The Emily Dickinson Reading Circle, 11March2016

The Emily Dickinson Reading Circle, 11March2016
Fascicle 16

Polly. [Recommending a book on Dickinson’s fascicles, Holds up a copy of "Emily Dickinson's Fascicles: Method & Meaning" by Dorothy Huff Oberhaus Published by Penn State Press, University Park, Pennsylvania, 1996] … she focuses on all the fascicles but primarily on fascicle 40, the final one, and that’s the one she talks about most but in the course of it she talks about the others. Her background was in seventeenth century metaphysical poets, when she worked for her doctorate, so she knows that tradition very, very well. When she started reading the Dickinson poems she realized how closely Emily’s poetry fit into that period, in particular the poems of Herbert, that we know she read, and she was particularly fond of Thomas a’ Kempis’ Imitation of Christ. Dorothy’s theory, which she develops, is that all of the fascicles taken together are in the tradition of “a spiritual and poetic pilgrimage,” starting with the first poem in the first fascicle and leading up to the last one, the fortieth, and that all together they place Dickinson’s work in this tradition of Christian devotion. We’re so used to dealing with the poems one-on-one, we pick a favorite, pick here, pick there, without really looking at the context of the poem or the order in which it’s presented, and I think we get a sense, just from reading around the table that these poems are talking to one another, that they all relate to one another in some way. So I just wanted to point this out, that you can look at them as Emily Dickinson talking about art, and she is; she’s talking about art. She’s also talking about this struggle she had, through her life, to become a Christian, to have a spiritual life. She felt that she had been overlooked by God, left out of the church. All her friends were having symptoms that God was in their lives and she definitely wasn’t. She wasn’t going to say that she had such evidence just because there was a revival going on. It also left her with a great feeling of being left out that I think shines in her poetry. So, this was one of the crucial struggles of her life. So, Dorothy, who died two years ago, had come close to completing her study of all the fascicles, and I hope someday they’ll see the light of day and be published, because I really want to know what is in it.

Margaret. Well, that was a really nice introduction to Dorothy’s work because Marthat O’Keefe tried to look at the fascicles in that kind of way. She believed, much like Dorothy, that it was a spiritual journey, and she likened it to St. John of the Cross. Then, Ellie Hegenbotham, who like me was rather skeptical. Frankly I was skeptical of Dorothy because she’s very deliberately putting the fascicles in that order. We don’t know that that’s the right order.

Polly. No. She was depending on Franklin.

Margaret. Well, it was Todd, who labeled the fascicles as she worked with them, so that I was a little bit skeptical and so was Ellie. But what she did was begin to see how the poems were talking to one another. That was her focus, so that’s a kind of a nice confirmation.

Polly. Well, Dorothy was a little skeptical about Mable Loomis Todd but she rarely caught Franklin out. She did a couple of times, with his order. The very first poems in the first fascicle that Franklin divides into three poems she insists is one.

Margaret. Absolutely. In fact, I think they’re even longer. I think they stretch over several pages. So, thank you.

Connie. The word “fascicle,” when did that start being used?

Polly. That’s what Mable Todd called them. She didn’t know what to call them.

Margaret. Which is a bit surprising …

Polly. Vinnie came and put them in her lap. She chose “fascicles.”

Margaret. Which is kind of strange because chapbooks were very popular in the nineteenth century. Chapbooks are what people did. They created their little booklets and called them chapbooks.

Greg. I just learned recently that in botany a fascicle means a little cluster of flowers.

Margaret. Yes, and when the first poems were published and Higginson wrote about poetry being “torn up by the roots.”

Someone. Mable was very into art, and she wanted to be a little bit removed from “chapbooks,” I think.

Alice. Although there’s very little sacred language in them, she’s constantly in a dialogue with the Christian faith, and I see it from a musical standpoint, the use of the common meter, which so many of the hymns were in, the Isaac Watts and other hymn writers. So, it’s working in that it’s working in that very strong tradition of hundreds of thousands of poems written in that very simple form. Over and over again I come back to saying “This is eight lines of poetry, two verses of four lines each that don’t quite rhyme. They’re exact in the rhythm, and she takes that form and just turns it inside out within that tiny space. She is so free with it, it’s just amazing, but it’s rooted in both words and music – the rhythms in the faith tradition

Greg. She called it “singing.

”

Margaret. Well, that turning inside-out is my point on iconicity, You have to break through a conventional way of seeing in order for the poem to work in you so that you feel that embodied experience of felt life that connects you to that spiritual dimension that’s over and above the actual words on the page.

Alice. Yes, the words on the page are almost covering it, as if it’s hidden and covert.

Margaret. Yes, it is. Wallace Stevens has a beautiful image for all of that. He talks about the leaves covering the barren rock. These are the leaves that’s covering what’s really underneath. We subliminally know, but we don’t consciously know it.

