Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter May, 2017

Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter

May, 2017

Topic: Fascicle 4 Sheet 1,

Facilitated by Lois Kackly

Victoria reads.

Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower,

But I could never sell—

If you would like to borrow,

Until the Daffodil

Unties her yellow Bonnet

Beneath the village door,

Until the Bees, from Clover rows

Their Hock, and Sherry, draw,

Why, I will lend until just then,

But not an hour more!

Judith Reads.

Water, is taught by thirst.

Land—by the Oceans passed.

Transport—by throe—

Peace—by its battles told—

Love, by memorial mold—

Birds, by the snow.

Melba reads.
Have you got a Brook in your little heart,

Where bashful flowers blow,

And blushing birds go down to drink,

And shadows tremble so—

And nobody knows, so still it flows,

That any brook is there,

And yet your little draught of life

Is daily drunken there—

Why –  look out for the little brook in March,

When the rivers overflow,

And the snows come hurrying from the hills,

And the bridges often go—

And later, in August it may be,

When the meadows parching lie,

Beware, lest this little brook of life,

Some burning noon go dry!

Masako reads.
Flowers—Well—if anybody

Can the ecstasy define—

Half a transport—half a trouble—

With which flowers humble men

Anybody find the fountain

From which floods so contra flow—

I will give him all the Daisies

Which upon the hillside blow.

Too much pathos in their faces

For a simple breast like mine—

Butterflies from St. Domingo

Cruising round the purple line—

Have a system of aesthetics—

Far superior to mine.

Mary reads.
Pigmy seraphs — gone astray —

Velvet people from Vevay —

Belles from some lost summer day —

Bees exclusive Coterie —

Paris could not lay the fold                 [Dressmaker]

Belted down with Emerald —

Venice could not show a check

Of a tint so lustrous meek —

Never such an Ambuscade

As of briar and leaf displayed

For my little damask maid —

I had rather wear her grace

Than an Earl's distinguished face —

I had rather dwell like her

Than be "Duke of Exeter" —

Royalty enough for me

To subdue the Bumblebee..

Lois. Does anybody care to share anything they noticed, or question about this group of poems? Do you think Dickinson had anything in mind when she put these poems on this sheet?

Greg. Three of them have to do with flowers.

Lois. A lot of flowers in this sheet, aren't there?

Victoria. Four of them have a kind of feeling of personification - take on different characters.

Lois. She's drawing on an assumption of shared experience in doing that, isn't she.

Greg. What do you mean, "shared experience?"

Lois. Well, for instance, to say "Have you got a brook in your little heart? She's assuming that the reader has a sentimental, or a very kind of pleasant connotation with Brook.

Judith. Or even has seen a brook,

Lois. Yes. What do you feel when you watch a brook? What do you feel?

Judith. Delight. You feel gentle.

Mary. Liveliness, as well. A brook, typically, is flowing.

Lois. Right. There's a lot of energy, isn't there, but it's a soft energy; It's not an overwhelming energy. If she'd said, "Have you got a hurricane in your little heart?" [laughter] That would not [crosstalk]

Greg. Water is life.

Adrianna. I think about baptism, too. Water is used for that. It's called the staff of life.

Lois. So, in a poem like Water, is taught by thirst, the assumption is stronger with water, than with thirst - or is it? She's saying, if you know thirst, you know water.

Mary. You know each thing by understanding its opposite.

Greg. - or experiencing its loss, or its lack.

Melba. And there's a stronger claim; it's taught. You cannot know Water until you've know thirst,

Lois. But the real message there is that you cannot know the significance of water. Water here again is a metonym for a broad meaning.

Robert. I was just thinking of Franklin 284.

[The Zeroes — taught us — Phosphorous —
We learned to like the Fire
By playing Glaciers — when a Boy —
And Tinder — guessed — by power
Of Opposite — to balance Odd —
If White — a Red — must be!
Paralysis — our Primer — dumb —
Unto Vitality!]

Lois. Yes, this is one of the funny things about starting with these early poems, is that we see these themes that she's picking up on early. That poem Water is taught by thirst is almost an index of poems to come [laughs], because, she groups them, in this little poem - as she goes and gets more experience, she takes any one of those lines into an expansion into one poem.

Adrianna. - and it becomes many poems - each individual line.

