EDIS, Amherst Chapter, Poetry Conversation 7 April 2017

EDIS, Amherst Chapter, Poetry Conversation

7 April 2017

Facilitated by Lois Kackley

Fascicle 2 Sheet 4

Lois. Eleanor Heginbotham has done a book strictly on the fascicles. And, we paid special attention to her page 15, where she delineates some thoughts on the patterns that may or may not exist in the fascicles. Scholars reads these fascicles in a variety of ways – everything from proof that in fact she did want to publish, to self publish, and then there are those who treat them as worksheets, a kind of experiment that she played with for a number of years. But, nevertheless, they interest anyone that has a deep interest in Dickinson, and we decided that when we read these fascicles that we would look for some of these possibilities.

            She says “Dickinson has slyly left not only the doublings, such as in the prose/poetry pair but also a number of other ‘tight-rope tricks’ as well. For example, at times the poem at the center of a fascicle acts as a sort of a stile, up toward and away from which the fascicle moves. Elsewhere Dickinson seems to compile her poems as her niece and nephews must have played dominoes, ending one poem with an image that would begin the next. She may end the fascicle with a poem that seems both a culmination of the fascicle and as a precursor to the first poem so that, as is true in fascicle 1, the open book provides the visual trick of leading the reader back to the first poem from that on the back cover. … Dickinson has chosen to place poems on opposing leaves that are both reprises of each other and revisions of earlier poems. “

            She’s alerting you to look at the poems within as we take up the fascicles one by one.

            “She has made the poems (or the speakers in poems) address each other diagonally. She has pulled lines from certain poems and used them on the next page for titles to adjacent poems. She has used verses separated from previous verses on their new page to bridge proximate poems.”

            And there are other ways to think of it but we took that as a kind of a jump start to reading the poems. Today, we’re really drawing from a book that has become quite a classic among Dickinsonians, “The Passion of Emily Dickinson.” I know it’s one of Victoria’s favorites - Judith Farr. I’m not a big fan of a lot of conjecture on the Master poems, or any supposed lover or imaginary lover of Dickinson’s, but nevertheless I think it’s kind of fun to look at this fascicle, since Judith has pointed out – this is on the sheet that all of you have – just above the part that says Heart! we will forget him! which is at the center of our fascicle today, The reason I talked about this is because I’d like to spark our imagination as we look at these other poems, and notice that this poem – Farr says,

            “The fascicles reveal – in keeping with biography (which reminds us of Sue’s evenings for Bowles in the 1850’s) – that a man of his description came to capture her thoughts, challenging the beloved woman” – That being Sue. “A little poem (47) in fascicle two, probably written in the 1850’s even as Dickinson was writing “One Sister have I in our house,” cries,” and then she quotes this poem at the center of our fascicle today. Farr suggests this is the first poem in which we find Dickinson referring to the master, and you can agree or disagree.

            “In the first glimpse the fascicles provide of the figure (at first glancingly sketched) of Master.” It is the first glimpse. This is the first glimpse that the fascicles provide. “He is Dickinson’s light-bearer, even as the beloved woman (though herself crowned with light) is ultimately her consort in darkness, the empty mirror, and “blame.” Dickinson’s characteristic association of Master with light was natural to a Victorian intellectual, for literature and art in the 1860’s linked the heroic male with Apllo.”

            But, the idea that this little poem at the center of our fascicle that we’re reading today may be her very first reference, or of our first glance of the Master [inaudible]. So let’s read that poem first.

Victoria reads.

Heart! We will forget him!

You and I -- tonight!

You may forget the warmth he gave --

I will forget the light!

When you have done, pray tell me

That I may straight begin!

Haste! lest while you're lagging

I remember him!
                    -J47/Fr64/M50

Greg. I remember hearing someone else read this poem, reading the first line, “Heart! We will forget him!” I like the way Victoria read, “Heart! We will forGET him! [laughter] I exaggerated a little. The tone can be changed so much, depending on how you say it.

Victoria. I looked at that, you know. One, two, three, four, five exclamation marks. There’s an emphatic sense of her trying to use all her will. I guess that’s my interpretation of her punctuation. Give yourself a good talking to, you know?

Lois. Yes, she poses this conversation .. well, it’s sort of the one side; we haven’t heard the heart answer. Apparently, the heart in this little conversation is keeping her silence. In the last two lines there’s the implication that the heart is simply reluctant, right? Haste! Hurry up!

Greg. It’s heart vs. head. [general agreement]

Lois. It’s such a successful poem, in that it - just flows. Reading it, you have an intuitive understanding, don’t you, of the feeling that went into this poem. You men can substitute “Her” when you read this.

Jeff. No need to do that.

Lois. [laughs] Well, you might get a little meaning out of it if you reads it with the “Her” pronoun. Do any of you remember reading it for the first time? Do you remember what your reaction was, or what you thought about when you first read it?

Greg. I heard it on an audio tape. It’s something you feel. You feel the poem, yeah.

Lois. Is this affair of the heart likely to continue?

Judith. You wonder. She’s referring back to the heart.

Victoria. It reminds me of a Bob Dylan poem – song – in which he’s trying to forget this love, and he says something like, “I don’t even remember what her lips felt like on mine.” You know that he’s thinking about her all the time. “Most of the time, she isn’t even on my mind. She’s that far behind.”

Lois. A little bit of bravado, a little bit of fake sincerity.

Greg. I guess now that he’s won the Nobel prize it’s OK to bring him into our literary discussions. [laughter]

Robert. Well, since we’re discussing songs, I was just memorizing the lyrics to Wildwood Flower - and the same kind of theme.

Robert sings:

I'll think of him never/  I'll be wildly gay

So, maybe this should be set to Wildwood Flower really. And, maybe that was my initial response – this sounds like kind of a response to a popular song rather than a poem from a great poet. I guess I’ve been taking this attitude which I don’t try to justify, but I’ve been looking at [inaudible] these early poems with that air [inaudible]

Lois. Well, it’s one of her most famous poems.

Robert. Is it really?

Lois. And I found it – if I ever thought about it, I didn’t realize it came so early – but like a lot of the most famous poetry, there’s a [inaudible] that speaks to every one. Whereas some of the other poems we have to work a little harder to find ourselves in the poem. Well, let’s start with the broken wheel. The beginning of sheet four. The imagery that comes out of this poem is really amazing.

Jeff reads.
My Wheel is in the dark.
I cannot see a spoke -
Yet know it's dripping feet
Go round and round.

My foot is on the tide -
An unfrequented road
Yet have all roads
A "Clearing" at the end.

Some have resigned the Loom -
Some - in the busy tomb
Find quaint employ.
Some with new - stately feet
Pass royal thro' the gate
Flinging the problem back, at you and I.
                               -J10/Fr61/M49

Lois. Any comments?

Greg. Jeff, thank you for reading An un-fre’-quented road in stead of an An un-fre’-quented road and getting the meter right in there. Very hard to picture dripping feet on a wheel.

Lois. Anyone want to take a stab at what she’s talking about here?

Greg. Questions of mortality and immortality? Is there immortality? She’s in the dark, her foot is on the tide – we’re all on the same voyage, the same trip. Some have resigned the Loom, those are the women who’ve gone on, passed. There’s the tomb.

Someone. The busy tomb – that’s got me puzzled. What do you think?

Greg. I think perhaps the tomb is busy taking people in. They were pretty busy in those days.

Robert. There’s a poem where she’s more of a believer – more of a sense of a believer coming through. It seems like she’s not dismissing the stately feet that pass royally through the gate. So, it’s not a “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” kind of irony.

