EDIS, Amherst Chapter, Poetry Conversation 2 February 2018

EDIS, Amherst Chapter, Poetry Conversation

2 February 2018

Facilitated by Lois Kackley

Fascicle 5 Sheet 2

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

Lois. Emily Dickinson believed that poetry was a deceiver’s art as well as a place for truth. This is one of the comments made by Vivian Pollack in her wonderful new book, Our Emily Dickinson. She will be giving the annual keynote address at the EDIS meeting in Amherst this summer. The title of the address will be “Beyond our Emily Dickinsons.” So, she’s going to take off with this book. But it’s very rich in biographical information and also legacy poets like Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop. It’s rich in details about Dickinson’s relationships, but also the legacy poets. One of her positions that I found interesting is how poets that follow Dickinson – all of the famous names – had various responses to Dickinson’s poetry, and also she shows how they used Dickinson to work through their own battles – professional battles. And, you may enjoy measuring your own responses to Dickinson against some of these poets that you will recognize. So, starting out with sheet two, I thought we might play around with this little statement she makes about poetry being a deceiver’s art and a place for truth. I’ve played around with that thought quite a bit, and I think it’s potentially fairly fruitful as a way to look at a poem. Is she engaging in a kind of artistic deception, or can we see where she’s aiming at a truth that she wants to share. Well, let’s stick with our tradition and read all the poems aloud first.

[All the poems are read aloud.]

Good night, because we must,

How intricate the dust!

I would go, to know!

Oh incognito!

Saucy, Saucy Seraph

To elude me so!

Father! they won't tell me,

Won't you tell them to?

                        - J114/Fr97/M71

South Winds jostle them  -

Bumblebees come  -

Hover  - hesitate  -

Drink, and are gone  -

Butterflies pause

On their passage Cashmere  -

I  - softly plucking,

Present them here!

                        - J86/Fr98/M71

Low at my problem bending,

Another problem comes  -

Larger than mine  - Serener  -

Involving statelier sums.

I check my busy pencil,

My figures file away.

Wherefore, my baffled fingers

Thy perplexity?

                        -J69/Fr99/M71

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?

                        - J115/Fr100/M72

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/MhDx5jr2whg ]

I had some things that I called mine  -

And God, that he called his,

Till, recently a rival Claim

Disturbed these amities.

The property, my garden,

Which having sown with care,

He claims the pretty acre,

And sends a Bailiff there.

The station of the parties

Forbids publicity,

But Justice is sublimer

Than arms, or pedigree.

I'll institute an "Action"  -

I'll vindicate the law  -

Jove! Choose your counsel  -

I retain "Shaw"!

                        - J116/Fr101/M72
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/krTnr68ksCI ]

Lois. That’s a very appropriate poem for these days. [laughter] Alright, let’s start back with Good night, because we must. So, the speaker is put off because the night, the impenetrability of night, or night’s curtain on a relationship, or perhaps death’s refusal to admit, even incognito, regarding the so-called intricacies of life. What do you make of the tone of voice of the speaker, and is it successful. Does the attempt to lighten the failed interrogation of the father God work?

Greg. The tone is a little … childish? …a little naïve – which Dickinson often adopts when she addresses the most weighty of questions – death and immortality – at a time when women were properly proscribed from addressing or venturing on those topics. She adopts that little girl tone. “I’m not being threatening. I’m questioning your whole religious faith that the whole community’s based o, but, I’m just a little girl.”

Victoria. “Just asking a question.”

Lois. [laughing] Yeah, so, a little deceitful, huh?

Greg. Good point.

Robert. Saucy, Saucy Seraph. What’s she referring to, an angel?

Greg. Seraphim is a higher order of angel.

Martha. It could be a symbol for all the mysteries we’re asking about; we never get answers – because the dead people that know aren’t telling us.

Lois. That’s right, and to up that label, Saucey, on someone because they won’t reveal the information is rather, I find, exquisitely Dickinsonian. [laughing]

Dorothy. You can imagine, too, in her world, that she was a curious child and that she’s gone back to that metaphor of wanting to know things, and that word is probably like her, actually, so she’s applying it back.

Lois. That’s a good thought.

Dorothy. I have an image of the angels on a tombstone.

Lois. Oh. They don’t talk much, they’re all stone. Very good.

Dorothy. So, yes, she’s almost a child at the beginning of this poem. Good night, because we must – very childlike.  How intricate the dust! So, you’re lying there, and you can’t go to sleep, and you’re staring at space.

