Emily Dickinson Poetrry Conversation 28 September 2016

Emily Dickinson Poetrry Conversation

28 September 2016

Facilitated by Lois Kackly

Fascicle 1 Sheet 2

[Lois begins by reading from A Victorian frame of mind 1830 - 1870, by Walter E. Houghton, Yale University Press 1959]

Of all the criticisms brought against them by the Lytton Stracheys of the twentieth century, the Victorians would have pleaded guilty to only one. They would have defended or excused their optimism, their dogmatism, their appeal to force, their straight-laced morality, but they would have confessed to an unfortunate strain of hypocrisy. To understand the charge, it must be broken down into three specific counts. One, they concealed or suppressed their true convictions and natural tastes. They said the ‘right thing’ or did the ‘right thing: they sacrificed sincerity to propriety. Second, and worse, they pretended to be better than they were. They passed themselves off as being incredibly pious and moral; they talked noble sentiments and lived – quite otherwise. Finally, they refused to look at life candidly. They shut their eyes to whatever was ugly or unpleasant, and pretended it didn’t exist. Conformity, moral pretension, and evasion – those are the hallmarks of Victorian hypocrisy.

Greg reads.

I had a guinea golden—
I lost it in the sand—
And tho' the sum was simple
And pounds were in the land—
Still, had it such a value
Unto my frugal eye—
That when I could not find it—
I sat me down to sigh.

I had a crimson Robin—
Who sang full many a day
But when the woods were painted,
He, too, did fly away—

Time brought me other Robins—
Their ballads were the same—
Still, for my missing Troubador
I kept the "house at hame."

I had a star in heaven—
One "Pleiad" was its name—
And when I was not heeding,
It wandered from the same.
And tho' the skies are crowded—

And all the night ashine—
I do not care about it—
Since none of them are mine.

My story has a moral—
I have a missing friend—
"Pleiad" its name, and Robin,
And guinea in the sand.
And when this mournful ditty
Accompanied with tear—
Shall meet the eye of traitor
In country far from here—
Grant that repentance solemn
May seize upon his mind—
And he no consolation
Beneath the sun may find.
                         - J23/Fr12/M35

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/2dUX0T5CcBk ]

Victoria. It’s sing-songy, and in a way at the end, almost taunting.

Harrison. There is a great example of her exquisite sense of rhythm. And, it’s like she’s written to a friend who hasn’t written back.

Lois. There’s irony in the idea of the story having a moral.

Harrison. Mockery. She’s mocking her own emotions at not being heard.

Lois. Well, she may be mocking her own emotions, but I’m wondering if she may not be mocking some other things.

Greg. Like what?

Lois. That’s what I want you all to  ….

Judith. Well, she didn’t mind missing the pliad, but she did mind missing the robin and the guinea.

Lois. Well, the reason I handed this paper out is I thought it was germane to this poem, because “Of all the criticisms brought against them by the Lytton Stracheys of the twentieth century” whoever they are …

Victoria. The Victorian people. The Bloomsbury

Lois. Oh, OK.  “the Victorians would have pleaded guilty to only one. . They would have defended or excused their optimism, their dogmatism, their appeal to force, their straight-laced morality, but they would have confessed to an unfortunate strain of hypocrisy. To understand the charge, it must be broken down into three specific counts. One, they concealed or suppressed their true convictions and natural tastes.” The reason I jumped on this with this poem is because I wanted to hear what you all thought of this embodying this Victorian tendency to hypocrisy. Whereas she – and I don’t think it takes away from what you’re saying – that she is mocking her own sensibility in a way. But I think, in the broader sense, her intense rhythm with Victorian sensibilities, so yet she is in a way, mocking the hypocrisy of others who would not admit – who are more in tune with moral poetry, if you will. I wonder if she’s playing with the Victorian sensibility for poetry that does have a moral [I think that may be there, but it’s not her purpose.], so that a typical reader would get as far as “My story has a moral,” and they’re like, ready for it, right? [some laughter] The reader would have been ready for what Harrison called her exquisite sense of rhythm that she used to keep the reader with her, and also typifying Victorian poetry, that didn’t have any experimental lines of half-rhymes. There are no ellipsis’ in this poem; it just reads straight through. She really keeps the reader in the palm of her hand. Then, when she says My story has a moral, there’s this Victorian tendency for straight-laced morality would be ready for the kill in her [inaudible]. Because her conclusion is utter honesty, right? – in wishing revenge, or expressing unpleasant feelings toward her friend or counterpart.

Harrison. Has anyone seen the TV commercial where subtitles are suggesting what the speaker is really thinking?

Lois. Yes, there was a New Yorker podcast. Have you seen that one? It was hysterical! It’s an office meeting, and they greet each other in the accepted form, and then they mumble their real feelings, and then by the end it’s total bedlam.

Harrison. Emily Dickinson was quick, wasn’t she, to take umbrage when someone didn’t’ write quickly back to her? [general agreement]

Greg. Sarah Tracy lives in infamy!

Harrison. The first stanza reminds us of “the widow’s mite,” about the woman who loses a coin, and she searches throughout the house to find it.

Greg. And the golden coin and the robin and the star in heaven also sound as romantically Victorian imagery, too.

Harrison. Almost trite, in a way.

Greg. Yeah, yeah. [some laughter]

Harrison. There’s a very funny rhyme here.

And tho' the skies are crowded—
And all the night ashine—
I do not care about it—

That I think is mocking Victorian rhymes.

