THE EMILY DICKINSON INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

Volume 24, Number 2 November/December 2012 “The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality.” EMILY DICKINSON INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

Officers

President: Jonnie Guerra Vice-President: Martha Nell Smith Secretary: Nancy Pridgen Treasurer: James C. Fraser

Board Members

Antoine Cazé Jonnie Guerra Nancy Pridgen Paul Crumbley Suzanne Juhasz Eliza Richards Cindy Dickinson (Honorary Board Member) Barbara Mossberg Martha Nell Smith Páraic Finnerty Marianne Noble Alexandra Socarides James C. Fraser Elizabeth Petrino Hiroko Uno Vivian Pollak Jane Wald (Honorary Board Member)

Legal Advisor: Barbara Leukart Chapter Development Chair: Nancy Pridgen Nominations Chair: Suzanne Juhasz Book Review Editor: Barbara Kelly Membership Chair: Elizabeth Petrino Bulletin Editor: Daniel Manheim Dickinson and the Arts Chair: Barbara Dana Journal Editor: Cristanne Miller

Sustaining Members Richard Brantley Niels Kjaer Martha Nell Smith Jane D. Eberwein Cristanne Miller Gary Lee Stonum David H. Forsyth Jo Ann Orr Ethan Tarasov Jonnie G. Guerra Emily Seelbinder Robin Tarasov

Contributing Members

Yoshiko Akamatsu Marie Esteve Daniel Manheim Paul Beckley Judith Farr Gregory Mattingly Mary Elizabeth K. Bernhard Alice Fulton Jonathan Morse Carolyn L. Cooley David Jamieson Burleigh Muten Nick Crump Suzanne Juhasz Richard Tryon Barbara Dana Mary Loeffelholz Hiroko Uno Everett S. Decker Cynthia MacKenzie Michael Wall

EDIS gratefully acknowledges the generous financial contributions of these members.

EDIS Bulletin (ISSN 1055-3932) is published twice yearly, May/June and November/December, by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. Standard Mail non- profit postage is paid at Lexington, KY 40511. Membership in the Society is open to all persons with an interest in Emily Dickinson and her work. For further information, contact Jonnie Guerra, President, EDIS, 1812 Garden Street, West Lafayette, IN 47906 USA or [email protected]. Annual dues are $50.00 for regular members, $30.00 for students, $200.00 for sustaining members, $113.00 for institutional members, $100.00 for contributing members (all of whom receive the Bulletin and the Emily Dickin- son Journal), or $20.00 for associate members (Bulletin only). Membership inquiries should be directed to James C. Fraser, 159 Prospect St., Apt 7, Acton, MA, 01720-3654, USA. Membership applications and changes of address should be sent to The Emily Dickinson International Society, c/o Johns Hopkins University Press, P.O. Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211-0966, USA. Direct changes of address to [email protected], 800-548-1784 (U.S. and Canada), or 410-516-6987; fax to 410-516-3866. Ad- dress submissions for the Bulletin to Daniel Manheim, Centre College, 600 West Walnut St., Danville, KY 40422, USA or [email protected]. Submission deadlines are March 1 (Spring issue) and September 1 (Fall issue). All articles become the property of the Bulletin. Back issues are available for $5.00 each from the editor. Copyright © 2012 by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. The Bulletin is indexed in EBSCO, Humanities International Complete, and the MLA Bibliography. www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org I n T h i s I s s u e

Features Series, cont. 4 A New Daguerrotype of Emily Dickinson? 16 Dickinson Scholars By Martha Nell Smith Josephine McIlvain Pollitt Pohl By Aífe Murray 6 Cleveland 2012: Emily Rocks Series Editor, Cindy MacKenzie By Daniel Manheim 26 Dickinson and the Visual Arts 11 Trying to Think with Jed Deppman The Little White House Project: “Dwell in By Melanie Hubbard Possibility” Maryanne Garbowsky 18 Collecting Emily Dickinson Out West: The Series Editor, Maryanne Garbowsky Cyber-Trail to Oregon By Krans Bloeimaand Reviews 20 Getting Creative in the Kitchen: Dickinson 33 New Publications Inspires Student Art By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor By Robert K. Wallace and Nicci Mechler 35 Review of Jen Bervin and Marta Werner, 24 Facing Emily Dickinson The Gorgeous Nothings By Ellen Bienhorn Reviewed by Polly Longworth 31 Emily Dickinson’s Secret Language: The Work 35 Review of Michael Kearns, Writing for the of Hans W. Luescher Street, Writing in the Garret By Rolf Amsler and Margaret Freeman Reviewed by David Garnes Series 36 Review of Cristanne Miller, Reading in Time Reviewed by Margaret H. Freeman 8 Poet to Poet The Ecstatic Clocks of Emily Dickinson 37 Review of Jadwiga Smith and Anna Kapusta, By Lisa Russ Spaar Writing Life: Suffering as a Poetic Strategy Series Editor, Jonnie Guerra Reviewed by Magdalena Zapedowska 14 Teaching Dickinson Members’ News Subjects Hinder Talk: Dickinson’s Class- room of Possibility 39 New Board Members By Robert Weisbuch Series Editor, Marianne Noble 43 Residue of Adz

Front Cover: Many Bulletin readers will have already seen the new image believed by many to represent Emily Dickinson, seated with her friend Kate Scott Anthon. The image was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Emily Dickinson International Society in August in Cleveland, Ohio. Martha Nell Smith’s discussion of the image appears in this issue, beginning on page 4.

Back Cover: Three images from the featured book in the Book Reviews section, The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems, by Jen Bervin and Marta Werner. Granary Books is a New York City based publisher of artist’s books and more. Visit the website at: www.granarybooks.com.

All three images are from the Emily Dickinson Collection at Amherst College.

Dickinson poems are reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from the following volumes: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Copyright © 1929, 1935 by Mar- tha Dickinson Bianchi, Copyright © renewed 1957, 1963 by Mary L. Hampson: Little Brown and Co., Boston. Dickinson letters are reprinted by permission of the publishers from The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1958, 1986 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; 1914, 1924, 1932, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; 1952 by Alfred Leete Hampson; 1960 by Mary L. Hampson. A New Daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson?

By Martha Nell Smith

eaders of the Bulletin have likely regarding writers and any intentions they Ralready heard about or seen the im- could possibly have influence interpre- age on the front page of this issue. Pre- tations of what the words left on a page sented on August 3rd at the EDIS 2012 might be understood to say. meeting in Cleveland, and then published in the Guardian on September 5th,1 the So I have long been interested in the new daguerreotype that possibly might disjuncture between the teenager Emily be a nearly 30 year old Emily Dickinson Dickinson whose image festoons so many has been excitedly featured in numerous conference posters, book covers, and is news stories, has careened around Face- now ubiquitous – not only in scholarly book, has been tweeted and retweeted so productions but on postage stamps, throw much that one of my dear Philadelphia pillows, t-shirts, tattoos, CD, DVD, album friends wrote, “It’s everywhere.” All of jackets, cookies, coffee mugs – and pow- this buzz speaks to keen, widespread in- erful poems such as “My Life had stood terest in what this poet dead more than – a / Loaded Gun – ” (Fr764) and “Wild 125 years looked like, and leaves us with Nights – Wild Nights!” (Fr269) (again, I the question, “So what difference does Detail of Dickinson’s eyes, from the 1847 daguerreo- could go on . . . and on). The rather jar- it make what Emily Dickinson looked type and from the image of the poet seated with Kate ring separation that has intrigued me is like?” Scott Turner Anthon. obvious, I suppose – that a teenage im- age presides over hundreds of wonderful, As a story in the Washington Post on the lated to literary books of Poems and Letters powerful, exhilarating, vexing, life-experi- National Portrait Gallery’s “Poetic Like- is, after all, the reason what she looked like enced writings seems at the very least ironic. ness: Modern American Poets” notes in can be any kind of subject at all. As was the Having read Dickinson for quite a few years its opening sentence, “There is something case when previous possible new images of before I saw a picture of her, I was stunned almost paradoxical about an exhibition de- Emily Dickinson emerged, this new one of to see a wan figure who looked younger voted to portraits of poets,” since poets seem her and perhaps friend Kate Anthon, has cre- than my senior high school yearbook picture the “most inward” of all artists, “not given ated quite a stir and much publicity. Why? when I first set eyes on the known daguerre- to advertise their material presence in the otype that seems everywhere. world.”2 For the poet who wrote “I’m No- My interest in the appearance of the icon body,” that certainly seems to be the case. Emily Dickinson and what difference that Early promoters of the poet Emily Dickin- The subject itself – the bodily appearance of might make for our readings did not begin son were concerned about her appearance, an icon whom we remember for her embodi- with this new daguerreotype but has been how she was represented to the world, and ment of wild emotion, profound thought, clearly voiced over the last couple decades. promoted the daguerreotype we all know anguish, elation (I could go on) in poetic “Perusing triangular intertextualities, or the so well. As familiar as the image is to us, it expression – seems a lesser one in the hi- influences of biography, reception, and tex- is not a representation that pleased her inti- erarchies of scholarly inquiries, tied as it is tual reproduction upon one another, Rowing mate family and friends who knew her well, to biography, and lending itself to gossip – in Eden, my story of reading Dickinson” has saw her often, and over decades. The iconic good, bad, and seemingly mostly irrelevant repeatedly explored the dynamics of liter- teenage image is anachronistic, and even to Dickinson’s writings and compositional ary authority, authenticity, genre, and inten- something of a forgery, if you will, when practices. tionalities (of authors and readers).3 In other understood to be a likeness of the adult words, long convinced that readers produce woman poet. Sister Lavinia had miniatur- What’s written on those papers of many a biography of any writer whose works they ist Laura C. Hills retouch a photograph of kinds (gilt-edged formal stationery, enve- are reading, I have sought to count at least that daguerreotype twice. Vinnie was finally lopes, shopping bags, and more) and trans- some of the ways that readers’ imaginations pleased with the second image, which niece

4 | EDIS Bulletin Martha Dickinson Bianchi retouched a bit The conditions in which we read Emily more and published in The Life and Letters Dickinson, whether as scholars, fans, devo- Notes of Emily Dickinson (1924).4 Beyond those tees, or casual browsers, are far removed early interests of editors and biographers, from the conditions in which she wrote her 1 Flood, Alison. “Emily Dickinson Gets a New Dickinson’s readers have repeatedly demon- wonderful poems, letters, and letter-poems. Look in Recovered Photograph,” The Guardian strated fascinated interest in what she looks Just as the Emily Dickinson Museum helps (September 5, 2012), http://www.guardian.co.uk/ books/2012/sep/05/emily-dickinson-new-pho- like. In 2000, Philip Gura brought forward a us imagine her writing environs, her bed- tograph. To view a number of the news stories room, her kitchen, her garden, her outhouse, photograph that he believes is Emily Dick- printed in the wake of this first one, see “1859 inson, and whether she is or is not has been and the kinds of traffic that passed through Daguerreotype in the News,” Dickinson Elec- 5 hotly contested. her own Homestead and the house next tronic Archives http://www.emilydickinson.org/ door, her brother and sister-in-law’s Ever- node/13. So what about this new daguerreotype that greens, an adult picture of her seems to take might just be an Emily Dickinson who is not us closer to her world and to her. 2 Kennicott, Philip. “American Poets, On 16 but is 28, nearing 30? What about the fact the Surface,” Washington Post, (November that this “Emily Dickinson” is not alone? To some readers, the very suggestion that 4, 2012), E7. http://www.washingtonpost. com/entertainment/museums/exhibit-review- Where did this picture come from and how this new picture, which features Dickinson poetic-likeness-at-the-national-portrait-gal- as a bold, assertive woman, and one who did it surface? What difference could it pos- lery/2012/11/01/e9d89caa-2399-11e2-8448- sibly make if the image is Emily Dickinson? is not solitary, violates the integrity of “My 81b1ce7d6978_story.html What difference does it make that the image Emily Dickinson.” For other readers who has been purported to be Emily Dickinson? are suspicious that the stories of withdrawal 3 Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson Readers can consult three different archive- just might be a bit overblown and who have (Austin: U of Texas P 1992), 2. oriented scholarly websites to learn about concluded that she loved at least some wom- the discovery of the daguerreotype in 1995, en as passionately as any stories about her 4 Polly Longsworth, The World of Emily Dickin- about analyses under way of the clothing loving a mysterious man suggest, this image son (New York & London: W. W. Norton 1990), 124-125. on the two women, about the tests run by holds out the possibility of restoring some integrity to audiences’ sense of a real person a trustworthy, conscientious opthamologist 5 George Gleason, “Is It Really Emily Dick- that led her to conclude, “After a thorough rather than a myth. Those are but two polar- inson?” The Emily Dickinson Journal (18.2 examination of both of these women’s fa- ized kinds of responses of the myriad that [2009] 1-20). Another possible picture of Em- cial features as viewed from the 1847 and this new picture has evoked, and the picture ily Dickinson featured as a frontispiece for 1859 daguerreotypes, I believe strongly that will be championed and challenged, often Richard Sewall’s volume two of The Life of these are the same people” (Susan M. Pepin, passionately. Emily Dickinson was contested by Joe Nickell, M.D., Professor of Surgery [Ophthalmol- “A Likeness of Emily? The Investigation of ogy] and Pediatrics, Director of Neuro-Oph- What we have at this point is a preponder- a Questioned Photograph,” EDIS Bulletin 5.2 (November/December 1993), 1-3, 15. thalmology, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical ance of current evidence suggesting that 6 there’s a strong possibility this picture Center). 6 The three articles can be found at Amherst is Emily Dickinson with her friend Kate College Special Collections (https://www.am- Whether we can bring ourselves to say it out Scott Turner Anthon. We now need addi- herst.edu/library/archives/holdings/edickin- loud, a writer’s (indeed, anyone’s) appear- tional scientific comparisons and testing to son/new_daguerreotype), the Emily Dickinson ance seems to tell us about his or her charac- verify whether the picture is the real thing Museum (http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum. ter – the kind of dress suggests how vain one or not. More than that, what’s needed is an org/new_daguerreotype), and the Dickinson might be, or how particular, and the styling awareness that the ontology of the picture Electronic Archives 2 (http://www.emilydick- of hair and posing for the camera perhaps may never be reliably concluded and also inson.org/1859daguerreotype). suggests how arrogant or reticent, pompous an embrace of another kind of research or humble an individual is. As far as Emily question – why does what Emily Dickin- Martha Nell Smith is Professor of English Dickinson’s readers go, we all have some son looked like make such a difference to and Founding Director of the Maryland investment in what we imagine her dispo- her audiences? What are we imagining her Institute for Technology in the Humanities sition, her ethics, her personality to be. For appearance tells us? Whether this picture (MITH) at the University of Maryland. Her some, the new picture is very inconvenient, turns out to represent Emily Dickinson or latest book is Emily Dickinson, A User’s while for others it appears all too conve- not, it has enabled audiences to imagine her Guide (forthcoming from Wiley 2013), from nient. as an adult woman. which the preceding article was excerpted.

November/December 2012 | 5 Cleveland 2012: Emily Rocks

The Bulletin gratefully acknowledges Nathaniel Allen and Kate Dunning for the photographs. More photographs appear on page 23.

hen Alan Freed risked playing the people seeking reactions to developing man- roughs and Lori Anderson, the Sex Pistols Wtaboo music of African-American uscripts. Several non-academic members of and a contested North Atlantic ledge called artists on WJW, his Cleveland radio sta- the society admitted they most keenly antic- Rockall, Dettmar presented an original read- tion, in 1951, he started a process of fusion, ipated the master sessions on individual po- ing of the politics of rock lyrics and intel- incorporation, and assimilation of hitherto ems, where an observer noted more than one ligibility. hostile cultural forces that, whatever else its seasoned professor relishing the opportunity result, created a world in which innumerable to recall glorious days of undergraduate and Some of the most fiercely socially engaged hitherto discrete categories and hierarchies graduate class discussion. rock bands, who turned out to have had could no longer be maintained. their heyday during the speaker’s impres- Evenings provided opportunities not only sionable youth, seemed deliberately to try Thus the seemingly incongruous elements for animated dinner conversations, but for to confuse audiences – to write and sing in the title of the 2012 Annual Meeting of members to display their hidden euterpean provocative lyrics that prove more elusive the Emily Dickinson International Society, talents. A Friday night extravaganza wit- the harder one tries to follow them. The “Emily Rocks,” turn out to go together bet- nessed readings, recitations, burlesques, result is the notorious phenomenon of the ter than might appear. Though separated by dramatic performances, and one merry band Mondegreen (a corruption of a line from a century, an artistic medium, and a whole of troubadours singing madrigals. an old ballad, “and laid him on the green”). panoply of social strata, rock and roll and When we can only barely comprehend a Emily Dickinson perform a number of simi- Nevertheless, it was the plenary sessions, lyric, Dettmar argued, we substitute our lar kinds of cultural work, particularly in the particularly the keynote addresses, that own – the Mondegreen. The substituted imaginations of those who study them most justified the oxymoron of the title. If EDIS lyrics, invariably more politically or psy- closely. members came to Cleveland ready to rock chologically charged than the elusive ac- and roll, they were not disappointed. One of tual lyrics that provoke them, mark not our The meetings, held at Case Western Re- the two keynote speakers, Kevin Dettmar of responses to the song’s actual (implicitly serve, included some familiar popular and Pomona College, gave a talk about rock that unrecoverable) lyrics, but something deep- vital elements, such as gatherings of groups was at once confessional, esoteric, witty, er within us that is released by our imagi- of graduate students, emerging scholars, and and dizzyingly erudite. Fusing William Bur- native engagement with the song. These misprisions then serve as an “ink blot of ideological critique”: an expression of political and social resistance to the banal official From left, narratives according to which we actress Lau- reluctantly construct our lives. rie McCants performs a An audience member, struggling portion of to remember what he ever knew a theatrical about Gang of Four and An- thrax, began to wonder whether work, and Dickinson was being targeted as Dongxin likewise fundamentally unintel- Qin leads a ligible. What Dettmar referred to, discussion of however, was not the incoherence “The grass of words and phrases, but rather so little has the openness of syntax. Dickin- son’s Mondegreen, he suggested, to do.” was (for want of a better term) the dash – the place-holder in a poetic line marking where sense breaks