Alice. Because we can’t put it into words and she comes closer than most… and subjecting herself to the tightest discipline. This is not the sprawl of poetry that goes in great long lines. It’s the opposite, just into the bone.

[Interlude}

 Polly. So many of these poems are about the feeling of saying goodbye since you go over the divide hoping that people will come to you. They’re done in different degree – very tangible descriptions of the landscape. It’s almost like a child talking. “I wonder if Richard will go to the mill” and a generic 

Richard, someone in her family. What was interesting is that you said “going to the mill. ” What I found interesting when I read that poem is that it can be both. It can be to the mill, but actually to mill, which is to actually do the work.

Polly. Or is it more like the British go “to Hospital.”

[At this point, all 16 poems in fascicle 40 are read out loud. I am not reproducing them all here]

Barre. Can someone tell me why I don’t have He showed me heights I never saw in my book? [Johnson edition.]

Margaret. Oh, she has two versions of this poem. The other is I showed her heights she never saw. [Franklin edition].

[Interlude]

Jeff. Did Mable Todd pull destroy all the bindings?

Greg. She took them apart. She had her own numbering system; it’s explained in Franklin – I can’t understand it. She wrote on the manuscripts in blue pencil. Amherst College still uses that system in their collection. That’s why Franklin had to try to put them together again by examining the pin holes and bled-through ink stains.

Someone. What inspired Mabel to take them apart?

Polly. I think it was because she was working with Thomas Wentworth Higginson of finding the strongest poems that would make the most sense in the earliest publications that people would expect and not quarrel with, saying that she was being irreligious, and all kinds of things that they’d object to. Crazy punctuation – meter, I think they were hunting for the ones that they could get safely published to prepare for the next one.

Greg, He asked her to group them by strength A, B, and C poems.

[interlude]

How noteless Men, and Pleiads, stand,
Until a sudden sky
Reveals the fact that One is rapt
Forever from the Eye —

Members of the Invisible,
Existing, while we stare,
In Leagueless Opportunity,
O'ertakenless, as the Air —

Why didn't we detain Them?
The Heavens with a smile,
Sweep by our disappointed Heads
Without a syllable —
                          - J212/Fr342/M180

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/RNjnyruw3VA ]

Of nearness to her sundered Things
The Soul has special times —
When Dimness — looks the Oddity —
Distinctness — easy — seems —

The Shapes we buried, dwell about,
Familiar, in the Rooms —
Untarnished by the Sepulchre,
The Mouldering Playmate comes —

In just the Jacket that he wore —
Long buttoned in the Mold
Since we — old mornings, Children — played —
Divided — by a world —

The Grave yields back her Robberies —
The Years, our pilfered Things —
Bright Knots of Apparitions
Salute us, with their wings —

As we — it were — that perished —
Themself — had just remained till we rejoin them —
And 'twas they, and not ourself
That mourned.
                       - J607/Fr337/M177

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

Margaret. At the last meeting, we were looking at her second poem, Of nearness to her sundered things, and we got to the last stanza and somebody said that themselves was a strange usage. Look at that last stanza. It’s amazing. The Gave yields back her Robberies, right>? –The Years our pilfered Things. Think about the rapt being taken away from the eye. Bright Knots of Apparitions/ Salute us, with their wings Again you’ve got that semantic network with Members of the Invisible. Then, final stanza, As we — it were — that perished, as if we had perished. It’s a complete reversal. In the first one she’s alive, thinking about the dead, and in this one she’s dead and she’s thinking about the living. It’s amazing how parallel those two stanzas are    

    

Margaret M. And to me, the misuse I guess you could say, of the reflexive is like making the reflexive a nominative. It reflects that reversal that she’s undergoing with her consciousness.

Margaret. And her “self” anaphors, when they attach to a word, they all involve mapping across domains. So that “I have a Bird in Spring/ That for myself doth sing” – well it should be “doth sing for me.” Why “myself?” Because “I have a Bird in Spring” is being written when it isn’t spring. She’s thinking of it in winter. She puts herself in the future in the spring, therefore she uses the “self” pronoun. If she’s in her reality space of the present, she does not use the “self” pronoun. There is at least one poem where it looks as though I’m wrong, where she does use “me,” and it’s A fair fictitious People. It’s a very complex crossing of domains where in fact she crosses back and so therefore it’s “me” and not “myself.” It’s amazing how consistent she is in her own grammar.

Greg. I have found similar usages of the reflexive pronoun in the New Testament and in Aurora Leigh.

Margaret. Yes, and the fact that she makes it singular is interesting too, and I haven’t dealt with that.

Mary Clare. I’m struck by how un-mystifying this poem is. It’s very straightforward. [General Agreement] It’s like a little story

.

Margaret M. I think her use of the singular themself rather than themselves is to emphasize that she is playing with the grammar, in a deliberate, conscious, and consistent way.