Lois. Yes, she is mocking them, but her ability to mock them is only a exquisite as her mastery of it. [general agreement]

Victoria. That’s what I’m wondering, because this is such an early poem, that this is evidence of her – paying attention to how she wants to construct a poem, and at this point the experimental stuff – she hasn’t really broken into that yet.

Lois. So, you think it was a choice outside of the mimicry.

Victoria. No, I don’t think it’s a choice; I think it’s just her early development; this is her early process. She could construct a poem like this ‘til she reached a point where she had more experience, a larger scope that she wanted to pursue. I mean, this seems pretty small.

Harrison. Like Picasso developing his draftsmanship.

Victoria. Yes, exactly – developing her craft. Also, at that point in her life, a kind of immaturity of experience?

Greg. She’s twenty-seven. I was reminded by Bianchi, reading her Emily Dickinson Face to Face, she says you have to remember, these people were growing up in an incredibly Romantic period. This has that feel to it, too. There’s feeling in this.

Victoria. And she was reading all of those Victorian writers. Elizabeth Barrett Browning …

Greg. Plus Gothic novels.

Victoria. … the Bronte’s. I mean, you read Jane Eyre now, in our age, it’s still a wonderfully written novel, but it’s just so Victorian and so Romantic, I could just picture Dickinson imbibing that as a young woman.

Greg. That’s got to be why they all loved Reveries of a Bachelor so much, because that’s just saturated in that kind of … STUFF!

Lois. Well, l you know, people have remarked on the fact that Dickinson never mentioned Jane Austen, and I read a scathing criticism of Austen once, by a feminist. She felt that Austen glamorized marriage so much, and that got me to wondering if Dickinson had a similar reaction to her.

Victoria. Oh man, you could make such a big argument against that. [laughter]

Greg. Well, I understand that Jane Austen had kind of faded from the general awareness in this period.

Victoria. Yes, and then she made a come-back.

Adrianna. Austen wasn’t in the Romantic period; she was just on the cusp there. She was just finishing off the previous period.

Victoria. There was a good fifty to seventy-five years where she was – not obscure – but certainly not a popular writer.

Greg. There are parts in Pride and Prejudice I think it is, where Elizabeth Bennett really resents the way her father belittles his wife. Not a completely Romantic picture of marriage as far as I can say.

Lois. Yes, but just because these women had no recourse was kind of rooted in the sanctity of marriage.

Victoria. Maybe she didn’t look closely at Persuasion. That was her last novel and that’s probably where she most fully looks at – she was more mature then – looks at marriage in a much different way, and she’s got a lot of examples of women breaking out of the mold.

Harrison. Marriage was considered an economic institution. Women fell into their roles because to the needs of the greater society [crosstalk],

Greg. This is a poem that could easily appeared in the Springfield Republican, in her lifetime; I don’t think it did, but

Lois. You think so?

Greg. It sounds like it would have gone over pretty straight in her time [First published in Poems, Third Series, 1896]

Lois. I don’t agree. I don’t think they would have smiled at the last stanza. I think if she had left out the last four lines. That’s just my opinion. They would not have approved of the hidden agenda, let’s call it today.

Greg. Yeah, I see what you mean.

Victoria. It’s not a Christian-hearted thing to say. [laughter]

Lois. That’s what was so un-Victorian about it.

Harrison. It shows her skill at running verses that sort of play with the same idea. Variations on a theme. Two of my favorite poems that are constructed so perfectly in that way are I would not paint a Picture – different kinds of art and sensibilities, and The Brain is wider than the Sky.

Lois. It’s a comparative. She plays with comparatives. I keep coming back to the imagination here while she nurses this grudge. These verses all exemplify various themes on that same purpose.

Adrianna. What’s I kept the "house at hame.?”

Lois. Kept the house at home. It’s a quote of Robert Burns and she wanted it to rhyme. She couldn’t have said it without the reader being familiar with Burns, I don’t think.

Adrianna. Are there any variants in this poem?

Greg. I doubt it, because in the early ones there aren’t any. The first five fascicles, I think, have no or almost no variants.

Victoria. So, what does that mean? What does that indicate?

Greg. That’s one for your thesis. As she wrote she developed. Her practices changed, I suppose.

Lois. I notice that she used quotes for "house at hame," but she did not use it for I sat me down to sigh, from his poem, “Despondency.”

….

Harrison reads.

There is a morn by men unseen --

Whose maids upon remoter green

Keep their Seraphic May --

And all day long, with dance and game,

And gambol I may never name --

Employ their holiday.

Here to light measure, move the feet

Which walk no more the village street --

Nor by the wood are found --

Here are the birds that sought the sun

When last year's distaff idle hung

And summer's brows were bound.

Ne'er saw I such a wondrous scene --

Ne'er such a ring on such a green --

Nor so serene array --

As if the stars some summer night

Should swing their cups of Chrysolite --

And revel till the day --

Like thee to dance -- like thee to sing --

People upon the mystic green --

I ask, each new May Morn.

I wait thy far, fantastic bells --

Unto the different dawn!
                      -J24/Fr13/M36

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

Lois. Just to note, Chrysolite is a gemstone mentioned several times in the Bible, including Revelation. Dickinson tells Higginson “For prose, Mr. Ruskin, Sir Thomas Browne, and the Revelations”

Greg. Yes, in the New City of Jerusalem, which is God’s Kingdom, which will come down to earth, one of the foundations of the wall of that city is Chrysolite. That’s her Gem Chapter.