Lois. No, I think this is all taking place this side of the grave. I love the speaking of some having resigned the Loom, as if one had a choice. Those who have resigned the Loom are those who have died, and she does that elsewhere.

Robert. When I read that third stanza, it resonated with that poem we discussed some time ago, Not any more to be lacked/ Not any more to be known. At the last stanza there’s something like Some — rescinded the Wrench —
Others — Shall I say
Plated the residue of Adz
With Monotony.

That kind of phrasing – Some have – has a parallelism to the later poem, which I find a much better poem.

Lois. What other condition do you identify with? Like Greg said, we’re all in this together.

Dorothy. To me, the final three stanza’s seem to be about stepping into eternity, and those who have made it simply toss the problem back to us. But, I’m having trouble with this wheel. It’s like a water wheel. So, she’s talking about something continuing, but the rest of it doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels like people leave. They just leave and they don’t tell you where they’re going. So, I’m having trouble tying those two together. [crosstalk]

Nancy. I’ve been seeing it as a spinning wheel. [crosstalk] Later she talks about the Loom.

Dorothy. But why would a spinning wheel have dripping feet?

Robert. I was thinking of a paddle boat.

Burleigh. I was picturing a mill; so we all have different images.

Jeff. I saw it as a carriage wheel.

Victoria. I did too.

Judith. I was thinking of a coach, as in Because I could not stop for Death.

Robert. There’s a thread of water. There’s water in the first stanza, water in the second stanza, and, just looking up “loom,” loom can be the part of the oar that is not the blade. Someone who’s resigned the Loom may have stopped rowing the boat across the passage.

Jeff. What made you look that up? Did you suspect that it had an interior meaning?

Robert. I couldn’t figure out the Loom itself, so I finally got a picture of an oar, showing the blade and the loom, and I guess it’s a word that was popular back in Greek times; In Greek literature they would talk about the loom of the oar.

Victoria. This doesn’t feel to me like a watery place. You’ve got feet on the road …

Robert. Well, she didn’t live near the water, so she probably had a hard time talking about it during these earlier years.

Greg

“I never saw a Moor—

I never saw the Sea—

Yet know I how the Heather looks

And what a Billow be.”

Lois. Well, it starts out, to me, as a kind of lamentation. My Wheel is in the dark! I cannot see a spoke!

Robert. Yeah, I get that sense, yeah. That second stanza’s a little more puzzling, isn’t it; My foot is on the tide. It has an image of I take my dog and visit the sea. My foot is on the tide, but on the tide. And tide being an unfrequented road is something I had trouble bringing together in my mind.

Lois. Say some more about what you were thinking when you were responding to this poem, your comment that we’re all in this together.

Greg. That’s the tide; I see the tide as carrying us all. I also notice that in the first two lines she expresses this difficult condition, and yet there are two lines that speak of some kind of confidence or faith, and that repeats itself, I think, in the second stanza –

Lois. Where do you see confidence?

Greg. Yet know it's dripping feet/ Go round and round. I know that much. I’m on this unfrequented road, but all roads must have an end somewhere. But at the end, for this final question she has no such confident recourse.

Dorothy. I’m beginning to see the stanzas fitting together now. It’s the mill wheel that drives it. It supplies the power, but what is it? I don’t know what it is.

Lois. I’m responding to it very similarly. It’s like, where am I going, what am I doing, why isn’t there a better roadmap? Why do I just have to learn from mistakes? Why can’t there be more clarity in this life?

Greg. A user’s manual.

Lois. Yeah, exactly. Where’s the freaking user’s manual? You know the church would tell her, “Read your Bible and you’ll know. Right’s right and wrong’s wrong.” And her response is her poetry. She’s not satisfied with that dogma. Life opens up in such a mystery every day.

Victoria. Well, I like what Greg said, because it gave me kind of something to hold onto, as I’m trying to go through the understanding that she does get that there are some knowns, at least in this life, but when you get to this place of the tomb, you can’t know it when you’re alive. So, there’s that limitation. Any earthly knowledge that she’s talking about here – it’s limited. You’re either alive with it, or you take it with you.

Lois. I love the authenticity of it. The refusal to accept trite explanations, and it comes out so strongly in that last line. When they’re gone, they just fling it all back.

Victoria. Isn’t that a great word? Flinging it back!

Lois. There’s just a barely controlled resentment at the dead, because you just left without – you know –

Robert. What is the problem they’re flinging back?

Greg. “Is immortality true?”

Lois. Yeah. We’re left with all the questions, and they’re flinging the questions back at us.

Robert. They have the answers.

Lois. Is that the assumption of the poem, that when you die you understand everything?

Robert. Well if you stately feet and Pass royal thro' the gate,

Greg. There are a couple of places in letters and poems where she speaks of the expression on the face of the dead as arrogance. Now they’re aloof. They’re not going to tell you anything.

Victoria. What was that poem we talked about – I heard a fly buzz when I died I- or any of those death poems where people are watching people die and see if they can get some hint – OK you’re getting closer to –

Greg. “We trust that she was willing/ We ask that we may be.”

Victoria. Yes, but that they would somehow reveal it, but then she’s saying here that they die and it just gets all flung back at us. That mystery, they take it with them.

Dorothy. One of Henry Thoreau’s friends asked him, as he was dying, what he saw, and Henry Thoreau replied, “One world at a time.”

Robert. Wow. To have the wherewithal to come up with that response –

Lois. – when you’re checking out.

Jeff. I think in the nineteenth century – isn’t it true? – that people thought that the dying person had an epiphany, and that that’s a part of what happens when you die.

Greg. They called it “the good death.”

Jeff. And, experience tells a lot of us, in this day and age, it doesn’t happen. Well, maybe it does occasionally, but commonly it doesn’t. You die.

Dorothy. And the mystery remains – what they thought at last, you know?

Lois. As you keep in mind that this center poem is the one that really lives, what these other poems might inform –

Victoria. As the stile poem?

Lois. Yeah. We feel that, because the center poem is so famous, and so successful on so many levels. So, if there is a means to her madness in this particular sheet we’ll try to pick it up. Who would like to read the next one?

Greg. I will, because I looked it up and the word can also be pronounced as per-riph’-ra-sis, which saves the meter.

There's something quieter than sleep
Within this inner room!
It wears a sprig upon its breast —
And will not tell its name.

Some touch it, and some kiss it —
Some chafe its idle hand —
It has a simple gravity
I do not understand!

I would not weep if I were they —
How rude in one to sob!
Might scare the quiet fairy
Back to her native wood!

While simple-hearted neighbors
Chat of the "Early dead" —
We — prone to periphrasis
Remark that Birds have fled!
                           - J45/Fr62/M49

Lois. Yes, for those who didn’t look up periphrasis, would you like to tell us what it means?

Greg. Periphrasis is talking around the topic rather than directly. Periphery is from the same root. Peri is around land phrasis is speech, so …

Robert. So, in stead of addressing painful topics, we say something like Birds have fled?

Lois. Yeah, that’s a good way – that’s a very literal way to look at it. What’s the tone of this poem? Does it have one tone?

Greg. That’s what’s interesting. The third stanza shifts the tone a bit. It’s more – I grope for the word – whimsical?

Robert. Yeah, it’s almost like The Walrus and the Carpenter, How rude in one to sob! [laughter]

Jeff. There’s even a kind of levity to it, just from the exclamation points. It’s not irreverent, but it’s not a poem that you’d write the day after someone you loved had died.

