Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter Sept 7, 2018

Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter

Sept 7, 2018

Facilitated by Lois Kackley

Lois. ... two strategies. What I call existential poems, where the speaker is essentially rejecting any future understanding, insight, knowledge, and just bears down on the real pain. And then in contrast to those are more what I would call spectrum poems - poems that situate the loss within a spectrum of sentiment, responses, reactions - you might even say a circumference (laughs) of human capacity to absorb loss. So for me anyway, when I read a poem that makes me feel - or reminds me - or takes me back to a particular loss of mine, I think about it in terms of her strategy - whether the poem is really bearing down, with blinders on of any possibility of ever overcoming, this tragedy or this crisis, as opposed to those that take in all of our capacity to absorb, to grow from, to learn from. There are a lot of other ways you could look at it. This is by no means comprehensive, but I do have some examples of that group I call spectrum poems. An example of an existential poem is that one we all love:

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.

I guess indirectly it's about loss, but it's bearing down on the emotion of the event, refusing, if you will, to think about any experience that might ameliorate that loss. ... This first poem, besides its martial tone and expression of celebration, it's also an example deals with loss, but in a way that highlights our ability to get some perspective on loss, and to learn from it, and to grow from it - even to use it, if you will, as this poem does, to highlight human achievement.

Robert reads

Who never lost, are unprepared

A Coronet to find!

Who never thirsted

Flagons, and Cooling Tamarind!

Who never climbed the weary league—

Can such a foot explore

The purple territories

On Pizarro's shore?

How many Legions overcome—

The Emperor will say?

How many Colors taken

On Revolution Day?

How many Bullets bearest?

Hast Thou the Royal scar?

Angels! Write "Promoted"

On this Soldier's brow!

Lois. We're alerted on the very first line that this is a poem about havint reflected on loss, rather than being in the throes of it, aren't we. Who never lost, are unprepared.

Greg. It's always something that we've been deprived of, or lacked for a while. "Beggers banquets can define." If you hadn't climbed that mountain and trudged through the jungle with Pizarro, you're not going to appreciate that vision of the Pacific when you finally reach the summit - as much as they would.

Robert. "As those defeated - dying/ On whose forbidden ear/ The distant strains of Triumph burst/ Agonized and clear."

Lois. That's "Success is counted sweetest."

Judith. This seems a little heady to me, though, in the sense that I don't feel the loss in this.

Lois. What is the mood of this poem?

Polly. Triumphant. Things have happened to me that haven't happened to people who have easier times.

Lois. Do you think she wrote this for herself?

Polly. The speaker. I don't know about her herself. I don't know.

Lois. Has anybody thought about who might be the audience for this poem?

Greg. How about philosophical? It's an observation. She's observed life and has seen how people have to go to the jungle to get to the other side and they value it more than someone who's had it handed to them on a platter.

Polly. She has an exclamation point.

Lois. So, a kind of sympathy.

Polly. More forceful than philosophical because of all those exclamation points.

Greg. Well, I like your word, "triumphant," because it's a kind of a triumph - any of these activities are triumphs - of endurance, or will, or ...

Lois. Well, I used the word "martial" when I was first talking about it.

Greg. I can hear that.

Melba. I feel that there's an introspective turn that kind of gets truncated in that last stanza. How many Bullets bearest?/ Hast Thou the Royal scar? That could take you pretty deep into examining your own losses. Then it gets wrapped up neatly with this notion that there's sort of going to be recompense. I almost feel that she's grasping at the conventional notion of [inaudible] of immortality to wrap it up.

Lois. Yeah, that's a good observation - especially when she brings in angels.

Victoria. Yeah.

Melba. Yeah, that's usually more complex - angels and the heavenly notion usually is the upper topic for her.

Lois. I just see this poem as one that could have followed the Gettysburg Address. A celebration that really rallies the troups.

Greg. I think I see what you mean, Lois, when you're asking about the audience. This is like trying to encourage, inspire, someone who's maybe had to face some difficult undertaking.