Victoria. I looked up the gem, what it looks like, and in my old, beautifully illustrated Webster’s. They have an illustration for Chrysolite, and it’s a translucent pale green.

Harrison. In that poem about heaven, where she’s a little girl, and she’s cutting her feet on the stones …

Greg and Victoria together.

What is -- "Paradise" --

Who live there --

Are they "Farmers" --

Do they "hoe" --

Do they know that this is "Amherst" --

And that I -- am coming -- too --

Do they wear "new shoes" -- in "Eden" --

Is it always pleasant -- there --

Won't they scold us -- when we're homesick --

Or tell God -- how cross we are --

You are sure there's such a person

As "a Father" -- in the sky --

So if I get lost -- there -- ever --

Or do what the Nurse calls "die" --

I shan't walk the "Jasper" -- barefoot --

Ransomed folks -- won't laugh at me --

Maybe -- "Eden" a'n't so lonesome

As New England used to be!
                           -J215/Fr241/M105

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/zz9-9hcNOsc  ]

Victoria. Oh! But do you know what I always thought Jasper meant? Not the stone, but to “Walk the Jasper” was to act like a fool. Clowning around, acting like a fool, dopey. So, I think she means, “I won’t clown around and make a fool of myself.”

Greg. Wow, I never heard that. Where’d you get that?

Victoria. When I did that painting and I looked up that poem I looked up Jasper, and that was one of the meanings. I’m sorry I can’t tell you where I found that.

Greg. That’s something to hunt down.

Victoria. But it fits, doesn’t it?

Greg. I’m pretty sure Jasper was another foundation stone in the New City of Jerulalem.

Lois. Well, what is the morn by men unseen? Is it the New Jerusalem already?

Greg. Oh, I think that’s the afterlife.

Lois. What is the tone of this?

Greg. She’s sorry for her departed friends – these birds who have flown. The maids who no longer walk the village street – she misses them.

Lois. So, is this a kind of self-comforting exercise, to imagine he departed being …

Greg. … and where they’ve gone? Unto the different dawn? Like thee to dance -- like thee to sing --. I want to be where you are.

Adrianna. It’s funny she says, I ask, each new May Morn, and she died in May.

Lois. OK, so, is this rhetorical? Is she saying  “I never saw such a wondrous scene.?”

Harrison. Rhetorical, I would say.

Lois. So, where is she seeing this?

Harrison. In her imagination; in her memory.

Lois. So, she’s explored by her own vision, kind of.

Harrison. Yeah.

Greg. Christians call the afterlife “the new day,” the dawn of a new day. That’s the different dawn. She hasn’t seen it yet. None of us have. We’ve never seen this wondrous scene that she’s imagining … but she wants to.

Lois. Adrianna picked up on the fact that the month of May being the month that Dickinson died in.

Adrianna. [inaudible] and what she was thinking – the green – each new May morn.

Harrison. And she talks about the pain of spring …

Greg. I dreaded that first Robins so….

Lois. So you think she’s drawing on her emotions with earthly spring to describe what she wants – an afterlife.

Harrison. Yes.

Greg. There is another poem where she expresses a similar wish; it’s I had no Cause to be awake —/ My Best — was gone to sleep —, She writes, I looked at Sunrise — Once —/ And then I looked at Them —/ And wishfulness in me arose —/ For Circumstance the same —. Same idea. She wants to join those that have departed her.

Harrison. There’s a poem about birds singing in the spring …

Greg.

The Birds declaim their Tunes —

Pronouncing every word

Like Hammers — Did they know they fell

Like Litanies of Lead —

On here and there — a creature —

They'd modify the Glee

To fit some Crucifixal Clef —

Some Key of Calvary —

Harrison. Litanies of Lead. That’s right. You hear the birds in the spring and it’s painful. People who have died and are gone.

Lois. Well, the tone of this poem is very different, isn’t it. It’s as if she’s refusing, in a way, to be caught up in the loss – attempting not to focus on what I’ve lost, and at least attempting to focus on what they’ve gained.

Greg. That’s a good comparison.

Lois. It avoids and differs from what I often hear, among the so-called religious, who want to talk about how much better it’s going to be. This poem somehow avoids that kind of sanctimonious strain.

Greg. “They’re in a better place now.”

Lois. Yeah, yeah.

Judith. She’s definitely thinking of an afterlife in this poem; or maybe she’s hoping. It seems there’s more certainty than in other poems.

Lois. It does have that emphatic tone, doesn’t it. Gambol is a kind of a game, isn’t it?

Greg. To gambol is to kind of frolic about, isn’t it?

Lois. OK. So it’s just an everlasting freakin’ holiday. [laughter]

Victoria. It’s just one big party. [more laughter]

Lois. Here to light measure. It’s strange she uses “here;” I mean, she’s really trying to be there. She’s really trying to imagine herself there. She doesn’t say “there to light measure.” HERE.

Greg. And she gets us there, too, by doing that, I think.

Judith. It almost makes you want to go there. [laughter]

Greg. Careful! Careful! We’ve lost many members that way! [laughter]

Harrison. Be careful what you wish for.

Judith. I’ll wait.

Greg. You do find those expressions of certainty more in the early poems, don’t you. Yet certain am I of the spot/ As if the Checks were given

Harrison. Yeah, really. The two poems do seem to fit together – the first two poems.