Margaret. And also I think, Members of the Invisible, and Why didn’t we detain them, and Polly asks, about it [variant], Why didn’t we detain it. She’s thinking of the plural, everybody coming to me, but thinking of them as individuals. So it’s each one of them, rather than themself.

Greg. Very straightforward – it’s just a dead person talking. [laughter]

Johnson 445
'Twas just this time, last year, I died.
I know I heard the Corn,
When I was carried by the Farms -
It had the Tassels on -

I thought how yellow it would look -
When Richard went to mill -
And then, I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.

I thought just how Red - Apples wedged
The Stubble's joints between -
And the Carts stooping round the fields
To take the Pumpkins in -

I wondered which would miss me, least,
And when Thanksgiving, came,
If Father'd multiply the plates -
To make an even Sum -

And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The Altitude of me -

But this sort, grieved myself,
And so, I thought the other way,
How just this time, some perfect year -
Themself, should come to me -

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/PVVwPV3Q0y0 ]

Margaret. But what I find striking in this poem is in the second stanza where it says And then, I wanted to get out, I don’t want to be here.

Polly. The apples wedged in the cornfield are interesting to me.

Alice. I love that image.

Polly, Yeah, but how close was the apple tree? It must have been very close.

Greg. Well, the apple carts were often shaped like a wedge. They could be pulled through the stubble of the corn.

Mary Clare. I like how the Carts wen stooping. I like the use of that verb. It’s a whole story there, it’s a whole picture. Carts and bending and picking up the pumpkin. Not the carts, but the people.

Greg. The apple carts often had just two wheels. They were on a single axle so they would tip forward as they moved along.

Jeff. And they put them down like that to stop them.

Someone. So it’s both. What do you call that.

Someone else. Compression.

Margaret. It’s also metonymy, isn’t it?  ….. And what about And would it blur the Christmas glee/ My Stocking hang too high?

Polly. There’s the verticality again.

Margaret. I’ve always thought of it as a kind of past participle  - “my stocking is hung too high,” but as I read it for the recording I realized that the would it blur it. “if I hang my stocking too high,” so that she’s actually hanging her stocking. Of course, where she is it’s going to be too high for Santa Clause to reach, so I see it much more actively now than I did.

Polly. Isn’t that pagan – hanging a Christmas stocking in heaven?

Someone. I’m surprised that Santa Clause is in one of her poems.

Margaret M. I didn’t think that they celebrated Christmas

Greg. She wrote once to her cousins, “Father frowns upon Santa Claus and all such prowling gentlemen.” [laughter] And Susan got in real trouble in Amherst, I guess, for hanging Christmas wreaths out.

Margaret. Oh yes, she did.

Jeff. Santa Claus – it’s very playful. There’s a lot of playfulness in the poem. It’s almost sing-songy, almost like a child’s poem.

Polly. Yes, but there are only two rhymes in the whole poem, mill and will and glee and me.

EDIS- Amherst Massachusetts Chapter 04Mar2016

Emily Dickinson International Society – Amherst Massachusetts Chapter 04 March 2016
Facilitator: Lois Kackley
Theme: The Treatment of Wealth or Riches in Dickinson

Lois. Some argue that the fat on the fire of 2016 election dynamics is economic, public and private. Dickinson, while she did not make money for herself, has become a literary and now cinematic kingmaker in the emerging market of her poetry and her person, Dickinson looked straight into the face of one “Too hungry to be borne,” which is a line out of the first poem that we’ll talk about, and also at “misers,” who wring their hands in the second poem, and finally she appropriates the fleshly joy of feeling “it” to poetry in the last one.
            I guess the first thing we notice in these poems is the interplay between tangible and intangible riches. As with love, some people are lucky and some are not. So it is with the ability to write poetry. I’ve been reading Emily Dickinson’s Shakespeare by Páraic Finnerty, which I’m, enjoying very much. There are a couple of passages in here for launching us into our discussion. Paraic points out that there’s actually only one poem where Dickinson names Shakespeare. Now, others have speculated on other poems being responses to or rewrites of certain Shakespearean themes. She discusses him frequently in the letters. So, while we’re looking at these poems to see what they have to say to us about the experience, possession, or however you want to think of it towards your personal economics or, in this election year, the economics of the country and the world. One of the things I thought was interesting on that theme that I read recently was that Páraic says, referring to Henry the Fifth, says that “When Henry, disguised as a commoner,  declares, ‘I think the king is but a man as I am. The violet smells to him as it does to me. All his senses have but human  condition.’ And then Páraic takes the position that Dickinson would not have agreed with this particular critic who says, ‘Shakespeare’s ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man. Of course, such ideas are the antithesis of what many of Dickinson’s poems propose. Usually her speakers rise within monarchical divine hierarchy to be finally and deservedly crowned. Her girls are disguised earls, and her rustic speakers are revealed to be queens. So it’s very interesting to contemplate the different applications that Dickinson applied to the idea of hierarchy and wealth.

