The poem just before that is not titled, but in my opinion it’s pretty obvious that it’s a description of Santa Clause. And, these two poems at the center of the fascicle form what Hegenbotham refers to as a style, up toward and away from which the fascicle moves. So if you think of those two poems – I’m adjusting a little bit – I’m developing this theme, but I think I see – or I choose to see in this fascicle a theme of Christmas. The Santa Clause and the snow flakes, right there in the middle with two poems on either side forming a lead-up, up toward and away from. She enumerates different ways in which she thinks Dickinson organized the fascicles.
            There is a word/ which bears a sword reminds me of this popular Christmas song which would have had no emotional grab, no purchase in our imagination, if not effectively a play, on the fear of having been forgot by St. Nicholas”

You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town!

He's making a list,
And checking it twice,
Gonna find out who's naughty or nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town!
He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows when you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!

Judith. When was it written?

Lois. 1934. Alright, jumping ahead to Trough a Lane it lane is one of the two poems leading up to the center style. Here again, I’m imposing my reading of this poem; you may feel free to disagree. Banditti dangers and risks on life’s long lonely road, yet we are told since infancy, be good, for goodness sake. You better watch out. The wolf came peering curious/ The owl looked puzzled down/ The serpent’s satin figure sees you, and then I’m going back to the song He sees you when you’re sleeping/ He knows when you’re awake. It’s the same theme of being spied on, right? Skipping over to the last poem for today, Before the ice is in the pools, reminds me of the poem Expectation - is Contentment. So the theme I believe, of that next to the last poem, is a statement of philosophy, I guess, Christmas, more than anything, is expectation. And then the final quatrain, a benediction if you will, on the recurring theme of this fascicle. So, shall we start with There is a word?

Judith. I have to say, I never thought of Santa Clause at all in all my reading of these …

Lois. Well, I’ve heard other comments form others about this being about Santa Clause. That’s not original.

Jeff reads: 

The Guest is Gold and Crimson
An Opal guest and gray—
Of Ermine is his doublet—
His Capuchin gay—

He reaches town at nightfall—
He stops at every door—
Who looks for him at morning
I pray him too—explore
The Lark's pure territory—
Or the Lapwing's shore!

[To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/UTJiPu8I08U]

Lois. The tone of it is almost reverential, but not quite, right?

Victoria. You get a sense of … royalty? – with the opal and the ermine.

Lois. Well, I didn’t look up capuchin.

Adriana. A brown cloak, or a hooded cloak made for a woman.

Robert. Displays a nineteenth-century image of a hooded Santa Claus.

Lois. She used the name Santa Claus in a poem [“'Twas just this time, last year, I died“]

Judith. They did “The Dickinsons at Christmas” at the museum a couple of years ago, and they talked about how little was made of Christmas in that time, and the gifts are very practical – sewing needles and thread and things. And this Night Before Christmas poem suggests the opposite.

Robert. Written in 1823 and then attributed to Clement Moore in 1837

Greg. Her Puritan forbears would not celebrate Christmas. There’s that funny quote of Emily’s in a letter to her cousins, “Father frowns on Santa Claus and all such prowling gentlemen;”  but, in some earlier letters she writes about what she got in her stocking! “Otto of Rose” and this, that and the other thing, so apparently her parents were a little more tolerant and allowed a little bit of that celebration.

Victoria. Didn’t they hang their stockings on their bedposts? Maybe it was that the adults would indulge the children.

Judith. By the time little Gib came along [1875] they were much more indulgent.

Greg. When Austin and Susan first moved into the Evergreens [1856] Susan displayed Christmas wreaths in her windows and the town was up in arms against her. Popery!

Lois. Paganism! [laughter]

Robert. Here’s a letter from Emily in 1880 to Sally Jenkins. “Atmospherically, it was the most beautiful Christmas on record. The Hens came to the Door with Santa Claus and the pussies washed themselves in the open air without chilling their tongues, and Santa Claus himself, sweet old gentleman, was even gallanter than usual. Visitors from the Chimney were a new dismay, but all of them brought their Hands so full and behaved so sweetly – only a Churl could have turned them away …” It goes on.[L683]

Lois. What do you make of the last two lines? He reaches town at nightfall— /
He stops at every door—, I mean, you kind of have to believe, but when I read that it sent me back to the first stanza and I say, “Oh, yeah, OK.” What do you make of the last two lines? – The Lark’s pure territory?

Robert. Morning

Jeff. The lark is a morning bird. “Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings.”

Lois. Who looks for him at morning – OK, yeah.

Jeff. And the lapwing is a plover, or, a shore bird. I’ve also been consulting some references this morning.

Robert. The lapwing is up around the north pole, isn’t it?

Judith. A northern bird; I don’t know how far north, but yeah, that would make sense, wouldn’t it?

