EDIS, Amherst Chapter, Poetry Conversation 1 December 2017

EDIS, Amherst Chapter, Poetry Conversation

1 December 2017

Facilitated by Lois Kackley

Fascicle 4 Sheet 4

Source: Cristanne Miller, Emily Dickinson’s Poems as She Arranged Them, Cambridge, Massachusetts  London, England Harvard University Press, 2016

All the poems are read aloud.

She bore it till the simple veins

Traced azure on her hand -

Til pleading, round her quiet eyes

The purple Crayons stand.

Till Daffodils had come and gone

I cannot tell the sum,

And then she ceased to bear it -

And with the Saints sat down.

No more her patient figure

At twilight soft to meet -

No more her timid bonnet

Upon the village street -

But Crowns instead, and Courtiers -

And in the midst so fair,

Whose but her shy - immortal face

Of whom we're whispering here?

                                    -J144/Fr81/M66

We should not mind so small a flower —
Except it quiet bring
Our little garden that we lost
Back to the Lawn again.

So spicy her Carnations nod —
So drunken, reel her Bees —
So silver steal a hundred flutes
From out a hundred trees —

That whoso sees this little flower
By faith may clear behold
The Bobolinks around the throne
And Dandelions gold.

                                    -J81/Fr82/M67

This heart that broke so long —
These feet that never flagged —
This faith that watched for star in vain,
Give gently to the dead —

Hound cannot overtake the Hare
That fluttered panting, here —
Nor any schoolboy rob the nest
Tenderness builded there.

                                    -J145/Fr83/M67

On such a night, or such a night,
Would anybody care
If such a little figure
Slipped quiet from its chair —

So quiet — Oh how quiet,
That nobody might know
But that the little figure
Rocked softer — to and fro —

On such a dawn, or such a dawn —
Would anybody sigh
That such a little figure
Too sound asleep did lie

For Chanticleer to wake it —
Or stirring house below —
Or giddy bird in orchard —
Or early task to do?

There was a little figure plump
For every little knoll —
Busy needles, and spools of thread —
And trudging feet from school —

Playmates, and holidays, and nuts —
And visions vast and small —
Strange that the feet so precious charged
Should reach so small a goal!

                                    - J145/Fr84/M67

Lois. Let’s have the four people on this side, Nathan, Melba, Adrianna and Greg will tell us how all the poems are about a single person or a type of person. I think that’s what would be interesting to flesh out – all four poems. And these people over here, Harrison, Margaret, Jeff and Victoria will argue the opposite, that that can’t be. It can’t be about one individual. Who wants to go first?

Greg. Well, the first poem does seem to describe an individual, down to the veins and the purple crayons around her eyes. She seems to have died some time after the daffodils have gone, so, after early spring, apparently a long time ago.

Lois. A long time ago? You think it’s not a contemporary of hers?

Greg. She can’t count the time, the days, since this person passed away. I cannot tell the sum; her patient figure; her timid bonnet. “Courtiers" harkens back to the previous sheet, Taken from men this morning/ Carried by men today – someone died, right? The last two lines, Courtiers quaint in kingdoms/ Our departed are.

Lois. Oh, yes, I remember.

Victoria. There’s the connection, with the crowns and courtiers.

Lois. So, what about the next poem. This one you think is not about a contemporary person?

Greg. Yes, this one’s about a contemporary person who’s died. The next one [We should not mind so small a flower ] I think is about a flower. Blue gentian, perhaps.

Lois. You can’t say that [with humor] – you can’t say that it’s not about a person.

Greg. Oh, alright, I have to say that this is a person. Well then, Emily often referred to her friends as flowers, so this is obviously about a person, one of her friends, of course.

Lois. Nice save. [laughter]

Adrianna. Yes, she’s describing a death, again, but, yeah, it could be a person, because it’s going through the same kind of flowering of youth, into life, and then ….

Lois. I didn’t even look up the note on this one. She’s got a note on it. The first three words of the poem, We should not, Cris is relating to Revelation 4.4: “The elders round about the throne had on their heads crowns of gold.”

Victoria. She also says, down at the bottom there, that this poem, or a variant of it, was sent to Sue in the spring of 1879. I found that a little confusing.

Greg. Why?

Victoria. If you think that, if you’re going to be particular about this flower, and you say it’s a gentian, the gentian is an autumn flower. Judith Farr says that she thinks that this poem refers to a gentian.

Greg. Yes, and it brings the garden back, because it’s gone… it’s ‘cause it’s autumn.

Victoria. Oh, I always thought that she looked at the gentian as that last hearty flower, the hardy flower that could take the Tyrolean winds. God made a little gentian/ It tried to be a rose. This is the gentian that she’s talking about [Victoria passes around her watercolor of the flower], the fringed gentian.

Lois. This is your side, that it’s a gentian. Our game is to defend it being also about a person.

Nathan. I was reading David Porter’s comment on this poem, and he says it’s about a gentian, and that it reminds her of the flowers in the summer. So the gentian is a winter flower, not a summer flower?