6 | EDIS Bulletin through, where verse and reader simultane- the 1830s, maintained a policy that social television, from The Meeting of the Minds ously come alive. work counted as manual labor, and though to 30 Rock, theatre, and fiction. no abolitionist himself, effectively enabled Two other plenary sessions were as fasci- abolitionist students, the so-called “Lane The sheer number of allusions, Smith sug- nating in their contrasts of manner and con- Rebels,” to go off to the inner city to develop gested, indicates how fully Dickinson has tent as they were in their arguments. James and articulate their positions. entered our popular, collective imagination Guthrie, of Wright State University, drew – how deeply we need something she rep- from his current research on the significance Guthrie’s learned history was followed by resents. Behind all the allusions, however, of the law in Dickinson’s life and work, to Barbara Mossberg’s almost jazz-like riff lie a surprisingly small number of canonical discuss the importance of Ohio, and even on Emily Dickinson’s poetics of irregular- poems, many of them evocative of the famil- of Case Western Reserve University itself, ity. Invoking chaos theory, Mossberg called iar, static daguerreotype of the 17-year-old in the life of the poet. In doing so, he ex- reading Dickinson’s poetry “an informed, future poet, the only image known surely to posed the inadvertent but crucial role played formless experience”; “ad-hocness work- have survived. Pale, demure, the Dickinson by the poet’s grandfather, Samuel Fowler ing for immortality.” Her presentation – de- of that image encodes a particular idea of Dickinson, in the emergence of the crucially claimed, occasionally sung, almost danced – female creative power, yet at the same time American doctrine of Free Speech. The issue defies summary, but the enthusiastic uprush remains elusive, unfathomable. She has be- concerned debates over abolition at Cincin- of commentary at the end of the formal part come a sort of “cultural palimpsest of our nati’s Lane Seminary. Dickinson, serving as of the presentation indicated that something emotions” – we read our own desires onto a “glorified shop teacher” at the seminary in further may follow of the convergence of that somewhat vacant, malleable image. Dickinsonian poetics and fractal mathematics. What if, Smith asked – what if a different image lay behind our fascination with Dick- Unquestionably, though, inson, and our impulses to invite her into the moment that has gener- our psychological hinterlands? Here Smith ated the most post-meeting showed a different daguerreotype, the one buzz came during the very reproduced on the cover of this issue of the first presentation, when Bulletin. The woman on the right can eas- EDIS vice-president Mar- ily be identified as Dickinson’s friend Kate tha Nell Smith delivered Scott Anthon. The figure on the left sits her address titled “Tramps slightly elevated, with an arm around her Like Us (they cool our companion, gazing at the camera with a tramp).” Calling Dickin- commanding attitude, fully controlling the son a kind of “curator of terms of her own representation. The face our deepest intellectual, of the woman in this image was compared emotional, and spiritual at- by Susan Pepin, a neuro-ophthalmologist at tentions,” Smith explained Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, de- her terms by noting how tail by detail, with that of the 1847 daguerre- remarkably wide-spread otype. After a thorough comparison, Pepin Dickinson has come to be said she felt “99% certain” that the two im- in our popular culture. She ages represent the same woman. played excerpts from art- ists such as Trailer Bride Have we reached that long-sought goal: an (“Hope is the thing with accurate visual picture of the fully mature, feathers”) and Eva (“Hour practicing poet? And if so, what does it tell of Lead”), who perform us? How will this new image of Emily Dick- musical interpretations of inson provoke our spiritual attentions? Or is Dickinson poems or in- the woman in the photo a sort of visual Mon- corporate her lines into degreen, another elusive cipher upon which Above, Jane Eberwein reads carefully to test the ideas presented their own lyrics; and she we impose our ideologically insubordinate in a master session. Below, the audience responds to Barbara described uses of Dick- misprisions? Such questions are bound to be Mossberg’s vision of Dickinson’s chaotic imagination. inson’s cultural legacy in engaged for a long time to come.

November/December 2012 | 7 Poet to Poet

Series Editor, Jonnie Guerra

Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of many collections of poetry as well as professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Award, the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, and the Library of Virginia Award for Poetry. Thanks are due to editor Daniel Manheim for suggesting Spaar to be featured in the Poet to Poet series. I am delighted to present Spaar’s provocative medita- tions on her connection to Dickinson. The Ecstatic Clocks of Emily Dickinson By Lisa Russ Spaar

mily Dickinson’s poems and let- is ultimately untranslatable. Her devi- Eters – restive, interior, aggressive, ant syntax, what William Carlos Wil- private, anguished, erotic, linguisti- liams called her “structural warping” cally breath-reaving, witty, explosive, (Boruch, 27), her transgressive coinages elliptical, noetic, daring, concentrated, of diction, manipulation of metonymy, complex, veiled in “Codes of Bliss” and disruption of grammatical expecta- and cast in a language put under such tion are intensely physical, ushering in a pressure and in possession of such psy- sensation of witness and an experience chic and somatic torque as to feel en- of language at its most primal regis- tirely original – were the first texts that ters. The lyricism in these poems owes invited me to try to make the poems, to riddling, but the most provocative inchoate within me, for which I had among them is a puzzle with no answer, found no antecedent. offering instead a select design of im- * placable discovery, discerned fleetingly Dickinson’s poems “tell” a lyric time in the frisson separating “Syllable from of interstice, awakening, and wake – Sound” (Fr 598): an ecstatic and, to me, aftermath – in an inimitable, elusive irresistible precinct. matrix characterized by abstraction, * figuration, and a lexicon so palpable Was any realm of ecstasy – Eros, Than- it bodies forth, resisting page, margin, atos, Terror, Vision/Mysticism, Necro- print, and eluding the notion of any mancy, Illness, Madness, Despair, the fixed message. Via Negativa, Reading, Writing – be- yond the reach of her poetic “Campaign I’ll tell Thee All – how Bald it grew – inscrutable / of the Interior” (Fr1230)? How Midnight felt, at first – to me – How all the Clocks stopped in the Photo Credit: Jen Fariello Paul Valéry points out that “a poet’s World – function . . . is not to experience the And Sunshine pinched me – ‘Twas so poetic state: that is a private affair. His cold – (Fr431) function is to create it in others” (Valéry, 60). By what ruses does * Dickinson create her ecstasies? Wondering about this has shaped After Great Pain. Paradox. Compression. “Extatic Contract!” my reading of her, and my own writing, for at least two decades. (Fr266) Revolt. * * Without a trace of irony and in syntax so contorted that it makes “Split the Lark – and you’ll find the Music – ” (Fr905). Larks. a kind of meta fetish of its telling, Gerard Manley Hopkins re- Clocks. Letters. Poems. In nearly every Dickinson text there is a sponded this way to a charge that his poems were obdurate: “Ob- node, an organ, an escapement of language, perception, troping scurity I do and will try to avoid so far as is consistent with ex- that eludes explication, deciphering, unpacking – a qualia that cellences higher than clearness at a first reading” (Hopkins, xv).

8 | EDIS Bulletin Poet to Poet

Elizabeth Bishop writes in a letter to Anne Stevenson about a body at death. But it is also, certainly, an intrepid poem about poem she is working on about Dickinson and Hopkins: “I never making poetry. really liked Emily Dickinson much, except a few nature poems, * until that complete edition came out a few years ago and I read Herself to her a Music it all more carefully. I still hate the oh-the-pain-of-it-all poems, but I admire many others, and, mostly, phrases more than whole The day protracted, tasking – poems. I particularly admire her having dared to do it, all alone – then sleep, brutal in its brevity. a bit like Hopkins in that. (I have a poem about them comparing But nonetheless this drunken heart them to two self-caged birds, but it’s unfinished.) This is snob- bery – but I don’t like the humorless, Martha Graham kind of in a moon-milked parlor, person who does like Emily Dickinson . . .” (Bishop, 858). the upstairs all asleep, * mouth unmooring her ideas Dickinson showed me that I am the kind of person who likes Em- ily Dickinson. I also believe her capable of shrewd whimsy and in off-key descant at the piano deep play, as in the gallows humor here: as fingers tink the weird stillness of silled wasp’s wings, If I could’nt thank you, Being fast asleep, of lamp’s electric lapping, You will know I’m trying silo of glass, With my Granite lip! tongue torqued at the dark pain, (Fr210) and at her nape I also find that I like difficulty in poems. a voice – from where – * whispering turn over. Though it has been said of Dickinson that she is one of the only American poets without a “program” or poetics manifesto, many Her restless fingers of her poems concern her relationship with language and its ma- seek a fissure, teriality (“Many a phrase has the English language – / I have the chafed, ardent pew heard but one . . ./ / . . . Breaking in bright Orthography / On my simple sleep – ” [Fr333] and “I found the words to every that opened when she entered thought / I ever had – but One – / And that – defies Me – / As a this world. She sings Hand did try to chalk the Sun” [Fr436]). One thing that compels the metallic sting of a key me to Dickinson’s work is the way she floats in any one poem a stereoscopic mix of God-hunger, erotic longing, and the “Vision broken in its lock, phantom voltage, of language!” itself (L782). “Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White her wild, sleepless hymn Heat’?” (Fr401) strikes me forcibly as a poem about Dickinson’s humming heaven. poetic process and obsession with consciousness, its peril and its expression. The poem begins with a question and a dare, and then (“Herself to her a Music” from Satin Cash, by Lisa Russ Spaar. Copyright invites us, with typical distortion of scale and perspective (one of © 2008 by Lisa Russ Spaar. Reprinted by permission of Persea Books, inc., the chief ways Dickinson achieves ecstatic effects in her poems), New York. All rights reserved.) to “crouch within the door.” Where are we in this moment, limin- * al, yonic, ajar? It is in a crucial/crucible place of in-between-ness In a letter written in 1854 to her brother Austin (Emily was 23 that is both aftermath and prelude. What will we witness as we years old), she warns him that she is so tired from working in contort to see? What has happened to the person that we were? the garden and from visiting that she must write her epistle “just What will we become? To what vanquishing, veto, and victory as it happens . . . you mustn’t expect any style. This is truly ex- will we be privy as the poem itself, “symbol for the finer Forge tempore, Austin – I have no notes in my pocket” (L165). Clearly / That soundless tugs – within – ,” wields its hammer and blaze keeping scraps of paper handy for notes jotted during the crush to make, to design, a thing so powerful that its “designated Light of other activities, for the rush of ideas she would then craft into / Repudiate the Forge”? This could be a poem of sexual arousal the performances of poems and letters, was part of Dickinson’s and invitation. It could well be about the soul ascending from the practice from early on. In particular, though, perhaps because,

November/December 2012 | 9 Poet to Poet at 56, I have now been alive longer than Dickinson lived, I have A perfect – paralyzing Bliss – been especially enthralled to explore, through the work of Marta Contented as Despair – L. Werner, Jerome McGann, Virginia Jackson, Alexandra Socari- (Fr767) des, and others, the late “visible language” of Emily Dickinson What is style if not profound solitude? And so, after being “hun- – facsimile leaves of the open folio work, draft and fair copies, gry, all the Years,” and finally tasting a “Plenty” (Fr439) that phrases, drawings, scribbles, passages inscribed on chocolate hurts her, she chooses another, almost apostatic way: poetry – an wrappers, telegrams, envelope flaps, flyleaves, most often in pen- estranged and heightened consciousness italicized by renuncia- cil – ecstatic texts, muddled, hybrid, urgent, sometimes mutilated tion. Hard not to see in Dickinson’s “bowls” the enormity of her by cut-outs, hypertextual variants, cross-hatchings, marginalia, inner ocean over-brimming those tidy hymn-haunted fours and and scissorings of unknown origin: sixes (“A love so big it scares her, rushing among her small heart – pushing aside the blood – and leaving her faint [all] and white Different guise when in the gust’s arm –,” from the Master Letters, L248): my fingers make it – It is Anguish Why Bliss so scantily disburse – I long conceal Why Paradise defer – from you to let Why Floods be served to Us – in Bowls – you leave me, I speculate no more – hungry, but you (L767) ask the divine * Crust and that David Porter in Dickinson: The Modern Idiom: “There is no would doom the boredom in Dickinson because there is no prose” (4). Bread - Emily Dickinson: (from A740, transcribed by Marta Werner in Emily Dickinson’s Open Folios). I dwell in Possibility – * A fairer House than Prose – Hunger. Renunciation. Trespass. Freedom. “An ablative estate” More numerous of Windows – (Fr1761). Superior – for Doors – * (Fr466) Dickinson was a hunger artist. She could wade “Whole Pools” of * grief, but the slightest “push of Joy” (Fr312) unnerved her. What Marianne Boruch, from “Dickinson Descending”: “On and on was fulfillment, after all, compared to the electric, ecstatic cur- the homage continues by reference or explanation, or more di- rents of desire, to poetry? rectly by imitation, until it seems something crucial to our sur- vival to remember her, something the Chinese know by their It was the limit of my Dream – The focus of my Prayer – Continued on page 28

Emily Dickinson Takes the Freight Elevator he world premiere of An Emily Dickinson Sense Surround had an Taudience of nearly 50 New Yorkers. With LitCrawl NYC programs in hand, those game literature-seekers braved long white echoing cor- ridors on the way to the 7th floor at 195 Chrystie Street, HQ for ArtStar Gallery, for an unusual take on Emily Dickinson: Figs and flowers to smell and touch; Emily’s cake recipes – and poems that resembled recipes – to hear; Coconut cake – from Emily Dickinson’s family recipes – to taste; Old fashioned apple cider, as if pressed in Emily’s kitchen, to drink; And songs from her own playbook to sing.

The sensate materials were provided by Marta McDowell, Cindy Dick- Author: Aífe Murray inson, David Giovacchini, and Aífe Murray. Photo Credit: Thomas Altfather Good

10 | EDIS Bulletin Trying to Think With Jed Deppman

An Interview by Melanie Hubbard

elanie Hubbard: Here is a silly UW-Madison library – and I couldn’t Mquestion to get us started, but I find anybody! Nobody had talked can’t resist: Is your name really Jed, as about this poem, and I thought, what in short for Jedidiah? is happening? Is my Emily Dickinson Jed Deppman: That’s a great question! somehow different from other peo- (laughing) My given name is John Er- ple’s Emily Dickinson? So that was ickson Deppman, so it’s JED. All my really a sparking point for me, when I life, until I was twelve, I thought my realized I couldn’t not think about that name was Jed, everybody calls me Jed, poem, and that I had to write some- and then my parents let me in on the thing about it. secret that no, officially your name is John, but we’d never call you that. * * * MH: As for your book, Trying to MH: What got you interested in Dick- Think with Emily Dickinson, what inson? makes you think philosophy is a vital JD: I went to Amherst College and way to look at this poet? graduated in 1990, so she’s in my JD: To my mind, it’s an honest way, blood a little bit, but I didn’t really read in the sense that you don’t need to im- her seriously until I went to graduate pose upon her writing philosophical school in comparative literature and or other theoretical discourses that was absorbing a lot of theory and phi- have been subsequently developed. losophy. I went to France to pursue a She was trained in philosophy, as DEA (diploma) and there I was read- were many of her peers; philosophy ing lots of French theory and history was a central discipline at Amherst of philosophy. At the same time I was Photo Credit: Steve Fratoni College. Amherst College taught a thinking about my dissertation and tremendous amount of mental and what kind of academic career I wanted to thought, now that is a poem. I wonder moral philosophy, the discipline itself was have. I was reading lots of James Joyce and where that starts, that is really something. very prestigious, and all of her interlocu- I also sort of picked up Emily Dickinson. I I really thought about that poem. I looked tors or friends were all sort of saturated in knew and respected her work already. But at it carefully; it fit with a lot of what I was it – her brother, Benjamin Franklin New- then I saw so much in it that responded to all studying with the works of George Ba- ton, and Henry Emmons in the early 1850s the questions I was learning about from the taille and Jacques Derrida and some other – she had a lot of discussions with them, theory and philosophy I was studying, and I French philosophers I was reading at the and it was just how they were trained. It have always connected the two ever since. time, Jean Luc Nancy in particular; and I was an absolutely natural, organic kind thought, OK, fine, I’m going to go look at of vocabulary which she had known ever MH: So you’ve been doing Dickinson and what all the Dickinson scholars have said since she was a teenager. She had read philosophy since grad school? about this poem and figure it out. Because Watts’s Improvement of the Mind many JD: I remember reading the Johnson edi- to my mind it was so clearly a kind of sum- times as a teenager, and she read it again tion then and thinking, OK, I’m going to mary statement of Emily Dickinson’s atti- in order to be able to go to Mary Lyons’ read all of these. Making my way through tude toward death, her great flood subject. Seminary. I thought, this is something that the 1860s and the 1870s and just thinking And so when I came back to the U.S., I I know is in her DNA. how voluminous and amazing she was, and went to the University of Wisconsin library then, getting toward the end of the 1880s to track down everything I could find, and I MH: Why was the college, or really her finally, reaching those poems, I ran across remember going through all of the indexes whole milieu, so interested in giving her a “Of Death I try to think like this.” And I – there are great Dickinson resources at the philosophical education?