Lois. Very good. I’m glad you mentioned that because I wanted us to think about that but I’ve not been sure about how to bring that into the conversation. … There’s almost a biographical description, isn’t there? – on how she sees herself in the best light – dancing, walking around town – in the woods. It’s almost biographical. Even Dickinson can only call upon images that are part of her. As she attempts to know what it would be like to be in heaven, she draws on the best of her own biographical experience. That’s why I’m saying that, if we want to read between the lines a little bit to get some biographical information on Dickinson, it’s right here.

Greg. Even psychological, in a sense, because it tells you what she values – what would be heaven to her. “I went to Heaven/ It was a small town.”

Lois. Just like Amherst. I like that she includes the woods - Nor by the wood are found. The woods are not part of heaven, right? The woods are something you have to leave back in Western Massachusetts.

Greg. Nothing in Revelation about woods, I don’t think.

Victoria. Well, it was pretty logged over by then, don’t you think? [laughter]

…..

Lois. Do you think the birds that sought the sun are the birds who flew too close to the sun? – an image of Icarus? She’s using the annihilation reference to place down in Paradise, is she not? – getting rid of the annihilation –

Harrison. What does Distaff mean, actually?

Greg. It’s used in spinning yarn. In hand weaving it’s used together with a spindle.

Harrison. the birds that sought the sun are the ones that flew too close to the sun, and they’re also birds that flew south to seek the sun.

Lois. In the stanza where she says Ne'er saw I such a wondrous scene, she really hasn’t given us a wondrous scene except in terms of behavior.

Victoria. Well, she tells us later – the stars some summer night –

Greg. Well, she’s told us about keeping a seraphic May, with dance and game, that’s a wondrous scene.

Lois. Yeah, that’s the wondrous scene – what people are doing.

Harrison. It’s mostly pretty light, in tone, as you said. There’s a foretaste here of the way she changes things at the ending – the different dawn! There’s a finality about it. “Dots on a Disk of snow." The D sound. She talks about joining the fun, and she makes it in the end about immortality.

Victoria. I wait ‘til the day that I will be called to that fantastic place. – that great Dell.

Greg. I love that line, I wait thy far fantastic bells.

Harrison. Fantastic is a good word. It’s kind of a fantasy in a way. If it’s not seen it’s a fantasy, and it suggests that the other might be a fantasy as well.

Greg. Hm. Wow.

Judith. Oh that’s really – whoa! – somewhere else. YOU JUST TOOK US FROM THE FUN TIME! [laughter]

Harrison. Party Pooper.

‘’’’’’’

Lois reads the final two short poems.

As if I asked a common Alms,

And in my wondering hand

A Stranger pressed a Kingdom,

And I, bewildered, stand

As if I asked the Orient

Had it for me a Morn -

And it should lift its purple Dikes,

And flood Me with the Dawn!
                         -J323/Fr14/M37

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to  https://youtu.be/F-6_wT833Rs  ]

She slept beneath a tree
Remembered but by me.
 I touched her cradle mute;
Put on her carmine suit,—

                                                And see!

Lois. I have a note here that Mable titled this poem “The Tulip.”

Adrianna. Carmine is a color.

Victoria. It’s a red, tinted more toward the blue.

Greg. One of the variants in the first poem is “And it should lift it’s purple dikes and shatter me with dawn.” The first two poems dwelt on the theme of loss. This one is the opposite, isn’t it. She’s got it!  She has it! All she asked for was a common Alms, and Bam! I still remember Marilyn Nelson reading this.

Lois. What was memorable about it?

Greg. It was passionate.

Lois. Well, this could be anything but just a moment of ecstasy at the gift of life itself, or the discovery of her ability to create. For the reader, you fill in your own blank, don’t you? It sends you into a place of humble awe.

Greg. Yes! That’s a good word – awe, it’s unasked for and unexpected.

Lois. Unimaginable until you have it.

Greg. You don’t have to fill in anything, really. It’s an expression of extreme gratitude, I guess.

Lois. Flood Me with the Dawn! Maybe it’s a poem abut how it felt to witness a dawn.

Victoria. An actual sunrise.

Greg. It’s coming from the east – the Orient.

Harrison.

Will there really be a "Morning"?
Is there such a thing as "Day"?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like Water lilies?
Has it feathers like a Bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Men from the skies!
Please to tell a little Pilgrim
Where the place called "Morning" lies!
                                 - J101/Fr148/M87

[To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/ZANrIfip7ps ]

Judith. Have you ever heard it sung? It’s beautiful. It’s been set to music.

Greg. Harrison may not want anyone to remember this, but I once heard him speculate that that poem is about insomnia,

Harrison. Oh yes.

[Hilarity ensues]

Judith. NO! YOU’VE RUINED IT! [more laughter]

Harrison. It’s probably three o’clock in the morning, and she’s wondering, will there ever be a morning. That’s how you feel. [laughter continues.]

Lois. So, we’ve had a satire on morality, an attempt to imagine what it would be like in heaven, a sunrise or just a simple expression of ecstasy, and a tulip. Any common theme?

Greg. This puzzles me. I’m not sure what the recognition of the foot is.

Harrison. The foot rocking the cradle. That’s how you rock a cradle – with your foot.

Greg. Wow. OK. Now – are the last two lines an imperative? – or is the last line an imperative? It reads like it.