Lois. No, nor would you send it to someone who has lost someone. Exactly. The speaker in this poem is not grieving, l think it’s safe to say.

Victoria. Maybe she’s at a distance , and there’s more of a detachment, and she’s watched how various funerals, and deaths that have been observed, and all the chatting, and she sees it as all these things that go on after someone dies. But as you say, it’s not someone that she’s [inaudible] directly. You don’t feel the heart in it – the heart pain.

Lois. Maybe, I can say, someone who is witnessing, and maybe a little offended by the repetition of ritual, no matter who it is or what’s going on. Jessica Mitt wrote a whole book, she was so incensed by the money that changed hands and made capitalism of funerals, so there’s a little bit of that perhaps.

Greg. The fourth stanza sounds to me like a bit of insightful social commentary.

Lois. What is quieter than sleep? If sleep is the dead, then what is quieter than that?

Dorothy. I think she means death is quieter than sleep.

Lois. Oh, OK.

Robert. It is the corpse. [general affirmation], That she refers with several its in the first two stanzas sets a real tone for me… in the sense that it is not something that’s connected to any kind of grief. It’s an object.

Jeff. I get the sense that this is not a poem you would have seen from her late in her life. We know her heart had broken during her life, multiple times, maybe, but there’s no broken heart about this poem. And if I had the time, I was going to go through all prior poems to see if there – is there a broken heart before this? Do we see it anywhere, earlier? To me it’s biographically kind of relevant. It is one of those biographical questions we’re always thinking about.

Victoria. Well, she’s still so young here; how young? 29.

Lois. But she has felt passion. …. She’s certainly been introduced to her own capacity for deep intensity of emotion.

Victoria. But I don’t feel that in this poem. This feels detached.

Lois. Right. I’m just saying that this poem is not written by a twelve year-old. It’s written by someone who is acquainted with deep feeling, and I don’t think we can pass it off as by someone who doesn’t know intense emotion

Greg. She hasn’t begun writing it into her poems yet.

Victoria. Yes. Yes.

Greg. Alright, I can’t resist. There’s recently been uncovered a second source, an independent source, that strongly indicates that George Gould and Emily were close to getting married and her father nixed it. She was about nineteen when that happened.

Lois. Right. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.

Robert. Did he die a short time later?

Greg. No, her father said this guy has no prospects. He moved south and, according to one neighbor – the piano teacher, Penniman – it broke her heart. It was just a recollection left in her diary, and having no reason to make the story up ,,, Before that there the story had been in a biography by Genevieve Taggard, but it was third or fourth hand information so nobody could put much confidence in it. Then this second source showed up. …. So, if that’s true she felt plenty before she ever started writing any of this.

Lois. And what’s even more mysterious is the fact that he had a trunk load of letters from her that went missing.

Victoria. I’m kind of taking back what I said. I’m listening to what you’re all saying. I look at that third stanza, I would not weep if I were they —/ How rude in one to sob! Now I’m looking at that and thinking maybe she’s saying “How crass to make a show of your sorrow, so public a show.

Lois. Well, I don’t know, what was your word? Whimsical. There is whimsy in this poem - Might scare the quiet fairy/ Back to her native wood! It may be a less successful effort at what she accomplished in Heart! – we will forget him. In this poem it’s possible she was attempting the same kind of attempt at making light of deep sorrow.

Greg. Doesn’t it bring a smile, though?

Lois. It does bring a smile. And so does Heart! – we will forget him.

Robert. Is there an element of disingenuousness for those who are apparently grieving, but she’s not seeing something that’s genuine?

Polly. Yeah, there may be some sense of the simple-minded folk who just go through all the motions, and say all of the normal things; But I think also, just given the ending that she’s making that distinction that she makes in other places, where she’s aware of herself as a different kind of person. She’s a poet.

Lois. Yes, the speaker in this poem seems to want to voice an understanding that is not shared by the common mourner. Whether we agree with that or not. Actually our discussion has kind of led me to think that she is attempting the kind of attitude that she succeeds better at in Heart! – we will forget him. But that’s just a thought.

Jeff. I think it’s the third stanza that throws the rest of it off, especially the last two lines there, Might scare the quiet fairy/ Back to her native wood! – with an exclamation point. That’s the part that sounds just so off-handed.

Polly. Off key?

Jeff. Off-key, yes, exactly, that’s right.

Victoria. Why is that for your?

Jeff. Because, the tone of it – it’s light. It’s too light. I don’t want to say it’s irreverent – if you look at the first two stanzas, they hold up very nicely. That’s the way we think of Emily Dickinson; there’s something much more profound here. It has a simple gravity/ I do not understand – that’s what we think of aS Emily Dickinson, a very typical viewpoint, right? Then, in the third stanza, again you get the exclamation points, which trivialize it, and especially the last two lines, the way that’s expressed is almost trivial.

Victoria. I thought that too. It seemed really light-weight, and just this last minute I’ve been thinking this could have been someone that is kind of like an Ophelia, where this precious young woman that was so delicate, almost fairy-like, and to have people making this show, sobbing over her, was something that Dickinson would have found really objectionable. I just had this image of some delicate young woman that she might have known that had died, and the fragility of the spirit of this little waif – it would have been too much, people making such a big show of something so sad, and tender.

Lois. It’s a difficult poem, and I think we all recognized immediately that there was conflicting tone.

Greg. Maybe not. Maybe not conflicting after all. You know the poem about the cemetary?

What Inn is this

Where for the night

Peculiar Traveller comes?

Who is the Landlord?

Where the maids?

Behold, what curious rooms!

No ruddy fires on the hearth —

No brimming Tankards flow —

Necromancer! Landlord!

Who are these below?

But she doesn’t know what this is. That’s the speaker. She’s saying, what is this peculiar this? What is this? Quieter than sleep! What’s that sprig on her breast? Some chafe its hand, I notice that people kiss it – why are they bawling like that? The speaker is as if she doesn’t know what death is. I think that’s the voice here, and I think that makes all four stanzas consistent – consistent mood. It’s kind of weird.

Lois. No, I like that. That’s very good. If what you’re saying is true, and it sounds very valid, it expresses in a very poetic way but also very quiet way our desire to not look at death. We all want to not look at death. We spend our lives as if we’re going to go on forever until we get so old that we have to start making decisions. I think, Greg, you’ve given voice to Dickinson’s ability to give voice to that instinct not to look. I think it’s very valid.

Jeff. She’s maybe assuming the persona.

Polly. Yeah, I was just going to say that, that the speaker’s not necessarily the poet.

Jeff. It’s the innocent view of the child, sort of. That would fit, I think.

Lois. A child’s reaction.

Robert. The last stanza – simple-hearted neighbors – it’s interesting that she’s using simple-hearted not simple-minded.

Greg. Yeah – big difference.

Robert reads.

I keep my pledge.

I was not called—

Death did not notice me.

I bring my Rose.

I plight again,

By every sainted Bee—

By Daisy called from hillside—

by Bobolink from lane.

Blossom and I—

Her oath, and mine—

Will surely come again.
                      - J46/Fr63/M50

Lois. She’s got a period with that first line, like it’s almost a title.

Victoria. And then another one in the third.

Lois. So, perhaps she wants us to read I was not called—/ Death did not notice me. We just got through with one where we said the speaker was not wanting to notice death, and in this poem death doesn’t notice her.

Victoria. So she’s made a pledge or an oath. To … life? Sainted Bee – Daisy – Bobolink. Her trinity – “In the name of the Bee and the Butterfly and the Breeze.”