Lois. Well, I was kind of interested in whether you all read the third and fourth lines the way I did. She’s saying, I would go incognito to know, or is there another way to read that?

Greg. The way I read it was “I’d go – cross the vail – into the other world. To go incognito is to say, they won’t know who I am, and I can get back.

Lois. That’s a more complex way of saying what I was thinking. ( :

Victoria. When she’s saying Good Night, I think she’s saying good-by – because, we all must die. We came from dust, to dust ye shall return. So, she’s saying, I know – I would go …

Lois. Yeah, it’s that second line that keeps us from knowing for sure whether she’s talking about an occasion of having to say goodbye because it’s night, or if it’s about death, and she doesn’t make it clear, I don’t think.

Victoria. I think that’s what does it for me – the word dust. You go back to dust. So, she’s not saying “Goodnight, and maybe I won’t see you for a long time. If I could dress up incognito and follow you, they wouldn’t know. No, I think she’s saying, “Goodbye.” And, she’s pleading with God, saying, “The angels, they’re eluding me, about what’s going on, and Father, God, they won’t tell me, won’t you? God is the one place she could get the truth if she could get God to talk to her.

Greg. It’s the question that she always asked her whole life isn’t it? What lies beyond? [general agreement]

Polly. I don’t think it’s a particular death. Dust is capitalized. We’re all dust, but we’re pretty complicated.

Lois. You think that’s what the intricate is?

Polly. Mm.

Lois. To me, there are a lot of false doors here, a lot of false clues. To say intricate the dust. Intricate is a very alive word. There’s nothing intricate about a corpse.

Greg. The mystery, though.

Lois. the mystery is what’s intricate?

Victoria. Yeah.

Melba. But I’m looking at the definition [in the dictionary of 1844 that Dickinson used] of intricate, and if you go back to the Latin, it means to entangle, perplex, or embarrass, which does kind of fit with this.

Greg. Look up “embarrass” in that dictionary and it’s going to say something like, “puzzled, confused.”

Melba. Yes, you’re right.

Victoria. So, how confusing it is.

Greg. How puzzling it is. We’ve got all this scripture, and all these sermons, and aaaagh!

Melba. Perplexing, confused, yeah. How intricate the dust; and dust is puzzling, too, because I just assume it means fine dirt, but that definition included possibilities of mist, vapor, and storm. So you’re getting a sort of mixture of air and matter and water, which could stand in for a human being. We’re spirit, we’re matter.

Polly. Also, it’s capitalized. It could mean the universe

Greg. He ate and drank the precious Words —

His Spirit grew robust —

He knew no more that he was poor,

Nor that his frame was Dust —

Lois. Well, the first line in this poem just doesn’t do anything for me. This poem doesn’t stand up to most poems that we recall because of the beginning of the poem just pulling you in.

Melba. Right. It sounds like she’s got something interesting going on with he specific word choice, but it doesn’t cohere into anything. Maybe she realized that and decided to end this on the second stanza with the humorous note.

Lois. Very possible.

Victoria. When she puts that many exclamation marks … [laughter, general recognition] … she’s trying to give it some punch!

Lois. Well, part of the fun of these early fascicles is recognizing these themes that we are more familiar with later on. Beside the wonderful one that Greg just mentioned, can anybody else think of a poem that treats this topic a little more compellingly?

Greg. The topic of what lies beyond?

Lois. Yes. No need to labor over it. I just wanted to give everybody a chance to say so if they thought …

Victoria. I never lost as much but twice/ And that was in the sod.

Lois. Yeah, now that has that punch. That really gets hold of you by the ear lobes.

Victoria. And Burglar! Banker! Father!/ I am poor once more. Then, down in poem 100 [Franklin Edition] Necromancer! Landlord! She keeps wanting to pull, and demand in a way that [inaudible] for both of those poems – the early practices.

Lois. There’s a playfulness, isn’t there, in this poem, that she sheds, later in her career. Won't you tell them to? It is a deceitfully childish voice, but she also belies a certain lack of arrogance and indignation. It is a child-like voice, but to me there’s also a young person’s plaintiveness… Let’s move on. South Winds jostle them.

Burleigh. It is pretty saucy to suggest that you could just go incognito to the other side and then come back and know what it was all about.