Victoria. It’s not a winter flower. It’s a late summer/ autumn flower. Just before the snow.

Lois. It is nice as a reference to the lost garden that a gentian would recall. OK, so I guess this side loses. We can’t ot-argue the other side.

Greg. Can I ask, did anyone have a problem with the word mind? We should not mind so small a flower?

Victoria. We should not notice so small a flower/

Greg. Except.

Victoria. Except. That’s the implication, yeah.

Greg. Yeah, I think so too. For a while, I was thrown by it, because we often say “I don’t mind the cold as long as it’s not wet,” in that way.

Jeff. That’s how I read it. It bothered me.

Greg. Her dictionary defines “mind,” the transitive verb form, “to attend to; to fix the thought on; to regard with attention. When I read that I thought, “Oh, now I understand.”

Victoria. We say, “mind your head” when you tall guys walk through a low doorway.

Greg. There ya go.

Lois. Yeah, she uses that word, I think, pretty exclusively that way. It may be a generational thing that it’s evolved to the way we use it. Sometimes it can be a sardonic way to excuse yourself to somebody – to say “Do you mind?”

Jeff. I think she’s using the subjunctive here. And what she means to say, in our plain English, is “We wouldn’t pay any attention to it, except that it quietly brings our little garden that we lost back to us. Otherwise we wouldn’t pay it any attention.

Melba. Just to mention the obvious, the one thread that I find running through these it that each poem finds a way to remember something that’s gone – person, garden – but without the pain that was associated with the original experience.

Lois. Sort of like an elegy?

Melba. Yeah. And I keep looking at the first stanzas of Franklin 81 and 83, and they both have that image of long suffering that’s now at an end.

Greg. That wasn’t obvious to me. I thought that was a valuable insight.

Melba. Oh, thanks. I keep trying to do something with it, and I guess in Franklin 82 I keep looking – I started thinking about this when you mentioned the quiet – It’s not the spicy carnations and the drunken bees. That time is now past. That’s over. We’re done with that kind of excitement, but the quiet it brings.

Jeff. What do you all see in So silver steal a hundred flutes/ From out a hundred trees? What is she seeing there?

Greg. Birds, singing.

Victoria. The bobolink.

Greg. Pianos in the woods? “Not all Pianos in the Woods.”

Jeff. I was trying to see something visual, but it’s a sound.

Judith. And there’s only one bird in each tree.

Jeff. That’s right, if you do the math. [laughter]

Victoria. I love The Bobolinks around the throne. That’s so Dickinson.

Lois. Well, it’s very picturesque. I take it on blind faith, from what you all say, that it would be about a gentian, but –

Victoria. I’m not convinced.

Lois. You’re not convinced that it is?

Victoria. That’s what Farr says, and she’s an expert.

Greg. Yeah, that’s probably where I got it.

Martha. Did anybody get the idea that ED was in a graveyard, looking at stones, and illustrations on stones, of a flower. That’s what came to my mind. In fact it was triggered by your tour [Melba’s Dickinson Museum tour] yesterday that I went on, where you said that when she was tense she would overlook the graveyard and that’s what she was looking ... so I did get this image of something you could see on the gravestone – the nests of birds – the hound can’t overtake the hare – the Grecian urn kind of thing, frozen in time. So, this is what just occurred to me.

Lois. Yeah, that’s wonderful. It’s a lovely look at this poem.

Melba. And even if we go more literal, the flowers you would see at the graves at that time would be whatever was blooming and available, and it might be a gentian.

Lois. Well, I think we’re right, that this particular poem is about an individual, but if we look at it as imagery of carvings upon stones, it opens it out a little bit. What about the line That whoso sees this little flower/ By faith may clear behold?

Victoria. That whosoever believeth in me  …. Harrison?

Harrison. Whosoever believeth in me shall have everlasting life.

Lois. So, what’s the payoff for believing?

Victoria. Everlasting life. Immortality.

Lois. And in this poem, if you believe, you have the gift of sight; you may clear behold. A little more temporal, but again, she’s setting herself up against the gospel to offer a better alternative, or a better gift, or a better outcome of belief. To just simply be able to see …

Adrianna. To have to have faith, because it doesn’t say that the Bible is actually – the other flowers haven’t come out yet, but by faith, you can envision.

Melba. I’m still working with the idea that there’s a way of remembering the people, or the person that’s gone without being overwhelmed,

Lois. Yeah, she does seem to be going to great lengths to tone down the ecstasy that we find in other poems.

Jeff. Well, I’d add more to that, but I’d lose a lot of points for our side of the table. [laughter]

Lois. Well, have we heard from both points of view on this subject? Victoria, you’re not so sure it’s a gentian? Do you have a thought about an alternative?

Victoria. I don’t know. I did at one time think, this little flower – she referred to herself sometimes as a Daisy, so possibly it could be one of those little flowers that just pop up in the grass – a wild chamomile or something, that looks like a little daisy. When she says Our little garden that we lost/ Back to the Lawn again, maybe the lawn is the Garden of Eden and she’s using that as a metaphor for the big garden of paradise – Eden. She writes whoso sees this little flower. In a way it’s like you were saying, taking the gospel and saying that whoever would see her poetry, there would be a transcending experience, some kind of immortality in what she writes. If one beheld that poetry, it would be like the bobolinks and the dandelions were shouting, were trumpeting the beauty of her poetry, the poems as flowers.