November/December 2012 | 11 JD: One reason was just sort of structural. ganic link between philosophical and reli- her questions. I think she used it, she un- Amherst Academy, where she went, was gious questioning. derstood it very well, she accepted a lot of very closely linked with Amherst College. its questions and distinctions, but when it The college trained supervisors at the MH: To what extent does ED accept, and came to answering the very hardest ques- Academy, so what the college prized often kind of agree with, the Common Sense phi- tions of her life, it came up short. Ques- found its way very quickly into what the losophy that she’s being taught? tions about how thinking actually works, Academy was thinking about. The disci- questions about how we pline had such a high moral value because think about death, how it was in two stages: there was mental we think about life and philosophy, which was the science of the the possibility of after- mind, and then there was moral philoso- life, all the really dif- phy, which was the higher and the more ficult questions seem to important; it was absolutely necessary for be solved almost by fiat anybody who was being trained to be a in the Common Sense minister. Also, Dickinson’s family had a tradition. lot of social contacts with Amherst Col- MH: Indeed. They ac- lege faculty and she knew a lot of the chil- knowledge the diffi- dren of the faculty there and was friends culty of the answers, with them, so there were a lot of local, actually, but then they small town connections with philoso- just say, Well. But, you phers. It would become quite lighthearted know, God made it so, at some points; it would find its way into so there you are! Dickinson’s Valentines, and it was a natu- JD: They stop question- ral vocabulary that she uses in her letters. ing at a point sometimes But one great central location for the im- where Dickinson wants portance of philosophy was its perceived to start questioning. link to the Christian faith. MH: And that must pro- vide to a certain extent MH: One thing that I think is vital is that the basis for your title, Dickinson has been called a “Puritan” in a Melanie Hubbard received an NEH a few years ago and is finishing a if not your book, Trying lot of the early critical literature, and I won- book on Dickinson’s philosophical and rhetorical education. Her new full- to Think. der if that is the reason why critics don’t length collection of poems, We Have With Us Your Sky, won the 2011 JD: I just noticed that seem to have paid any attention to her phil- Book Award in Poetry from Subito Press and will appear in October 2012. in her letters and po- osophical background? Photo Credit: Ann Mohin ems, it’s a phrase that JD: You’re right about that, of course. She she herself uses. And has been construed largely in a Puritan JD: (laughing) Here I would like to refer- it couldn’t have cropped up, I thought, tradition in the biographies. I think one of ence your own work, which I find abso- so many times, if it were an innocent the reasons is that we don’t see how much lutely admirable. She was very familiar problem; I also wanted to reference the philosophy was part of that tradition, be- with Common Sense philosophy. It was difficulty we have in understanding and cause by now, things are quite different. the backbone of her training, it’s central to thinking with Dickinson, trying to under- People who are coming to the question many of the books that you find in the li- stand where her questions came from, and of Dickinson as a writer, as a person who brary, her letters are full of Common Sense what philosophical traditions they might is educated, don’t see how closely linked distinctions. I think that what you point out emerge from. I wanted to give the sense philosophical inquiries were with reli- really crucially is that there’s a real problem that she herself spent her life trying to gious inquiries. We see them as very very in Common Sense philosophy about deal- think. separate now. That’s one thing that plays ing with language, how language works. into the idea that Dickinson is somehow And I think she came to this recognition MH: Even when one poem might settle, more religiously trained, and her back- partly through reading, partly through her or seem to settle, on one pole of an an- ground was all religious; we fail to see the own independent thought, and she came to swer, the next poem is likely to contradict strong philosophical component to that. a kind of crisis about the extent to which it. You talk to a certain extent in your book There was certainly a much stronger or- Common Sense philosophy could answer about the openness of her poems.

12 | EDIS Bulletin JD: First, I think I mean that she has a kind fewer and fewer get actually sent out, and its tropes, figures, performativity, and all of reader-oriented or propositional way it’s my sense anyway that she’s using this those things that she can manage there, I of thinking. She doesn’t think she has the space, whether we call it a lyric space or a think that there’s a slow realization that answer, and her poems almost never pres- poetic space, this writing activity, to deal comes to her that that is the form she ent themselves as the result of a set of with these hard questions that she has no needs, and nothing else will suffice. The conclusions that have been reached, or a other outlet for. problem with writing philosophy, too, is philosophical analysis. But they give the that it’s reader-directed in another way. It problem and her thinking to their readers, MH: Why didn’t Dickinson simply do doesn’t have that playful, free, open state; I mean in both the letters and the poems, philosophy? Why did she turn to poetry it’s trying to convince people; they have to so that’s one important sense of openness. instead? follow you in where you’re going. Where- There’s also a poststructuralist sense which JD: I don’t think we’re going to have an as I think at some point, she has tried out Umberto Eco talks about, the “open work” easy answer. One reason might be that so many audiences, so many vocabularies, as one where a lot of the work remains to to the extent that she is a philosopher in for working on these hard philosophical be done by the audience or reader. a stricter sense, she has already philoso- questions that tormented her, that eventu- phized in the epistolary project. She wrote ally, the lyric, poetic space turned out to * * * a tremendous amount of letters trying to be the best, richest, most supple one. think with other people through prose. I JD: Maybe I could sketch a short intellec- think that she didn’t get the response that * * * tual biography of Dickinson that speaks she needed. to where her openness might have come MH: I think she risked her friendships, re- MH: I’d like to move now to the forthcom- from: Dickinson in the late 1850s has a ally. ing collection of essays, “Emily Dickinson lot of resources available to help her try JD: You’re absolutely right, she did do and Philosophy,” that you’ve edited with to think: she has her brother Austin, that that. Marianne Noble and Gary Lee Stonum. she’s writing letters to, she has Susan Gil- MH: She lost friends. Tell us what’s in the book? bert that she’s writing letters to, she’s still JD: She knew she was doing it, too, but JD: This book is a collection of twelve es- attending meeting every Sunday, she’s she couldn’t stop herself. She wrote a let- says; the first six situate Dickinson in her hearing different speakers, she’s just fin- ter to Jan Humphrey where she writes a time and look at the way she grew out of or ished her schooling in the late 1840s, so long paragraph about death, and she says, responded to existing vocabularies, philo- there are a lot of ways that she can con- I’ve been trying to think about death, sophical traditions that were available to tinue to worry and think about things. She she uses that phrase, and then instantly her, that she made something of, in one has a lot of childhood friends she’s writing she says, Oh, but please forgive me, I’ve way or another. So there – well you have letters to (and Henry Emmons and Ben- been very naughty to think about this, I a wonderful essay on Common Sense phi- jamin Franklin Newton to talk and write shouldn’t have written this. Her thinking losophy, we also have an essay on mental to) who are very important to her. Slowly and her trying to think are causing crises philosophy and the early psychology that throughout the 1850s, all of these sources that are both personal and epistolary. She was available to Dickinson. And then the of help for her to think are gone. Susan can’t perform, it’s not working for her. second half of the book is devoted to philo- and Austin get married and move in next sophical thinking that has developed since door, so there’s no need to write them let- MH: Don’t you think that, given the slip- Dickinson’s day, but to which her poetry ters anymore; Emmons and Newton are periness of language, it becomes part of the seems to respond very well. So there we gone – one of them gets married, another problem of thinking? have an essay on pragmatism, an essay on one dies; her schooling is more and more JD: That’s really true, but I don’t think Martin Heidegger, Nietszche, where subse- distant, she stops going to church, and so that recognition comes until the episto- quent philosophical trends seem to reveal there’s a sense that she has to find an out- lary project fails. I think if you look at things about Dickinson, perhaps she was let for her thinking, that she has a tremen- the first 200 poems, they take place in a a precursor, perhaps she came to certain dous amount of mental energy and she kind of Valentine mode. Dickinson isn’t awarenesses of her own that were subse- has questions that are not going away. So expecting so much from the lyric proj- quently developed. We wanted a balance in increasingly she writes poems, starting in ect. Then, as she gets better and better the book between historically situated es- the late 1850s, that do not get circulated at writing poems, she sees what they can says and then those that explore where her in letters. Throughout the 1850s a lot of do; she has perhaps greater consciousness thought might have consequences outside her poems are circulated in letters, but as of the limits of language, and the utility what she herself had thought. time goes on into the 1860s, 1861, 1862, of lyric language in all of its suppleness, Continued on page 29

November/December 2012 | 13 Teaching Dickinson

Series Editor, Marianne Noble “Subjects Hinder Talk”: Dickinson’s Classroom of Possibility By Robert Weisbuch

ast spring, I was invited drama. And sometimes, lost in Lto guest-lecture on Em- the administrative tasks of fill- ily Dickinson for a couple of ing forms and attending end- English classes at my son’s less committee meetings, we high school in Montclair, New can become “the lonesome for Jersey. It was 8 a.m. I was in they know not what” too, rou- a recalcitrant mood. It was one tinized and missing what Dick- in a string of down days that inson called “the missing All” we all endure on experience’s (J985). We are so lucky to have roller coaster and I could not Dickinson and all the others to easily countenance taking on teach, for even as they speak the public stance that we as to our lifeless moments, they teachers assume. Worse, my provide the fresh breath of life son, Gabe Weisbuch, was hor- and help us to be more human, rified to have his Dad speaking over and over. That’s why this to so many of his peers. career is better than selling real estate. But by 9:30 that morning, ev- Photo Credit: Gabriel Weisbuch erything was different. I had pep in my step Dickinson had more to tell me that day. In fact, Dickinson applies so readily be- for the first time in a week. As soon as that “If your nerve deny you/ Go above your cause her poems address our own specific class began, some other me tuned out the nerve” (J292). To tell the truth, I was facing issues without imposing their own. This is static and tuned in the teaching signal. The a lot of life changes, and it was these that hard to grasp, but one of the first lessons I kids had been great, their attention unflag- had brought on my bad mood. But she re- offer students is that if Dickinson’s poetry ging and their questions and ideas engag- minded me that I could go above all of that. is going to be able to mean more largely, ing. And I had been great too, not because I “A Bomb upon the Ceiling/Is an improv- we need to relax our demand for specifics. am, but because anyone is irresistible when ing Thing – / It keeps the Nerves progres- Our students want to know what Dickinson they are crazy about a poet. I gave a silent sive / Conjecture flourishing – ” (J1128). I believes, but I show that Dickinson, like blessing to the saving nature of classroom understood those lines in a new way that Whitman, is large and contains multitudes. teaching. But the salve was due as much to day. I don’t mean to suggest that we value I encourage them to come to know her not the subject, due to Dickinson. Dickinson most for little Victorian nuggets by pinning down what she believes but by of wisdom, but I do mean that teachers learning what she cares about. Dickinson is so ready to take on any have lives, too, and that Dickinson’s poems mood, including the November in the speak superbly to one’s self while connect- For instance, in many poems Dickinson ex- soul I brought to class that day. Dickin- ing that self to something larger, including presses a religious faith earned by individ- son proposes that agony enlarges the self: other selves. ual thought. She is the mariner who leaves “Power is only pain” (J252). “A wounded taught doctrine to sail seas of thought on deer leaps highest” (J165). But she always As teachers, one of our first lessons is to re- her own, but then she earns her way back knows that any benefits to our suffering mind our students – and ourselves – not to to that initial faith, now on her own terms: do not nullify our experience. One day, relate everything to ourselves, for our own “Though I get home how late – how late/ she writes, Christ will explain in his “fair interests and obsessions may well misshape So I get home ‘twill compensate” (J207). schoolroom of the Sky” why one must un- the text’s meaning. And yet, as theorists Or again, in “I’m Ceded – I’ve stopped be- dergo the pain “that scalds me now/That from Plato on acknowledge, without one or ing Theirs,” the speaker sees her baptism in scalds me now!” (J193). Our immediate another form of the partaker’s self-interest, a country church as something childish to pain always takes priority over its even- meaning is dormant, inert. Teachers, like be stored “with my Dolls.” But now “Bap- tual justification. their students, continue to experience life’s tized, before, without the choice,/But this

14 | EDIS Bulletin Teaching Dickinson time, consciously, of Grace,” the speaker the merely commonplace: “Had I not seen apply to any possible subject. They are has “Will to choose, or to reject,/ And I the Sun/I could have borne the Shade” typically not about love or God or nature choose – just a Crown” (J508). Yet else- (J1233). But she can also demur and argue or death but about any and all of those sub- where, “The Bible is an Antique Volume – / against the overwhelming experience in its jects and all others too. That gets her, as I Written by faded men” (J1545). How much capacity to destroy creatureliness and the wrote earlier, beyond the whats of experi- belief is there in that? More generally, in enjoyments of the everyday. ence to the felts, to “internal difference, / some poems, to be “owned” by someone Where,” as Dickinson insists, “the mean- or something greater is “my one glory” This can be seen as a legitimate reading of ings are” (J258). That is why students (J1028), whereas in “My Life had stood – “I started early, took my Dog – / And vis- love Dickinson despite her difficulty. The a Loaded Gun” (J754), being owned leads ited the Sea” (J520). The speaker playfully poems are impersonal, and yet they speak to a false sense of power and finally to not begins a journey to the shore with her com- more intimately to them than anyone has having lived at all. This desire to scout all forting domestic pet; but as the tide rises ever spoken to them heretofore. the positions of an issue is one reason why beyond her control, “past my Apron – and “Adjourns are all – ,” why all of Dickin- my Belt/And past my Bodice – too – ,” she Every poem works in this way, but this one son’s poems deal with endings, with death, runs fearfully back to “the Solid Town.” seems to me an especially striking example: in one form or another – because death is The tide had been following closely, but available to such a spectrum of possibility, there, he discerned “No one He seemed to Did the Harebell loose her girdle from nothingness to immortality. know – ” because, one takes it, the wild, To the lover Bee the id, cannot recognize the restrained and Would the Bee the Harebell hallow Probably her most frequent self-debate common. And so the sea-tide bows and Much as formerly? concerns experiences that take one be- “withdraws” but with a “Mighty look,” as yond one’s common-place self. Sometimes if to say, getcha next time. Did the “Paradise” – persuaded – transcendence seems to be as available as Yield her moat of pearl – air. “Paradise is of the option,” Dickinson This poem, which poses as a story, takes Would the Eden be an Eden writes in her Emersonian moods. But else- us to the third job we have in letting go as Or the Earl – an Earl? (J213) where she vetoes her vision – “The power we introduce Dickinson to students. Just and the glory are the post mortuary gifts.” as “what Dickinson believes” is a ques- Somehow in this poem we move from a Do we really want to be transcendent? tion that needs to be restated in terms of domestic garden and a question that sounds “One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunt- what she cares about, so too what the po- the fear of a mom to a daughter – as the ed. . . . Ourself behind ourself, concealed / etry is “about” needs to be rephrased into Shirelles sing, “Will you still love me to- Should startle most –” (J670). To have an the question of how a poem can be about morrow?” – to a justification of God’s overwhelming experience is to sacrifice the any number of subjects at once. Helping non-appearance in the world. The first everyday self who enjoys good old life: students to think about town and sea in “I stanza ostensibly concerns a masculine started early, took my Dog” can help to il- bee romancing a feminine flower while the The Brain, within its groove lustrate how Dickinson’s images manage second stanza raises the bet from an ordi- Runs evenly and true; to suggest subjects without being confined nary garden to The Garden, Eden, which But let a splinter swerve, by them. The sea as a masculine, enticing, is simultaneously described as a medieval ‘Twere easier for you even assaulting figure may indeed suggest castle. By poem’s end, the question of To put the water back a sexual desire and fear, but the sea also whether a beau will still value a maiden When floods have slit the hills, could be whatever fantasy life, whatever once he has had his desire fulfilled in her And scooped a turnpike for themselves, wild intelligence, whatever notion of tran- has become the question of whether the And trodden out the Mills – (J556) scendence contrasts to the solidity of our Earl of Eden, perhaps God, would still be own common sense. God if his paradise could be entered and his Some poems vigorously express her devo- presence directly known. From the sexual tion to transcendent experiences while oth- Years ago, I wrote that Dickinson’s poet- to the metaphysical with everything in be- ers, like this one, say “no thanks.” “Fath- ry is like a pattern in the carpet that then tween, the poem ultimately argues that the oms are sudden neighbors,” Dickinson makes the carpet disappear to leave you attainment of what is desired does not so wrote to a friend (L804), but not always face to face with the pattern. I still find much provide bliss as it does deflate the welcome ones. Dickinson knows that the this a meaningful way to teach Dickinson. value of the desired object. You can’t have special moments affirm and maximize our “Subjects hinder talk” (L397), Dickinson your cake and eat it, and this also explains humanity, and she can mourn the fact that wrote, and her poems tend to forego sub- they are temporary and then disappear into jects and offer instead designs that can Continued on page 30

November/December 2012 | 15 Dickinson Scholars

Series Editor, Cindy MacKenzie Josephine McIlvain Pollitt Pohl By Aífe Murray I am indebted to Josephine Pollitt for being the first scholar to discover the letters of Margaret Maher and to note the importance of the Boltwood Family Papers in the Detroit Free Public Library’s Burton Historical Collection. These materials enabled me to fill in many blanks in the life of Margaret Maher as well as imagine, through the meticulous records of her peers, Emily Dickinson’s daily existence with servants. I am also grate- ful for Josephine Pollitt's singular mind and lively prose, especially what is found in her essay “Emily Dickinson - Loaf Giver” which appears in print for the first time as an appendix in my book Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson's Life and Language (UPNE/UNH, 2010). Margaret Dakin and Marjory Allen Perez contributed to this article.