Lois. Who looks for him at morning – So, she’s giving it a little added meditation there, isn’t she?

Greg. It sounds like you can look for him, but you’re not going to find him. Explore the whole lark’s territory – go ahead.

Lois. And, the opal guest?

Greg. I can’t quite place opal, or gold either.

Robert. I thought it was something about the sun.

Judith. I thought it was the phoenix.

Greg. I thought it was about a bird.

Lois. The opal?

Greg. No, the whole thing.

Jeff. Opals are all kinds of colors, I think.

Judith. And they change in the light.

Robert. Like a sunset.

Adriana. Is it the same guest?

Lois. Oh, yeah, it’s just a description of Santa Claus.

Robert. And, the Ermine doublet?

Lois. On a nineteenth-century Santa Claus, yeah.

Greg. You can find nineteenth-century illustration of Santa Claus wearing all kinds of costumes.

Victoria. Gold buttons!

[Robert displays an 1863 Thomas Nast drawing of Santa]

Victoria. He was often depicted as a short, fat elf. He was a jolly old elf.

Lois. It’s interesting that you would say that, because she doesn’t play up that elf quality, does she?

Victoria. Well, when she says Capuchin gay, wouldn’t that be the elfy costume, gay? Jolly?

Lois. I was just fascinated with him being depicted as a guest, with a semi-respectful – playfully respectful in the poem.

Greg. Even admiring.

Judith. No chimney, though; he’s at the door.

Greg. She couldn’t find a rhyme for chimney. [laughter]

Victoria. [examining the drawing] “Harpers 1863.” They subscribed. She would have seen this image.

Lois. That Santa doesn’t look benign, cheerful.

Victoria. What’s the date of this fascicle?

Lois. 1858. Well, along with Christmas comes snow, right? So, she put this [“Snow Flakes”] right after Santa.

Victoria reads.
I counted till they danced so

Their slippers leaped the town –

And then I took a pencil

To note the rebels down –

And then they grew so jolly

I did resign the prig –

And ten of my once stately toes

Are marshalled for a jig!
                          -J36/Fr45/M43

To hear Victoria read this poem, go to https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=OTuQ2s9smAw.

Lois. This seems like something that’s hard to imagine except for one of the children.

Victoria. Yes.

Lois. An invitation for them to dance with her, right? We’ll dance like the snow flakes. Like a good children’s tale, it is a narrative.

Robert. Yeah, it really salvages the poem if it’s a children’s poem.

Lois. Well, and the Santa poem likely is as well.

Robert. You can almost see her getting the kids to dance, like these snow flakes coming down.

Judith. Well, I will read a note that I took down from another time about this poem. “Immature poem. Someone else could have written it.” [laughter] That was part of our discussion, you know, when we were looking at it in isolation.

Victoria. O-oh.

Judith. Yeah, I like “Snow Flakes” now. It has a totally new twist.

Victoria. In the context of the fascicle.

Judith. Yeah, and Santa Claus and Christmas.

Robert. That’s something we don’t do very often here –kind of comment on, is this kind of an immature poem; is this one of her more highly developed poems; I appreciate it.

Jeff. I think you can say about all of these, they’re definitely not the mature Emily Dickinson you see later. You get tastes of the articulateness, and being able to make metaphors of things in unusual ways but they don’t have – and I was making this comment in one of Margaret’s sessions not too long ago, about a relatively early poem that didn’t seem to me to have much feeling to it – maybe it was here – and Harrison said, “It’s intellectual,” and that’s the sense that I get from some of her early works like this, that it’s kind of following conventional poetry in a way - at the time – and it doesn’t have the really soulful depth that you get later.

Lois. Keep in mind, though, that she destroyed what she considered juvenilia. There’s nothing from her quote, immature years. Not to take away from what you’re saying, but I also have to keep in mind that Emily Dickinson’s mature self deemed these worthy not to be destroyed – to be in the fascicle – to keep them. I’m sure she wouldn’t argue with the idea that poems that she wrote in 1880 had a little more life in them than when she was 20 or 25.

Greg. The Snowflakes poem puts a big smile inside of me, and I don’t think any normal poet can do that. I like this poem. It does something to me. It makes me feel good.

Robert. Wow, wow

Judith. Yeah, when I read that last line I thought, Woah! This is unusual for Emily.

Greg. Oh, by the way, there’s a note here at the bottom in Miller’s book, The Guest is gold and crimson? Sent to Susan Dickinson, variant, late 1858 titled “Navy Sunset.” So, there’s your sunset.

Judith. Going back to what you said Jeff, she was only 28 years old, and I think of how one develops ones voice, and I think about it more in that developmental sense, as opposed to mature and immature – that she was just really beginning to see herself as a poet and try it out with all of these incredible poems.

Greg. I think she describes that in her poem We play at Paste.