Lois. Well, what you’re saying is consistent with our observation of her having usurped the message of the gospel. Essentially, her point about losing too much when you predicate everything you do on the promise of the hereafter. She keeps debunking that concept in favor of real, genuine life now, lived to the fullest.

Victoria. If you clearly behold.

Lois. The gift of sight. I’m kind of hung up on spicy Carnations. Do they have a scent?

Victoria. As far as I know, they do not.

Greg. I’m reading that as that’s what has passed, and the little flower is bringing back the memory.

Lois. That kind of ties in with Margaret’s observation of it’s possibly being a reflection on the images on gravestones and that the pleasantness of forgotten life, in terms of our ability to recall it.

Victoria. The second stanza? It seems ome grammatical omissions are going on there. Aren’t there some words missing?

Greg. Not to me.

Melba. The word order’s a bit challenging. If we were going for a conventional word order, we would have said “So nod her spicy carnations. So real her drunken bees.”

Greg. Oh. I’m reading “her carnations nod so spicely.”

Victoria. Yeah, I would read it more that way. You’re changing the word order.

Melba. I was reading spicy and drunken as adjectives. Greg wants to make it an adverb. I’m good either way. [laughter]

Greg. I think she just doesn’t care too much about being grammatically correct here.

Lois. Right.

Greg. It sounds better if you just say so spicey.

Lois. In the first stanza, isn’t it a living flower? And then in the second stanza we’re suddenly reflecting on what has been, and then in the third ….

Nathan. The third stanza reminds us of the transcendental nature of God? The bobolink around the throne, and the throne God? There is the poem, Some keep the Sabbath going to Church/ I keep it staying at home. So this poem has the transcendental idea that home is God, paradise.

Lois. She’s casting doubt on everybody’s seeing this little flower.

Greg. Yeah, not everybody really sees, right?

Lois. So, it has to be metaphorical, because anybody can see the freaking flower. [laughter]

Margaret. It seems to be that the revelation of the poem is now. To me, if I can see this little flower, through Emily, then I can see an immortality.

Melba. I like that, because she’s saying, I can show you this little flower, and you can imagine all the riot of summer, that you didn’t pay attention to when it was summer, because it wasn’t called out to you. It wasn’t brought into focus. But she somehow sees the one flower that’s going to remind you of all of the carnations nodding spicily.

Lois. It’s kind of a little puzzler. Well, perhaps This heart that broke so long is more conventional as an elegy suggestive in the first poem. It seems very similar to me to the first poem, is it not? It’s very sentimental, is it not? Sweet and sentimental. I would love it if someone could say it isn’t, but I’m overcome with a sense of sentimentality.

Jeff. That much? It doesn’t overwhelm me with sentimentality …

Lois. What I mean is, if there’s any other way to see it, I’m so closed in to this sentimental reading of it, I don’t think I could read it if there was anything else there.

Melba. When I started reading Franklin 81. She bore it till the simple veins – I was reading it, I was reading it as a human person – the dark purple circles under the eyes, and I thought, “Oh, this is a dark image. This is someone dying of disease – grief – tuberculosis – whatever. Then it became more gentle, when she brings in the daffodils, and you begin to get the sense that maybe this isn’t a person as much as a thesis. But there is the possibility that she’s discussing an actual human being that’s died is kind of alarming to me.

Lois. The first poem or this one?

Melba. The first one, yes, but this poem, too, This heart that broke so long/ These feet that never flagged. – man, the image!

Lois. Well, it’s also very tender, isn’t it? Somebody’s died –

Melba. You are remembering the pain, but you aren’t feeling it.

Lois. It makes me think, as a homeless person, that everybody walks around –forever – and she’s given enough charity to keep her alive, but she’s kind of a fixture, and then she’d not there anymore – that’s what this reminds me of, not somebody in the family, not a cherished friend.

Melba. OK.

Lois. Not somebody who’s personality – you can be very poignant in your commentary, but someone who maybe was just there, and you didn’t really recognize them until you missed them. That’s what it makes me think of. Both of those poems strike me in that sense.

Greg. Your saying that makes me realize consciously for the first time that when I read these poems, my mind automatically goes back to nineteenth-century Amherst, where people died with alarming regularity back then, neighbors, friends, young people, old people. We’re so used to reading about her life it just put me back there. That’s how I read it. It could be a neighbor – someone you knew, somebody at church. Somebody died, but not judge Lord.

Lois. Right, and not your sister, not your brother, not your lover.

Harrison. “There’s been a Death in the opposite House/ As lately as today.”

Jeff. It seems to me that all four of the poems have a diminutive tone to them, and the first and the last of the four – you can very much personify it as maybe a child having died. But all four of the poems have diminutive language in them. Small, little, quiet, fluttered panting, here, tenderness.