This is the first in a series of articles about early Dickinson biographers, including Genevieve Taggard and George Frisbee Whicher.

n November 12, 1890, when Roberts found Bianchi to be “unfailingly courteous” OBrothers printed the first edition of Em- but also “treacherous” and not as intelligent ily Dickinson’s Poems, future Dickinson bi- as Todd, whom she described as having a bet- ographer Josephine McIlvain Pollitt was one ter understanding of poetry than Bianchi but month old. Perhaps her mother Lula, with as possessing a “monstrous egotism.” Pollitt infant daughter in her arms, was among the notes that both Todd and Bingham were fear- first in Indianapolis to purchase the volume ful of Bianchi and suggests that mental illness of Dickinson’s poems. If it wasn’t the recita- inherited from David Todd might be at root in tion of these poems that sealed her daughter’s Bingham’s erratic behavior. Conducting re- interest, then Lula Pollitt provided other vital search with the cooperation of these key play- support, for she is the one to whom Josephine ers appears to have been a minefield. Twice Pollitt (1890-1978) dedicated her only pub- Pollitt seriously considered abandoning the lished book, Emily Dickinson: The Human biography subsequent to meetings with Todd Background of Her Poetry (New York: Harp- and Bingham. er, 1930). The plan had been for the well-regarded poet It took five years after high school graduation Genevieve Taggard and Pollitt to “polish” for Josephine Pollitt to matriculate at Butler the latter’s thesis, turning it into a jointly au- College, but her widowed mother made sure thored biography. Eventually the two parted she got there. When she taught college in ways over, presumably, their differing beliefs Kentucky, her mother kept house for her until regarding the poet’s elusive lover (George Pollitt, admitted to Columbia as a grad stu- Gould versus Edward Hunt). That Genevieve dent, headed off to New York in 1923. It was Taggard was allowed, by Martha Dickinson Class Photo, Shortridge High School, 1909. at Columbia, from which she took her M.A. Bianchi, to quote from the poet's writings, in English on June 3, 1925, that Pollitt began Photo Credit: Indiana Historical Society and Pollitt was not, suggests that Pollitt was her research on Dickinson, writing her thesis not successful in picking her way through the on the poet. The May following graduation she Todd Bingham. Pollitt's unpublished essay terrain of the Dickinson-Todd feud. There is a married playwright, scholar, and Boys High “A Swan Song” provides keen insight as to penciled note, in the upper right hand corner School English teacher Frederick Julius Pohl what it meant to conduct Dickinson research of Pollitt’s typescript of “A Swan Song,” that (1889-1991). With his research help, Pollitt while those three women were alive. Pollitt reads “Keep for ultimate use – after Mrs. T's concluded the writing of her centenary biog- describes her encounters, especially with the demise.” raphy which appeared alongside Genevieve Todd women, with the detail of a novelist. Taggard's volume, The Life and Mind of Emily While acknowledging Todd’s and Bianchi’s Pollitt’s biography was considered flawed be- Dickinson (A.A. Knopf, 1930). pivotal roles in bringing Dickinson’s poetry cause of a focus on the poet’s elusive lover and to the public’s attention, she takes pains to what later critics found to be a blurring of bi- In the course of her thesis research, Pollitt be- articulate differences and similarities such ography with poetry. Martha Ackmann, how- came well-acquainted with Martha Dickinson as that both Todd and Bianchi “enjoyed im- ever, in the 1998 Emily Dickinson Handbook, Bianchi, Mabel Loomis Todd, and Millicent mensely the prestige of their position.” Pollitt praises Pollitt and Taggard for rendering “a

16 | EDIS Bulletin Dickinson Scholars sense of the life actually being lived. There is correspondence describing domestic life in on the ground in April 1996, was what hap- an immediacy and freshness to their narratives nineteenth-century Amherst and a cache of pened to Josephine Pollitt’s promised essay? It that make the academic literary biographies of letters written by the Dickinson's maid of 30 didn't appear to have ever been published but, the late twentieth century seem almost torpid” years, Margaret Maher. These letters made if written, where was it? (14). Pollitt pause “with keen anticipation.” She added that “Maggie comes alive, definitely.” After Pollitt's death her husband donated both While Todd and Bianchi continued to publish Within two months Pollitt had determined to of their papers to Amherst College but held actively in the early 1930s, Pollitt’s husband “write a biographical memoir of Miss Maher, back several essays with the intention of get- and fellow playwright Vincent York were busy in connection with [her] study of the imagery ting them into print. He never succeeded. In collaborating on a theatre script based upon of Emily Dickinson's poetry, and its sources” the mid-1990s, his second wife and widow, Pollitt's biography. Their play Brittle Heaven (10/8/1942). Loretta Champagne Baker-Pohl, sold any opened on November 13, 1934 at New York’s remaining papers of value to an antiquarian Vanderbilt Theater with Dorothy Gish play- Nine years later, in 1951, Josephine Pollitt’s book dealer specializing in Dickinson materi- ing Emily Dickinson, Edith Atwater as Helen husband retired and she became fully involved als. Polly Longsworth circled one item in the Hunt, and Albert Van Dekker in the role of in his productive writing career. Book after book dealer’s catalog and mailed it to me. The Hunt’s husband. Arthur Pollack, reviewing book – he authored a dozen in addition to nu- piece, authored by Pollitt, made references to it the next day in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, merous articles including at least one piece Dickinson maid Margaret Maher. By the time called their performance “childish, false, on Dickinson – is dedicated to Pollitt for her I heard from the book dealer, the item had been prim, and pedestrian.” On December 1, Brittle involvement from “shaping the substance and sold. He referred me to Loretta Baker-Pohl for Heaven quietly closed. spirit,” and her “wise counsel,” to her “unfail- more information. Writing from her home in ing support that steeled me to persevere.” Westfield, MA, on her husband’s letterhead, Thereafter it would seem that Josephine Pol- she indicated that Amherst College had any litt was through with Dickinson or with the Before her husband’s research got underway, papers related to Josephine Pollitt. Frost archi- Dickinson-Todd feud, which she compared to however, Pollitt made another effort to pursue vist, John Lancaster, however, didn't have the the previous generation’s Froude-Carlyle con- her own lines of inquiry. In November 1951 document in question and suggested I contact troversy. Like Froude, after the publication of she made plans for a return visit to Detroit. Brown University’s John Hay Library. her biography, Pollitt found solace in numer- By then, a “young man,” as collection chief ous trips abroad. But perhaps with Todd out Elleine Stones described the 41-year-old Jay After searches and delays due to a “cataloging of the picture and Bianchi all but gone (Todd Leyda (1910-1988), was scheduled to use the error,” wrote Mark Brown, the item was locat- died in 1932 and Bianchi in 1943), Pollitt got Boltwood Papers in December so Pollitt, 20 ed. I finally held, perhaps five or six decades her second wind by the 1940s. From perusing years his senior, postponed her trip for later after it was drafted on a manual typewriter, a the catalog of manuscripts at Columbia, Jose- that winter. Leyda was conducting research copy of the slender nine page, double-spaced phine Pollitt learned that the Burton Historical for The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson article, “Emily Dickinson – Loaf Giver.” Here Collection at the Detroit Public Library had (Yale, 1960) and had been alerted by Fanny was the promised piece on Maher. Brilliantly the best records on Amherst, Massachusetts Boltwood of Goshen, Massachusetts (Lucius conceived – acknowledging the domestic and outside the town. These were the Boltwood Manlius’ youngest child) of the extensive ar- aural space of the Homestead kitchen – this Family Papers, the product of scrupulous col- chive in Detroit. Leyda was so taken by the brief and lovely essay concurred with my own lection and preservation work by Lucius Man- Maher letters in the Burton Collection that theories that the work of the kitchen and those lius Boltwood, librarian and genealogist (son he immediately put pen to paper. His essay who populated that space had definitive -im of Lucius and Fanny), who had settled with his “Miss Emily's Maggie” appeared in a 1953 pact on the language and form of Dickinson's family in Michigan. Pollitt was eager to learn Mentor Edition. Nothing more seems to have poetry. Pollitt compares some of the poems to more about Edward Dickinson and Amherst been heard from Pollitt while Dickinson re- the brevity of Dickinson's family recipes and College, so she visited the Burton Collection search moved apace, with the appearance of considers that her slant rhymes in the mouths in the summer of 1942. Rebecca Patterson’s 1951 biography followed of “Miss Imlay's” servants are perfect rhymes. by Thomas Johnson's and Theodora Ward’s As soon as I read it I knew I had to publish it. Josephine Pollitt sifted through a rich col- complete versions of the poems and letters. lection that included hundreds of letters, Richard Sewall's prize-winning biography ap- It was not easy being a Dickinson scholar in photographs, and childrens' cut-out figures. peared four years before Josephine Pollitt died, the early years when many informants from She exchanged over a dozen letters with El- in 1978, at the age of 88. the Dickinson, Todd, Higginson, and Wad- leine Stones, chief of the Burton Collection. sworth families were alive. Feelings ran high; In her letter of August 9, 1942, written from Leyda scooped Pollitt, but the question on my the wrong word said could close off access to her home in Brooklyn Heights, Pollitt details mind, as I sat in Detroit reading the Stones- the collection's value, particularly in family Pohl correspondence, with a wet spring snow Continued on page 27

November/December 2012 | 17 This is the first in a series of reports from collectors of Dickinson-related materials. If you have interesting items that you would like to boast about, or if you have stories to tell of exploits in the field, please send them to the editor of theBulletin . Collecting Emily Dickinson Out West: The Cyber-Trail to Oregon

By Krans Bloeimaand

In the eyes of some, all collectors are more such as the late John S. Van E. or less crazy. Kohn and Michael Papantonio Charles Eliot Goodspeed, who eagerly filled the want lists Yankee Bookseller of their patrons and dispensed sage guidance along with their he bibliographer, author, librarian and sale catalogs. Due to this modi- Tbookseller David A. Randall once ob- fied relationship between seller served that “Poe was, and is, the glamor boy and buyer, my own browsing, of the American collecting scene.”1 It could scouting and actual acquisition also be argued that Emily Dickinson is “the on the cyber-trail have been ac- glamor girl” of the collecting scene, for few complished with little outside Autograph of Dr. Heman Humphrey, Amherst College authors offer the prospect of so many plea- guidance. Fully 90% of my col- sures for the modern book collector as she lection had to be imported from does, especially to enthusiasts so far removed the East and Mid-West through web-based reading and collecting Dickinson is akin to from the hub of Dickinson-related activities in enterprises such as eBay and AbeBooks, using capturing fog in a bottle. There is the element New England. The internet is the critical factor Dickinson bibliographies and other reference of the raven, or trickster, in Dickinson’s writ- that has made it possible to build, on a mod- materials for road maps. Indeed, this self- ing that is truly captivating. est budget, an interesting working collection guided traverse along the “Dickinson trail” to of material by and about Emily, her circle and Oregon has been filled with adventure and sur- Every collection, though, begins with a first her community. The ability to assemble such a prises. More importantly, it has been an educa- item. In my case, a well-loved first edition collection via the internet has also altered the tion and a revelation. of George F. Whicher’s This Was a Poet: A relationship between booksellers and buyers. Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson found In the pre-internet days, passionate Dickin- I accepted the challenge of collecting Dickin- its way to my shelves. That was the “seed son collectors such as Margaret Jane Pershing son and only Dickinson in earnest in late 2007, book” of my collection which has, at last formed close partnerships with booksellers so I am fairly new to the game. Few authors count, grown to 350 items. Because I decided haunt me the way Dickinson to focus my energy on one author, I can, to does, for as Charles Good- borrow from fellow-collector Nick Basbanes, speed noted in his autobiog- exercise an abundance of “patience and forti- raphy, “Dickinson found the tude.” Means and passion and a bit of luck, of secret of crystallizing carbon course, are the other key ingredients for any into diamonds.”2 Dickinson collector. It also helps, I think, to be among the was, like all great writers, a select souls of the “gently mad.” master at decoding and re- vealing the essence of her Emily Dickinson collectors today owe a great humanity. Reading her poems debt of gratitude to the latter-day virtuoso and letters, I soon learned, is a pathfinders in the field beginning in the 1920s process, not an event, for she with Charles Green, then later the afore- Postal cover addressed to Mrs. David P. Todd, postmarked Lynn, Mass, makes many demands on us mentioned Margaret Jane Pershing, William April 18, 1893. The handwritten notation beneath the return address, as readers and collectors. In- White, Carleton and Territa Lowenberg, Bar- “MLT Amherst Mass,” was probably written by Mabel Loomis Todd. deed, I think sometimes that ton Levi St. Armond, George Monteiro and

18 | EDIS Bulletin early editions and printings and Dickinson’s increasing reputation as an author. Collectible books they may be, but very little space on my shelves is devoted to them. I’ve taken to heart Emily’s statement that it is “Sweet to have had them lost / For News that they be saved” (J901), for, as tempting as these early editions are, there remain areas in this specialized sphere of collecting worthy of attention that are moderately priced or even inexpensive. I sincerely believe that affordable, undervalued treasures still beckon, so my focus as a collec- tor is on autographed books about Dickinson, signatures of persons of interest, association copies of books concerning Dickinson, books about Dickinson once owned by Dickinson scholars, periodical literature associated with Dickinson during her lifetime, offprints of scholarly articles concerning Dickinson, non- print items, Dickinson-related philatelic items such as old letters, postal covers and period Inscription in black ink by Alfred Leete Hamp- Denise Levertov’s copy of Wendy Barker’s Amherst-ana. son, the Evergreens, in my copy of Guests in Lunacy of Light, warmly inscribed to the poet Eden. Note the brief quotation from Fr858. by the author.

Joel Myerson. The first generation of preser- published in The Caxtonian titled “Collecting Notes vationists, of course, were those close to Em- Emily Dickinson.”5 Eden, with whom I cor- 1David A. Randall, The J.K. Lilly Collection of Edgar Al- ily, among them the Todds, Madame Bianchi, responded regarding his essay, stated that he is lan Poe: An Account of Its Formation. The Lilly Library, T.W. Higginson, Abiah Root and, of course, “far from an ED specialist,” though his piece Christmas, 1964. Sue and Lavinia Dickinson. Because most does a fine job of briefly chronicling- Dick of the material assembled by these and oth- inson’s life story. Another essay that takes a 2Charles E. Goodspeed, Yankee Bookseller: Being the Reminiscences of Charles E. Goodspeed. Houghton Mif- ers are permanently housed in libraries large different slant is one titled “Giving Emily flin Company, 1937. and small, holograph material in Emily’s hand Dickinson to the World,” by John S. Van E. is difficult to find and when found, costly to Kohn.6 This essay deals with the Margaret 3Sotheby’s web site. James S. Copley Library auction, acquire. Two Dickinson letters, for instance, Jane Pershing Collection of Emily Dickinson 2010-2011. Lot 19, Emily Dickinson letter, Spring, 1871, to Mrs. Henry Hills on the subject of love and charity, sold were sold by Sotheby’s in 2011 for $18,750 and its formation as reflected in the early pub- for $18,750, June 17, 2011. Lot 20, 4 page letter to Mrs. 3 and $12,500. Naturally, libraries with large lishing history of the poet’s books. Collector Jonathan L. Jenkins, late May, 1877, sold for $12,500. Dickinson holdings are eager and able to ac- William White, a Dickinson devotee, wrote quire such material, and are in competition several pieces touching on Dickinson, one of 4192 linear feet of boxes, a figure derived from adding up those numbers provided on the web sites for the Emily with private collectors in search of such gems. the best being “The Emily Dickinson Indus- Dickinson Collection, Jones Library, Amherst, Millicent 7 The sheer magnitude of the amount of ma- try,” in which he decries the advance in prices Todd Bingham Papers and Mabel Loomis Todd Papers, terial in the larger institutional collections is paid for the early Roberts Brothers printings Sterling Memorial Library at Yale, Amherst College staggering and totals some 192 linear feet of of the poet’s books. A cursory glance through Emily Dickinson Collection, the Carlton and Territa A. 4 Lowenberg Collection on Dickinson, University of Ne- boxes. The upside, of course, is that the rare various bookseller’s catalogs from the 1940s braska, Lincoln. This sum does not include other major items in these archives will be forever careful- to the 1970s illustrate his point. Dickinson archives that do not provide measurement fig- ly preserved and made available to Dickinson ures in linear feet on their web sites. scholars and other researchers. How, then, does one begin to collect an au- 5R. Eden Martin, “Collecting Emily Dickinson,” The Cax- thor whose books can be scarce and often tonian, Vol. XV, No. 11, 2007. As a collector, I am keenly interested in litera- costly? In today’s collecting environment, for ture about collecting, especially articles by my instance, one could expect to pay in the high 6John S. Van E. Kohn, “Giving Emily Dickinson to the fellow Dickinson collectors. There, too, the four-figure range or more for a very good World,” The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol- field is rather sparse, but a few pieces stand copy of the first printing of Poems, 1890, a ume XXXI, Number 1, Autumn 1969. out: R. Eden Martin, whose chief passion is price out of reach for most collectors. This is a 7William White, “The Emily Dickinson Industry,” Ameri- collecting Russian literature, wrote an essay product of the relatively tiny press runs of the can Book Collector, Vol. XIX, No. 5, January, 1969.