Emily Dickinson Museum Discussion Group, 023 September 2016

Emily Dickinson Museum Discussion Group

Topic: The Vitality of Words: An Exercise in Philology

Facilitated by Margaret Freeman

023 September 2016

Margaret. The topic for today is “The Vitality of Words,” and Dickinson’s love of philology. This is an exercise in philology, and philology is the love of words, or the study of words – from the Greek. And all of you, I’m sure saw and know that famous letter that she wrote to Higginson – that first letter – where she asks, “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive? The mind s so near itself, it cannot see distinctly, and I have none to ask. Should you think it breathes, I would be grateful …..” Of course, what’s interesting about this opening is the idea that verse can be alive, that it breathes, and that there’s a question of seeing – the mind so near itself that it cannot see distinctly. So what I want to talk about is the play of words that goes on in poetry, where poetry is often just words playing against each other, and what sorts of things they’re doing as a result. The whole point of poetry, it seems to me, is that it tries to capture that quality of words not having meaning, but suggesting meanings that we create as we read. That’s why there can be so many different readings of a single poem, right? We all have a different way of reading, of contributing. I’ve pulled out the three poems where she actually uses the word “philology,” so let’s look briefly at those. And not go into great detail about experiencing them. I should say that one of our missions at our institute [Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts] is that in the arts and in language and in literature, it’s a question of experience, not interpretation. In studying poetry and literature in school, the first thing the teacher would ask, “What does this mean.” And, if you didn’t agree with the teacher, you were wrong. I think that that’s a real mistake. Interpretation should come last – if at all. What we’re really talking about is experiencing the life of the poem. So let’s look at the first one.

Shall I take thee, the Poet said

To the propounded word?

Be stationed with the Candidates

Till I have finer tried — or , other tried, or vainer tried

The Poet searched Philology  or, proved philology

And when about to ring

For the suspended Candidate

There came unsummoned in —

That portion of the Vision

The Word applied to fill

Not unto nomination

The Cherubim reveal —
                          - J1126/Fr1243/M557

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

So, what I want you to notice from this poem as we start our discussion are several things. One is the idea of searching for words, for the right word, or the word that the poet wants to use. There’s the idea of vision – remember that very first letter - That portion of the Vision – so there’s the idea of seeing as well, in terms of words. And then, of course, Not unto nomination/ The Cherubim reveal. Immediately you’ve got Dickinsonian play going on here, because nomination and Candidate implies in the Church, when you are nominated, or in politics, as we nominate candidates. So you’ve got that meaning, but nomination also means making a noun – to turn a verb or an adverb or an action into a noun. It’s called nominalization in linguistics. We’ll talk about that, too – the way nouns and verbs play against each other. So those are the three things I want you to think about for that particular poem.

                        The next one is quite an interesting one.

"Was not" was all the Statement.
The Unpretension stuns —
Perhaps — the Comprehension —
They wore no Lexicons —  [variant - knew no Lexicons]

But lest our Speculation
In inanition die
Because "God took him" mention —
That was Philology —
                     - J1342/Fr1277/M566

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

That’s a lot harder poem to get your head around, isn’t it? I think the very first thing we have to recognize is the quotes. She’s quoting from Genesis chapter 5 verse 24 “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” And that is what Dickinson’s basing this poem on, right? What does that have to do with philology? What does it have to do with words? If you look at the inside of the poem, between the two quotes - The Unpretension stuns – died just like that, like something trivial. And Perhaps — the Comprehension – the unpretension/ comprehension tend to play against each other. They knew or They wore no Lexicons. Of course the Lexicon is the book of words, the dictionary. You’ll notice that I brought the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) because there’s no way that we can have a conversation about words without recourse to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Polly. Is that better, Margaret, than the dictionary that she used?

Margaret. Yes, I was going to say, that’s important too. But the interesting thing about dictionaries and you, and how you developed your own vocabulary and grammar, most of the words that you know and use you never looked up in a dictionary. You acquired them. You develop meaning from the context that you learned it in. As a result, the shade that you have on a particular meaning is as much influenced by your own reading and experience as it is from the dictionary. If you think about the way the dictionaries were created, they had to get at a meaning somehow that we all kind of agree. A word like “vision” means seeing, and we can all agree with that – what in traditional grammar is called denominated meaning, the denotation of a word. Then you have connotations. What does “vision” imply? What else is associated with that word? In traditional grammar there was always a strained difference between the denotation – what the word means – and the connotation that we apply to that word. Now, cognitive linguists do not use that terminology anymore, because they believe that language is embodied, that the mind is embodied. And what that means is that the knowledge of words is encyclopedic. It isn’t something that is self-identified. Words don’t have meaning; we give meaning to words. And the advantage of the OED is that unlike other dictionaries it includes meanings of the word from the very first time that it was found in writing. They go through the meanings from the very first time that it was in print to the present day. That’s why the OED keeps getting bigger and bigger. Dickinson’s vocabulary was not taken primarily from her Webster’s ‘44. It was taken, like us, primarily from her experience growing up, the cultural meanings of words in the nineteenth century that were being used around her, and her reading. She read an enormous amount. And because the OED includes literary references, you can see where she might have picked up some meanings, say from her readings in Shakespeare. So, we have in the lexicon groupings of words and possible meanings, and for the potentiality of meaning. I want to use the term potentiality of meaning rather than the actual having meaning. That becomes very important for poetry, I think, and for language. So, that’s what I want you to get from that particular poem. Now, the third poem where she uses the word philology.

Julie. Could you define inanition first?