Judith. Lois, just for clarification, is it that in one case one is born a king and in the other one learns that distinction?

Lois. Well, you might save that thought for one of the poems. It may be that we find that idea , but in the quote that I just read is  a reference to  – Shakespeare started to be read in the nineteenth century in America – a lot of the critics and religious people were not thrilled with Shakespeare. They objected to the way he portrayed the hierarchical order of people. The servant class are more often treated as lowly and the aristocracy are treated with more prestige. Páraic has taken the position that Dickinson would not have been in line with that criticism. I think she actually adopted a lot of it.
            ”If Dickinson had read this critic is unlikely that she would have approved of his view. She probably admired Shakespeare for the very reasons this other critic abhorred him. Not only did she read and perhaps choose to identify with the sorrows of Talbott and Queen Margaret, her writings appropriate a Shakespearean vocabulary of hierarchies, crowns, jewels, earls, kings and queens and court,” a language that in viewpoints of her day was inappropriate for America.

Victoria. Not democratic enough?

Greg. Well, there was a real hostility to anything that smacked of aristocracy in colonial times and later.

Lois. Right. So, as we look at these poems today, which really do not – I didn’t bring this up to illustrate our poems, it’s just that so often we read of wealth and riches in the context of that hierarchy.

Greg reads.
I play at Riches — to appease
The Clamoring for Gold —
It kept me from a Thief, I think,
For often, overbold

With Want, and Opportunity —
I could have done a Sin
And been Myself that easy Thing
An independent Man —

But often as my lot displays
Too hungry to be borne
I deem Myself what I would be —
And novel Comforting

My Poverty and I derive —
We question if the Man —
Who own — Esteem the Opulence —
As We — Who never Can —

Should ever these exploring Hands
Chance Sovereign on a Mine —
Or in the long — uneven term
To win, become their turn —

How fitter they will be — for Want —
Enlightening so well —
I know not which, Desire, or Grant —
Be wholly beautiful —
                      -J801/Fr856/M393

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/HdRV7cn9-Uk ]

It looks like she made the word Sovereign into a verb.

Lois. If it’s a verb, what’s she saying?

Jeff. I read it as meaning “owner, essentially.”

Greg. Yes.

Lois. It almost sounds like a gambler

Greg. Chance

Lois. Chancing a sovereign on a mine. Well, lets go back to the beginning because I’ve always been struck by those last two lines in the second verse. First of all, I play at Riches, as if it were an easy thing. Somebody’s got to make a living, so I play at it. I don’t take it too seriously, there’ll always be enough. I’m one of those people. But, it was better to be occupied in earning a living – at least kept me off the street. For often, overbold/ With Want, and Opportunity – now then we switch. Or do we?

Greg. OK, I play at Riches, as in We play at paste/ Till qualified for Pearl. She’s just pretending that she’s rich, she’s not really earning money. Playing princess, and she does that to appease that  clamoring. Appease some desire just by pretending. I do it all the time. [laughter]

Lois. She’s taken a really strong first person pronoun here. This poem is about my relationship with gold, riches, thievery, want. My relationship ..

Victoria. I play, I could have done, I deem myself, I derive, I, I , I

Lois. As I read it, if forces me to think about whether this is my experience. Do I play at riches? I either have to own these expressions or read it as a poem about somebody else.

JoAnn. It sounds like it’s about her.

Lois. Well, but we do read it, right? There are poems where she puts it at a distance, such as “There are those who play at riches.” That’s not the effort in this poem I don’t think… but that ‘s a minor thing. There’s some contradiction here, and there’s also some playful language. If I play at riches …

JoAnn. That keeps her from being a thief.

Lois. Isn’t the thought here that this is someone who is gainfully employed, but is not particularly committed to the job. I play at it. And it could also be as Greg said. There’s this poet, using her poetic imagination to imagine what it would be like to have her own riches Is that what you meant?

Greg. Yes, and that makes it consistent with when she’s tempted she doesn’t steal – I wonder what it would be like. my lot displays/ Too hungry to be borne? Doesn’t sound like someone gainfully employed.

Lois. Exactly, exactly.

JoAnn. It sounds like a stay-at-home mother trying to decide whether to stay home or go to work. [laughter] I’m perfectly comfortable right here at home, but …

Lois. But don’t you think that’s hysterical that you can think of independence as an easy thing?

Greg. She’s saying that when she’s been in difficulty there have been opportunities to steal by being dishonest, but that would have been the easy way out, and that’s why it would have been the easy thing.

Lois. So it’s a follow-up to I could have done a Sin.

Greg. Yeah.

Jeff. I read An independent Man as a wealthy man. It’s a much easier thing that having to trudge off to work every day to keep going. That’s the easy thing. That’s why everyone wants to be rich, because it’s easy.