November/December 2012 | 19 “Getting Creative in the Kitchen”: Dickinson Inspires Student Art Robert K. Wallace and Nicci Mechler

taught a graduate course in Emily Dickin- book “Only Safe in Ashes.” Inside her hand- iterature class has always been made me Ison and Henry James at Northern Kentucky colored cover for the book, she hand-printed Lwant to draw. I think in a visual way, University for the first time during the 2011 each letter of her eight-page autobiographical though the skill of execution varies depending Fall Semester. As with my undergraduate poem, beginning with “Drink me with invis- on the pace of conversation, and the prowess class, I gave students a choice between writing ible ink. / I am / Yours – Even if / No one can of the writer to describe interesting characters. a research paper and creating an artistic ex- / See me.” The last page reads, “Burning the I will confess here and now to being an artist. pression for their final projects. Ten of my thir- Love Letters, / She understood how much / teen graduate students did their final projects Detached emotional / Masochism / Suited This past fall (2011), we spent the semester on Dickinson, and all ten of those chose the her.” You could smell the book as well as immersed in the texts of two well-respected creative option. One of those students, Nicci see and touch it because each page had been authors of the late 19th century, exploring Mechler, collaborated with me in this co-au- seared with actual flame. their works not only directly, but also through thored essay. After I provide an overview of biography and contemporary criticism – the Dickinson-inspired projects, she will dis- Tom Clark’s goal in “Emily’s Civil War” was contemporary to their time and to ours. We cuss her creative experience in the class. to “showcase the verses in which Dickinson explored reproductions of artworks specifi- captured the sense of loss and majesty that fil- cally mentioned in James’ prose – the author Nicci Mechler’s final project was a painted tered from the battlefields all the way back to himself was quite a fan of painters and paint- portrait on tissue and canvas entitled “Susie’s Amherst.” He did so in a sophisticated pow- ing – and discussed the books Dickinson fa- Girl: An American Flirt.” Visually striking erpoint slide show that weaves phrases from vored and the recipes mentioned in her letters. and emotionally evocative, “Susie’s Girl” 13 Dickinson poems through 84 Civil War Through these readings, we began to connect presents Emily as a young woman we could photographs accompanied by music from the in a full and sensory way with the stories. know and love today, her whitened flesh re- Civil War period. The period photos are all in How better to understand the quality of light vealing shadows of text only if you get so black and white, but somehow that made all in the opening scene of Daisy Miller than to close you could touch it. Nicci compared the more effective the photo of soldiers stand- look at atmospheric watercolor studies of the the process of painting this portrait to “get- ing in a field accompanied by Dickinson’s “A same vistas? This practice gives us the best ting creative in the kitchen,” whereas writing slash of Blue – A Sweep of Grey.” opportunity to see what James saw when he a research paper would have been more like put his descriptions to paper. James’ interest “following a recipe.” Her primary ingredi- The other Dickinson projects utilized a variety in art was a doorway for me, an artist, into his ents were “ink and a brush,” mixed with love of media. Beth Coyle combined words, image, sometimes difficult prose. for Emily and Susie. and music in the power-point soundscape she presented as “Punk Emily and Indie James.” My experience with Emily was different from Halfway through the semester Heather Braley Lauren Magee took Emily to the 2012 Lon- the start; indeed, I refer to her as Emily rather asked if she could create an Emily Dickinson don Summer Olympics for her Emily Dickin- than Dickinson. I do not think she would mind Quilt. Doing so allowed her to pay tribute to son Podcast. Megan Deeter used “It’s coming the liberty. After an initial immersion in the eight favorite poems while participating in – the postponeless Creature” as the frame for lengthy sentences favored by James, her quick a family tradition deeply meaningful to her. a ghost story set on a college campus. Justin wit and the brevity of her lines were refresh- Heather had been taught to sew by her grand- Williams created a spoken-word performance ing to the mind – the white space of her pages mother when she was ten, and for this quilt inspired by “It’s such a little thing to Weep / restful to the eye. I sat with her more easily, she used thread that had belonged to her step- So short a thing to Sigh.” Sharon Price created and found myself drawn into her world. grandmother, who had died when she was six. an artist book in which thirty-seven Dickinson Where did she write? The lines she stitched include “Immortal is an first lines are juxtaposed against images from What did her world look like? ample word.” Heather can now herself say, contemporary popular culture. Danielle Ow- with both grandmothers and Emily, “Don’t ens displayed eight Dickinson poems on eight Enticed by the spectrum of subjects covered put up my Thread and Needle.” vertical sheets framed with contrasting styles in her poems, I was inspired to study her more of scrapbooking. closely, to absorb the Brazilian reds and morn- Carola Bell had created art before but she had ing-sky blues of her poetry, and delve into her never written poetry. Inspired by Dickinson’s What follows is Nicci’s account of the experi- life and letters. I began with Susan, and thus emotional honesty, she created her own artist ence. accessed her passion and lifelong friendship

20 | EDIS Bulletin – a thirty-year love affair in ink. I looked up live with the space of a hedge between them relationship to literature. We came away en- her herbarium, which is scanned and available for thirty-some years. riched, discussing and informing each other to online. I scoured journals and websites look- the last. ing for things her hands created – the pasting Some of us put them to music, choosing from of a leaf with a hand-lettered label, the creas- a vast array of contemporary sounds to imag- My thirty-by-forty inch portrait of Emily es of her letters and her longhand script, the ine what a young punk rock Emily would as the young American flirt was inspired by hand-sewn bindings of her fascicles – these listen to, or how Henry might favor dark, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, Emily’s letters and things provided a view of her intimate life, alternative music and a smart vest. We pen poems, and Henry James’ “Daisy Miller,” as and I began to think of her as a friend, perhaps seemingly fantastical tales of time travel and well as by my history with bookmaking and someone I knew, and a fellow adventurer on poetical duress. In these imaginings there is a writing, and the presentations of my fellow the path of living and discovery. fundamental truth – we are inspired. students who spoke the session before I did, integrating the music of one student, and the And then I learned about her baking. In the flavor of our work, in the attention to sass of another’s interpretation. I thought of detail, one can find sensitivity to Emily’s line the passion deferred, and self-control the poet Emily’s recipes do not include oven instruc- or Henry’s mood. We interpret – filter these displayed in her life and poems, and again and tions, strict measurements, or mixing orders. works through ourselves as we understand again returned to her letters. I found Richard She provides a list of ingredients, and it’s them, as we understand their critics and possi- Wilbur’s essay “Sumptuous Destitution” in understood that one already knows how to bility, to create new works. We weave through which he writes of Emily, “her chief truthful- bake. Everything’s optional, and sometimes the scholarship, into ourselves, and come out ness lay in her insistence on discovering the different versions of the same recipe appear again with a stitched world of literary under- facts of her inner experience.” In this critic, I in letters, tailoring taste to a friend’s palate. standing, borrowing ancestral threads to tie found a spiritual fellow. My inner experience One evening, our graduate class indulged in these knots tight, binding our own lives to is ever evolving, changed a little by every- a sweet coconut cake recipe from letter 665, those we read. We see these works and writers thing I read – by research, by discussion. As I exploring Emily’s spiciest letters and love differently, and come to be friends with them. put brush and color to canvas, I thought about poems alongside another labor of her love – Rather than repeat excerpts of the works that these words, revisiting what I thought might food. In this way, we invited the poet into our have come before us, in the same dusty style, have been Emily’s experience – I translated world, but also took a step deeper into hers. we can take that Brazilian red and put it to my idea of her character into a portrait, her canvas next to what we imagine to be the blue passion to color and line, as if she were sitting In the classroom, students learn differently, Emily mentions so much, and bring her to life in the studio with me. These new ingredients express differently. Anyone who’s ever sat in again. We carry with us this thread of con- fleshed out the flavor, and imparted amore a classroom, let alone taught in one, knows versation, inherited from a shared American complex understanding of the text and poet. this about us. We’re distracted and overloaded history. The graduate classroom is the perfect beings, maddeningly curious about things; place to put it to the test, because the skills are This is the best gift we can give each other. sometimes those things aren’t covered in the there, and there are so many spices waiting to text. We follow our passions, and it is the be tried. Robert K. Wallace is Regents Professor of valuable professor who opens his or her door English at Northern Kentucky University. to allow us to delve into art, who trusts us to I see my world visually. I translate everything His interdisciplinary books include Jane Aus- absorb information, to immerse ourselves in through this filter, and I’ve been writing essays ten and Mozart, Melville and Turner, and the material so far that we’re able to generate for most of my life – argument, evidence, and Frank Stella’s Moby-Dick. His book on Jake our own pathways to understanding literature. extrapolation. Though I’m trained that way, I Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Moby-Dick op- Yes, we use the same building blocks on the find the art adds interpretation and translation, era is forthcoming from University of North journey, those pieces of information that es- and allows me to go to new places. When I Texas Press in Spring 2013. sayists do – we look at criticism, read through saw the line on our Dickinson and James syl- supplementary texts, enter into discourse via labus about a creative option for the final, I Nicci Mechler is an MA English candidate respected scholars, check out news articles, was elated. I figured the creative writers in the at Northern Kentucky University. Recent gather up books on 18th Century architecture, room might opt to do something fictional or publications include fiction in the anthology decorative arts, and interiors. We bake coco- poetic, but I had no idea that almost everyone Rapunzel’s Daughters, and poetry in The nut cakes from Emily’s recipes, rail against would opt for the creative approach. The qual- Pinch. Nicci is currently working on a series Henry’s long sentences, devise complicated ity of the thinking didn’t suffer from a lack of of prints and mixed media illustrations about revenge plots for Osmond, and imagine a training in art, and the class was fearless. We Emily Dickinson’s relationships, recipes, and world where Emily and Susan didn’t have to discovered things about ourselves and our poems.

November/December 2012 | 21 Clockwise from lower left: Heather Braley with Emily Dickinson quilt; Nicci Mechler with Susie’s Girl; detail, Susie’s Girl; detail, Carola Bell’s Only Safe in Ashes; Lauren Magee, Nicci Mechler, Carola Bell, and Heather Braley after presenting at Celebration event.

22 | EDIS Bulletin A Scrapbook of Images from Cleveland

November/December 2012 | 23 Facing Emily Dickinson By Ellen Beinhorn

FACING EMILY WHY DO THEY SHUT ME OUT OF HEAVEN?

THE SOUL HAS BANDAGED MOMENTS

THE FACE YOU CHOOSE TO MISS

24 | EDIS Bulletin eing a portrait artist and a lover of verse, I have long been game of interpreting words into countenances that would evoke Bdrawn to the magic of Emily Dickinson’s words. Her po- additional understanding. ems have continually conjured up faces and they have finally inspired me to do a series of portraits based upon phrases from Sometimes my brushes were silent, and I listened to her words her writings. and I learned. The faces began to evolve, revealing the com- plexities and details of the poems. Something unique was hap- Questions have long been with me as to what made this singu- pening. The tensions of good and evil, reality and dreams in lar person produce a well of thought which she was able to put humanity, became clear in the portraits, as if the poems had into words. Was it ambition? Challenge? Frustration? Was it literally spoken to the faces. because the given genius was just there? All artists feel a responsibility to their creativeness, and I like Given the context of her life it would appear that her creative- to believe that Dickinson, in command of her thoughts, must ness was the incontestable drive in all her poems that reveal a have known peace and serenity in her uniqueness and privacy. depth of universal understanding which is a marvel. She wrote She never knew that she was to enlarge lives of individuals who about what she felt and observed. accept the task of living life as completely as they are capable.

Perhaps the absence of others in Dickinson’s life enabled her I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to commu- to know herself. Dickinson’s thoughts partnered her life, as she nicate the greatness of Dickinson in my faces of her words. As translated them into astounding words. curator of a North Carolina art gallery, I was asked to speak to a senior fellowship group of the University of North Carolina at Did Dickinson see faces as she wrote? Her poems describe Appalachia. The subject was left to my discretion, providing a thoughts that are readily transcribed into portraits. There are perfect opportunity to launch “The Faces of Emily Dickinson.” quite a few quiet faces as you pass by such phrases as, “Why – do they shut me out of Heaven?” (Fr268) Here was to be an audience mature, and probably wise and open to receive something other than the blah-de-blah of current In her letters Dickinson herself sometimes used pictorial cut- fashion. As the presentation of chosen Emily Dickinson poems outs to help form mental pictures of her poems and words. In along with my portraits translating her words proceeded, the this poem, contained in a letter, she uses four illustrations to room quieted into self-absorption. give further meaning to her words: The landscape of faces in the audience was, in reality, her po- Life is but a Strife – ems. For Dickinson’s poems are men and women with their ex- T’is a bubble – periences in the inextricable circumstances of time, place, flesh T’is a dream – and blood. They are not history – they are of today – they are And man is but a little boat – everyman. Which paddles down the stream. (L33) When my offering closed, I was caught up in a fear I had gone In another, to Susan Gilbert, she draws a staff with music notes over their heads, but no such thing. One elderly man comment- and writes, ed, “I’m too full to speak.” Another said the portraits brought the poems to life, and another said, “Dickinson is never out of Dear Susie – I send step.” I decided to reinforce the concept into a book – Emily you a little air – and Me (Dancingfish Press 2008). The “Music of the Spheres.” They are represented above My portraits, begotten by the poems, hopefully depict thought as passing thro’ the sky. – between breakfast and supper – between life and death. As a (L134, lineation, Smith and Hart, Open Me Carefully) poem is a secret about a secret – a face reveals the secrets. My mission in transposing Dickinson’s mastery of poet- ic thought into portraits is to enlarge her audience. Faces of Educated at the University of Oxford in England, Ellen Beinhorn thought can draw people out and into the meaning of the poem’s is an artist and educator. Her paintings and sculptures range from words. portraits to wind blown steel forms for gardens. Beinhorn found- ed the Sculpture House & Gardens in the Carmel Highlands of When we read Dickinson’s words, they change us. My object in California before moving to Banner Elk, NC. She is the author of creating the faces of her poetry was to do the same. I selected Emily and Me and recently completed for publication her memoir phrases and poems to put into my sketchbook and began the with her poems and creative portraits.

November/December 2012 | 25 Dickinson and the Visual Arts

Series Editor, Maryanne Garbowsky The Little White House Project: “Dwell in Possibility”

hen Emily Dickinson first wrote “I slideshow based on a small white cardboard constructed of sustainable “formaldehyde- WDwell in Possibility,” she could not house named Emily” after the poet (Action free plywood panels” (Lederman). The hous- have imagined how her words would inspire a Art). He also recalls that he always had “a es were “laced throughout the downtown” of Deerfield Academy student or what he would desire to build and design houses,” something Amherst as well as at the Homestead, The Ev- do with them. What began with the seed – the that may have begun when his father “built a ergreens, and Sweetser Park. When Peter first words of her poem – blossomed into “The green house for me based on the Monopoly approached Jane Wald, the executive director Little White House Project: ‘Dwell in Possi- houses,” a favorite childhood game (Action of the Emily Dickinson Museum, about the blilty,’” thanks to the fertile imagination of a Art). project, she was struck with the young man's young Peter Krasznekewicz. vision and “the creative imagining of Emily In an interview, Peter states that “the houses Dickinson's poetry, and the words, words that As described in his personal website, the . . . mirror local barns in the area.” They “are are the building blocks of expression.” Using purpose of the Little White House Project, white" and "easy to set up and install.” He houses as a canvas for words, she explained, roughly 40 houses, 4’x7’x8’, installed first on planned them to act as “a canvas” for the po- allowed a viewer “to become a participant in the campus of Deerfield Academy and then, et's words, so that the quotations themselves the art” (Lederman). from May 12 to June 30, 2012, at the Emily became the “focal point” (Asakiyume). While Dickinson Museum, was threefold: he stenciled the words on the houses, he Peter, an enterprising and entreprenial young “spent a lot of time thinking intensely about man, was able to raise “over $50,000 in cash • Create artwork to reinvent and comple- a single word.” The individual word “makes and services to fund the project” (Asakiyume). ment the landscape of two historical sites; each panel unique” but at the same time the His nonprofit website, Action Art Inc.,- al • Showcase Emily Dickinson’s quotes and words can be put together in a new way by lowed him to get his project off the ground. share her profound view of the world; the viewer – almost as if the words are “new “In the initial stages of the project most people • Demonstrate green building materials phrases or thoughts,” (Asakiyume) were hesistant to give donations to a 15 year- and minimal waste using Forest Stew- old high school student,” but after Deerfield ardship Counsel (FSC) approved materi- For the construction of the houses, Peter hired Academy and the Emily Dickinson Museum als to build the small houses and then use local carpenters, a father and his two sons, to approved the exhibit and gave permission for the panels in the construction of a house work with him. The houses are simple in de- it to be shown on their grounds “donations in partnership with Pioneer Valley Habi- sign, requiring few cuts and panels. They were were easier to get” (Asakiyume). tat for Humanity. As difficult as it was to get- dona In the end, he hoped that “The tions, there were other obstacles to combination of these themes overcome. He not only shattered his [might create] an exhibit that in- collarbone and had two subsequent teracts with the surroundings and surgeries, there were other problems provides viewers with something when “300 sheets of the wrong wood” to enjoy and think about. The were delivered (Asakiyume), or when exhibits are built within the com- two weeks before the houses were to munity and then used to contrib- be set up on the Deerfield campus, ute permanently to the commu- the flooding from Hurricane Irene nity” (Action Art). forced the exhibit to be relocated (Weisstuch). Thus Dickinson's words Peter traces his “early exposure” “Dwell in Possibililty” took on more to Dickinson's poems back to his personal meaning: “I'm encouraging sister Allegra, a junior at Yale, people to think about the words . . . who helped with the project. and realize anything is possible no “When we were very young, Photos are from the entries on the installation in the Asakiyume Live- matter what gets in your way” (Asa- my sister Allegra and I created a journal, a wide-ranging blog on arts and ideas. kiyume).

26 | EDIS Bulletin Dickinson and the Visual Arts

Moreover, “over 600 1’ by 1’ panels have Jeffers and author John Steinbeck. He ad- been donated to schoolchildren and art- mires “people who get things done and aren't ists to paint on and eventually will be afraid to try new things,” people like the art- sold to raise money for local charities” ist Christo, whom he studied in the eighth (Asakiyume). Some of these panels will grade, as well as Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank be canvases for paintings based on Em- Gehry, Steve Jobs, and his own father (Asa- ily Dickinson's poems and will be shown kiyume). in coordination with “Emily's Rhapsody” as part of the 2012 Amherst Biennial in But for now, Peter still has another year of the fall (Emily Dickinson Museum). high school to complete. He has many years ahead to work on other creative ventures. He Peter notes in a personal interview that he will certainly keep Dickinson's words close hopes to encourage viewers to believe in as they continue to inspire him that “anything themselves and in their abilities, but also is possible” (Asakiyume). The poet herself to bring beauty into their lives “through would be proud. art and words.” The individual words stenciled on the houses become “more powerful and poignant,” creating “po- Works Cited etry from the poetry of Emily.” They will make people stop and think; they may Action Art, Inc. Web. 21 August 2012 see nature differently. Perhaps they will think about our society and its many con- Asakiyume.livejournal. Web. 22 June 2012 flicts, or they will become more aware of the environment and take better care of it. Emily Dickinson Museum. Web. May 2012 “By making the project green and creat- “Emily Dickinson Museum Installation being Sold Krasznekewicz crafting a little house. ing no waste,” Peter has tried to parallel to Benefit Habitat for Humanity.” GazetteNet. the poet's own appreciation for nature. Web. 21 August 2012. The “Little White Houses,” built for this exhibit are now on sale by the Pioneer Val- Peter’s future plans include working with Krasznekewicz, Peter. E-mail message to author. ley Habitat for Humanity for $250 each. The local communities as much as he can. “I 29 June 2012. money will be used by the organization “for want my projects to be good investments Lederman, Diane. “Amherst Showcases the Words of Emily Dickinson in Environmental Art Project.” the next Habitat home built in the Valley” for the donors as well as the communities The Republican. 12 May 2012. (GazetteNet). It is suggested that they may be involved” (Asakiyume). He has already been used as “garden storage sheds or as children’s approached by foundations in California to Weisstuch, Liza. “Homing in on Dickinson’s Po- playhouses” (GazetteNet). work with other writers like poet Robinson ems.” The Boston Globe 22 May 2012.