Jeff. That sounds like a great association for this poem.

Lois. Boy, there’s a lot left out of this poem.

Dorothy. The way she starts with I keep my pledge, and then she says I plight again. It sounds like she’s saying that “I must live.” Because I pledged I would, I keep my plight.

Victoria. I think the her is referring to the Blossom. [General Agreement]

Lois. What could prompt a poem like this? I keep thinking of that first poem that we read, where she was talking about the – my word was lamentation because there’s so little to help us know what to do in difficult circumstances, or just like Greg was saying – the lack of a user’s manual for life. Then this poem I can’t help but seeing as a follow-up to that poem. “I don’t know any more than I did, but I keep my pledge; I’m not dead.

Robert. Those first three lines – she was not called – it’s like she’s on a list – the list of those called to heaven? Is there a shift to where she’s kind of focusing on nature, and that’s where her real faith is? The Bee, the bobolink ….

Lois. Maybe that’s a reference to what keeps her going – Nature.

Robert. Is there a relationship between the pledge in the first line and the oath in the next to last line?

Lois. Victoria seemed to think so.

Robert. What is the oath.

Lois. Good question.

Victoria. To life, I think. Death did not notice me, so then I pledge to live, and somehow I got passed over. I was lucky compared to the poor person in the previous poem. I pledge to live and bring the rose, and watch the bee, land call the bobolink from the lane and watch the bee. I pledge to get right in there with life.

Greg. The world is calling her. She wasn’t called to death, so the world is calling her. I don’t see – she’s made her oath, she wasn’t called – so why an oath again – until the next time death passes her over?

Jeff. I think it’s “Blossom and I will surely come again.” It’s her oath and my oath that we will surely come again.

Greg. Oh!

Jeff. It’s an affirmation. I’m alive. I’m going to be here next year too.

Lois. And, I think here the blossom is symbolic of poetry, and that speaks to a lot of confidence.

Emily Dickinson Reading Circle, 10 March 2017

DRAFT ONLY

PLEASE DO NOT CITE IN THIS FORM

Emily Dickinson Reading Circle, 10 March 2017

Facilitated by Margaret Freeman

Poems of the Wind

Margaret F. This presentation is sponsored by Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts. We are dedicated to furthering interdisciplinary research in the cognitive sciences and the arts. As part of my poetic iconicity project, my talk today focuses on the role of metaphor in creating a poetic icon. When a poem “works,” it becomes an icon of felt life.

First I will show how poetic iconicity draws from semiotics, linguistics, religion, and popular discourse. I’ll then explain how Fauconnier and Turner’s blending theory provides a model for creating an icon. That brings me to the central point of my paper: the nature of metaphor and its role in iconicity. I’ll end with an example of how an entire poem becomes an icon of felt life.

First, then, from a poetic perspective, what is an icon? What do the various approaches to iconicity in linguistics, semiotics, religion, and popular discourse contribute to defining the poetic icon?

In language, the linguistic icon occurs when phonetic, syntactic, and semantic features are related to the metalinguistic elements of prosody, diagram, and image, but also to bodily movement. Sometimes, phonetic elements simulate external sounds, like the cuckoo of a bird or the thud of a book dropped on a table. The structure of sentences can simulate order of events, like Caesar’s veni vidi vici - I came, I saw, I conquered - and images can simulate bodily movement (the earth pirouetting around the sun). These can also express sensory and emotive feelings, as the following few slides show.

Sound can signify an emotive or sensory feeling when certain sound clusters recur in related words. Take the sound cluster sn-. You can say snack or snip out loud, with limited facial movement. Try it. Now try sneer and snort. Did you feel your lips and nostrils moving? 

You can say them as you said snap and snip – sneer, snort – but I find that much harder to do. With words like sneer, snort, snout, snarl, snit, I find my lips curling and my nostrils raising and twitching. Try it again. Somehow, as we think of the meaning of sn- sounds linked to words related to the nose, it produces a facial movement showing distaste or disgust. It’s not just sn- that links words to bodily movement. Consider gl-. It occurs with many words connoting light and brightness, such as glance, gleam, glitter, glare. Again, they can be uttered without any facial movement, but when we focus on the way the words are related to seeing, we open our eyes wide, our eyebrows go up. Try glare. Then glance, gleam. Here, facial movement produces a sensory feeling of brightness.

Order of words can represent order of events, even with the simple and construction. Here’s a passage from The Sun Also Rises: “We stood against the tall zinc bar and did not talk and looked at each other. The waiter came and said the taxi was outside. […] I gave the waiter a franc and we went out.” Obviously, it does not make sense to change most of the order around: we went out and gave the waiter a franc, or the waiter saying the taxi was outside before he came. Studies have shown that sentence length can also represent relative distance between speakers: the further the distance, the longer the sentences, as in a lecture; sentences are shorter with more intimate exchange, and there have been lots of studies to show that. Notice that all these examples show bodily position and movement.

Semantically, meaning can also evoke iconic representations. To say “the earth pirouetted around the sun” describes in one image the way our planet rotates 360° on its axis and revolves around its sun. Here the word pirouette links the movement of the earth to our own bodily movement.

Or consider a sentence from the Daily Mail: “Australian model Jordan Barrett looks worse for wear slumped against a wall after a big night out with Jesse Somera.” The body image of slumping against something else invokes both sensory and emotive feelings. Language iconicity can affect the way we perceive physical events. Studies have shown how sentences like “the carpenter hammered the nail into the wall” elicit an underlying mental image of horizontality, whereas “the carpenter hammered the nail into the floor” elicits verticality. In other words, there is a closer connection between our bodily positions 

In Christian Orthodox practice, an icon is a picture, bas relief, or other representation of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or the saints, through whom the believer may seek divine help or consolation. In this icon of Archbishop Romero, we access his concerns with and struggles against human rights violations in his native San Salvador. A religious icon does more than connecting a material artifact with the immaterial. It enables us to contact and be involved with the immaterial. A religious icon is not simply an index, nor a symbol.

Consider the centuries-old debate over whether the bread and the wine in holy sacrament actually become, or simply symbolically represent, the body and blood of Christ. Neither is true. The bread and the wine neither actually turn into, nor merely represent Christ’s flesh and blood. They are icons. When the priest says, echoing Christ’s words at the Last Supper, “This is my body which is given for you; this is my blood which is shed for you,” the linguistic invocation causes the bread and the wine to become icons of God’s presence in the bread and the wine through which communicants might then share in the suffering of Christ and become united in God’s love. Once the bread and wine have been thus sanctified, they are no longer simply bread and wine but icons (which is why they have to be consumed and not used for other purposes). You know, there are certain covens that will steal the sacramental wafer and start using it in black magic. The religious icon directly accesses the immaterial and the spiritual through a material artifact without actually treating them as having the same identity. Religious iconicity provides an entry to something beyond its manifestation

Popular discourse offers yet another dimension to iconic function. To be iconic, something has to be emotively meaningful to someone, group, or nation. Berkowitz, the architect for Miami’s Skyrise notes: “I can hold up a handful of architectural icons from throughout the world and you would identify the city in a heartbeat.” Berkowitz even anticipates that his tower will be iconic: “Miami is on the precipice of becoming a world-class city and one of the goals is an iconic structure.” His comment on his own intentions highlights iconicity as a motivating factor in artistic creativity.