Polly. I don't think it was written by the soldier. I just think of all the times people have been rallied to war bu downplayed realities. I think I'm just stuck in the experience that I feel of my distance from loss and I'm just not sure the soldier would write this.

Victoria. I'm not sure if it's not literally a military soldier, but a Christian soldier, fighting for Chirst.

Polly. What was the opinion of Pizarro in those days?

Lois. Not as bad as it is today. [laughter]

[crosstalk]

Purple Territory. What do you make of that?

Greg. The color of royalty.

Victoria. Didn't he discover the Incan empire?

Lois. He conquored it, yes.

[crosstalk]

Lois. I think Victoria and Greg are looking at it more from the point of view of a personal communication, and that certainly rings true in that second stanza. It's more oblique as far as - there's not a direct reference to war.

Polly. To me, this is more like a metaphor for striving. If you've never really had hard times, if you've never slogged through the difficulty, you never reach the reward.

Melba. What is a tamarind, anyway.

Judith. An exotic fruit. In indian restaurants you can get tamarind chicken, for example.

Polly. I think it just stands for something very far away. The purple territory, that tamarind, very far away and exciting. Reserved for the few.

Lois. Keeping with that train of thought, how would you reword those first two lines?

Polly. I think it has to do with, if you have never been without ... I'm not sure ...

Lois. Well, if you ever lost it, you had to have it. Wheter it's a loved one, status, wealth, whatever it is.

Polly. I wonder what she's symbolizing by the coronet. It kind of goes with royalty, and her being the queen.

Victoria. In the last stanza she uses the word royal. That does suggest that she's in that territory. Some lofty place that if you could reach, that would be your reward. But I wonder if, getting back to my comment about the soldiers being Christian soldiers, could it be that crown. Christ's crown of thorns and one is crowned when one goes to heaven, if you're a good Christian, and that's your reward.

Polly. So, is this talking about the afterlife? You live a good life and then you get your reward?

Greg. Yeah, that's how I read it. "Servant, well done."

[interlude]

Lois. Let's read A Lady red.

Greg reads:

A Lady red—amid the Hill

Her annual secret keeps!

A Lady white, within the Field

In placid Lily sleeps!

The tidy Breezes, with their Brooms—

Sweep vale—and hill—and tree!

Prithee, My pretty Housewives!

Who may expected be?

The neighbors do not yet suspect!

The woods exchange a smile!

Orchard, and Buttercup, and Bird—

In such a little while!

And yet, how still the Landscape stands!

How nonchalant the Hedge!

As if the "Resurrection"

Were nothing very strange!

Lois. What is she drawing from here?

Greg. I'm waiting for our horticulturist to identify these flowers. ... The Lady

Polly. Cardinal flowers?

Victoria. No, I don't think it would have been cardinal flowers, because they're in the autumn and this is more spring. From the trees, you see a bud-haze across the landscape.

Lois. Who has she observed, that she is drawing from, as a description of the behavior of Spring?

Melba. Oh, the housewives tidyin up ...

Lois. Not just tidying up, but what else?

Greg. She's driving at something.

Polly. Well, it's like people don't recognize what's about to happen - what is happening.

Lois. What is she using from everyday life to describe spring? We all recognize spring, but what's the majic? Where does she get the magic in interpreting spring? I like "the housewife tidying up," but why? There''s a specific reason.

Greg. She's expecting something.

Lois. Exactly. She's getting ready for a guest.

Melba. This reminds me of some moments, usually early March, when - out-of-season effective disorder - I realize that for the first time you can actually smell something organic. It's like, Oh my God! Something out there is living, and you just have this little sense that winter's turned and is leaving.

Greg. My favorite line is The woods exchange a smile! You can't actually close your eyes and see that, but it comes across.

Polly. The trees have feelings.

Lois. It comes across because you can imagine neighbors exchanging a smile. And the interplay between preparing for a guest and spring coming is in some ways - Dickinson notices spring coming in the same way that she notices her mother or Sue turning the house upside doewn to get ready for a guest, and nobody really talks about it, and maybe she's invited somebody for dinner, and father kind of walks around the dustpan. I don't know whether she's thinking more about spring, or whether she's thinking about a special guest coming to dinner.