Continued from page 17 Harvard and Yale men who began dominating original documents or key people and thwart Dickinson scholarship by the 1950s. It’s too A former EDIS Scholar-in-Amherst, Aife cooperation. This appears to have been the bad. She had something unique to contribute. Murray is the author of Maid as Muse: case for Josephine Pollitt and played a role in How Servants Changed Emily Dickin- her holding back from publication her keen Materials of Josephine Pollitt (and her hus- son’s Life and Language. She has led and insightful articles as well as prematurely band) are archived at Amherst College’s public walking tours of Amherst from ending her career as a scholar in her own right. Frost Library. Harvard’s Houghton Library the Dickinson servants’ perspective and The “revolution” in Dickinson studies – led possesses some Pollitt correspondence in has created a mixed media installation by Harvard men – most notably Johnson, who their Bianchi Papers. Finally, the holdings of and public art for The Mead Museum’s was aided by Leyda – also helped push to the Brown’s John Hay Library contain additional Word as Object: Emily Dickinson and side and denigrate the contributions of early, Pollitt correspondence and several unpub- Contemporary Art. She collaborated with mostly women, biographers including Bi- lished papers in their Bianchi holdings includ- the Dickinson Museum’s house cleaners anchi, Pollitt, Taggard, and Bingham. Pollitt ing “A Swan Song” and “The Lovers of Em- and gardeners on the artists’ book, Art deferred to her husband’s research and to the ily Dickinson.” of Service.

November/December 2012 | 27 Poet to Poet

Continued from page 10 Hours, weeks, the futile saving of daylight. “Homeless at home,” you wrote. And yet. hurried care, in the hours following a death, to put out food And yet, to disappear enhances – for the new ghost, to appease its inevitable anger at such aban- Peeper canticles. Crickets. The last mourning rags donment . . . . Hungry ghosts, they are called. And the small tables heaped with gleaming colorful vegetables and steaming dangle on the rosehips. Cinnamon bits. chicken outside the mourning houses are not mere gestures of Frosted fence. Then winter, hospitable provision, but calculated stays against danger. Such brutal, voweled, but returning light, danger, nevertheless, and certainly such hunger, are what seri- ous writing, particularly poetry, honors. The strain and silence bringing my gypsy, despair in Dickinson’s best work suggest something not finally and per- dispelled. This year my blade’s fectly etched, but willfully incomplete, broken off – sometimes a yes among the stems. A new dog pulls violently. Her power is costly, and continuing, because it seems only partly visible, yet for all that believable to us, compelling back outside. Moon-globe streetlamps us forward, a curious machinery with its immediate, eternal make cul-de-sacs exotic. Insects ignite my leash arm, spins and hums” (Boruch, 34 – 35). fly. Abide. Unadjourned. And you ever by. * (Lisa Russ Spaar, forthcoming in Vanitas, Rough, Persea Outliving Emily Books, 2012) * When it is May, if May return. “Great Hungers feed themselves” (L652). – Emily Dickinson (10 December 1830 – 15 May 1886)

Knobby corms buried above the buried dog. Three. One for each child grown and gone away. Works Cited

“This is freedom!” you mimed with a key in air. Bishop, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose & Letters. Library And bulb noses poked emerald through secret black leaves of America, 2008. last March. Asphyxiation. Horrible dragging Boruch, Marianne. “Dickinson Descending” in Poetry’s Old Air. Ann of breath in and out before the chaired watchers, Arbor, U of Michigan, 1995. all privacy choked. Early April: Poet’s Narcissus above the dog’s grave. Don’t touch. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Poems and Prose. 1954: London and New York, Penguin, 1985. May advanced. Austin’s diary: “would not wake again Porter, David. “Introduction” to Dickinson: The Modern Idiom, Cam- this side. The day was awful.” bridge & London, Harvard, 1981. Summer stormed in, wild goddess, Valéry, Paul. “Poetry and Abstract Thought” in The Art of Poetry. stone wall toppled, shingles stripped off, Trans., D. Folliot, 1939: Princeton, 1989. electric stakes plunging. But rain brought the day-lilies for which you were “Lunatic.” Werner, Marta. Emily Dickinson’s Open Folios: Scenes of Reading, Surfaces of Writing. Ann Arbor, U of Michigan, 1995. My mother, crone in unmatched shoes on the wrong feet, cut a divot through the forehead of her paper doll. Ulysses S. Grant. Among Spaar’s publications are two recent collections of po- My father and I canned tomatoes, ten bushels. etry, Satin Cash (2008) and the forthcoming Vanitas, Rough Seeds in my hair and clothes for days. Fortnight later, (2012), both published by Persea Books, the edited volumes Ac- long bridge back from a week at the beach, quainted with the Night: Insomnia Poems and All that Mighty Heart: London Poems, and a collection of essays, The Hide- I can’t stop crying. Your Norcross, one of few and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry, due out from whom you did not run, had travelled away. from Drunken Boat Media in 2013.

28 | EDIS Bulletin Continued from page 13 she puts it in one poem. You realize she JD: They take their place as experiments understands different philosophies as dif- or attempts; they don’t stand for the rest MH: How does thinking about Dickinson ferent vocabularies, or different, limited of things that she’s thinking. in these ways complement or critique oth- resources. She appreciates them, she uses MH: Right, well, and maybe that’s prag- er approaches? them, but never commits in any essential matic also. JD: It’s a matter of supplementing them. way to any particular vocabulary. This JD: Exactly. One way to measure the impact of the makes it very hard for critics. Dickinson topic of Dickinson and philosophy is to was perfectly capable of reading the New The following poem by Melanie Hubbard look at the biographies. “Dickinson” has Testament in the morning, Isaac Watts on will appear in her forthcoming collection, We been largely constructed by the people mental philosophy in the afternoon, and a Have With Us Your Sky, from Subito Press. around her, the impact of others on her, Gothic novel later, and using vocabulary her relationships with Sue and other from all of them, simultaneously. So in figures in her family, her potential- lov that sense, she’s an extremely open-mind- ers and that kind of thing, so looking at ed and wide-open philosopher. A description of John Tawell, who mur- Dickinson and philosophy quite seriously dered his mistress in Slough in 1844, helps to reshape the conversations that MH: I agree with you, but I think that was wired ahead of him as, disguised exist already. It could encourage people your book has established, and if I’m not as a Quaker, he fled by rail to London. to follow Dickinson more philosophi- mistaken, I bet most of the essays in the The telegraph code at the time did not cally, to look more deeply into the texts collection would agree, that she’s anti- include the letter Q. – Carolyn Marvin that she read, to try to follow how she metaphysical and anti-foundationalist, read them, how she acquired the vocabu- you know? JD: Yes, I think we could definitely say lary. It will really change the way readers DRESSED LIKE A KWAKER understand the poems and how Dickin- that. The idea that philosophy reinforces Christian doctrine, which is exactly the son herself understood poems; and, in the You were five: a lie. message that was driven home at Am- economy of readers’ own mental exercis- You were ten. Have you ever lost es, the Dickinson poems have a chance to herst College in hundreds and hundreds of hours of lectures for students, she came to become something much more important a friend, slowly or suddenly? distrust that completely, I think that’s fair and significant, I think, than simply being You strive to spin a quarter testimony to biographical development or to say; and the idea of a strong metaphys- ics or the possibility that humans could other kinds of arguments. on its edge: fillet of light: a face develop a single God’s-eye perspective and a house inside each other. * * * on all human and non-human events, she came to see as almost totally incorrect. So MH: To what extent is Dickinson a consis- Mobled Queen, Mundo Lindo. to that extent she falls into a pragmatic tent philosopher? What a fabulous air you have about you. JD: I think there’s a very important sense philosophical tradition. in which she is a consistent philosopher, Bullets ricochet to the north. Divine MH: Yeah, I would probably push that and by that I mean, that she returns to a neater way, blast off in those glass certain kinds of inquiries, certain patterns way. And then, of course, to be contrary, I want to say, But there are moments of of thought, and certain leitmotifs; certain galoshes peeling mud. some kind of unaccountable bliss! But questions continue to bother her and in- Suck the spit from your teeth spire her throughout her whole life. Hav- they’re rare. JD: There are moments when she seems ing said that, there’s a sense in which she toward your tongue. In the dark, to commit to a sort of strong metaphysi- is not in the least a systematic philoso- we’ll identify you by that sound. pher or a committed, dogmatic philoso- cal or Christian metaphysical discourse, and if you take them by themselves, those pher of one kind or another. Philosophy, You cannot fail, you can only vary poems can be read into that tradition quite if you look at her poems, often gets rep- from yourself like a coelacanth. resented as a kind of unique, interesting easily. The trick, of course, is that they never stand alone, in the economy of all source of erudition, but ultimately one We have you in the nets. that doesn’t answer the questions that it her writing and all her thinking. itself provokes. “Philosophy don’t know,” MH: She doesn’t stay there, right.

November/December 2012 | 29 Teaching Dickinson

Continued from page 15 A piercing Comfort it affords But when I introduce Dickinson to stu- In passing Calvary – dents, I’m aware that they need something Dickinson’s law elsewhere of “sumptuous of the life first, if only to get it mostly out of destitution,” the idea that the transcendent To note the fashions – of the Cross – the way. I even start with the myths about is by necessity not to be attained. Once at- And how they’re mostly worn – her person, in the service of establishing tained, no longer transcendent. And any Still fascinated to presume the humanity behind the eccentric man- student who has lusted after an I-Pod for a That some – are like my own – (J561) ner. Yes, she sometimes spoke to people year and then taken it for granted two days from behind a door, but that was because after being thrillingly presented with one is We all have a cross to bear, she knows. she found each new one of us so startlingly included in that design without a subject. The language of cold analysis – measur- unique, because she saw into each person ing grief, noting the fashions of the Cross, and lacked whatever protections most of us This versatile, analogical quality of a poem, even being “fascinated to presume” – com- erect against the startling encounter with encompassing whatever subject you bring municates a red-hot pain no histrionic ex- individuality. “I never was with anyone to it, is what Dickinson must mean when, clamations could convey as effectively. who drained my nerve power so much,” in “I Dwell in Possibility/A fairer House The seemingly analytical language does her professional friend and editor of the than Prose – ,” she describes her “Occupa- not really imply a collected calm but its Atlantic Monthly Thomas Wentworth Hig- tion” as “The spreading wide my narrow opposite, a reaction of repressed agony. In ginson wrote of her to his wife after a short Hands / To gather Paradise – ” (J657). “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” visit (L342b). Dickinson’s distance was (J341), and in many other poems, Dick- thoughtful, then, too, for she presented an I know some teachers encourage their stu- inson’s persona is a wounded logician. intensity hard on her and on those she en- dents not to seek Dickinson herself in her But the logic matters too, for it makes her countered. Her nerve endings were as if on poetry, and I agree wholeheartedly, in the grief a version of everyone’s. This makes the surface of her skin, and this absence of superficial sense of seeking “real-life” being nice a rigorous and even fierce phi- defenses no doubt contributed to the great- clues. Dickinson clearly tells Higginson losophy of being. We are all “lonesome for ness of the poetry: “A thought went up my that her speaker is “an imagined person.” we know not what,” each in our individual mind today – ” (J701) like a physical crea- But someone did write these words, an es- “fashion.” ture. To express how a person can be mean- sential Dickinson. And so teaching Dickin- ingfully eccentric, strange but in a humane son requires keeping the eye on the “I,” the Dickinson’s healthy, large soul is why I cause – to get beyond a scorn for weirdness overall life experience and consciousness have always reacted angrily to the bio- – is to offer students something truly worth – the soul – expressed in the poems that graphical descriptions of her eccentricities. pondering. binds the poet and the reader. The Dickinson of the poetry is in one cru- cial sense the opposite of quirky, eccentric. If the words are about the poet’s “I,” they When I first read Dickinson, after the ini- She generalizes experience while particu- are about us too, and we shouldn’t make a tial compound of alarm and delight at a larizing it; the poetry simultaneously feels secret of it. Our students must understand new way of encountering language, I had intimately personal and general. Readers that they have a stake in this meaning and a revelation that is both startling and banal: find their own most particular experiences in this moment in the classroom. As we she’s really nice. Dickinson was, is, a love- in it while recognizing that this experience address the challenging complexities of ly person. Her fellow-feeling is implicit in extrapolates to a universal class. language and social context, we must not the poems and proven in the letters. She lose sight of literature as a primal aid to is kind beyond any norm, generously and Commentators extrapolate all kinds of sup- our experience. What follows won’t matter expertly empathic. Especially in consoling posed life events from faint evidence or enough if we do not begin with that. the bereaved, she assigns her enormous, else criticize her for apparently not having acute intelligence to the service of com- lived a life at all. But the poetry insists that The author of Emily Dickinson’s Po- fort. She does well at sharing joy but she what matters is not the event but how it etry (1975), Robert Weisbuch taught and does best at embracing pain. Real empathy makes a mark on the self. When she writes chaired the English Department for many requires confession; and when, in “I mea- “The Grieved are many – I am told – ,” she years at the University of Michigan before sure every Grief I meet,” Dickinson writes, continues, “There is the various Cause,” serving as President of the Woodrow Wil- “The grieved are many – I am told – ,” she suggesting that what matters is how grief son Fellowship Foundation, and subse- pretends to a distance and disinterest that or any other emotion gets experienced; the quently, as President of Drew University, she quickly undercuts: event, the cause, is irrelevant, narrowing. leaving the post in June 2012.

30 | EDIS Bulletin Emily Dickinson’s Secret Language: A New Website Devoted to the Work of Hans W. Luescher By Rolf Amsler and Margaret Freeman

esponding to an English reviewer who probing research could work out the symbol- Rclaimed that Dickinson’s poetry lacked meanings, their correlations . . . and the ways eroticism, Rebecca Patterson writes: “There of their articulation. is . . . no more erotic poetry in the English language. This is the secret of her drive, of its Hans devoted more than thirty years of his life febrile energy, of the inexplicable fascination to deciphering Dickinson’s secret language it has for many baffled readers.”1 Long before through the creation of a complex symbol sys- Patterson penned these words in 1951, Hans tem, long before the advent of concordances W. Leuscher, a Swiss emigrant to the United or computers. The result of Hans’s labors is a States, had not only independently discov- massive database which he was never able to ered the poetry’s erotic quality in the course publish in his lifetime. This database, among of his translating Dickinson’s poems into Ger- his many other prolific writings, he bequeathed man, but had painstakingly set out to provide to his relative, Rolf Amsler, in the hopes that evidence that would account for it, concluding Rolf would be able to make his findings avail- that Dickinson had created a double language, able to the world. at one level writing the masterpieces of poetry, and on another, using the poetry as her diary, This Rolf has now done in creating a web- describing, in lush detail, her erotic experienc- site, Emily Dickinson’s Secret Language es. Hans describes the problem of Dickinson’s (http://www.emily-dickinson.net), that con- enigmatic writing as follows: tains much, though not all, of the material on Dickinson that Hans created. (They do not as In spite of beautiful, easily translatable lan- "clouds," "wind," "water," "windowpane," yet include Hans’s translations of almost 400 guage . . . , the poems of Emily Dickinson are "fly," "spider," "birds," "bees," "butterflies," Dickinson poems into German, approximately very often obscure to the point of unintelligi- "pebble," "sea," "coast," "morning," "noon," 10,000 pages of early analyses, nor his many bility. An element of odd expressions and bi- "evening," "night," and again and again: other writings that include philosophical es- zarre poetic situations pervades them which "day," "day," "day"! The frequent repetition says, travel reports, and daybooks). Among tend to emerge from translation as senseless, of these words and several hundreds more these materials, one intriguing manuscript is even absurd statements. I began to conjec- gave rise to mental discomfort. Finally I described in the following account Hans gave ture that these poems might carry hidden could not get rid of an impression that a nim- of his initial encounter with Dickinson: esoteric freight which could elucidate their bus of symbolic double meanings hovered inner meaning. But how could one fathom around a great number of nouns and about I was attracted to Emily Dickinson’s poems such disguised communications? some verbs, adverbs and adjectives likewise. around 1944, at the beginning of a highly emotional experience of many years dura- [A] literal, word-for-word translation in And so, then, I began to prospect for possible tion, which found copious expression in a a just slightly elevated prose . . . brought a second meanings in her usage of such words. diary written in English. This experience, as deepened acquaintance with the work in its In doing so it became quite necessary to sub- well as the expression of it, has striking simi- totality, but little new enlightenment and no ject the personality and the life experience to larities with what must have been the Dick- solution. So, at long last, I asked, "what is conjectures about any and all possible and inson experience during the years 1859-64. happening here? what is the hidden secret? admissible human frailties. . . . In tracing I believe it gave me some special key to the Wonderingly I began to search out certain them, it also soon appeared that I had before inside understanding of the Dickinson expe- oddities . . . . There were above all groups me a word- and sense-labyrinth created by rience.2 of words throughout the work whose mean- an incredible gift for dissembling and sense ings would appear as abstract unrealities in for double meanings, a private language The decision to publish Hans’s database elec- one instance and as highly personified con- within the language so to say, in whose inter- tronically rather than trying to attempt an edited crete carriers of poetic action in another. To related sense-alignments, sense-deductions volume resulted from the realization that much mention but a few: "sun," "heaven," "earth," and sense-combinations only a tenaciously work needs to be done with the commentaries

