Emily
Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter Poetry Conversation
Topic: Fascicle 1, Sheet 1
Facilitated
by Lois Kackley
27 August
2016
“Whatever else Dickinson intended
in leaving at least 40 hand-bound books for our ‘delight,’ “ says Eleanor
Higginbotham’s Introduction to, Reading The Fascicles of Emily Dickinson,
“they are ..the most important clue for reading the poems..
-Eleanor
Heginbotham, Dwelling in Possibilities:
Reading the Fascicles of Emily Dickinson, 2003, Ohio State University Press
Lois. [ Referring to
Heginbotham’s book] I thought it was good enough to launch us on our little
enterprise.
Jeff. Are you planning on going through
the fascicles in order?
Lois. Yes. As far as the way
Dickinson preserved them. Of all of Dickinson’s poems, almost half were in
fascicles.
Greg. Yeah. 810 poems.
Lois. Close to half were unbound,
or loose. Loose poems can be anything that was retrieved from a recipient, that
wasn’t bound. It could have been a candy wrapper in somebody’s drawer, or may
have had a poem in the body of a letter. When Jay Leyda wrote his book, he did
a tremendous amount of reaching out to a gazillion people who might have one,
and he found a lot of them that way, according to Polly. So, the poems at the
end of the book [Chris Miller, Emily
Dickinson’s Poems as she Preserved Them, 2006, the Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press) are from a variety of sources, unlike the fascicles and the
unbound sheets.
Judith. Were the fascicles found
in the dresser drawer? Or the Trunk?
Greg. There’s conflicting
information about where the poems were found. The story about them being found
in the bottom dresser drawer is apocryphal/
Jane. Yes, that’s what we used to
tell visitors. We told so many lies. [laughter]
Greg. Vinnie said she found them
in a locked box. Martha said the were found in “boxes and drawers, and Maggie
Maher said that some of them were stored in her – Maggie’s – trunk for safe
keeping. The unbound sheets were found – and I don’t know what they mean by
this – but they were found in such a way as to make it look like she organized
them as a fascicle, so they’re called sets.
Victoria. So she grouped them
together in a certain order.
Greg. Yes, but I don’t know how.
Victoria. How long did she do the
fascicles?
Greg. 1858 to 1865.
Lois. OK, as I wrote in my email,
the first three poems were separated by Franklin, but they were not separated
by Johnson. [displays photocopy of the manuscript; see https://acdc.amherst.edu/view/asc:15595].
Here, it shows why one person would think it was three different poems and
another person would think it was the same poem.
Victoria. With just a stanza
break it could have appeared [inaudible]
Greg. In most of the fascicles
she draws a horizontal line between poems – and she did not between these
three. For that reason alone Franklin thought they were separate poems,
starting from number 21 in Franklin. Johnson thought they were all one poem,
and that’s what I think, too.
Lois. We can get into this when
we talk about it, but one of the fascinating things abut this little group that
we start with is – if you look at the way she wrote it, obviate parade is set
off. She brought it in almost as if to give a title for what’s underneath it.
It’s anybody’s guess why she did that. She put a big ol’ fat period there, too.
Victoria. Another signal.
Lois. Yeah, another signal that,
if you want to make this into one poem, go ahead, but take two or three deep
breaths before you do. So, it’s just kind of fun. I just wanted to say before
we get going, Emily Dickinson’s gift for populated loneliness gave her the
freedom to explore what Suzanne Juhasz called “The undiscovered continent” of
her mind, and to assess the thread between inner nature and outer nature, or if
you will, the link between .– the “aged bee” and the earth that some tell of.
So, looking at this first poem, let’s read them separately, keeping in mind
that anybody’s free to group them if they want to.
Robert reads.
The
Gentian weaves her fringes—
The
Maple's loom is red—
My
departing blossoms
Obviate
parade.
Fr21/J18/M33
[
[
Lois. What do you make of the
significance that she gives to that little term?
Robert.
What was coming up for me was, translating My
departing blossoms as her poetry. They obviate
parade because they’re not seen.