Lois. I was reading an anthology, "The Emily Dickinson Handbook," written in the late 70's, I think, and Martha Nell [Smith] has a section in the beginning about the manuscripts. She points out that in Dickinson's early manuscript books (fascicles), there aren't really a lot of variants. It was not until about the ninth or tenth fascicle that she started using unusual line breaks, putting in a lot more variants, and in the early poems that we're reading now, she tends more toward tetrameter [long meter], whereas in the later poems, from around the ninth or tenth fascicle, she starts mixing in a lot more pentameter, and even trimeter. So, Have you got a Brook in your little heart is really unusual for these early poems. Pentameter, in the first line, is quite unusual for these little books. I just wanted to point that out, because these poems that we're looking at do have a lot of variation in meter and line breaks.

Victoria. It seems to me that the line has to sound like a brook - Have you got a Brook in your little heart [read flowingly].

Lois. Yeah. If she'd written it like the rest of the poem, she'd have placed a line break after your.

Melba. Well, if you're going to keep it in four, then you've got a parallel with And nobody knows, so still it flows.

Polly. Then the stanzas are 4-3-4-3.

Melba. And it's interesting; When the water's mentioned, the syllables speed up, but with the visual images - Where bashful flowers blow,/ And blushing birds go-down-to-drink - there's a nice alternation with what you might hear.

Victoria. All those b sounds make it sound like a bubbling brook.

Melba. Which makes it seems like she's really enjoying the music - just putting the words together.

Judith. That makes me think of what Thomas Wentworth Higginson said, that he couldn't understand her poems until he heard Mabel [Loomis Todd] read them aloud.

Victoria. Well, if you hear someone read her poems well, it does make a difference, and I imagine Mabel had a lovely voice. With all that vocal training, she would have had to.

Greg. She referred to her poetry often as "singing."

Judith. I'm struck by how much of life she understands, in this poem; the little brook in her heart being a resource, but then, watch out; In August, you could really be up a creek. [laughter] She's got the warning signs out - and she ends with a contrast to the first two stanzas. It just strikes me as how simple and natural the imagery is, and how, as she always does, gives so much meaning to it.

Lois. I remember reading this when I was young, and saying, "Hm. Have got a little brook in my heart?" [laughter]

Jeff. She uses the word little in all four stanzas.

Lois. To me, there's a lot of ruefulness that's one of the more lasting elements in this poem. There's a lot of sugar in there to help the medicine go down, isn't there?

Jeff. "A smile so small as mine might be/ Precisely their necessity."

Mary. What is a little Brook? Does everybody have one? It just occurs to me that maybe she's talking about just certain people.

Lois. Yeah, let's probe Miss Dickinson's metaphor a little more here. Do you think she's talking about a universal experience here?

Mary. It's whether you have some kind of creativity, I think.

Lois. A reason to get up in the morning is the way I would define it. "Do you have a reason to get up every morning?" But then to elaborate on it a little bit, what would be some bashful flowers? - little private pleasures, right?

Polly. I would think, if we can continue with the idea of creativity, most creative people feel that, if you look too directly at the idea, you extinguish it. You have to approach it a little bit slant-wise.

Lois. And blushing birds go down to drink - that's all in the same vein, right? And shadows tremble so - How would you interpret that?

Victoria. Flickering light. I think flickering light, as how you would actually see it, if you were sitting by a brook and the light is flickering through the foliage - shadows move - and somehow shadows would come in and out of that creative light that she was experiencing when she wrote or thought about her poetry.

Lois. Self-doubt, do you think? Could it be that?

Melba. I'm wondering if maybe she feels she needs some privacy and concealment - if she's ambivalent about letting too many people in.

Lois. OK, so putting it on a more universal plane, we could say that, even for someone who's not a poet - private ambitions that they're not ready to share, right? And nobody knows, so still it flows,/ That any brook is there? It almost puts the emphasis on the thing that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning, rather than the "want to." In an odd way, I like Polly's suggestion - coming at things indirectly.

Polly. - the elusiveness of that inspiration, and how precious it is - how it can overflow and also can die.

Lois. Can anybody relate to a private inspiration that nobody knows about?

Greg. I went to a workshop once, a long time ago - a stress management workshop - and I'd been doing a lot of Zen meditation at the time. The instructor taught us how to create a sanctuary - a mental place. You might imagine a garden, for instance, and when you're stressed out, you can actually go there, if you're able to do it. It reminds me of that.