Margaret. Inanition comes from the Latin inanire, which means to make empty. Inanition is kind of exhaustion from lack of nourishment, but it also has a meaning of lack of mental or spiritual vitality and enthusiasm. So, But lest our Speculation/ In inanition die – if we lose the energy and empty out the meaning of what was going on here. What is the significance of Enoch being taken by God and was not, because God took him? Now, why was that philology? That’s the question. That was philology – what was the relationship between them? That’s what I want to get into, in terms of what is behind all of these ideas of words and language and especially poetry – and Dickinson

So, this third poem is again a quotation from the Bible. The interesting thing about this poems is, Sue transcribed the little inscription above. I’m going to read that before I read the poem. “The import of that paragraph. ‘the word made flesh,’ had he the faintest intimation who broached it yesterday.” You can speculate on what that meant. My guess is that this was written after a church sermon, and the pastor or the preacher ..

Greg. Could it be John? The Gospel?

Margaret. Well absolutely, that’s what we’re going to talk about, but what got me was the yesterday. She meant literally yesterday.

Greg. I wonder.

Margaret. I know. You don’t know. Here’s the poem.

A Word made Flesh is seldom

And tremblingly partook

Nor then perhaps reported

But have I not mistook

Each one of us has tasted

With ecstasies of stealth

The very food debated

To our specific strength —

A Word that breathes distinctly

Has not the power to die

Cohesive as the Spirit

It may expire if He —

"Made Flesh and dwelt among us"

Could condescension be

Like this consent of Language

This loved Philology.
                       - J1651/Fr1715/M671

[ To hear this poem rad alound, to to https://youtu.be/v2xeTAygDRw ]

And there you have the whole idea of the vivacity, the vitality, the word-making flesh. It’s almost as if Dickinson was a cognitive linguist. Words are embodied; they’re made flesh. And of course it’s about the St. John’s gospel. In the opening it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John, of course, is referring to the very first chapter of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said Let there be light: and there was light.”

            Now, if you notice in the Genesis passage, you’ve got the beginning, the creation of something. You’ve got the earth without form and darkness. The face of the deep – face, which implies seeing, vision – we see with out faces. The spirit of God moving – we’ll come back to that word, spirit, in a minute. And then God saying – speaking – let there be light – and there was light. So there you’ve got that vision of light again. So, something’s going on between speaking words, and light, and creation and making. And poiesis, poetry, is from the Greek word poiesis, to make. That’s what artists are doing; they are making.

            So we have in this poem again the idea of breathing distinctly, and the spirit made flesh. The opening of John’s gospel reads,

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” I’m quoting from the King James version.

“In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness overcame it not.” Then there’s some here about John, the disciple, and I’m skipping that to verse 14.

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” So what’s going on here is that you’ve got word, you’ve got light, you’ve got creativity. You’ve got life, light, and you have truth, in the word being made flesh, full of grace and truth. So, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that all art, and especially poetry, conveys truth. I think this is what Dickinson knew above all other things. So, let me go through a few words that I think are aligned behind all three of these poems

First of all it’s spiritual. Spirit, right? Spirit is from the Latin spiritus, which means breath, and spirare, to breath. So, you’ve got the noun breath, and the verb. To animate means to give life to, right? Where did that come from? Anima, mind and soul. So, animate is to instill with life – is to give life. You have Genesis, which is from a Greek word meaning to be born or to produce. So you get the word generate, and generation, and to generate stuff means to bring it into being. Logos, the Greek for word, and reason. So you have philology – the love of words. Then, you have the Latin word for live, vita. So you’ve got vital, and vitality. In Latin, the vitalis is the animating principal of life and being. So, this is the way I want you to start thinking about he way words have a semantic network. One word will have a host of different associations. That is something that I think Dickinson really, really knew. Let me give you an example, then, of the way she’s playing with words before we turn to particular poems to try to figure out what they’re doing. The last thing on your handout, jut in four lines, which was transcribed – we don’t have the original manuscript, but Sue transcribed it, and it seems to me that there’s no question here that this is a Dickinson poem.

The gleam of an heroic Act
Such strange illumination
The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination
                       -J1687/Fr1686/M662

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/PMONFrV4-kI  ]

For what I’m going to talk about, I’m indebted to a linguist, Haj Ross – John Robert Ross, who is currently at the University of North Texas. He is an absolutely brilliant linguist. He loves Emily Dickinson. He calls her Saint Emily. He has written several pages on this poem. He is a phonetician and a syntactician. He believes the Blake thing, that every mark counts. If you know Blake’s paintings and poetry, every single thing counts; not a blur, not a mark is without significance. Haj takes that literally. He looks at every single thing in the poem, right from the letters, to the morphemes, to the syntax, to the sounds, to the patterns, and what he discovered is – he brings the poem to life in this way. So let’s start this with a gleam. What’s a gleam? A gleam of light, right. To gleam is to give light – to shine brightly. But that’s the verb. How about the noun? A gleam – it’s not just as light, right? It’s insight, a glimmering of something. It’s fainter, isn’t it, in the noun. If you have a glimmering of something, it’s not totally distinct. In the way that the verb is. Gleaming is totally distinct. There’s a Possibility of shining brightly, but it’s just a little flash, it’s brief. Dickinson is using it as a noun. The moment you put an article in front of it, it’s a noun.

Polly. Margaret, could it be a nugget?