 Now, Peircean semiotics is the most theoretical of the approaches to iconicity. According to Peirce, there are three levels of signs in which each mode—icon, index, and symbol—appears but one predominates. The icon at the first level is a complex structure, consisting of metaphor, image, and diagram. Peirce’s description of metaphor, image, and diagram is difficult:

Hypoicons may be roughly divided according to the mode of Firstness of which they partake. Those which partake of simple qualities, or First Firstnesses, are images; those which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts, are diagrams; those which represent the representative character of a representation by representing a parallelism in something else, are metaphors.

Peirce is obviously struggling here with expressing his understanding of metaphor. But as we shall see, his reference to “something else” is important for our understanding of metaphor and the poetic icon.

 This is how Peirce understands the relation between icons and hypoicons:

A Possibility alone is an Icon purely by virtue of its quality; and its object can only be a Firstness. But a sign may be iconic, that is, may represent its object mainly by its similarity, no matter what its mode of being. If a substantive be wanted that means if you want a noun, an iconic representamen may be termed a hypoicon. Any material image, as a painting, is largely conventional in its mode of representation; but in itself, without legend or label it may be called a hypoicon.

Here’s my take on Peirce’s enigmatic statement. Images, diagrams, and metaphors are not examples of the first level of sign, but partakers of its various modes. The Greek word hypo means “below” or “beneath.” So I don’t think hypoicons are icons in themselves. They are elements that underlie an icon. Thus, metaphors, images, and diagrams are subcomponents of an icon and not icons in themselves. This distinction is important for my theory of poetic iconicity.

To sum up so far, the poetic icon is an amalgam of semiotic, linguistic, religious, and popular usage. It connects a product of human cognition, language, art, or artifact, with some aspect of the experienced world, material or immaterial. It enables us to connect with something beyond what is presented. It has meaningful and affective significance to someone, a group, or a culture. It has evaluative power: whether something is or isn’t iconic. To explain how the poetic icon works, I turn to Fauconnier and Turner’s conceptual integration theory. How many of you are familiar with blending? I’ll try to explain the theory briefly.

The blending model shows how new information can be created from old. For example, say you’ve just met a young woman, Line, at the conference registration area. You don’t know who she is, but a colleague tells you “Line is the daughter of Per Aage.” You are now in possession of new information. That is an example of a very simplex blending. The generic space carries shared structural information that enables blending to happen. The two input spaces contain roles and values. An identity principle matches the roles to values across the two input spaces. These are then projected into a new, blended, space that contains the emergent structure that Line is the daughter of Per Aage.
Blending is a process that ranges from very simple to very complex.

If you now take Peirce’s structure of an icon and apply the blending model, metaphor becomes the element of the generic structure that bridges image and diagram to result in the emergent structure of the icon. This is a very simplistic skeleton of the processes involved. But it is crucial in understanding how metaphor works in creating a poetic icon, which is the main subject of my talk today.

So, that brings me to part two of my talk, the nature of metaphor itself. Metaphor is usually understood as an expression that is the product of seeing something in terms of another, as in Shakespeare’s line, “Juliet is the sun.” As a result, it has either been mostly understood as a literary figure that only exists to embellish poetry or as one that is dead, as in “the leg of a table,” or “the foot of a mountain.” In 1980, however, Lakoff and Johnson in their book Metaphors We Live By revolutionized the study of metaphor by showing how much of our lives are triggered by metaphor. For example, conceptually, we see life as a journey a productive metaphor that triggers such linguistic expressions as “obstacles in our path” or “we are at a crossroads in our relationship.”

 

This means that metaphor is not a product, but a process. The word comes from the Greek μετα-φερειν, a verb meaning to carry across or beyond. Metaphoring is a mapping between domains and an integral part of cognitive processing. It structures the ways we perceive and construe our world experience. Metaphoring consists of three hierarchical levels: linguistic, conceptual, and sensory-emotive. At the most surface level, metaphoring creates linguistic expressions, like Shakespeare’s “Now is the winter of our discontent.” At the next level, metaphoring links concrete embodied experiences with our conceptualizing minds, like LIFE IS A JOURNEY. At the deepest level, metaphoring links our sensory-emotive experiences with the external world. That level cannot be articulated directly. Sensory-emotive metaphoring lies below the level of our conscious minds. It is the level where iconicity operates as the motivating force for poesis, the making of artifacts through the activity of the arts.

Think of metaphor as a living tree. Linguistic metaphors exist at the surface of language, much as the leaves of a tree emerge from its branches. Conceptual metaphors constitute the trunk and branches that support and feed the leaves. Sensory-emotive metaphors are the roots that lie below the surface and without which the tree cannot grow. The leaves depend upon the trunk’s branches, and both depend upon the tree’s roots. Lying under the surface of consciousness, sensory-emotive experiences of the physical and social worlds cannot be formulated in words. Nevertheless they motivate the production of conceptual metaphors, just as the roots of a tree nourish the tree above ground.

Discussions of the role of metaphor in poetry necessarily focus on the conceptual and linguistic levels, since the sensory-emotive level below the level of consciousness cannot be articulated directly. The sensory-emotive level motivates the poet, who works upward from the roots through the trunk to the leaves (the actual poem) of the cognitive metaphor tree. When reading a poem, respondents work downward from the linguistic leaves through the conceptual trunk to the sensory-emotive roots. Although all three levels of metaphor exist in poetic forms, it is the root structure of sensory-emotive metaphor that constitutes the motivating force for the creation of a poem as an icon of reality.

Now think of the blending model as an upside-down cognitive metaphor tree. At the level of the generic space, sensory-emotive metaphoring is subliminal. It results from a blending process that occurs below the level of conceptual awareness. The blending is a mapping of our sensory-emotive experiences with the external world. It does not appear linguistically, but motivates conceptual metaphoric mapping between the domains of the two input spaces. Projections from these mappings to the blended space create the emergent structure of the icon.

That the motivating metaphor of the generic space is “hidden” is what enables a poem to reflect the potentiality of Peirce’s “pure icon.” As the poet is motivated by this subliminal process to formulate the images and structures of the poem in language, so do its hearers/readers intuit and realise the possibilities it presents through their own blending processes. In this way, a poem gives us access to the actual world of sensory-emotive experience that is not expressed linguistically.

That brings me to the third and final part of my talk: to describe the role of metaphor in creating a poem as an icon of felt reality. In her poem “Metaphors,” Sylvia Plath’s image of pregnancy expresses a truth about metaphor captured by blending theory: the creation of something new, the birth of new meaning brought into existence by means of the metaphoring process. Neither the feelings arising from the physical event of human pregnancy nor the birth of something new are actually mentioned in Plath’s poem.

As readers, we work downward from the linguistic to the sensory-emotive level. We interpret the first set of metaphors, “An elephant, a ponderous house, / A melon strolling on two tendrils,” as images related to pregnancy: the extra weight that causes a lumbering gait, the container of the stomach becoming huge and massive, the appearance of the pregnant woman with huge belly on legs that appear stalk-like by comparison. The second set refers to the process of pregnancy: the yeasty rising, money new-minted. The next line sums up: means, stage, cow in calf. We read the final two lines of the poem, “I’ve eaten a bag of green apples, / Boarded the train there’s no getting off,” as a story of how it feels to be pregnant. Our own experience of the discomfort felt as a result of eating unripe fruit enables us to share the feelings of the speaker who has eaten a whole “bag” of them; and the feeling of inevitability—that this is something that once set in motion cannot be undone—comes from the image of a moving train that has no exit doors.