Lois. I think implied with that is that it's something we have to work on; It's not something that happens naturally. The thing that's fascinating to me about this poem is her insistence on secrecy about this brook. Am I wrong about that?

Melba. No. There is a protective impulse, because, when you get to stanza four, she's not saying that it will go dry in August, she's saying that it may go dry in August Beware - so tend it carefully, and I assume that tending it is keeping it sort of in the shadows - a retreat for the birds and the flowers.

Greg.
"Inheritance, it is, to us--

Beyond the Art to Earn--

Beyond the trait to take away

By Robber, since the Gain

Is gotten not of fingers--

And inner than the Bone--

Hid golden, for the whole of Day"

Or,

"Of Chambers as the Cedars/ Impregnable of eye"

Lois. You cannot get at it; It's a very private experience. But I think, as readers of Dickinson, we can find a lot of reinforcement for very private experience, and also very public experience, rather than - and maybe in the post-Freudian era that's not so hard, but I just find a real fascination with the intensity with which she expresses these two different realms as being so very distinct, and also reinforces the reader, it that reader has a suspicion that there are private experiences that simply cannot be shared. And I think that Dickinson, as a poet, is trying to reinforce the awareness of that phenomenon, rather than the more public attitude, which is, you know, "Don't just sit there, do something."

Victoria. Or, in our contemporary culture, if you don't share a lot of your inner private life, either you're uptight, or your neurotic in some way - you have issues, right? [ some laughter ] and when you were saying that, Lois, it's ironic; She's writing a poem to tell you about the privateness, but she's not telling you what it is   specifically.

Lois. OK, let's see if we can get with the mood of it. What's the tone of the poem?

Polly. It seems playful - or cheeky.

Lois. Cheeky? [laughter]

Melba. And she's having fun with the commercial metaphors; sell, borrow, lend.

Lois. Exactly

Melba. So, when you read her poem, you are, in some way, borrowing the image of the flower from her. She can't give you the flower itself - the flower that she sees, but you can, kind of, borrow the impression of a flower, for her  - but maybe she doesn't want that compared to the actual flower. Maybe she doesn't want you to compare the image to the real thing.

Polly. In a sense, she's implying that you can have it when it's in the bud, but once it  Unties her yellow Bonnet - it's mine.

Melba. I will lend until just then.

Lois. But not an hour more!

Robert. I'm sensing that she gives flowers an autonomy of their own, and they are not hers to sell. She doesn't own flowers; they untie their own Bonnets. She can't sell them, but they can be leant - they can be shared.

Victoria. I'm wondering if, in the poem Flowers—Well—if anybody/ Can the ecstasy define—/ Half a transport—half a trouble, that for a gardener, it's a transport to see these wonderful creations of nature, and also, it's so much trouble, combating the worm, the wind, and the grasshoppers and whatever. It's hard work, making a garden. Again, if flowers are a metaphor for her poems, it's half ecstasy to write, and so much hard work.

Lois. I love that line, Too much pathos in their faces. This is somebody who studies expressions, right? What I'm getting at is that, in this poem, she's assuming a certain experience, again, that cannot be clearly defined - in the response to a flower. In the first poem, there's an intrinsic value, without being bothered to define what that value is. There's a loose connection, it seems to me, between these two poems.

Melba. OK - I don't know if this is going to hold together, but, in Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower, I'm beginning to wonder if , OK, you can borrow this poem until the flowers actually bloom, but maybe you borrow the poem, you read the poem, and then the flowers begin to bloom for you. You're little Brook gets nurtured, and enriched.

Greg. That's kind of nice.

Melba. Maybe she says, I will lend until just then, but then you don't need my poem anymore, because you've got it; you've internalized it - whatever it is to you, it's now blooming, and my flower now is just a flat thing on a piece of paper.

Greg. Yeah, if you're still holding on to it, don't open your eyes, because I'm taking it back anyway.

Melba. Right, but the Bees and the Clover that are making the Hock and the Sherry are what happens to the individual who's literally drinking from someone else's well, which is an image Thoreau really liked. Walden ends with him imagining his works being read, and flowing into the thought of other countries, and thinking maybe that someone will put their bucket down into the Ganges and draw up water from Walden.