November/December 2012 | 31 scattered throughout the corpus. These com- observation of events in which two persons mentaries include an historical construction of PARTIAL INDEX TO HANS’ participate and in which each “wins” or suc- Dickinson’s relationships with Samuel Bowles GERMAN TRANSLATIONS cumbs,” “must die” or “comes to life” and and Kate Scott Anthon, Hans’s descriptions both simultaneously with changing points of and evaluations of his methodology, identifi- 1. BAND view. cation and explanation of the symbol system, WEIB OHNE DAS ZEUGNIS as well as the poetic analyses themselves. We do not know what prompted Hans’s own Among these analyses are to be found what Der Jungferntod ordering of poems in the various packets he Hans called “Rosetta Stone” poems, those po- Der dunkle Freund created. Close research into both the two Ger- ems that are particularly instructive in guiding Die weisse Frau man volumes and Hans’s own packets may readers into the way Dickinson steered her po- Die vergessene Seele reveal chronological support for his historical etic images toward their erotic meanings.3 Komm langsam Eden construction of Dickinson’s experiences. Hans Dem Wunder zum Gleichnis himself was puzzled during the first stage of Presenting these materials electronically will his work by various word patterns and analy- 2. BAND enable researchers to follow particular strands ses that did not seem to fit the heterosexual of enquiry that Hans opened up in his work. DER GRILLE SANG encounters that literary critics and biographers For example, Hans believed that the chronol- assumed characterized Dickinson’s love rela- ogy of poems in the Johnson variorum edition Das Jahr im Jubelrund tionships. When he read Patterson’s thesis sug- needed to be adjusted. He based his conclusion Ich kann nicht mit dir leben gesting a lesbian relationship between Dickin- on the historical reconstruction he made in his Ein Flecken im entehrten Gras son and Kate Scott Anthon in The Riddle of analyses and commentaries of Dickinson’s Die Saat im Lebensfeld Emily Dickinson (1951), the remaining pieces meetings with Samuel Bowles and Kate Scott of the puzzle fell into place, and he meticu- Anthon. One might study whether Hans’s re- story of a long lost great love and to elucidate lously redid his earlier analyses to accommo- ordering corresponds with Franklin’s chronol- these to the reader, especially when these date the homoerotic into his symbol system. ogy based on different principles. In an unpub- poems are masked by a secret language. It lished essay, “A Riddle Person and Her Riddle not only assumes a faultless interpretation of 1Rebecca Patterson, Emily Dickinson’s Imagery. Ed- Work,” Hans comments on the difficulties of the secret messages – and how would this be ited, with an introduction, by Margaret H. Freeman chronologically ordering Dickinson’s poems: possible? – but also a good share of practical (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts, 1979), p. 30. psychological philosophy. I have endeavored to accommodate my in- 2From a letter to Thomas J. Wilson, Director of Har- sights as well as possible in the translation. A second difficulty was [that] . . . the poet- vard University Press, August 22, 1959. An intro- duction to Hans’s background that includes his own I aimed at moderate elucidation of the secret ess felt obliged by the constraints of the se- commentaries on his Dickinson work can be found contents, I avoided however to relate the ac- cret language to continuously use her past under “Critical Essays” on the website and would tual circulatory coins of the secret language experiences as analogon for the present. . . . serve as a good starting point for readers wishing to to their bare hidden sense. Every elucidation This mixing of composition can go so far as learn more about Hans and his discoveries. necessarily leads to a slight shift in the sense to have heterosexual meanings stand for ho- 3 Opening up the page for each symbol will give of the analogon and thus to blurring of image mosexual aspects and vice versa. [Likewise,] Hans’s brief definition, plus a list of poems contain- and effect of the outer poem. I attempted to two opposing syndromes, "Death and Dye- ing that symbol. Rolf and his webmaster, Andee leave both untouched as far as possible. ing [sic]" on one and "Life and being born" Link have provided “Research Options” for all pag- on the other hand, bear the apparent contra- es in the database. These enable the viewer to search Unfortunately I encountered huge problems diction that they are often interchanged in the according to 1) alphabetical or numerical order of poems, 2) the dates of Hans’s recorded entries, and when determining the new order. Per se it is secret sense, Death meaning Life and Life 3) Hans’s organization of poems into the packets a hazardous undertaking to attempt to extract standing for Death. This astonishing aspect he created, or Mabel Loomis Todd’s fascicle order from the piece meal of so many poems the is explained by the changing standpoints in from which Hans worked.

It is hoped that the materials provided in these databases will provide ample and varied sources for critical essays that can be posted on the site in order to provide a lively interactive exchange among Dickinsonians, whether general readers, students, or scholars. We also encourage licensed users to consider sponsoring and assisting in the program to add the rest of Hans’s work to the site. Although visitors to the site may access the dictionary of symbols and most other pages, Hans’s poem analyses are restricted to licensed users. However, the first twenty poem analyses listed on the “Poems” page are freely available for viewing to give readers a sense for Hans’s approach and methods. Registration information is provided on the “Home” page under “How to Access the Archives.” Individual users may purchase unlimited access to the entire website for an annual fee of $8.00. Multi-user licenses are available to institutions for an annual fee of $350. Revenue from the website will go to the HANS W. LUESCHER MEMORIAL FOUNDATION whose aim is to create a complete electronic archive of all Hans’s materials. We very much hope that you will visit Emily Dickinson’s Secret Language at www.emily-dickinson.net and enjoy browsing through Hans’s remarkable research into this remarkable poet.

32 | EDIS Bulletin By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor

Brown, Julie ing are included in this lucid, well researched Henderson’s well researched, clearly written Writers on the Spectrum: How Autism and study. work is rich with information and includes an Asperger Syndrome Have Influenced Liter- afterword on the modern genres of grief, 11 ary Writing. black and white illustrations, a 21-page bibli- Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publish- Henderson, Desirée ography, and an index. ing, 2010. 236 pp. Paper, ISBN 1-84310-913- Grief and Genre in American Literature, 6, $55.95. 1790-1870. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. 189 pp. Hoberman, Mary Ann, ed. Illustrated by Longtime writing instructor and mother of an Cloth, ISBN 1-4094-2086-6, $99.95. Michael Emberley autistic child, Brown studies “the impact that Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart. Asperger's Syndrome has on literary writ- Focusing on eighteenth- and nineteenth-cen- New York: Little, Brown, 2012. 144 pp. ing.” Finding common symptoms of autism tury American representations of death and 11.25 x 8.75 x .625 inches. Cloth, 0-316- and Asperger's Syndrome in a number of au- mourning in literature, oratory, and culture, 12947-3, $19.99. thors, she provides a chapter each on Hans Henderson examines how authors engaged Christian Anderson, Henry David Thoreau, with conventional responses to loss and grief Drawing from 88 classic and contemporary Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson (95- by challenging traditional modes, adapting, poets, Hoberman selects 123 poems – short 116), Lewis Carroll, William Butler Yeats, revising, and innovating. Following an in- and long, simple and complex, humorous and Sherwood Anderson, and Opal Whitely. troduction are five chapters: “The Imperfect serious – chosen “because they are memo- Brown explains that autism presents itself as Dead: Funeral Sermons, Fallen Women, and rable,” both “easy to remember and worth a spectrum of developmental disorders from the Early American Novel,” “American El- remembering.” Intended for children and severe to very mild. At the milder end of the egy: William Apess and National Mourning,” illustrated with Emberley's lively, often hu- spectrum, those with Asperger's Syndrome “Geographies of Loss: Frederick Douglass morous, color illustrations, this large format “exhibit high intelligence levels.” Brown and the Slave Cemetery,” “Lincoln’s Unrest: book will delight anyone young at heart and says, Dickinson was an original genius who Walt Whitman and the Civil War Cemetery,” will serve as a resource for teachers want- exhibited “both the impairments and gifts and “Mourning Books: The Conduct Lit- ing to revive memorization and recitation of typical of those with Asperger's Syndrome.” erature of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and Emily poetry. Hoberman introduces each of seven Among her impairments were sensory is- Dickinson” (127-57). Henderson argues that sections: “The Short of It,” “One and All,” sues, poor handwriting, and problems with Dickinson suspended “her usual descrip- Beautiful Beasts,” “Delicious Dishes,” “It's boundaries between herself and others; how- tive methodology in favor of prescriptive About Time,” “Happiness Is,” “Weather and ever her autism enabled her intense focus on discourse about what is proper, appropriate, Seasons,” “Sad and Sorrowful,” “Strange and poetry and influenced it in four ways: “an au- or necessary after death.” Providing close Mysterious,” “Poems from Storybooks,” and tistic disregard of audience; a quirky use of readings of Fr 472, 647, 657, and 1037, she “The Long of It.” She includes Dickinson’s language that wrestled against conventions; says that her analysis of Dickinson’s conduct “A word is dead” (J1212) and “I'm nobody! a reliance on metaphor and symbol; and the poems “require[s] a rethinking of the lyric Who are you?” (J288). Among a dozen of exploration of themes and ideas related to au- genre” and “provides insight into the func- Hoberman’s own poems is “A Poem for the tism.” Brown supports her cogent study with tion of her manuscript books or fascicles.” Reader”: “You’re on an adventure / About analysis of Fr 242, 340, 512, 563, 706, 867, Dickinson’s variants are notable because they to start, / You’re going to learn / Some po- 1286, 1570, and references to other poems “undercut the authoritarian stance of her con- ems by heart! / Short ones, and long ones, / and letters. She concludes, Dickinson “is an duct poems, acting as a release to the tension Old ones and new, / Happy ones, sad ones, / important part of autistic history and culture, . . . between each poem’s directions about Some silly ones, too. / You’ll pick out your and her poetry has much to teach us about proper mourning behaviour and her pessi- favorites / From those that you’ve read / And the ‘complex corridors of the mind’ and ‘the mism about its efficacy. Whereas the poems invite them to live in / The house in your secret chambers of the human heart.’” An establish themselves as figures of authority, head. / This house is called Memory, / Eve- introduction, works cited, and further read- the variants return the power to the reader.” rone knows. . . .” She concludes, “And your

The Bulletin welcomes notices of all Dickinson-related books, including those published outside the U.S. Send information to Barbara Kelly, 444 Washington Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94301, U.S.A. Email: [email protected]

November/December 2012 | 33 poems will live with you / As long as you Described as “part cultural reflection, part rative that Walsh suggested in his 1971 The live.” Included are practical suggestions for lyrical criticism, part idiosyncratic literary Hidden Life of Emily Dickinson. The opening memorizing poetry, a list of the poets, and an history,” Thompson’s five essays focus on chapter of his current book imagines a meet- index of first lines. Hoberman’s enthusiasm William Bradford’s retrospective history, Of ing between Austin Dickinson and black- for learning poetry by heart is contagious. Plymouth Plantation; Melville’s short story, mailer Gardner Fuller, from whom Austin, “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall to avoid a scandal, bought more than twenty Street”; Whitman’s Civil War journal, Speci- “intimate” letters of “rosy-romance” written Holmes, Janet man Days; Dickinson’s Letters; and Michael by Emily Dickinson to Lord. Austin authenti- The MS of M Y Kin. Herr’s Viet Nam War memoir, Dispatches. cates the letters using a draft letter in his pos- Exeter, U.K.: Shearsman Books, 2009. 169 Thompson sees the fate of American writing session that matched a fair copy in Gardner's pp. Paper, 1-84861-035-4, $19.00. manifested in its “fraught relationship” with possession. According to Walsh, Austin and “a culture of violence and war,” the writ- sister Vinnie destroyed all the pre-1878 let- The curious title of Holmes’s book of po- ing often met with individual or communal ters and scissored many of those written after ems comes from erasing selected letters silence. He reflects on “the aspirations that Mrs. Lord’s death in 1877. Walsh discusses from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, thus key American writers have had for their writ- Dickinson’s three Master Letters and con- creating The MS of M Y Kin. Inspired by ing, the work they want it to do in a society nects them to seventeen poems of “frustrated Dickinson’s “If it had no pencil, / Would it hostile – or indifferent – to artistic expres- yearning,” seven of which lead to Lord: J47, try mine --” (Fr184), Holmes erases words sion, and the stylistic inventiveness it dis- 196, 217, 1237, 1290, 1507, and 1514. He from Dickinson’s Civil War period poems of plays in facing a culture marked by violence, says that the Dickinson-Lord relationship 1861 and 1862 and leaves the remnant words war, death, and materialism.” Amidst these began no later than 1857 and intensified with in place to comment on current Middle East male activists, Dickinson may seem oddly meetings during Dickinson’s 1864-65 visits controversies, hoping readers will return to placed; however, in “The Treason of an Ac- to Boston, followed by frequent correspon- Dickinson’s originals and notice their reso- cent: Emily Dickinson’s Letters” (78-103), dence until Mrs. Lord’s death. Walsh traces nance with the erasure poems. She identifies Thompson explores Dickinson’s Master Let- and documents the Dickinson-Lord relation- each of her 87 poems by the year the original ters, finding both fanatical love, “desire that ship “from its unexpected start to its mourn- poem was written, its order in this book, and runs off the page,” and “the pain of separa- ful conclusion.” Inviting readers to make up the Franklin numbers in parentheses. Thus, tion . . . an agony of anticipation: a passion their own minds about the Dickinson-Lord 1861.1 (185-186): “at / Sunrise – a Flag / for an indivisible being that borders on the relationship, he identifies his speculations How short it takes to make / Victory / hear violent.” A poet and professor, Thomp- and supports his narrative with 18 black and them / bustle / fumble at Prayer ‒ / com- son’s writing style has been compared with white illustrations; 81 pages containing three ing / before / the / country.” And 1861.12 D. H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic Ameri- appendices, notes and sources; an index of (247): “It matters / that the oil / is gone.” can Literature and Susan Howe’s My Emily 40 poems; a bibliography; and a general in- The erasures create white spaces that cause Dickinson. His essays are said to “push the dex. the words to float isolated from one another boundaries of the essay form.” Howe says, on the page. Critic Susan M. Schultz says the book’s “passionately unsettling reading that Holmes’s erasure “dramatically frees of American literary history is both an act of instances of prophecy, voices from 1861‒62 exorcism and an elegy.” Works cited are in- Book Notes rediscovered in contemporary political dis- cluded in this book for serious readers. Now available in paperback edition: course. It seems that the best of the embeds in Iraq was Emily Dickinson; read her re- Pollak, Vivian R., ed. ports from the (af)front here.” Erasure poetry Walsh, John Evangelist A Poet’s Parents: The Courtship Letters is not new, but Holmes’s provocative, ex- Emily Dickinson in Love: The Case for Otis of Emily Norcross and Edward Dickin- perimental project may interest the Dickin- Lord. son, University of North Carolina Press, son community and provide writing teachers New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University $45.00. with a novel classroom exercise. Press, 2012. 201 pp. Cloth, ISBN 0-8135- 5275-0, $25.00. Vendler, Helen Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commen- Thompson, Jon Walsh’s argument that Otis Lord was the in- taries, Belnap Press/Harvard University After Paradise: Essays on the Fate of tended recipient of Emily Dickinson’s Mas- Press, $19.95. American Writing. ter Letters (1858-61) and her primary love Exeter, U.K.: Shearsman Books, 2009. 134 interest long before the death of his wife “ex- A list of recent journal articles will appear pp. Paper, ISBN 1-84861-041-5, $17.00. pands, refines . . . and strengthens” the nar- in the next issue.