The metaphoring process in Plath’s poem is complex. First comes the blending associated with pregnancy. Remember the simplex blending model for roles and values. The structural relation is now female fertility, the role is occupied by woman and the value is being pregnant, resulting in the emergent structure of the potential child.

At the next level, the metaphors of pregnancy map the various images onto the woman. The generic space includes what is shared between the two input spaces: the size, weight, gait, and process of increasing change. The source space of the metaphor includes all the images that map onto the “I” of the target space—the ego “I” of the poem’s speaker. These elements are then projected into the blended space to produce an answer to the riddle: I am a pregnant woman.

So far so good. But what has that to do with iconicity? Plath’s poem is doing more than expressing the sensory experience of pregnancy. Given the focus of its title, “Metaphors,” the concept of a pregnant woman becomes the source space for the target space of writing poetry, so that the structuring metaphor governing the poem is WRITING POETRY IS BEING PREGNANT.

 Let’s go back to the cognitive metaphor tree. We can see that the poem’s metaphoring is operating on all three levels. On one level, the riddle is answered by “a pregnant woman,” but on another the answer is “metaphor,” and on yet another, “the poem” itself. Plath’s poem is an icon that simulates metaphoring as the structuring trigger for the emergence of poetic creation, embodied in the metaphor of childbirth.

Let’s go back to the poem for a moment. The invitation to solve the riddle is all the reader needs to motivate the metaphorical mappings in the poem. So here are some questions:

·         why does the first line mention nine syllables?

·         how many topics are mentioned in the first seven lines?

·         how many lines are there in the poem?

·         why is the tile “Metaphors” and not “Metaphor”?

It’s no coincidence that all these are nines. They mark the nine months of human pregnancy. Notice that answering these questions causes you to actively participate in recreating the poem’s structure.

The icon blending model, remember, shows how the process of metaphoring triggers the projection of image and diagram into a new, blended, space whose emergent structure is the icon. So the structure of the poem becomes one input space and the images the other.

We’ve seen how the poem sets up the blend of a pregnant woman through its images. However, there is an additional relation between the two input spaces that links pregnancy and poetry. The nine metaphors that map the identity of the speaker—riddle, elephant, house, melon, loaf, purse, means, stage, cow—are mapped onto the nine letters of the title, the nine lines, each with nine syllables, marking the nine months of gestation, to connect the pregnant woman to the poet. The poem’s “I” in the two input spaces maps onto woman and poet. The images of elephant, house, and melon map onto the woman’s belly and the poem’s body. In the last two lines the sensory discomfort of being pregnant represented by eating too many green apples and the motion of an unstoppable train one can’t get off are mapped onto the labor involved and the commitment to writing a poem. What emerges in the poem is that the potential child becomes the potential poem. In the blend the “I” becomes the poem itself, its riddle being the role of metaphoring as process in its creation.

By metaphorically integrating more closely the sensory-emotive effects of prosodic features with the grammatical and imagistic elements of a poetic text, the poet creates for us an icon of reality.

A final note. Plath was doubtless aware of Old English Riddle poetry, either from her studies at Smith or from her husband, Ted Hughes. Many of the riddles still have no solution; otherwise have more than one possibility. Can you solve this one?

Moth ate words. It seemed to me

a curious chance, when that wonder I learned,

that the worm forswallowed some man’s song,

thief in darkness the glorious speech

and its foundation. Thievish guest was

no whit the wiser for swallowing words.

From its earliest days, poetry “dwell[s] in possibility” to quote Emily Dickinson. Thus becoming closer to Peirce’s note of a pure icon that only exists in possibility.

Here’s a test. Is this poem an icon of felt reality?
These two poems have a similar subject, but the idea is not to compare them. Rather, I’d like to know how you respond to each of them as creating an icon of felt life.

My argument, you see, is not only is that not only can a poem be an icon of reality, but not all poems are icons of reality. What is missing, in a poem that I will claim is not an icon of reality? In other words, I think this theory of iconicity can actually be an  evaluative tool to decide whether a poem works as the poet wanted or doesn't. So, is this poem an icon?

Barbara. I would say no.

Margaret F. Why not Barbara?

Barbara. I don't see any metaphors in it.

Margaret F. Why would you want a metaphor?
Barbara. Going back to what you said before, the basis for metaphor is negotiating and like and unlike thing, like a pirouetting dancer and the earth a pirouetting dancer, Though we know the earth is not pirouetting, all of this is factual and not connecting like and unlike.
Margaret F.. Right, and why would you want to connect like and unlike? What's the result?
Barbara. I think is sparks your imagination and your brain to make connections of things that you don't normally put together.

Margaret F. Yes, but what comes out of doing that? Remember the religious icon. Emotion, something other - something beyond –“something else." Metaphor creating something else that is beyond words. That’s where I think the secret of poetry is. It’s saying something beyond the words, in a way. And, I call this an “occasional poem.” It’s talking about a particular occasion. I didn’t have time to do this, but Dickinson has a poem [about following a long illness] and it would be interesting to compare this poem with her poem, and see whether her poem is an icon of felt reality in a way that this poem, at least for me, isn’t. people can disagree.

Margaret M. I sure do.

Margaret f.. You think it’s an icon of felt reality?

Margaret M. I don’t know about that. I just think it works. It’s a good poem. I think it refers to life

Margaret F. Right. I’m not saying that all poems have to be icons of reality to be good poetry. That is not the qualifying thing for a good poem, but I think it’s qualifying for a great poem, if I can make that distinction. I have a paper on a sonnet., Ozymandias, that was written by two people, Shelley and Smith in a competition. They were told they had to write a sonnet in fifteen minutes on the same subject, and they both produces a sonnet on Ozymandias. You probably all know the Shelley poem, right? Ha anybody ever heard of the Smith poem? No. Why not? It’s really interesting, because the Shelley poem has a structuring metaphor that governs the poem, and the other one doesn’t. The other one is telling, not showing. To me this [the Bass] is a telling poem. It’s telling you something, it’s not showing us something.

Well, thank you for doing this with me, bearing with me.

Greg. That’s the kind of poem that I would ask, “Why is this a poem?” You could almost write it out in prose, almost, right?

Margaret M. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.

Margaret. Well, try it sometime. The selection of detail says a whole lot in not very many words. It evokes a whole lot in not many words.

Margaret F. Well, I’m sure we could carry on arguing …

[Discussion of technical aspects of the presentation omitted]

Greg. You may have succeeded in being able to explain, at least to some extent, how the magic actually works. That’s quite an accomplishment.  [general agreement]

Margaret F. You see, if you think about the reader coming down the tree, from the leaves to the roots, then you’re into that sensory – emotive region that you can’t talk about. But somehow, poetry enables them to get to that., because poetry moves us, if it’s going to work. It moves us in some way, and it’s that, and that sensory connection with the world, whether it’s a nature poem, or a poem about social relationships, right?

Can we turn to Dickinson now?

Margaret M. I love 1075 in Johnson.

Linda. I thought the topic was very timely, with this wind we’ve been having.

Margaret F. Well, Greg mentioned at the beginning of the meeting that there are so many March poems that we could have done the March poems. In fact, Greg, did you find out how many there were?

Greg. No, but there’s a lot.

Margaret. Yes, there are lots of them. But Linda, we had  already talked about the March poems another year. I was kind of inclined to do it again, but I thought, rather than trying to repeat, we’d do something a little different.

Margaret M. reads.

The Sky is low — the Clouds are mean.

A Travelling Flake of Snow

Across a Barn or through a Rut

Debates if it will go —

A Narrow Wind complains all Day

How some one treated him

Nature, like Us is sometimes caught

Without her Diadem.
                            - J1075/Fr1121/M535

Oh, that’s a perfect description of March.