Margaret. Yes, it could be a nugget. And again, what ‘s an Act? An act is an event, an action. It’s a verb, right? But again, she’s using it in noun form- an act, and also it’s an heroic act, which is associated with the Greek hero. It’s also associated with a first-century Greek mathematician called the “Hero of Athens” or something like that, so hero has become associated with something that is super manly or something special. Also, the heroic verse is used for expressing heroic subjects. Iambic pentameter, the Alexandrine, iambic pentameter were all considered heroic verse traditionally, and Dickinson would have been aware of that in the nineteenth century, that this is how you dealt with [inaudible] verse. And in the nineteenth century you had a classical education. You learned your Latin, you learned your Greek. And we know that Dickinson had Latin, and less Greek. So in that very first line we’ve got a noun from a verb, an adjective from a noun, and then another noun from a verb. Then the next line, Such strange illumination. Strange is a straightforward adjective, but what about illumination? It comes from the Latin again, lumen, for light, and illumination is a noun coming from “illuminate.” Again, we have a noun being made from a verb form.

            The third line, what the Chinese would call “the eye of the poem, The Possible's slow fuse is lit. Possible. What part of speech is “possible?” It’s an adjective, but she’s made it a noun by putting the article in front, and just in case you missed that, she puts a possessive at the end. Haj has some wonderful examples of that. …. She is not doing it meta-linguistically. She’s making it a noun, and in that, Haj says, is the whole poem – that it’s a poem in itself, The Possible’s. It’s playing with words. And lit, what’s that? To light, to light up. It’s a verb form, but it’s really an adjective, or a denominated verb. It’s really from “light,” but it’s being turned into a verb, so it’s the opposite.

            And, By the Imagination, and there you have the whole idea of the imaginative faculty, which is what enables us to be human, right – that enables us to create. And the reason we’re able to do that is through language, more than anything else. The other thing that’s going on here is the sound patterns. There’s a kind of symmetry in this poem that’s going noun-verb, verb-noun – the number of syllables, the number of words per line, the number of nouns per line are alternates, but equal. The number of words are 6-3-6-3; the number of syllables are 8-7-8-7’ the number of nouns per line 2-1-2-1; the number of syllables in the four adjectives 3-1-3-1. In this alternation you also have the alternation in the sound patterns. That would take us too long to go through – all of the sounds in this poem ….. The word “bomb” doesn’t appear here, but it’s suggested by the slow fuse…. Alright, moving on to another poem.

Victoria reads:

The Love a Life can show Below
Is but a filament, I know,
Of that diviner thing
That faints upon the face of Noon—
And smites the Tinder in the Sun—
And hinders Gabriel's Wing—

'Tis this—in Music—hints and sways—
And far abroad on Summer days—
Distils uncertain pain—
'Tis this enamors in the East—
And tints the Transit in the West
With harrowing Iodine—

'Tis this—invites—appalls—endows
Flits—glimmers—proves—dissolves—
Returns—suggests—convicts—enchants—
Then—flings in Paradise—
                                - J673/Fr285/M366

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

Margaret. That was lovely. Alright, how do you respond to this poem?

Polly. Well, it’s passionate

Margaret. In what way is it passionate, Polly?

Polly. Well, the elaborate language and the sense of all kinds of possibilities which appears in the final verse; also the sense of music through the center of it. It’s sort of orchestra.

Margaret. Yes, that’s a nice word for it. I was just thinking of the preceding verse to the music. It’s hyperbole, isn’t it, that gives you that sense.

Arianna. What is the Tinder in the Sun? What would that refer to?

Several. Used to start a fire.

Margaret. The poem starts talking about the Love, right? Notice again turning love into a noun. It’s but a filament. It is the filament of that diviner thing that is going to smite the tinder in the sun.

Daisy. It’s interesting, the repetition of Tis this. It’s like a pointer, helping finger guiding us.

Robert. I’m experiencing it a little bit like a definition poem, where she’s expanding on what love is.

Greg. Why did you choose it, Victoria?

Victoria. Because I’ve always love, as Polly put it, the large orchestral sound of it. I’ve also liked the sense that she’s given some tangibility to something that can’t be seen – that diviner thing, and in that last stanza, the driving verbs. I don’t think there’s any other poem that’s quite like that where she’s just – it’s got a lot of momentum to it.

Polly. Usually she’s choosing just one word from many, and this time she just throws them all in. [laughter]

Victoria. Apparently that’s what this diviner thing is –

Polly. But there’s more beyond

Victoria. But there’s more beyond., in that paradise.

Margaret. There are two copies of this poem in manuscript, and the other one begins “A love a child can show below.”

Susan. It’s almost a requiem for those of us left below. For us mourners.

Margaret. Yes. And notice, too, that in the repetition of all of those words. By putting them together she is making us see the connections, isn’t she? – between those words. All of them together trying to give us that sense of the all-encompassing. And the fact that she’s referring to music, and then she’s referring to painting in a way – she’s talking about art – about the creativity of all art, and of poetry. So you have it seems to me that this poem is also talking about the life force – the spirit that animates. The idea that poetry enables us to experience, and feel., and the idea is love- the idea that philology has the word love in it, and I think that that’s a perfect poem for that. Shall we move on to another one?

Susan reads.