Robert. Yes

Robert, Greg, and Victoria in unison.
We play at Paste —

Till qualified, for Pearl —

Then, drop the Paste —

And deem ourself a fool —

The Shapes — though — were similar —

And our new Hands

Learned Gem-Tactics —

Practicing Sands —
                 - J320.Fr282/M531

Victoria. And three years later the Civil War starts, and we start getting some of her really heavy-duty poems.

Lois. That’s after the Master Letters too.

Victoria. It didn’t take long for her to just go Wwshshshsh!

Jeff. This also lines up with what some of the scholars are saying, that the fascicles represent some sort of a unified effort. There’s some order to them. And, it makes sense that this would be in an early fascicle, because that’s early Emily. By the time you get to fascicle forty, which we’ve been doing at Margaret’s, Oh Boy, that’s really profound and really full of the heart of Emily Dickinson, the suffering heart that’s been through it all, which you don’t get here. She hasn’t been through the things here, at this point of her life, that really – really gripped her.

Judith. Or, she hasn’t written about those things yet.

Jeff. Maybe someone will remember, where was it in a letter that she said she had “a terror since September?”

Judith. Wasn’t that around 1858?

Greg. Yeah, Jay Leyda makes a really good case that that was Wadsworth coming to the house and scaring the shit out of them. Late in 1861. Vinnie rushes up to Sue saying “Sue! That man is here and I’m afraid that Emily will go away with him!” It’s after that you see that letter about the terror since September.

Robert. What is the quote?

Greg. I had a terror since September that I could tell no one.”

Lois. In a letter to Higginson.

Greg. But then, she often writes about “the two that I lost,” so, she was carrying that with her too.

Lois. Well, shall we go back and read the first poem in this fascicle and see what we find?

Jeff. But, she didn’t know Higginson until ‘62

Greg reads.
There is a word 

Which bears a sword 

Can pierce an armed man. 

It hurls its barbed syllables,— 

At once is mute again.

But where it fell 

The saved will tell 

On patriotic day, 

Some epauletted brother 

Gave his breath away.

  

Wherever runs the breathless sun, 

Wherever roams the day, 

There is its noiseless onset, 

There is its victory! 

Behold the keenest marksman!

The most accomplished shot!

Time’s sublimest target 

Is a soul “forgot”!
                      - J8/Fr42/M42

Lois. In the first line, There is a word, we don’t find out what that word is until the last lins. There’s a tension built in there, isn’t there, that she’s created. Without telling us what it is, she built a tension in. Why would she put this poem, assuming that we’re going to work on the premise that this fascicle has a Christmas theme, why would she put this poem in here? Now, I speculated that that 1974[?] song revealed the answer, but that’s my take on it. You may see something a little bit bigger.

Greg. I don’t see a connection.

Lois. So you think these poems may not be connected at all.

Greg. No, I’m not quite saying that. I’m saying I don’t see it. There must be something there that I’m missing.

Lois. Well, I confess, I asked myself that question – taking the Guest as Santa and the snowflakes as a companion. Now, why would she put this poem in here, and that’s what came to mind – that the idea of Santa, and to be forgotten by Santa, and to be forgotten period, there is no time more intense perhaps.

Greg. OK, yeah – if you’re forgotten you’re alone, and Christmas time would be the worst time for that to happen.

Lois. The worst. Let’s put in another way. Christmas, if one is forgotten by a loved one, Christmas would dramatize it the most.

Judith. But I don’t get But where it fell/ The saved will tell/ On patriotic day

Robert. Patriotic day? What’s patriotic day?

Greg. Decoration Day would be a patriotic day – what we now call Memorial Day, and the epauletted brother would be a soldier who Gave his breath away for his country and now he’s forgotten. And when will be remembered? – on the final day of judgement. Those saved are the elect of God.

Robert. Maybe it’s on the theme of “Lay this Laurel on the one.”

Greg. Yeah. Yeah.

Robert. Don’t want to use the word “mature;” at a different stage of her life.

Lois. We’ve read the poem now; we know that the word which bears the sword is “forgot,” and that it Can pierce an armed man, and that It hurls its barbed syllables

Greg. These are all martial terms, and it continues on in the second verse with the marksman and the accomplished shot. Not very Christmas-y.

Lois. But where it fell/ The saved will tell – Now, maybe that’s a separate thought.

Jeff. The saved tell it on the patriotic day, on Memorial Day. We memorialize the fallen soldiers.

Lois. That’s remembering. That’s the opposite of forgot.

Jeff. And maybe the saved will tell. There’s a sort of irony there. We memorialize the fallen but –

Lois. But where it fell – is it the condition of being forgot?

Jeff. It always seems to refer back to word.

Lois. Yeah, but she’s revealed at the end that that word is forgot.

Jeff. Right.