Robert. Could she be saying, at all, that the Daffodil is a bulged flower, and you don't sell it in the spring or the summer. you sell the bulb after it blooms - after the bee has had its nectar.

Lois. I like that line, that I was just drinking from - Too much pathos in their faces/ For a simple breast like mine. The notable factor is the thing that cannot be exchanged. Your experience of the poem, and my experience of your delight is totally separate.

Melba. Yeah, and this was the whole problem with the Romantic project, as I understand it, was that the authors were trying to capture an experience that would generate a strong, emotional, imaginative response in the reader, and trigger, and enrich, their own inner life, but they knew that my reaction to the flower could never be exactly what your reaction to the flower would be. So, they were trying trying to tell you what should happen to you without being able what should happen to you. [laughter]

Victoria. You have to drink the cool-aid yourself.

Melba. Whereas the enlightenment people will tell you, "All right, we can tell you exactly what it is you're supposed to know after you've read this.

Lois. And now, on comes Dickinson, and just simply recognizes that you have an inner life, which is more freeing than - anything, a poem, or a flower.

Judith. I'm intrigued by the second stanza - Anybody find the fountain/ From which floods so contra flow - She seems to contrast men being humbled by nature, but I'm just wondering if this is an image of what she thinks God is - this fountain that creates the ecstasy, and you can't find it, in that traditional sense.

Greg. The ministers of her day would have told her that that's where the fountain is; She may be not quite agreeing. She might be saying that it's a mystery. It is a mystery, isn't it?

Judith. I'm just wondering what she means by that, in terms of the contrast with how nature humbles men, and the certainty of traditional religion to know where beauty comes from, and it's more inaccessible than that.

Lois. Anyone want to comment on that inaccessibility?

Greg. Calvin said that every blade of grass that moves, that's God doing that. Then, when the enlightenment comes along, and Newton starts explaining things, these things start being de-mystified, and she's growing up in that romantic era, and prefers the mystery. "The unknown is the greatest need of the intellect."

Polly. Yeah, she's saying I'll give you all the Daisies if you can figure that one out. [laughter, general assent]

Greg. But you're not gonna do it. [laughter, general assent]

Polly. It's so central to life, and, its location in the poem makes it easy to overlook it.

Lois. I agree. Well, apparently, she actually used a colon after With which flowers humble men

That's very unusual in and of itself.

Polly. I think it's important to notice the word ecstasy, because to me, the poem is mostly about ecstasy. What is this ecstasy? It's unexplainable, but it's real. I think that's where the focus really lies - on the sensation of ecstasy.

Jeff. Why does she say the ecstasy?

Polly. It's that specific ecstasy With which flowers humble men. And, their beauty is unexplainable to us, and yet we all recognize it - we all need it.

Lois. And anybody who doesn't recognize their need is what? Dead? Really not experiencing life to the fullest. But the idea of pathos in their faces is just a genius way of describing this experience.

Jeff. I'm not sure I want to agree with what you're saying about the ecstasy and the reference which follows as being the ecstasy With which flowers humble men, because she's starting off by saying "Well, if anybody can the ecstasy define, flowers can." So, she's making ecstasy sound like a specific kind of ecstasy.

Melba. I think that Jeff is saying that "Flowers can well define the ecstasy."

Robert. What's the transport?

Jeff. That's the ecstasy part opt it.

Greg. Yeah, it's being carried away.

Robert. I guess I'm wondering if the fountain is the flow of nectar, and the butterflies have a system of aesthetics superior because they can actually taste from the fountain - taste the flow of nectar.

Melba. Of course. They have the actual experience of the flowers, not a mediated experience through poetry, or through vision. They can get it through taste.

Lois. I don't want to ignore this last poem, because Robert has asked specifically to do it, and I was waiting for Victoria to remind us what the damask maid is.

Greg. There it is! [Victoria displays a damask rose.]

Victoria. The little Velvet people.

Melba. Paris was the seat to haut couture - dressmakers. They can't match these flowers.

Greg. Venice, neither, in all it's glories.

Lois. What are the Pigmy Seraphs?

Victoria. Those are the flowers.

Polly. I just think she's trying to find these over-the-top images to describe the flowers.

Greg. It's like, poetry. [laughter]