Emily Dickinson Reading Circle, 10 March 2017

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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]

……