Victoria. It is kind of cool, because you’d think that most people say “No, I don’t even want to go there.” She’s saying, “Yeah, if I could find out what it is, I’d do it.”

Greg. In another poem, she speculates on those whom she’s lost and who have passed away, and says, “I looked at sunrise once/ And then I looked at them/And wishfulness in me arose/ For circumstance the same” In other words, “I want to go. I want to be with them; I don’t want to be separated.” Those last two lines – I can imagine her stamping her foot and pouting. [laughter, general agreement]

Victoria. But in that other poem, I never lost as much but twice – Burglar! Banker! Father! – there’s more of a fist in there than that little stamped foot.

Greg. Yeah, she’s hurtin’.

Lois. There’s no question there, she’s just letting God have it – and also admitting her own anger.

Greg. Harrison called that poem “God in the hands of an angry sinner.” [laughter]

Lois. Well, shall we move on?” South Winds jostle them sounds to me like a made-up verse to accompany flowers to a friend. This is one of the poems she sent to Higginson. which, in itself could be discussed. I don’t know when, in the sequence of their correspondence ….

Victoria. Well, it says April 1862, so that was pretty early on. She sent one to Thomas Gilbert, Susan’s brother, to Ns – probably the Norcross cousins, and one to Higginson in 1862 with pressed flowers.

Judith. I just learned that Higginson also dried specimens.

Victoria. So, he would have been an appreciative recipient.

Lois. Is the voice of the speaker childlike in this one?

Greg. I wouldn’t say so.

Victoria. A real naturalists voice. That’s a really nice poem to send if you’re giving anybody flowers.

Lois. Well, I notice that Susan Snively used Low at my problem bending in her talk last week. I know she was talking about writing implement’s, but I thought that because it was so recently discussed you might want to share anything.

Greg. Well, a couple of people at that talk seemed convinced that this was another poem about death – the problem she’s contemplating is the question of immortality. I don’t see that at all, but it’s interesting that some did.

Lois. Neither do I. But, in a more general, abstract sense, you could say it’s about my best effort, that my best effort is futile in comparison with a larger problem. What came to my mind was that after she sent this letter to Higginson she could have thought “Now I’ve done that; I’ve submitted my poem, but the larger problem would be if my work got accepted and they wanted to publish [laughter].

Greg. Another question people were asking, which I don’t find a problem with at all, was, where is the question being addressed, to her, the speaker, or is it to her fingers? I didn’t think that was a worthwhile question, personally. [laughter]

Lois. She’s really kind of picking up our stride here, because there’s something very engaging, and sticks in my mind – that first line. Low at my problem bending, I don’t know what it is, but it’s very musical, and yet it’s not, but that phrase just stays with me.

Judith. Well, the contrast is interesting there. The image of bending low and attending to something and then something bigger comes along.

Lois. Yeah, the question mark – is it a rhetorical question?

Greg. Yeah, I think so. Right on a previous sheet, she ends the poem Wherefore mine eye thy silver mists,/ Wherefore, Oh Summer’s Day? The same fascicle here.

Robert. The poem I associate Low at my problem bending with is the poet trying to find the word. The Poet searched Philology. So, Low at my problem bending, she’s working on a poem, and then some larger theme comes up and she’s just stopped. What is behind the word she’s searching for.

Lois. So, you see it as a small problem being eclipsed by a larger one.

Robert. Right. What’s the final line? Not unto nomination/ The Cherubim reveal.

Lois. So, is this a defeated student? A defeated writer?

Greg. In a way, she’s grown, hasn’t she? She’s become aware of something larger now. Serene. That has a nice ring to it.

Judith. Serener, yet statelier. There’s a tension there.

Greg. She’s investing this problem with some positive qualities, I think; serenity – stateliness … “Oh, I’m going to pay attention to this. This deserves my attention.”

Lois. Would you compare this topic-wise with We Play at Paste?

Greg. Hm. Yeah.

Judith. Which she dissent to Higginson in the first letter.

Greg. In that poem, though, she’s fully matured. She’s an accomplished artist; she’s tackled the problem and mastered it.

Lois. Well, Cris [Miller] puts it – it’s not even in a fascicle, it’s one of the loose poems, so if the dating is correct We play at Paste was written after – or maybe she just didn’t, for some other reason, want to put it in a fascicle; we don’t know.

Judith. It’s 1862.

Lois. So that’s fascinating, isn’t it? She did not include it in a fascicle.