JoAnn. Yeah, you can run for president. You can do all kinds of stuff.

Victoria. So in stead of the hard work she did writing that poetry, she could have had an easy life being the daughter of a provincial squire. In stead, she chose the hard way.

Lois. That’s interesting. We’re seeing the contrast here between accepting social responsibility for who I am, and all the uncertainty of it, while you’re surrounded by comfort.

Jeff. There’s a lot of tentativeness in this poem. The verbs are tentative. I could have, I would have. And I know not which. I think it’s interesting because in this poem  - There’s an ambivalence about this poem. Usually she says, “Oh, it’s much better to be spare and austere and without,” and “The wounded deer leaps highest,”  [?] to be the one that’s lost out. That’s usually presented by her as superior, but here she’s saying I know not which be wholly beautiful.

Lois. I think that’s what makes it A REALLY RICH POEM! And again, the universality of the experience is why we regard her so highly.

Arianna. And, she says, even if you don’t have all of this wealth, you can imagine what it would be like, and you could appreciate it more than the person who has it. That person that owns it, does he or she appreciate all that as we who never can.

Lois. Yes, and I think that points out the complexity of the poem. You can see it as a comment on the pros and cons of being comfortable, but what you’re seeing there is not only the ambivalence of the poem, but ambivalence toward the people who do experience opulence.

Greg. “Success is counted sweetest”

Several. Yeah. That is her point of view a lot.

Jeff. I’m interested in the first line of the fourth stanza - and I derive – I’m not comfortable fitting and I derive in. It seems like a little particle there that’s hanging. I don’t understand how to read it. I deem Myself what I would be. And novel Comforting My Poverty and I - We question if the Man. I can read it like that, but and I derive -  she’s introducing a whole new clause there.

Greg. I’m reading that she derives a novel comforting.

Lois. Right.

Victoria. It goes back. It’s a circular thing.

Greg. It’s a funny word, there are some strange words in here – sovereign – but syntactically it’s OK.

Lois. My poverty and I derive a novel comforting in imagining what I would be, right?

Several. Yeah.

Jeff. OK, yes.

Adrianna reads
A Mine there is no Man would own
But must it be conferred,
Demeaning by exclusive wealth
A Universe beside -

Potosi never to be spent
But hoarded in the mind
What Misers wring their hands tonight
For Indies in the Ground!
                      - J1117/Fr1162/M705

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/URHxMd6BX4Y ]

Victoria. Potosi, in Bolivia, one of the highest mountains in the world, 15,400 feet, the location of a Spanish colonial mint. There’s silver there.

Lois. It was a big town. Potosi became the capital in 1865. Maybe that was in the news. The accent is on the last syllable.

Greg. Yes, that name appears in more than one poem – kind of a synonym for great riches.

JoAnn. To me the word demeans is very strong. It sounds like the man who owns the mine is looking down on everybody else.

Jeff. I think it’s the mine that demeans, not the man. There’s a mine that nobody would be able to own, it has to be conferred, and it’s such exclusive wealth it makes ever

Victoria. That’s where the poems come from. The poetic gift is granted, or the poems are bestowed upon her.

Lois. Well the topic of the poem is the mind and then the rest of the poem describes it, right? It’s something that can’t be bought. It’s so rich that everything else appears demeaned compared to it.

Jeff. There’s something that comes only by divine grace, you could say. But line six puzzles me. But hoarded in the mind. Hoarding, I guess is associated with Miser, but she’s talking about this exclusive wealth that is only conferred on you by grace, if you will but then she’s saying that it’s hoarded, as if once you have it you grasp it and you won’t let it go. Hoarding is greedy. Hoarders are people who are insecure. They hold it all and won’t let anything go. That’s not what you would associate with Emily Dickinson feeling that she had the grace and wisdom that had been given to her – revelation and enlightenment.

Greg. She wrote, ” It was given to me by the Gods/ When I was a little Girl  ...  I kept it in my Hand/ I never putit down/ I did not dare to eat—or sleep/ For fear it would be gone.” It’s this precious thing that she …

Victoria. In her lexicon, was hording always something negative the way we contemporary readers would see that word. Hoarding was holding on to and possessing and keeping that gift in her mind. You can spend silver and the tangible stuff that would come from a silver mine, but this is a different kind.

Lois. So, to get away from Emily Dickinson for a bit, would it be possible for someone to hoard something valuable that they could not really share with anybody else in the way that we share money or share tangible resources?  What could you have that you did not earn, but you discover that you have something.

Jeff. It was given to me by the Gods. Greg’s right on it with 455. I suggest we all turn there.

Lois. After a while, Dickinson’s appropriation of words that have negative connotations in daily parlance become less surprising. That’s why I don’t really blame the hoarding something in the mind. This poem just points out that the poetry that we enjoy is the outcome, or the result of what she hoards in the mind. We don’t come close to her mind, we just get the result.