Robert. The second stanza resonates with me with kind of the mock dramatic tone of “Casey at the Bat.” [laughter] The tone of the poem is kind of funny – conflicting tones.

Lois. I’m not seeing Casey in this poem. [laughter]

Victoria. I’m trying to see this poem as the beginning of a progression through the fascicle with the two style poems in the middle, and how it fits, and I don’t understand what the connection is.

………………..

Jeff. I like what you were saying, Robert, that the second stanza has what sound to us like a fourth of July declamation – it’s got this patriotic fervor to it. Exclamation marks and rhythmic and all the rhetorical devices at play here. And, she’s playing on the irony. The first stanza is a quieter comment on the sting of what it means to be forgotten, for any person, dead or alive, in a sense. And then of course, in the very last two lines, she’s back more in the tone of the first stanza: Time’s sublimest target/ Is a soul “forgot”! Boy, that’s Emily Dickinson talking there.

Lois. Well, I can read the second stanza with a melancholy tone as well. … [recites softly with melancholic tone] Wherever runs the breathless sun,/ Wherever roams the day …

Greg. Sometimes, you have to remind yourself that they’re in the height of the Romantic era, and some of this language may not have sounded quite so flighty as it might to us.

Robert. In this poem, I really have the sense that she started out thinking of the word “forgot,” and it went out from there rather than having a pain otherwise that led up to the word “forgot,” that there was a focus on the word.

Lois. Perhaps, too, the individual that wrote this poem, her worst nightmare would be feeling forgotten by someone that she couldn’t hold on to. In her early years, we have those letters where she goes on and on to girlfriends, and she was only 25 when she wrote that letter to Sue, “You can stay Sue, or you can go; I’m used to this. It’s worse than death, but there are people who don’t want to be in my life anymore. … So, there’s a melodramatic tone to that poem, but that was her feeling.

Jeff. Yes, and typically of Dickinson she calls it the sublimest target. Conventionally, you’d say “most horrendous, horrible, terrible target is a soul forgot,” but for Dickinson …

Lois. [laughing] Right, right. And, she hates it, doesn’t she? She absolutely hates the idea of being forgotten.

Greg. Yeah, that’s the worst thing.

Lois. The worst thing, and it makes me stop and think about things that are running through my mind, that I’m mulling over, and sometimes I say to myself, stop, and let’s just cut to the chase, and that’s what she’s doing here. Don’t beat around the bush – if you’re forgotten it’s worse than death.

Jeff. It’s about the most primal fear we can have – that we’re not noticed, that we’re forgotten.

Robert. It’s interesting to me that probably her most popular children’s poem is “I’m nobody,” taking that humorous tone on not being noticed, not being seen.

Lois. OK, let’s read the next poem.

Judith reads:
Through lane it lay—thro’ bramble—

Through clearing and thro’ wood—

Banditti often passed us

Upon the lonely road.

The wolf came peering curious—

The owl looked puzzled down—

The serpent's satin figure

Glid stealthily along—

The tempests touched our garments—

The lightning's poinards gleamed—

Fierce from the Crag above us

The hungry Vulture screamed—

The satyr's fingers beckoned—

The valley murmured "Come"—

These were the mates—

This was the road

These children fluttered home.
                            - J9/Fr43/M42

Lois. Doesn’t that just grab you, that the last line is These children fluttered home, and the next poem is about Santa Claus?

Greg. Well, here’s a not from Miller’s book. “Through lane it lay may have referred to Paul Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) in which Pilgrim must descend through woods and a tempest, resisting serpents, to arrive in his heavenly home.”

Judith. We’re in danger here. This is like Little Red Riding Hood in the woods. Somebody’s out to get you.

Greg. It does seem like a Pilgrim’s journey.

Robert. It’s an exciting tale – just – told to Children.

Greg. The satyrs are temptation. The pilgrim has to get through all this stuff, until he finally reaches home.

Lois. So, if she’s right, this is Dickinson re-writing Pilgrim’s Progress?

Greg. Which she’s certainly known to do – take something and re-write it.

Victoria. It’s got a lot of great imagery in it. Vultures screaming, Owl peering …

Jeff. The children come through it like butterflies; they just flutter through.

Adrianna. I thought of that as the souls of the kids fluttering home.

Lois. But, I hadn’t noticed that Jeff; all this treacherous passage and the children just flutter through.

Jeff. There not hurt at all. They’re not threatened by anything. Banditti often passed us. Well, normally the banditti are the ones who are going to grab you but they just pass by.

Judith. It makes me think of all the horrible fairy tales we tell to kids, and then they go to sleep! [laughter]  … but I don’t know how this gets us to Christmas, though.

Lois. To me it does.

Judith. How?

Lois. Life is scary, but there’s every opportunity to make it home, and you did, and here comes Santa. [laughs)