Greg. Well, aren’t there fifteen or so, what they call sets, which look like they actually were meant to go into a fascicle, but she didn’t actually sew them up? There were a lot of them.

Lois. Yes, I think that’s what Cris puts in here as “Unbound Sheets,” but We play at Paste didn’t even make one of those. It’s just a loose poem. But apparently she did retain it. She kept it.

Victoria. Well, if she sent this to Higginson, April 15^th – that was one of the first poems she sent him – so she had this in her stash at the same time she had this little flower – the South Winds jostles, and as you said, she made the decision not to include it for some reason. Hu0h. Because it seems like such a mature, finely honed poem than Low at my problem bending.

Lois.What inn is this, where for the night/ Peculiar traveler comes?

Greg. The speaker distances herself a little bit, doesn’t she? from the reality that she beholds, pretending not to know.

Lois. Necromancer – wizard, witch, that communicate with the dead. So, she’s calling upon them. Two things jump out at me. It’s too tempting to reflect on the Christian nativity story when she leads off with What Inn is this. I don’t know, I can’t help it [laughs] – anybody else? I don’t know – that’s a little bit misleading in the whole poem, but that’s the first thing I thought.

Greg. I think that word would have rung that way in the ear of anyone here in nineteenth-century Amherst. It would have suggested the nativity – just the sound of the word – I think.

Lois. Yet, the poem doesn’t bear that out, at least in my reading of it. The inn is the grave.

Polly. I see this as a nineteenth-century Gothic novel, or poem. It all seems to play into that whole genre.

Greg. I’d say that rooms are the graves and that the Inn is the cemetery.

Polly. What does the word below have to do with that though? …

Greg. The rooms are below.

Polly. Does it mean not in heaven, or in the ground?

Greg. In the ground.

Lois. What’s curious, is rooms.

Melba. She really has this idea that people in the cemetery get to talk to each other. [laughter].

I died for Beauty - but was scarce

Adjusted in the Tomb

When one who died for Truth, was lain

In an adjoining Room

Lois. But, those are almost reverent. To me, there’s no reverence in this poem. With all these questions it’s almost like an attempt at insulting somebody. “Where is the Landlord!?”

Greg. It’s not a dead serious poem, and she doesn’t want it to be. It’s more of an amusement.

Judith. Like, “What the heck’s going on?”

Burleigh. When I first read it I thought it was more about a dream, but now that we’ve discussed it I think it is about a cemetery and the grave.

Lois. And, nobody’s in Hell because there are no ruddy fires. [laugher]

Robert. Well, maybe it’s aligned with Safe in their Alabaster Chambers. There’s a sense of poking fun at this sense of “Where are they now, really? Come come.”

Lois. That’s a good one. Several of you mentioned it, too. … Well, there’s a little bit of indignation in this poem that I think is not in Safe in their Alabaster Chambers.

Greg. Because of the unanswered questions.

Melba. But there’s a solitariness that’s similar. She’s imagining the physical tomb as the transition space. It’s an inn; you’re not going to be there forever, but it’s not a place of torment, nor is it a place where there are other people. This is an empty building.

Lois. Well, Peculiar Traveller is the only reference –

Victoria. Peculiar meaning particular, rather than odd or queer.

Robert. I just want to say that the most memorable part of the poem to me is just the dramatic inquiry – the way it’s posing the six questions just to start out and engaging your interest.

Melba. I think that the fact that she’s addressing God as Necromancer is pretty provocative, too. That’s not a happy term to use for raising the dead.

Lois. There’s also a little humility if you look at it as a universal condition that – when we’re all dead – it could be speaking for all of us. “Where are the maids?”

Burleigh. The more we talk about it I think it’s really great that she calls him a Necromancer. [laughter]

Victoria. She calls him a mastiff, and some other choice words.

Burleigh. It would be an interesting list.

Victoria. I’ve started a list; I have some thirty-some names –

Greg. Burglar – Banker – Robber

Victoria. Yeah, yeah.

Lois. The next poem is another witty poem, I had some things that I called mine. I wanted to share with you this rival claim. There’s a portion in a letter to Elizabeth Holland, that is possibly a little helpful in identifying this rival Claim as the grim reaper. Down at the bottom she says, “I’m glad you’re not a blossom, for those in my garden fade, and then a reaper whose name is death has come to get a few to make a boquet for himself,” which to me is very interesting to me in light of this poem where she’s going to sue God.