Greg. Yes, when we first read it in sounds like she’s contradicting the fact that she shared her writing with so many people. What are these last two lines? What are these Indies in the Ground and who are the Misers?

Jeff. To me there’s a complete change of tones in those last two lines. They’re sort of a throwaway to make it a complete couplet or something.  She’s devoted the first six lines to this high statement about this wonderful thing that we can have, if we’re lucky, and then the last two lines are almost a trivial thing. Those conventional misers are wishing that they could have  - well, the Indies is another symbol for wealth, but it sort of hangs, to me, on the first six lines without really belonging there.

Lois. I don’t know – those last two lines, she’s sort of put the topic at a distance, unlike the I – I – I of he other poem. A Mine there is is kind of putting things at a distance, saying to the reader, “This might have been a truth that I experienced, but it’s also just a truth, that there is a kind of wealth that must be conferred; it can’t be earned.

Greg. And that’s the top of the hierarchy.

Lois. Mm. And the word demeaning also puts things at the other extreme, however you choose to interpret. And to me those last two lines are necessary. As you say, it’s kind of a wrap. Who wouldn’t wring their hands, who wouldn’t covet having a bottomless source of riches in your person?

JoAnn. But why is she hoarding her riches?

Jeff. Would you mind if I read 455? I think it answers that question:

It was  it given to me by the Gods—

When I was a little Girl—

They give us Presents most—you know—

When we are new—and small.

I kept it in my Hand—

I never put it down—

I did not dare to eat—or sleep—

For fear it would be gone—

I heard such words as "Rich"—

When hurrying to school—

From lips at Corners of the Streets—

And wrestled with a smile.

Rich! 'Twas Myself—was rich—

To take the name of Gold—

And Gold to own—in solid Bars—

The Difference—made me bold—
                           J454/Fr455/M228

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/3wAJez3iwwY ]

I think that’s what she means by hoarding. It isn’t the sense of stinginess. It’s the sense of “Oh boy, I’ve got this. I’m going to hold onto it. I cannot let this go, it’s something so marvelous.

Victoria. I have always loved this other poem, 1091
To own the Art within the Soul
The Soul to entertain
With Silence as a Company
And Festival maintain

Is an unfurnished Circumstance
Possession is to One
As an Estate perpetual
Or a reduceless Mine.
                 - J855/Fr1091/M488

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/5CpLFb0RZEI ]

Lois. Reduceless  Mine.

Victoria. Yeah, so that reduceless mine …

Greg. Bottomless cup of coffee. [laughter]

Victoria. an Estate perpetual – it’s always - the wealth beyond. But it’s in her soul. She uses that word twice in this poem And she entertains it in that silence. That’s another vision that I have of her which could be how she holds it inside of herself.

JoAnn. To me, hoarding is keeping stuff and not doing anything with it, which she would definitely not be positive about.

Lois. But it’s a poetic application of a negative word in order to get this shock value of what is being described as a very private experience.

Greg. I’ve heard artists, sometimes, musicians and writers, a fear of losing this inspiration. For some people it comes and goes. You could wake up tomorrow and you won’t be able to do it anymore. You don’t know where it comes from. It’s just this gift.

Jeff. Creative people experience that sometimes, it doesn’t come.

JoAnn. Like writer’s block.

Several. Yeah.

Lois. Let’s read the next poem

JoAnn reads.
I'll clutch — and clutch —
Next — One — Might be the golden touch —
Could take it —
Diamonds — Wait —
I'm diving — just a little late —
But stars — go slow — for night —

I'll string you — in fine Necklace —
Tiaras — make — of some —
Wear you on Hem —
Loop up a Countess — with you —
Make — a Diadem — and mend my old One —
Count — Hoard — then lose —
And doubt that you are mine —
To have the joy of feeling it — again —

I'll show you at the Court —
Bear you — for Ornament
Where Women breathe —
That every sigh — may lift you
Just as high — as I —

And — when I die —
In meek array — display you —
Still to show — how rich I go —
Lest Skies impeach a wealth so wonderful —
And banish me —
                 -J427/Fr385/M205

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/okr4dnuqLbQ  ]

Lois. You read that beautifully. It really has the feel of a conversation, doesn’t it? One side of the conversation, certainly, but

JoAnn. And there’s that word hoard.

Lois. [laughs] Right. And this one, more than any we’ve read really pulls up all of these shared images of wealth and opulence. I don’t know that we even need to know who you  is but if anybody would like to venture out on that limb. [laughter]. Braggadocio, right? Bit the way JoAnn read it with the little pauses was more conversational. She’s pausing for the other person to respond.

Jeff. I’m tempted to read it as someone hopelessly involved, and realizing how unrealistic it is.

JoAnn. It’s very romantic and [?]