How Human Nature dotes
On what it can't detect.
The moment that a Plot is plumbed
Prospective is extinct -

Prospective is the friend
Reserved for us to know
When Constancy is clarified
Of Curiosity -

Of subjects that resist
Redoubtablest is this
Where go we -
Go we anywhere
Creation after this?
                   - J1417/Fr1440/M604

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

Margaret. The variant for Prospective is extinct is "It’s meaning is extinct." But it’s interesting because the first variant for meaning is import – import is extinct. But then she has Prospective is extinct, and she underlines that, which means that’s probably the one she preferred, and that’s probably why Franklin put it in his reader’s edition. … Our friend and colleague Masako Takeda is always asking, “What makes Dickinson Dickinson?” What is Dickinsonian about a Dickinson poem? – and I think that’s a lovely way to get at it. This poem is a good example. Shall we choose one more? ... ... Oh yes, this one has often been a puzzle.

Julie reads.

A faded Boy — in sallow Clothes
Who drove a lonesome Cow
To pastures of Oblivion —
A statesman's Embryo —

The Boys that whistled are extinct —
The Cows that fed and thanked
Remanded to a Ballad's Barn
Or Clover's Retrospect —
                          - J1524/Fr1549/M631

[ To hear this poem reas aloud, go to https://youtu.be/EAs30w7YCzU ]

I looked at when it was written – 1881, toward the end of her life, but it has this tone of everything just becoming a subject for reflection, and memories, and withdrawal and so forth. But then the contradiction with the Embryo, because that’s the egg in the beginning, and combined with A statesman's Embryo? I might get “a poet’s embryo,” but a statesman’s Embryo? Then she goes from pastures of Oblivion to becoming the subject of a song and to Clover's Retrospect, as if you’re thinking about pushing up the clovers, after burial. But it’s just very mellow – reflective – but in a sad way, I found. Lonesome Cow? Everything has become so…

Margaret. If you look at the words, they’re loaded with sadness, faded, sallow, lonesome, oblivion, extinct.

Julie. There doesn’t seem to be any passion about it, like in the other one, but then there’s that embryo.

Polly. This sounds like an elderly person, probably male, remembering his childhood. I’m not sure there’s a big message; it’s more a description.

Julie. But why a statesman’s Embryo?

Greg. This sallow boy just might be the beginning of great things to come.

Polly. It could be a statesman recalling the days when he took the cows to the barn.

Melba. With the suggestion, perhaps, that the statesman has moved just so far from this original experience, that it’s barely comprehended; it’s faded and out of focus for him.

Polly. Because so mush time has gone by.

Greg. This poor sallow boy may be the beginning of a statesman to be. And the one who whistles and is cavalier fades away.

Margaret. But then I think, why pastures of Oblivion?

Daisy. Well, forgotten pastures

Greg. The subjects of ballads are usually lost to history, aren’t they? They’re kind of gone. So this whistling boy is remanded to that forgotten place. He’s not the statesman.

Polly. But there’s a nostalgia there, too, for simpler times.

Margaret. I wonder too whether our own experience and background, which is the context in which you start reading these words, is the way we respond to the word statesman. For me, frankly, it has a certain negative tinge. That’s from my own personal background, and I wouldn’t want to intrude that into the poem, necessarily – but the way I am responding to it …

Melba. Well, we’re all a little dubious about politics in general, so you might want to let yourself go there. [laughter]

Victoria. I thought she might think of statesmen as men like her father, that she held in such high esteem. So, if this boy became a statesman, he would be a respected man.

Greg. One thing to help with that would be to find out if and how she might have used it in other poems,

[Margaret consults the Concordance of Emily Dickinson’s poems. The word statesman occurs in only this single poem]

Margaret. I don’t have the concordance of the letters with me. Of course, that would be another place to look – for the association of the words.

            One of the things I have not talked about – one of the reasons I got into this Vitality of Words business is that we got into a discussion at the Emily Dickinson Reading Circle in 2009. Three people brought in poems they wanted to discuss because they found them difficult. It was an amazing discussion, and afterwards, and I very rarely do this, I sat down and tried to remember what everybody said. I don’t take notes. So, I wrote it up. The first poem was A Chilly Peace infests the Grass. That poem is just incredible, when you start looking at it. What I found was, that I was expecting certain words when I copied out the poem – and you always should copy out a poem, because that’s how you really get to know and understand. It’s the same as saying it out loud. When you get “a Trance of Industry” in that poem, I think of a trace of industry. She’ll often do this, you know. She’ll use a word that’s very close. One would be typical, but she doesn’t choose it. She chooses something else, and then suddenly the whole thing gets up into a whole different way of thinking about things.

Victoria. I noticed that phenomenon when we held the marathon last weekend, and particularly with those people who weren’t as familiar with reading her poems. By putting their own meaning into a word then they’d think that the next word must be one that follows and it would be incorrect. Many, many times people did that.

Daisy. At the beginning, Margaret, you said that interpretation is last and experience is first. It seems like we’re diving into a discussion of words. What do you mean when you say “experience first?”

Margaret. I’d like to give the example of the very first poem, where Polly responded and said that it was passionate. That was her experience of the poem feeling that sensory, emotional response to the poem. You’re not looking then at the words. I realize we’re talking about words, because that’s what I titled this talk to be, but, a poem isn’t just words. It’s also the meta-linguistic features – the properties, the sound patterns, the repetitions, the alternation principle that you get in the gleam poem. It’s the prosody that carries emotional weight. The repetitions of all those words in Victoria’s poem, the effect in this poem of all the associations with words like faded and sallow, and lonesome; those kinds of negative attachments that are happening. Those have nothing to do with the meaning of the words. It’s experiencing what that word is evoking.