Greg. Across a rut and through a barn is how I would have thought about it. She kind of reverses those?

Margaret F. Well actually, outside, it would go across the barn ..

Margaret M. Yeah, and it’s a fight thing, and the snow would run along a rut –

Sandy. And you see them going across the barn.

Greg. Ah, yes.

Margaret F. What is it about this poem – Margaret, I noticed that it made you laugh? You were taken with this poem, right? It got your emotive juices working, if I can put it that way.

Margaret M. Well, this time of year is very, very trying to me. God! Winter! It should be over already – and it isn’t, and she captures that whole thing. A Narrow Wind complains all Day/ How some one treated him. [laughter] and you know that whine. [laughter]

Connie. How about this Travelling  Flake of Snow? – Crosses the barn -It’s just this flake travelling around.

Margaret M. It’s just like today, I was walking around, and it’s just a flake here, a flake there. It’s like Arizona where we say it’s a four-inch rain; four inches between raindrops. [laughter]

Margaret F. Notice how Dickinson is able to get at the very sensory feeling and sight of the snow, and the emotive attitude toward it which is, which is my point.

Margaret M. How she blends them, right. She sees the atmosphere in terms of human emotions, but the human emotions are caused by that atmosphere. [laughter]

Margaret M. You might like to know that in one of the letters – this concludes a letter to Elizabeth Holland – in the Holland letter the poem is preceded by this passage. “Today is very homely and awkward, as the homely are who have not mental beauty.”

Sandy. Low and mean.

Margaret F. The day without her Diadem is like the homely without mental beauty.

Barbara. Is it an iconic poem because it has a diadem in it?

Margaret F. No, it’s an iconic poem for the very reason Margaret said. It makes present sensory knowledge of sight, and perception, and feeling, and the emotion that arises therefrom.  – that sensory emotive level which is at the bottom – unspoken, but it’s there, in a poem that is an icon. It’s enabling us to have those reactions. It’s present in the poem, like the religious icon – that God is present in the bread and wine once the linguistic invocation has made it an icon. If the poet has made it an icon, that’s the response we’re going to get. Shall we take another one?

Greg. I have one. I took the last one on the list.

Margaret, It’s a lost poem. It was transcribed from the manuscript.

Greg reads.

High from the earth I heard a bird;

He trod upon the trees

As he esteemed them trifles,

And then he spied a breeze,

And situated softly

Upon a pile of wind

Which in a perturbation

Nature had left behind.

A joyous-going fellow

I gathered from his talk,

Which both of benediction

And badinage partook,

Without apparent burden,

I subsequently learned

He was the faithful father

Of a dependent brood;

And this untoward transport

His remedy for care,—

A contrast to our respites.

How different we are!
                     - J1723/Fr1778/M687

She’s observing this father bird, He seems to be expressing all his joy in his flight, his song, his badinage, happy as a lark [laugh.ter] and this is all in the service of his brood. And, how different that is from us poor bedraggled parents, who are sometimes beaten down by our domestic tasks.

Connie. He trod upon the trees. I find trodding – it’s hard to imagine a bird – a trod is like tum tum tum.

Greg. Yeah, she has another poem where the bird stomps Upon the air and says “Give Me!” to God.

Margaret. That’s why I thought it was about the wind.

Linda. You know how a bird will go from a branch to another branch to another branch?

Connie. But I don’t get the sense that they land in a heavy, treading way.

Jeff. I’m getting a crow out of this. A noisy crow.

Connie. It feels good if you have a specific bird. A noisy bird.

Sandy. Or maybe a blue jay.

Margaret. [consulting the concordance] Here’s Johnson 376, Franklin 581

[Here’s the complete poem]

Of Course—I prayed—

And did God Care?

He cared as much as on the Air

A Bird—had stamped her foot—

And cried "Give Me"—

My Reason—Life—

I had not had—but for Yourself—

'Twere better Charity

To leave me in the Atom's Tomb—

Merry, and Nought, and gay, and numb—

Than this smart Misery.

Margaret. Well, let’s get back to the other poem. By the way, these aren’t the only wind poems in the corpus. There are many poems about the wind that don’t mention the wind – The Tempest …

Greg. Of all the Sounds dispatched abroad ….

Margaret. When Greg was reading the poem, and I heard I subsequntly learned He was the faithful father Of a dependent brood – But how faithful is he, because the wind is taking him away, and he’s exulting in the freedom, away from the house for a bit, like having to take an hour away from the dog

Greg. You see, I figured he was either bringing them a worm, or he was out looking for food or something.

Barbara. Meanwhile, Mom is back at the nest.

Margaret. But, untoward transport – the wind has carried him off. And that’s his remedy for care!

Someone. He’s taking a ride, he’s taking a break. What does she mean by a respite? A contrast to our respites.

Greg. It’s a break. [general agreement] And we wouldn’t normally experience that in the care of our broods. Isn’t that right?

Sandy. Well, it’s a little different for us. We seize the moment, when it comes around. Enjoy it and not even think about the brood at home, whining away.

Margaret M. We’re weighted down, not riding on the wind, like him. We’re weighted down by our broods,.

Margaret F. Greg said he didn’t read this poem as the wind as the subject, but Margaret, and I think Linda, did. Could you say why you felt that way?

Margaret M. Well, the buoyancy – is the subject of the poem, I think.

Linda. I did, too. It’s very high energy. He’s taking advantage of the wind. It’s an enjoyment for him. This is how he gets his jollies, away from the brood. He’ll still fulfill his fatherly duties.

Margaret F. Yes, but that’s about the bird, it’s not about the wind. [crosstalk]. But I think Linda and Margaret have got something. This is a pile of wind/ Which in a perturbation/ Nature had left behind. What perturbation ? Nature, in distress, has sort of left it behind. There are two perturbations going on here – the father needing respite from the burden of looking after the brood; and then, the nature in distress, leaving the wind behind. The wind is what – enables the bird to be buoyant, to take off, right. So the wind is the force for this poem to happen.

Margaret M. That’s why I thought it was about the wind, and that the wind was poetry. What makes you fly, and what makes her fly, so she writes a poem.

Connie. The wind is the one with the one with the benediction, without a burden.

Jeff. The wind is the untoward transport

Margaret F. Oh! You’re right Connie. It is the benediction and badinage. It’s referring to the wind, and the bird is partaking of that.

Connie. The wind is joyous. A joyous-going fellow.

Sandy. He situated softly. So, it’s a joyous thing, rather than a fight, to stay aloft.

Margaret F. In modern parlance, he goes with the flow. [laughter]

Greg. I believe it’s his talk, which partook of badinage and benediction. Those are two qualities in his talk. There’s no wind in there.

Connie. Then who’s the father of the dependent brood?

Greg. That’s the bird.

Margaret. Yes, but the benediction and the badinage – the underlying cause is the wind. It’s like Keats’ “Ode to Autumn.”

Greg. I believe the badinage and benediction are qualities in the spirit of this bird.

Margaret. Yes, I agree, but why? What is the underlying cause that enables it to become so? It’s because the wind has given him this joyous buoyancy. [crosstalk]

Margaret M I love the idea that Nature has left something behind.

Greg. There was so much saccharine, sentimental poetry at this time, and this could so easily have been one, but she pulls it off.

Margaret F. OK, anyone else for a wind poem?

Jenna reads.