Lois. The language of romance I’m sure. Like so many other poems, is about her poetry, and it also reinforces what several of you were saying about the fear of losing he inspiration.  And doubt that you are mine? Count — Hoard — then lose /And doubt that you are mine?  Although, if this is written to us, an imaginary public, that she hopes will inherit her work, it could be that she’s hording the idea of that, of having a legacy, and then to lose the hope – thwarted and lose the hope..

[ On this poem, David Porter wrote:
   "Emily presents the reader with a metaphor of herself diving for pearls. The next one might be a beauty. She could take this one to add to her collection, and then wait for other diamonds, as she is diving late in the day, even though the stars are slow to bring in the night.
   What can she do with her collection of pearls? She can make them into
necklaces, tiaras, and diadems that would adorn a Countess. Like Silas Marner, she can count them, and then lose them to have the joy of finding them again. She could wear them at Court, on her breast so that they are lifted high as she breathes.        And when she dies, she could display them to the saints in the skies, but meekly, so that she is not accused of taking too much wealth there and consequently banished." ]

Some Early History of the Emily Dickinson Museum

                                  Some Early History of the Emily Dickinson Museum
                                                  Presented by Wendy Kohler

Wendy. I started as a guide and I’ve done many other things. I’ll tell a little of what I’ve been doing all these years. There’s so much that has changed. My husband and I moved here in 1972. I was 24 years old, my daughter was almost two and my son was nine months old. We rented a place and 3 doors down was another young mother, recently divorced from a professor at Amherst College, and she said,
            “I’m guiding at the Dickinson Museum. Maybe you would like to do that.
and so indeed, I started guiding either late Fall of ’72 or early ’73. In 1976 I was one of the co-authors of this [ shows pamphlet ]. I also worked on the documentary that Jean Mudge did with Julie Harris. I’ll tell you something about that because it included Florentine Films and Buddy Squires and it was one of the first Ken Burns films. He had just graduated from Hampshire. Once I started working full time in the public schools it was harder and harder for me to stay guiding but I wanted to stay involved. Before I was an administrator I taught a little English and then social studies. In 1993 I was the local historian/consultant for the first Evergreens feasibility study. In 1994 I was a co-author and lead a four-week National Endowment for the Humanities institute for teachers called Emily Dickinson and the Nineteenth Century New England village and they lived in the Sweetser house, which was thrilling for them. There were four week residences here – different from any program that we do now. I was media consultant for the Meade Contemporary Art Exhibit, and wrote the school programs for that, which was great, and I was consultant on the film Loaded Gun. Now, as a member of the Board of Governors, I head the Interpretation, Education, and Programming Committee, so I’m directly involved in the stuff that you do.

                                                ****************

Amherst College, really pushed by Archibald MacLeish, does save the Homestead from turning into a grocery store, and that was in 1965. But, let’s start with the 70’s Lou Mudge was a wonderful man. If you click on “Our House, Emily’s House” you get an article that includes a picture of the family. Jean is 30 years old and she had her degree in the equivalent of Museum Science from the University of Delaware which was one of the best places to get such, but she was the wife of the chaplain – of the Religion department. So, they did indeed move in there and lived there from 1965 to 1976. They bought a house in Amherst and stayed on here a bit longer than that. I gave Jean a call. We came into the house and she said,
            “Love to have you guide. The house is open on Tuesday afternoons from 3 to 5. We do have a brochure, and it had a picture of the museum, and she suggested that I read This was a Poet which I think is a fabulous book in so many ways. George Frisbee Whicher was a professor at Amherst. It’ a fabulous book. It’s out of print but you can get it. The first chapter is “The Village,” and I used to use it in all of my classes in social studies, because I taught local history. I taught a historiography course, which was required of all ninth grade students and they had to use primary source documents and they had to use this library [The Jones Library, Amherst], and it’s a wonderful chapter for describing what the town was like for Dickinson.
            So, of course, the guests just came in at the front door; you just wondered who was coming. We sat in the front parlor – not on the couch [laugher] – behind the couch on that wall was a book case, and it wasn’t full but it had different biographies and different things on Dickinson, and on the coffee table there were  

…

Enter Becky.

Wendy. So on the coffee table on the couch was a loose-leaf binder with plastic sheets in it, maybe eight, with photographs, so we could use that for whatever we wanted to talk about. Then we went upstairs to the bedroom. Jean had worked very hard to befriend Mary Hampson., as did I a bit later, let me say. She was successful at first; they had a friendship – had them for tea, even the children, so on and so forth. Mary did loan the college and the house the sleigh bed. So, when we got in we did have the sleigh bed draped with the paisley shawl. We had the Franklin stove of course, and writing desk, and a divan – a kind of settee. What she wanted me to do was tell her what I thought of Mable Loomis Todd. She in fact called me on Thanksgiving day ..[?] “Now tell me, this Mable Loomis Todd, there’s nothing redeemable about this woman whatsoever. I felt so – I couldn’t do it. Not that I think I would have liked her, but I would certainly be able to appreciate what she did. So, I gave up my chance to get in the house.