Lois. They
don’t need to be seen. To obviate is to render something unnecessary, or less important.
Jane. But
it assumes that there’s quite a wind. You would have to have to have that
parade of leaves blowing. Interesting that she doesn’t mention that – any kind
of wind.
Harrison.
Is there anything special about the gentian?
Greg. A
beautiful purple.
Victoria.
It grows late. That’s a fringed gentian, which is very hard to find these days.
It blooms in the fall, and it’s a sun-loving flower. In those days the fields
were more open and we have these forests now so it’s pretty hard on the habitat/
Judith. I
love her little poem, though – “I had a little gentian/ It tried to be a rose.”
It’s a wonderful poem for anyone working with kids and late bloomers.
Adriana.
William Cullen Bryant wrote a poem – I don’t remember the whole poem – but I
know he wrote one called The Pink Gentian. I didn’t have a chance to look it
up, but I don’t know why this particular flower was chosen by her.
Harrison.
She mentions Bryant in another poem.
Adriana.
Oh, does she?
Greg. “Besides the Autumn poets sing/
A few prosaic days” … “Gone—Mr.
Bryant's "Golden Rod"—/ And Mr. Thomson's ‘sheaves.’ “
Victoria. The fringes are so
pretty. They’re delicate little … if you see a gentian now, it’s blue, but it’s
a bottle gentian and it’s curved shaped without that fringe that she’s talking
about – but that close observation – she was such a naturalist.
Lois. Well, one of the things
that I think she gained from her separateness was the freedom that gave her
mind free range and it often landed on some of these little details that the
rest of us tend to overlook. Well, what is she talking about here? What’s going
on? What’s the point of these four lines, or do we need to get into the larger
poem to figure that out? Is there something discrete about these four lines?
Harrison. Are her blossoms the
same as the gentian, or is she saying that my blossoms are different from the
gentian’s blossom because they obviate
parade.
Victoria. I think the way Robert
read it, with the emphasis on My, it
seems like they’re separate; her departing blossoms are different.
Jeff. Yes, that’s the impression
I get. The Maple's loom is red –
that’s in contrast to her blossoms.
Lois. But we’re in fall, right?
Greg. You’ve got this beautiful
blue gentian, the bright red maples – who needs a parade? Departing is an
interesting word to use with anything but people who have passed away. We talk
of “our dear departed.”
Jeff. Yes. From a 27-year old,
talking about my departing blossoms – not that we necessarily take her as the
subject of the poem –
Greg. “So has a Daisy vanished/
From the fields today.”
Lois. Yeah. I’m just now thinking
about what you said. Is she talking about the summer flowers as My Blossoms – that the color of the fall
and the flowers like the gentian obviate the need to grieve over summer. The
maple is so red and the gentian is so blue .. is the what you’re thinking?
Jeff. This poem reminds me really
of Franklin 319 – Of Bronze and Blaze.
Lois. Yeah, well, I just wanted
to throw that out there. “I’m not going to be depressed about summer being
over; I’ve got the red maple and I’ve got the blue gentian, and what they
represent of fall.
Greg. I’ll suggest that the maple
and the gentian are the parade, and that, because her blossoms have departed –
if these are departed friends, that’s what obviates parade.
Harrison. It rained on her
parade. [laughter]
Judith. I just think of the poem This is a Blossom of the Brain. I
wondered if it was poems that she had sent to other people. Departing poems.
Robert. After, she wouldn’t see
them.
Judith. She wouldn’t see them.
Lois. Well, let’s move on to the
next poem, and see if the larger poem – if this is an introduction to the
larger body of the poem.
Greg. In the second poem, someone
has departed
Lois. Well, it’s a tricky poem.
Who would like to read this poem?
Jane reads.
A brief,
but patient illness—
An hour to
prepare,
And one
below this morning
Is where
the angels are—
It was a
short procession,
The
Bobolink was there—
An aged
Bee addressed us—
And then
we knelt in prayer—
We trust
that she was willing—
We ask
that we may be.