Beauty—be not caused—It Is—
Chase it, and it ceases—

Chase it not, and it abides—

Overtake the Creases

In the Meadow—when the Wind

Runs his fingers thro' it—

Deity will see to it

That You never do it—
                    - J516/Fr654/M310

Margaret. Any comments?

Jenna. I think it kind of speaks for itself.

Margaret. That’s the problem, all poetry does. What did Robert Frost say, when he was asked him “What does this poem mean?”

“What, do you want me to say it again in not as good words?” [laughter]

Greg. I think Neruda was once asked that. He answered, “If I cold have said it any more clearly, I would have.

Margaret F. And we’re not asking that. We’re asking what caused that smile on Jenna’s face. How did you experience the poem.

Greg. Weisbuch once wrote, “It’s perfectly natural to ask what a Dickinson poem means, but that’s exactly the wrong question to ask.”

Jeff. Now I’m going to be thinking about the roots of the tree.

Greg. I can kind of hear the wind in these lines. Overtake the Creasezzz/ In the Meadow—when the Wind/ Runzzz his fingerzz thro' it—

Margaret M. It reminds me of MacLeish’s “A poem should not mean, but be.” And, she’s recreating what she’s looking at in words. We’ve all seen it, and that’s the thing that makes it an icon to me – when a poet so well describes an experience that it resonates. You know exactly – Yeah! I’ve been there. I’ve seen that, or I’ve heard that.

Margaret. And it makes the experience present, as we read the poem, especially when we’re reading it aloud.

Lynn. The beginning of it is like an eastern, philosophical thing, and then it brings it back to this concrete example.

Margaret. And what I love about it is – it’s typical of Dickinson, isn’t it – She starts out by saying Beauty—be not caused—It Is. Beauty doesn’t have a cause. Deity will see to it. The ultimate cause is supposed to be the Deity, right?

Jeff. One of the poems has the line that there is no definition – and that’s like what’s in here. It’s one of these ….[Fr879, J797]

By my Window have I for Scenery
Just a Sea—with a Stem—
If the Bird and the Farmer—deem it a "Pine"—
The Opinion will serve—for them—

It has no Port, nor a "Line"—but the Jays—
That split their route to the Sky—
Or a Squirrel, whose giddy Peninsula
May be easier reached—this way—

For Inlands—the Earth is the under side—
And the upper side—is the Sun—
And its Commerce—if Commerce it have—
Of Spice—I infer from the Odors borne—

Of its Voice—to affirm—when the Wind is within—
Can the Dumb—define the Divine?
The Definition of Melody—is—
That Definition is none—

It—suggests to our Faith—
They—suggest to our Sight—
When the latter—is put away
I shall meet with Conviction I somewhere met
That Immortality—

Was the Pine at my Window a "Fellow
Of the Royal" Infinity?
Apprehensions—are God's introductions—
To be hallowed—accordingly— 
                              - J797/Fr849/M390

Isn't there another one where she says, "That Definition is None?"

Margaret. It’s 988 in Johnson, 797 in Franklin.

Jeff Reads.

The Definition of Beauty is
That Definition is none —
Of Heaven, easing Analysis,
Since Heaven and He are one.

Margaret. Another poem, Success is counted sweetest has the word Definition in it, too. But you know, the poem just before that is also a wind poem. It’s 796 in Franklin, 824 in Johnson. There are five manuscripts of this poem, so she obviously liked it a lot.

Connie. Do they differ?

Margaret. They do differ. One was sent to Mrs. Holland, one to Sue, one was retained, one was sent to Higginson, and one was sent to Niles, who was the publisher of Roberts Brothers. When Helen Hunt Jackson was encouraging her to think about publishing her poems, even if she did it anonymously. She started a correspondence with Thomas Niles.

Sandy Reads.

The Wind begun to rock the Grass

With threatening Tunes and low --

He threw a Menace at the Earth --

A Menace at the Sky.

The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees --

And started all abroad

The Dust did scoop itself like Hands

And threw away the Road.

The Wagons quickened on the Streets

The Thunder hurried slow --

The Lightning showed a Yellow Beak

And then a livid Claw.

The Birds put up the Bars to Nests --

The Cattle fled to Barns --

There came one drop of Giant Rain

And then as if the Hands

That held the Dams had parted hold

The Waters Wrecked the Sky,

But overlooked my Father's House --

Just quartering a Tree --
                        -J824/Fr796/M531

Barre reads.

The Wind begun to knead the Grass —
As Women do a Dough —
He flung a Hand full at the Plain —
A Hand full at the Sky —
The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees —
And started all abroad —
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands —
And throw away the Road —
The Wagons — quickened on the Street —
The Thunders gossiped low —
The Lightning showed a Yellow Head —
And then a livid Toe —
The Birds put up the Bars to Nests —
The Cattle flung to Barns —
Then came one drop of Giant Rain —
And then, as if the Hands
That held the Dams — had parted hold —
The Waters Wrecked the Sky —
But overlooked my Father's House —
Just Quartering a Tree —

[Differences are noted]

Connie. The Wind, the Wagons, they each do the thing themselves. The Wagons are quickening, nobody’s doing it to them, the thunder is hurrying.

Margaret M. And I love the dust that scoops itself and throws away the road.

Greg. She assigns agency to all the elements in the poem. It’s like they’re all alive. And, a storm is usually tumultuous, and then there’s a calm at the end. I think she does that in the poem.,

Margaret F. That agency is really invoking the nature of the storm. [crosstalk] I want to go back to Jeff’s poem, because we didn’t really discuss it. By my Window have I for Scenery.

Jeff. It was one of several I chose, just by chance.

Margaret. Well, talk about it, Jeff.

Jeff. Gosh. I have to say something about it. [laughter] Well, aside from the poetry that comes to fore, the thought in the last stanza is what I think most attracts me to this - Apprehensions—are God's introductions—/ To be hallowed—accordingly— It’s so aligned – like so many of these poems about the wind – there’s a suggestion of something that’s not defined. What is it? Another example of that is Four Trees, which is Franklin 778, which is very close temporally to this one.

Margaret F. Oh I love that one. Can I read it? It’s one of my favorites.

Margaret F reads.
Four Trees — upon a solitary Acre —
Without Design
Or Order, or Apparent Action —
Maintain —


The Sun — upon a Morning meets them —
The Wind —
No nearer Neighbor — have they —
But God —


The Acre gives them — Place —
They — Him — Attention of Passer by —
Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply —
Or Boy —


What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature —
What Plan
They severally — retard — or further —
Unknown —
                   - J742/Fr778/M382

[To hear this poem read aloud, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHocvXSNZB4]

I see why you put it together with By my window. What I like about By my Window have I for Scenery is that she’s looking at the pine – she’s looking at the underside – The Earth is the underside and The upper side is the Sun, in the sense of the tree growing upward toward the sun. And then, It’s Voice. The tree speaking to someone. You do hear the trees, when the wind is in them.

Margaret M. The sea is the air, I think.

Margaret F. Yes, it’s the sea/air image.

Margaret M. I’m getting the feeling that these wind poems, because they are about the air – I don’t know, it’s like the matrix of reality for her, or the matrix of creation or something. I kept coming up with the word “inspiration. [crosstalk – wind, spirit, breath

Greg. Are these apprehensions what the speaker is experiencing? [general agreement]

Margaret M. Oh, there is a variant you might be interested in. It’s Apprehensions—are God's introductions—/ To be extended inscrutably. [general delighted surprise]

Margaret M. Just to make it a little more of a riddle. [laughter]

……