Emily Dickinson Museum Poetry Discussion Group April 20 2018

Emily Dickinson Museum Poetry Discussion Group April 20 2018

Poems about Poets and Poetry

Facilitated by Bruce Penniman

Bruce. Since this is National Poetry Month, I thought it might be nice to look at poems by Emily Dickinson, and perhaps some others if we have time, about poetry and poets. As you know, this was a favorite subject of Dickinson, but there’s a long tradition; maybe the first poem written about poetry was by Horace called ars poetica, and in those days the purpose of a poem was to delight and instruct the audience. But, I was thinking of some more recent ones, especially ones that were more recent in Emily Dickinson’s time. Think about Pope’s essay on criticism; he says:

“True wisdom is nature to advantage dressed/ What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed/ Something whose truth convinced at sight we find/ That gives us back the image of our mind”

A very neo-classical idea of that. And you may remember Wordsworth, in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads talked about poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings – emotion recollected in tranquility.” And then of course there was Shelley, who said in In Defense of Poetry, that “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” [laughter] The unacknowledged part is true for sure. [laughter] They were all sort of in the background when Emily Dickinson was writing.

            Some interesting things that occur to me when thinking about these poems are, “What is poetry?” And, “What is a Poet?” And, when does Emily Dickinson write as a reader of poetry, primarily? When does she write as a writer of poetry, and what’s the difference? So, why don’t we start with number 348.

Robert reads.

I would not paint-a picture-

I’d rather be the one-

Its bright impossibility

To dwell- delicious-on

And wonder how the fingers feel

Whose rare-celestial stir

Evokes so sweet a Torment-

Such sumptuous-Despair-

I would not talk, like Cornets-

I’d rather be the one

Raised softly to the Ceilings-

And out, and easy on-

Through villages of Ether

Myself endued Baloon

By but a lip of Metal

The Pier to my Pontoon-

Nor would I be a Poet-

It’s finer-own the Ear-

Enamored-impotent-content-

The License to revere-

A privilege so awful

What would the Dower be,

Had I the Art to stun myself

With Bolts of Melody!

                        - J505/Fr348/M184

[To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwxGesoi7mI ]

Jule. I just happened to be reading Cynthia Wolff’s discussion of this poem. She sees it as satirical about the role of women and Emily Dickinson making it as ridiculous as she thinks it actually is – for women to be forced into that situation. They don’t get to be the one, they just …

Bruce. Ah, ok.

Claire. Enamored – impotent, that line really attests to that.

Jill. I know that she capitalizes many nouns, and we don’t know why, but my eye is drawn to the second line, where she capitalizes One to make it look like the Holy One. So it could be a poem about her humility about not being able to write really good poetry, only the criticism of it, or else, on the other side, I’d rather be the God [laughter] that can so transcend this earthly sphere that I don’t have to make the poetry in the sense of writing, but I just MAKE the poetry of the world.

Bruce. Well, the lines later on in that stanza would go along with that, wouldn’t it? And wonder how the fingers feel/ Whose rare-celestial stir.

Jill. Yeah.

Bruce. One of the variants for Evokes there is “provokes” there.

Brooke. This always makes me think of another poem where she says “I can’t do the thing! I can’t do the thing!” while doing the thing. [laughter]. There seem to be a number of poems like that I read as coy resistance – while delivering. [general agreement]

Melba. I want to go in a different direction with this. I found it quite possible that as a poet, she could read a poem by someone else, she could understand how it’s producing its effect. She could think about how she could have changed it – done it a little bit better – but that really interferes with the experience of the poem. I think that would distract you from just being struck with Bolts of Melody! So I have to wonder if her expertise was in some way a bit of a downer when it came to reading other people’s poetry.

Jule. That’s an interesting point because I’ve always felt this war – I mean, poetry and art – they are in motion, and yet we sit here and logically analyze and dissect them. It’s such a contrast. [inaudible]

Bruce. It’s funny – I almost included Billy Collins’ poem about poetry where they want to tie the poem to a chair and torture a confession out of it. [laughter] I hope we don’t do that here. [laughter]

Jule. No, we don’t tie them; we glue them. [laughter]

Victoria. That’s what Harrison [recently deceased discussion participant] was so good at. He had the intellectual storage of all those words, but when it came to actually embellishing some kind of emotional situation, he had it, and that’s where the power was.

Bruce. I must admit that this poem has always appealed to me as a lover of art and music and poetry, but a non-artist, musician, or poet, in that expresses very well for me, even though it may have been ironic in Emily Dickinson’s case, the experience of appreciating art or music or poetry, and trying to imagine the process by which it’s created, without necessarily doing it myself.

Jane. The first line in each of these verses is work. It’s the work part. And all of the rest of it is just the beautiful experience itself of art and the part where you just get to appreciate – or be inspired, or kind of circulate the ethereal[?] before you have to sit down and touch the page. And, I’m not sure I see it as either/or, it’s just that the work part of being the artist comes first in each of these, and she somehow knows that she’s going to have to get around to that, but for the time being I’m just going to rest in this experience.

Elizabeth. I like what Melba said. I’m struck by the image of the lightning and the image of the bolts of Melody – like the sky is stirring, and it makes me think a little bit of experience of electricity, and the experience of being shocked or stunned. The truth is, you might shock others, but you cannot shock yourself, and I think that you can never experience your own art, whether you are a poet, as being outside yourself. She is being coy [inaudible] I’d rather experience. The truth is that she can experience her own work. What would it be if you could stun yourself with your own electricity, and she’s not, and no one can do that.