Summer—Sister—Seraph!
Let us go
with thee!
Fr22/J18/M33
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/ENQIfRCppvE ]
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/ENQIfRCppvE ]
Lois. There’s a little
syntactical trickery here.
Greg. Where?
Lois. Like a lot of them. To me,
this section of the poem is a love song pretending to be a dirge.
Jane. It doesn’t express the
sorrow as deeply as some of her other poems.
Lois. Or a celebration –
pretending to be a funeral, because, until we take in the whole poem, there’s
all this language of bereavement, isn’t there, or a hint of bereavement? It was
a brief illness, and we only had an hour to prepare for he leaving. Then we’re
in this short procession. We’ve got the bobolink, who is the chorister [laughs].
Victoria. Well, she doesn’t
really get to she, to the person
herself until further down in the poem. I feel that there’s a distance from the
actual person who died. She had a brief illness – my patient friend – or
anything like that – it feels kind of distant.
Lois.
Well, because there’s no subject. It starts right out. A brief, but patient illness—, I mean, it’s all suggestive. I’s a patient illness. There’s no “patient,”
but we’re tricked into the images of illness and death words that are not
saying what they normally would indicate.
Victoria. A patient illness –
that’s just a play on the word patient.
Greg. “Patient illness” is just
brilliant.
Victoria. It’s not an enduring
illness.
Greg. There used to be a casket
company that I would pass on a train out of Boston. They displayed a big sign
which people objected to and they eventually took down. It read, “Drive
Carefully. We can wait.” Death is patient like that. Tuberculosis is patient
like that. “I’m going to get you. I can wait.”
Harrison. The illness is patient.
It can take it’s time, and the patient is patient. The patient endures the
illness.
Greg. What you and Lois are
reacting to, and I think I agree, is the tone of the poem compared to the
subject. If it’s a funeral …
Lois. Is it a funeral? Who thinks
this is a funeral?
Harrison. I tend to think it’s a
funeral for summer. It’s very characteristic, after Indian summer, of it ending
just like that. Summer was with us, next thing it’s gone.
Greg. Who’s “below?”
Jeff. I think it could just as
well be a wedding.
Lois. What?
Jeff. I mean if you want to look
on this sardonically. [laughter].
Victoria. What if Summer means that it was someone who was
in the summertime of their life, and they were struck
Greg. How
can you interpret And one below this
morning/ Is where the angels are any other way than somebody being dead and
buried?
Victoria.
Yeah. Yeah. Taken in the summertime of her life. It must be someone close to
her, because she calls her “sister. Not in blood, but ..”
Judith. It
doesn’t sound like it was somebody close to her.
Victoria.
To call someone a sister?
Judith.
Yeah, but it doesn’t have the sorrow of somebody close to her dying. I figured
it was someone she didn’t know well. She just was observing. But, she does say We trust that she was willing, and
that’s a question that was a big question at that time. Are you willing to die?
When Ben Newton died she wrote, “was he willing to die?” Had they professed
their faith … were they willing to go? So, that grounds it for me.
Harrison.
And, we hope that we may be, when our time comes. [general agreement]. I’m,
still clinging to summer.
Lois.
Anthropomorphizing summer. If you do that, you can entertain thoughts of summer
whether or not summer is willing to leave. We don’t want to feel like it’s
willing to leave us because that’s where our angels are.
Harrison.
We also want to feel that it was willing to leave, because that was in
indication of grace.
Lois. When
she says We ask that we may be, it’s
like she’s trying to be willing to move into fall – to let summer go.
Harrison.
And, summer comes and goes every year, and we should accept the fact that
summer will return again, and go away, and come back.
Lois. We
don’t always realize how profound an affect the seasons have on us unless a
tragedy or something takes away your ability to experience any real joy, and
then, when a new season comes it’s like an assault on your senses because your
senses are all broken down. I think Dickinson experienced that intensity that
the rest of us don’t.
[The recording device shut off accidentally at this point - alas!]