Elaine. I think you could have acted.

Wendy. Exactly. Exactly. So, I will move on to the next resident in the house, which is Elizabeth Debuvoise. Elizabeth Debuvoise is the widow of a trustee of Amherst College. A couple of years ago the Debuvoise field house was torn down at the college to rebuild the new field house, so he’s obviously very distinguished. He was the youngest person ever named a lifetime trustee, and he was in his fifties I believe. He died of a heart attack in Grand Central Station. The reason I know that is that his Daughter Susan was a friend of mine in College. When Betty came into the house it was the legacy of this very important man, her husband. She was not museum trained; she was not particularly scholarly about any of this, it was not her educational background. My friend Susan was working at Dartmouth College and fell in love with a professor there named James Wright, and Susan and Jim were married in the parlor of The Homestead. I don’t know of anyone else in our time who’s been married there. This was around 1984. He became the president of Dartmouth. What she had a love of was cats. There were lots of cats there, and actually, so did Jean. … So, 1977 the whole area becomes part of the Dickinson Historic District. 1988, Betty moved out. She’s buried in Wildwood Cemetery. Carol, and this is where Joan enters in. [inaudible] Carol didn’t have a lot of training, but she was so interested and wanted to have this as an opportunity for her to contribute by organizing the tours more, and I should say she also – I have somewhere a letter that she thought maybe was written to Dickinson, but we couldn’t’ prove it, and I was going to do this project with her and I set it aside – and that’s just to say she had that real thirst for all of it. Do you have anything to add , Joan?

Joan. Because I didn’t’ have formal training, I don’t remember much. I was given the Whicher and told to read it. I think we were open on Wednesdays and Saturdays when I was there., but I’m not 100% sure of that, and for just maybe an afternoon. We had one of these cash boxes, and we did have a few postcards

Wendy. Because, when we started with Jean nobody paid anything, and then maybe it was three dollars eventually.

Joan. It was pretty small, yes. And, we could see and go into the parlors, but the library was their living room, I think. And, of course, the tour center was their kitchen, and that’s what it was when Cindy moved in. And then we could go to the bedroom. I believe the dress was by then in the protective glass. I never saw it in the closet. …………………

Burleigh. So, even though the relationship between Jean Mudge and Mary Hampson deteriorated, once the bed and everything came over, it stayed?

Wendy. Yes, she didn’t take it back, although it was always a fear, I remember, that Jean had. …..  She [Mary Hampson] owned it until 1988. We were worried about what was going to happen to the Evergreens. We knew that the will said that after the last Hampson it was to be raised to the cellars,. Toby Dakin was still alive in town, and people were working on that. ….  I don’t know what Jean said or did, but if you acknowledged la broader source of information about Emily Dickinson and her poetry, broader than Sue, Martha, or Alfred, you were off the radar. And she was a recluse. She did not see a lot of people. And she was eccentric at best, and looney, so how were we going to penetrate this? And of course there was all the fighting and challenging with Harvard over the papers, and it was just amazing to go in there at first. I went in there in the early nineties. I went up into the cupola in the Evergreens, and there were stacks of the Atlantic Monthly, 1881, and newspapers, and just everything. The electric stove that she used was in front of the stove. In Gilbert’s room there was a new Monopoly game stacked up on top of games in his closet. There was a guy named Greg Farmer who I worked with when I was doing the feasibility work, and he would sit in the library freezing – Jane would too – but he was the first person hired to curate it and figure out what was there. But, all through that time, we’re worried. What’s going to happen? And, it’s not open. So, it was never part of the tour

Elaine. Where did Betty Bernhardt fit in with Mary Hampson?

Wendy. Betty wasn’t around when I first started. They came back to Amherst. I was a kid compared to this group of people,. …..
Mary was angry with Amherst because she hated Mable, and she wasn’t all that happy with Harvard, and Barton St Armand is so charming so she gives all this stuff to Brown, so all of that’s going on while we’re siting around trying to figure out, “Well, let’s see how can we – let’s see – this place cannot be torn down .” So, when that finally happened it was just jubilation. Martha’s will – part of the statement of the will was that he house must be used to honor the memory of Susan Dickinson. Then Alfred’s will, I believe, or somehow Martha’s too. The fudge factor was that of course, we do celebrate Austin’s family in the house, clearly. So, that was one intent that supersedes.
            So, Carol was until 1996, Cindy comes. For Cindy, this was the first time that Amherst College posted and advertised for a full-time professional. So, here’s this single woman living in this big house, and of course you all know what tremendous work she did in really professionalizing the staff and then meanwhile at some point Jane has taken over from Greg, and now there’s the creation of the museum eleven years ago.
[Tours included the Evergreens somewhat later]