Greg. Could she possibly be stunned when the inspiration hits – She suddenly gets the right word and it just stuns her?

Bill. I get the feeling that she’s talking out of both sides of her talents, so to speak. [laughter] The last two lines really give it away, to me. I think that’s a powerful poetic expression. and she’s saying at the same time, “I wish I had the art to say what I’m just saying.” So, I think she’s trying to describe poetry as a production and an art to see at the same time.

Bruce. What do you make of the lines right before? A privilege so awful/ What would the Dower be?

Greg. “Essential Oils are wrung.” You need to go through trials and pain and suffering in order to produce the poetry. What do I have to pay? What’s the price?

Bruce. So, clearly, to receive the dower you have to experience a loss, right?

Greg. Someone receives the dower, somebody else pays it.

Bruce. In that fifth line there, the variant for privilege is “luxury” – A luxury so awful. Well Greg, your comment before about the inspiration I think, was a nice transition to another one, number 1243.

Greg reads.

Shall I take thee, the Poet said

To the propounded word?

Be stationed with the Candidates

Till I have finer tried —

The Poet searched Philology

And was about to ring

For the suspended Candidate

There came unsummoned in —

That portion of the Vision

The Word applied to fill

Not unto nomination

The Cherubim reveal —
                     - J1126/Fr1245/M557

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/v2xeTAygDRw ]

Bruce. Can you see the word in the waiting room? [laughter] …. For example, in line 4, there were two alternatives to finer – “til I have further tried,” or, “til I have vainer tried.”

Elizabeth. I like how the word lowercase becomes the Word uppercase at the end. There’s a biblical [inaudible] there.

Bruce. If you imagine an office where Candidates are being interviewed – what happens in the last stanza there – or in the last half of the second stanza?

Jill. The reversal – the Marxist reversal, where the powerless actually gets the power. The Dandidate wasn’t suspected, and immediately strikes her as being the best Candidate. I read this kind of like a read “The Soul selects her own society.” My students always find that very arrogant of her. They’re ready to take her off the curriculum immediately for that one poem. [laughter] Yeah. They’re southern students though, I have to say, and it does make a big difference in teaching Emily the way I do, with the background of her living here. But I just love, also, the arrogance in this poem, where she thinks she’s God again, choosing, but then that unexpected angel – Cherubim – reveals itself to her. And that’s so much the way words work, according to a lot of literary theory that the text writes itself, ideas like that – post-modernism.

Jule. Browning had a line once – someone asked him what he meant in a poem, and he said, “When I wrote that poem only God and I knew what it meant, and now only God knows. [laughter]

Greg. Just so I’m clear, the candidate is left in the waiting room, is it not?

Bruce. Yeah.

Celeste. And then came the vision…

Jill. Oh, alright. Oh, so I read it wrong. I read that this proletarian candidate, who doesn’t have a job, walked in with no invitation and moved her by his or her revelation.

Bruce. Yeah, she was just about to call for the suspended candidate. Then, in walked the vision.

Judith. I don’t see this so much as arrogant, as she’s just telling us how it works for her, describing the process.

Jill. Oh, Judith, I do want to clarify; it’s an arrogance that I admire. It’s not a bad arrogance at all, that comes across in many of her poems. I guess there’s a division between myself and my students. [laughter]

Bruce. You are from New England. [laughter]

Jill. I know it. they’ll never let me forget it. [laughter]

Robert. Looking back at the last poem, That portion of the Vision/ The Word applied to fill is her “Art to stun herself with Bolts of Melody.” Something stunning in the vision. [general agreement]

Jill. Oh, wow, there’s another thing about theory here. I don’t want to bore anyone, but Not unto nomination/ The Cherubim reveal – in theory of language, language is never sufficient to express what we want to express. We talk about a slippery distance between the signifier word and the signified as meaning, so that can always slip in terms of other people’s interpretations, or even our own. Like you say, God knows, but we don’t know. And, just the fact that her medium is words – naming – nomination – but the words sometimes will not reveal the angelic vision – the meaning that she wants to convey. In order to communicate we need either touch or language.

Jule. Although, sometimes the look will do it. [laughter]

Claire. Do you think that’s what the ending means? Not unto nomination/ The Cherubim reveal, that in fact the Cherubim reveal unspeakable vision, and the words that are sitting there as candidates aren’t good enough and the Cherubim can’t give you a word, because there isn’t a word.

Elizabeth. The Word, capital W, is not the same as the lower case word. I’m being really Biblical here, but it really is the Word made flesh, it is the sign and the signified together. [inaudible] her word. It exists and it’s perfect. But I don’t know if it is revealed or not.

Bruce. The dual sense of nomination is interesting. The Candidate is being nominated here, in a sense, but the Word cannot be made into a word, lowercase, I guess – in that sense of nomination. …. Is this an argument against craft? – or about the limitations of craft? This is a poet who, at the beginning of the poem is trying to be very orderly and deliberate in making decisions.

Steve. Possibly endorsing the surpassing inspiration behind craft that exceeds the craft but still can be expressed by the craftsman.

Greg. Mozart said “My melodies come from I know not where.”

Jill. Dante believed, as did Medieval poets said that they were just a vehicle for what God was saying – that they didn’t have a personality themselves.

Bruce. “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story”