Polly. I wonder, if in contrast to just having a guest come, it's just spring cleaning.

Greg. I doubt that she'd liken the coming of a guest to the reserrection.

Robert. The way Greg said that he liked that line about the fences exchanging a smile kind of shifted the way I'm looking at the poem. I can enjoy this phrase; I can enjoy the phrase How nonchalant the Hedge! Just getting into her actual words that I'm enjoying, as a balance between trying to figure it out. I just appreciate both.

Lois. How nonchalant the Hedge!

Greg. That's wonderful. [general agreement]

Lois. So, you think if she's using the word resurrection she can't possibly be referring to .. preparing for ...

Mary. No, I think it's kind of a snide remark, because  -

Greg. In other poems she likens spring to the resurrection.

Polly. I think she takes great pleasure in it, and that this is about the anticipation.

Greg. "Nicodemus' question receives it's annual reply."

Robert. There's something about the poem that holds me off when I read those last lines, that she's a believer in the resurrection, so I guess I'm not interested in this poem.

[crosstalk]

Greg. It's just the language - she's using the language. It's not biographical.

Mary. They're often equated -even with the transcendatalists, you have this miracle every year. [crosstalk]

Victoria. Yeah, she's using that vocabulary, but that doesn't mean that that's what she's actually believing.

Mary. She's insinuating that the resurrection is very strange, but it's not so strange when you see it in nature.

Lois. Well, the emotion in this poem is really pretty amazing. You can feel for yourself - there's so much going on in it.

Greg. What's the tone?

Lois. Would you like to answer that?

Greg. To me, it's wonder.

Lois. I think Polly said it; anticipation.

Melba. For me, it makes me remember an emotion that passes in an instant, and I forget - Most springs, and I appreciate it for that.

Polly. And also, for me, there's maybe a little undercurrent of loneliness - that she's the only one that sees this coming. The housewives are busy and she says Her annual secret keeps! It's like she knows the secret that's coming.

Melba. She may be trying to conjure a sense of community out of the trees.

Polly. She's more connected to the nature than she is to the neighbors and the housewives.

Lois. Let's read the next poem.

Victoria reads.

To fight aloud, is very brave -

But gallanter, I know

Who charge within the bosom

The Calvalry of Wo -

Who win, and nations do not see -

Who fall - and none observe -

Whose dying eyes, no Country

Regards with patriot love -

We trust, in plumed procession

For such, the Angels go -

Rank after Rank, with even feet -

And Uniforms of snow.

Lois. In Eleanor Heggenhotham's book on the fascicles, she suggests that Dickinson places one poem opposit the other as a form of action and reaction, or a form of conversations between the poems. I havent seen the fascicle with this, but, this poem sounds like an interesting response to the first poem. And, thought it's possible to read that first poem as a personal reflection - a private reflection on the bravery of others, it's also easy to read it as very celebutory martial poem that could be included in any kind of recognition of soldiers. It could have been read at John McCain's funeral. Whereas, if we had gone to a hero soldier's funeral and read this poem, I don't know what the response would be. What do you think?

Victoria. I don't think that I would read this as a soldier's poem. I might read this as someone in my generation who, in stead of becoming a Viet Nam hero like John McCain - all the people who resisted, all the people who resisted the draft, men whom I know who went to jail, silently worked for prison reform and things like that, that's the kind of poem I think this is for me.

Lois. I agree whole-heartedly. Or, even, any private struggle; any private war. Some are so private they never get shared with nother human being.

....

Victoria. Well, I just have this little poem, and evrybody has been so miserable with this weather, that I thought Dickinson probably had some bad Aulus weather when she wrote this poem in 1878.

These Fevered Days - to take them to the Forest
Where Waters cool around the mosses crawl - 
And shade is all that devastates the stillness
Seems it sometimes this would be all - 

Lois. Paints a picture, doesn't it?