34 | EDIS Bulletin Book Reviews A “postscript” by artist Jen Bervin included Whether the envelope poems represent Dick- within the Guide reminds that Dickinson de- inson’s workshop in undestroyed form or Bervin, Jen, and Marta Werner fined “nothing” as “the force that renovates/ whether, as Werner believes, this is an en- The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s the world - .” The artist speaks of the poet’s tirely new, freed phase of the poet’s late life, Envelope-Poems. eye for compositional space in creating on en- simply cannot be known. What the scholar New York: Granary Books, 2012. 180 pp. velope scraps “a visual composition” in which cares about is the poet’s mind – what she be- Boxed portfolio, $3,500. thought and form manipulate each other. Ever lieved and spent her life and artistic powers attracted by fragments (her grandmother’s trying to express. For Dickinson, it was the Reviewed by Polly Longsworth family once ran a scrap yard) Bervin notes as tremendousness of life, suggests Werner, and well the influence of the “wafer thin” envelope the power to appreciate it all – to suffer and The Gorgeous Nothings is both a stunning manuscripts, which seem to her as if Dickin- feel pain and deprivation yet understand it, to artist book and an intriguing work of textual son was “reading light.” Bervin’s earlier artist withstand it, and in expressing it help others scholarship devoted to the late inscriptions book, The Dickinson Composites, focused on do the same. Emily Dickinson set swiftly onto scraps of a series of large-scale quilts she had created as envelope interiors she kept close at hand to an abstract display of the poet’s idiosyncratic All Dickinson scholars, especially those un- enable jotting her thoughts as quickly as they punctuation and manuscript markings. able to hold an original manuscript in her\ occurred. his hand, will want to see this glowing work. The Guide concludes with a description by Prohibitively expensive for most, it’s fortu- A limited edition of 50, The Gorgeous Noth- the publisher (Granary Books is a press that nate that institutions across the country are ac- ings is a boxed portfolio of some fifteen 11" x produces works exploring the intersection of quiring it – among them Amherst and Smith 14" sheets portraying high resolution, double- word, image, and page) of the papers, print Colleges; Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Em- sided color manuscript facsimiles of forty- forms, and considered choices of replicated ory, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale seven Dickinson poems or poem fragments images selected by and with the artist to cre- Universities; the Library of Congress and that the poet penciled on used envelopes slit ate the portfolio. the New York Public Library. The work will open for scrap paper. These are assembled by be exhibited at the 2013 EDIS International artist Jan Bervin to display the addressed and In her remarkable 1995 book of textual analy- Conference at the University of Maryland, inscribed sides as verso and recto, together sis, Emily Dickinson’s Open Folios, Marta and during the 2014 EDIS annual meeting in with smaller visual transcriptions of the poet’s Werner argued persuasively that we consider Amherst it will be displayed in the Amherst words. Accompanying the artist’s sheets is a Dickinson’s fragments and scraps as signals College Archives. three-part essay, “Itineraries of Escape: Em- of her working mind – as close to the poet’s ily Dickinson’s Envelope-Poems” by Dickin- creative process as we can get. Werner’s lyri- Polly Longsworth is a Dickinson biographer son textual scholar Marta Werner. The essay, cal essay within The Gorgeous Nothings pur- and member of the Board of the Emily Dick- bound fascicle-like in blue, provides contex- sues her meaning in three segments. The first inson Museum. tual analysis for the assemblage and holds nu- focuses on Dickinson’s unsent last letter draft merous tipped-in poem replicas that illustrate to Helen Hunt Jackson, the above-mentioned the author’s sensitive observations. A range of envelope prose fragment A821, “Clogged Kearns, Michael. Writing for the Street, beautiful papers incorporated into the work only with music like the wheels of Birds,” of Writing in the Garret: Melville, Dickinson, alerts the reader to the beauty of the undertak- which the phrase “Afternoon and the West and Private Publication. ing. and the gorgeous nothings” is a part. Tipped in Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University is the replica, suggesting a bird and its wing, Press, 2010. xii, 171 pp. Cloth, ISBN 978-0- The work comes wrapped in a facsimile of to demonstrate Werner’s belief, which she 8142-1140-3. $45.95. prose fragment A821/821a (it contains the goes on to explore in the next part of the es- source for the title) and includes a comprehen- say, in the strong bond between text and carri- Reviewed by David Garnes sive bibliographic Guide that elucidates the er. Her point is the “astonishing recklessness” mechanics of the work. Artistic in itself, the with which the poet’s mind worked in her late Except for their place in the American literary Guide’s index orders the forty-seven penciled years. “The whir of the envelopes is part of the pantheon and the approximate concurrence scraps according to form (shape), and several message they are sending” she writes in the of their dates, Emily Dickinson and Herman other criteria, and includes a directory with essay’s final segment, her contention being Melville may seem an unlikely pairing as the notes and publication data for each poem. All that the envelope poems form a “scatterfield,” subjects of a book-length study of authorship. but one of the envelope poems are from the a new way in which this poet released or liber- Michael Kearns, however, offers a penetrat- Dickinson Collection at Amherst College. ated her thoughts into the world. ing analysis of the ways in which these two

November/December 2012 | 35 giants of nineteenth-century literature navi- Kearns is also meticulous and generous in frail, timid, nosegay-carrying spinster of Am- gated, often in strikingly similar ways, the citing a wide variety of Dickinson and Mel- herst recedes as its capital – social, economic, turbulent, oftentimes solitary, waters of their ville scholars, ranging from Leyda, Whicher and cultural – loses currency. respective literary careers. and Sewall to more recent criticism by writ- ers such as Jonnie Guerra, Domhnall Mitch- Postscript: As I submit this review, the eagerly Writing for the Street, Writing in the Garret ell, Martha Nell Smith, Alfred Habegger, and awaited verdict concerning the newly surfaced consists of five cogent, intellectually demand- Hershel Parker, among many others. Progres- Dickinson / Kate Scott Turner daguerreotype ing chapters dealing equally with Dickinson sively drawn in and increasingly convinced is still out (see cover image). Whatever the and Melville on such topics as publishing by by Kearns’s arguments, I frequently found outcome, it is clear, to paraphrase Kearns’s manuscript, author ownership, the physical myself copying citations of particular articles words, that “Dickinson as cultural icon has process of writing, the “writing” self vs. the and books for future perusal. come to be an ‘object of desire’ within popular “biographical” self, marketing the image of culture.” One wonders how Dickinson would the author, and the posthumous careers of each As its subtitle – Melville, Dickinson, and Pri- react to such zealous attention. As the poet writer from the perspective of popular culture. vate Publication – indicates, Writing for the further wrote in her refusal to Higginson’s Street concerns itself mainly with avenues request for a likeness, “I . . . am small, like Kearns, Professor of English at the Univer- through which the two writers disseminated the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chest- sity of Southern Indiana and former Bulle- their work. Interspersed among Kearns’s the- nut bur – and my eyes, like the Sherry in the tin Editor and member of the EDIS Board, oretical arguments, however, are fascinating Glass, that the Guest leaves – Would this do begins with a concise yet detailed review of facts and anecdotes on any number of eclectic just as well?” the introduction of the daguerreotype into the topics: Melville’s early sales figures; the tight United States in 1840. Interestingly, both Mel- rein by Harvard over the years on Dickinson David Garnes is the author of three books. A ville and Dickinson denied requests for their manuscripts held by the university; references former English teacher and academic librari- photographic likenesses, he to an editor of a to Helen Hunt Jackson and her attention to an, he works at the Emily Dickinson Museum, magazine, Dickinson famously to Thomas her own market value (she said she “wrote for where he has been guide, trainer, workshop Wentworth Higginson (“Could you believe love but printed for money”); and Melville’s facilitator, and house manager. me ‒ without? I had no portrait, now . . . ”). vehement requests – sometimes honored, more often not – that he not be identified as Kearns goes on to develop his thesis that the author of Omoo and Typee on the covers Melville’s and Dickinson’s refusal indicates or title pages of subsequent published works. Miller, Cristanne. Reading in Time: Emily “distaste for the marketing of art and artists, Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century. especially marketing by ‘mug.’” Additionally, Writing for the Street, Writing in the Garret Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, both preferred private or limited publication is beautifully designed, inside and out. Hand- 2012. xi, 279 pp. Paper, ISBN 978-1-55849- (“the garret”) to mass readership (“the street”) written cover and chapter titles and 11 care- 951-5, $28.95. – Dickinson, in her more advantageous eco- fully selected illustrations enhance Kearns’s nomic circumstances, from the start and Mel- textual comments concerning the choices Reviewed by Margaret H. Freeman ville, gradually, as his economic capital began writers, editors, and publishers make in terms to diminish in the years following the publi- of form and content. The stunning cover de- Over her long and intimate association with cation of his commercially successful South picts a facsimile proof-sheet of the iconic Emily Dickinson’s poetry and Dickinson Seas novels. Dickinson daguerreotype and an etching of scholarship, Cristanne Miller in her latest the Eaton portrait of Melville superimposed publication, Reading in Time: Emily Dickin- In discussing the inclinations, tensions, and on a sepia-hued photograph of a dimly lit, son in the Nineteenth Century, has taken up consequences inherent in Dickson’s and Mel- brick-paved alley (the “street,” but a narrow questions that are, in her words, “essentially ville’s publication choices, Kearns refers ex- one) . unanswerable.” With a focus on Dickinson’s tensively to the work of Pierre Bourdieu, the writing up to and including the Civil War renowned twentieth-century social scientist. It For students of Dickinson, Kearns’s book is years, Miller documents her findings of what is Bourdieu’s conceptual theory of “capital” perhaps most significant for its contribution to counts as “reasonable evidence” for Dickin- as it relates to society, culture, and econom- the increasing recognition of the poet as a self- son’s composition strategies, circulation and ics that provides the framework for Kearns’s identified writer who made conscious, delib- retention of poems, and choice not to publish, study of the capital/resources Dickinson and erate, and sometimes unorthodox choices as placing Dickinson’s poetic practices within Melville used (or rejected) during their writ- to how, when, and where she would circulate her nineteenth century milieu. This includes ing careers. her work. The earlier marketed image of the contemporary ideas about lyric genre, ex-

36 | EDIS Bulletin perimentation with metrical forms by other That Dickinson’s poems are predominate- especially in reports of statements made by nineteenth century poets, oscillation between ly oral is one of Miller’s major arguments others. Nevertheless, her study provides new oral and written poetry, fascination with the and forms the theme of her fourth chapter approaches to many still-unanswered ques- Oriental and the exotic, and the effect of the on “Spoken Poetry and the Written Poem.” tions and will doubtless provoke further lively Civil War on poets of the period. As a final Here, Miller’s innovation is to introduce exchange among Dickinson scholars. coda, Miller uses evidence and conclusions the idea of the poetic line, described in a from these various explorations to revisit the footnote as a “scripted variation of metrical Margaret H. Freeman, founding president of question of Dickinson’s attitudes toward and lines, such that a split metrical line consti- the Emily Dickinson International Society and decisions about publication. tutes two poetic lines, or a combination of professor emeritus at Los Angeles Valley Col- two metrical lines in a single poetic line” (p. lege, is currently co-director of the Myrifield The first chapter, “Reading in Dickinson’s 232, n. 33). Since this constitutes a signifi- Institute for Cognition and the Arts, located in Time,” lays out one of Miller’s major ob- cant element in the way she perceives run- Heath, Massachusetts. jectives: to “point toward the correction of on lines, it would have been more appropri- some assumptions and the rethinking of some ate to spell this out clearly in the text itself. scholarly hypotheses about Dickinson’s aes- Similarly, it would have been more helpful Smith, Jadwiga, and Anna Kapusta. Writ- thetic and practices” (p. 2). Her methodology to this reader if Miller had introduced and ing Life: Suffering as a Poetic Strategy of comprises detailed examination of the books, explained her unorthodox scansion system Emily Dickinson. magazines, and newspapers Dickinson read, when discussing certain metrical patterns, Cracow, Poland: Jagiellonian University the metrical characteristics of her poems both rather than demoting it to a footnote. Press, 2011. 92 pages. Pdf. Kindle Edition, before and after 1865, the poetic practices $12.00. of other nineteenth-century writers, and the The chapters, “Becoming a Poet in ‘turbaned contemporary social, cultural, and political seas’” and “Reading and Writing the Civil Reviewed by Magdalena Zapedowska environment prior to the Civil War. Miller’s War,” show, respectively, how Dickinson strategy is one of elimination: rather than shared nineteenth-century interest in and ob- In their short book, Writing Life: Suffering as providing definitive answers to issues raised session with Orientalism, and the nature of a Poetic Strategy of Emily Dickinson, the Pol- in Dickinson scholarship, she refutes several Dickinson’s engagement with the Civil War. ish scholars Jadwiga Smith and Anna Kapusta speculative assumptions and hypotheses by discuss Dickinson’s life and work in terms of applying rigorous analysis to documentary In “Coda: Portrait of a Non-Publishing Poet,” Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytical theory of evidence. Miller addresses the vexing question of pub- the depressive subject. Describing the poet lication and presents a more complex picture. as a recluse who made her turbulent inner life Chapter 2, “Lyric Strains,” argues that schol- Rather than ask why Dickinson did not pub- the subject matter of her poetry, the authors ars tend to “retroproject” modern views of lish, Miller asks, why would she? Dickinson treat Dickinson’s writings as symptoms of her the romantic/post-romantic lyric genre onto didn’t need the fortune (to make money) psychological states and compensation for her nineteenth-century norms. In contrast, Miller and didn’t want the fame (to draw attention personal unhappiness. In doing so, they draw shows how the poet built on the lyrical prac- to herself). In this context, we see rather that extensively on John Cody’s controversial psy- tices of contemporary poets. Close analysis Dickinson hesitated, on several occasions chobiography After Great Pain (1971) and on of early reviews reveals that, contrary to re- tentatively exploring the idea before draw- David Porter’s argument, in Dickinson: The ceived opinion, most were laudatory. ing back. Miller’s statistical documentation Modern Idiom (1981), that Dickinson’s poetry of the numbers of poems Dickinson kept and lacks clarity and control. Chapter 3, “Hymn, the ‘Ballad Wild,’ and the number she circulated but did not keep, Free Verse,” examines the metrical forms of plus Dickinson’s awareness of the publish- The book is divided into two parts, one de- ballads and hymns that appeared in popular ing mores of her time which gave printers and voted to suffering as a theme, the other to suf- poetry of her day and which Dickinson her- publishers greater control to freely reprint and fering as a strategy of language and composi- self employed with incomparable skill. Not- adapt original work, provide a different pic- tional practice. Following Kristeva’s idea that ing Dickinson’s familiarity with free verse ture of the poet’s motivations which, Miller artistic creation results from mourning for the through the markings of appropriate passages believes, focused more on immortal recogni- irrecoverable loss of union with the maternal in her readings, Miller argues that the poet’s tion than immediate fame. body, Smith and Kapusta argue that Dickin- experiments in writing poems with no consis- son’s creativity was stimulated by various tent rhythmic patterns sprang from the rhyth- Miller’s admission that she wrote the book forms of biographical deprivation, from the mic units of stanzaic forms that Dickinson quickly is belied by the 54 pages of exten- lack of maternal love to the lack of physi- heard as “[t]unes in her head” (p. 78). sive notes but explains inaccuracies I found, cal and mental health. Dickinson’s poetry,

November/December 2012 | 37 they claim, oscillates between the desire for flow of speech. Smith and Kapusta identify a aspects of Kristeva’s theory, this approach union with the mother, which underlies the range of “clinical symptoms” (59) in Dick- does not leave much room for nuanced inter- depressive stance, and the resolve to become inson’s poetic language, presenting the idio- pretation. I would like to see extended close separated from the mother, which motivates syncrasies of Dickinson’s style as depressive readings of poems that show the interplay of artistic expression. It is the desire for separa- characteristics. These analyses constitute the the thematic, stylistic, and formal elements tion that compels Dickinson to transform the most controversial aspect of the book, and Smith and Kapusta discuss separately. The various forms of lack into their empowering few readers will agree with the view of Dick- argument would also be richer if it engaged equivalents. Thus, the lack of love prompts inson as overpowered by emotion and unable the large body of scholarship on Dickinson’s the poet to reject marriage as a form of pa- to control her own creativity. The final sec- use of personae and her immersion in nine- triarchal oppression; the “lack of God” leads tion, however, focuses on Dickinson’s control teenth-century popular culture, especially the her to develop a new spirituality focused on over suffering through its formal representa- sentimental discourse of female pain. While nature and friendship; and the “lack of health” tion in poetry. Drawing on Kristeva’s discus- their readings of individual poems rely on a leads to a focus on immortality. While Smith sion of painterly representation of melancho- variety of critical sources, it is surprising that and Kapusta’s discussion of the “empower- lia, Smith and Kapusta propose that suffering the authors do not acknowledge the Polish ing side of suffering” usefully emphasizes becomes for Dickinson “a form of poetic scholar Agnieszka Salska, whose work on Dickinson’s agency, the suggested corre- expression” (81), realized through such tech- Dickinson’s elegies directly pertains to the spondence between forms of lack and forms niques as minimalism of language and form, subject of loss. Nonetheless, the main value of empowerment will strike some readers as irony as an expression of defiance, or realistic of Smith and Kapusta’s book lies in bringing too categorical, leaving them to wonder how representation of death. They conclude that Kristeva and Dickinson into dialogue, and the authors would account for the emotional Dickinson “managed to gain control over her readers interested in psychological studies of complexity of poems like “Because I could ovepowering emotions and use them success- poetry or studies of literature and illness will not stop for Death” or “The Soul selects her fully as the subject matter of her poetry” (80). be intrigued by this interpretation of Dickin- own Society.” son’s writings. Readers may object to Smith and Kapusta’s Part two develops the claim that Dickinson’s psychological approach not only because it Magdalena Zapedowska works at the Writ- poetry, like the speech of depressive persons, perpetuates the negative image of Dickinson ing Center at Amherst College. Before mov- is dominated by what Kristeva calls the semi- as isolated, lonely, and oppressed, but also be- ing to the United States in 2008, she was a otic dimension of language. For Kristeva, the cause it rarely distinguishes between the poet faculty member in American Literature at semiotic represents the bodily instincts and and the speaker of the poems, instead view- Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Po- mysterious maternal energies that manifest ing them as direct expressions of Dickinson’s land. Her most recent article, "Dickinson's themselves through rhythm, intonation, allit- own emotional struggles. Combined with the Delight," appeared in the Spring 2012 Emily eration, and word-play, disrupting the logical method of using poems to illustrate various Dickinson Journal.

A Christmas Offer for EDIS Members

Buy the CD-Book “Emily and I” by Sofie Livebrant for 25 USD

The first 100 buyers also get a free gift – a handmade Emily-quotation-bookmark!

Order at http://sofielivebrant.com Click on “Emily Dickinson Society Members” Enter EDIS membership number

38 | EDIS Bulletin Members’ News

Meet the New Members of the EDIS Board

Páraic Finnerty

áraic Finnerty was elected to fill a vacant seat on Pthe EDIS Board for a one-year, renewable term. A native of Ireland and, since 2004, a lecturer in Eng- lish and American literature at the University of Ports- mouth, Finnerty is the author of Emily Dickinson’s Shakespeare (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), in which he examines Shakespeare’s reception in nineteenth-century America and locates Dickinson’s allusions to his writings in this context.

He is currently working on his next book, “Dickinson and her British Contemporaries,” in which he explores connections between Dickinson’s writings and the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Brown- ing, Alfred Tennyson, the Brontës, and George Eliot. The book is scheduled to be published in early 2014 by Edinburgh University Press as part of its Studies in Transatlantic Literatures series.

Finnerty has been a member of the EDIS since 1998 and has given papers at its international conferences at Mount Holyoke, Trondheim, and Oxford. In 2002, he was the first recipient of the EDIS Scholar in Amherst Award; and in 2004 he received a Copeland Fellow- ship from Amherst College. In May 2004, he gave a talk entitled “’Stratford on Avon – accept us all’: Emily Dickinson's Bardolatry” at the Dickinson Museum; the talk was co-sponsored by the Dickinson Museum and the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies.

As a member of the EDIS Board, Finnerty hopes to in- crease the appreciation and study of Emily Dickinson in the UK and Ireland, and to expand membership and member activities on his side of the Atlantic. He pro- poses to create a UK/Ireland-based chapter of the So- ciety, which would hold regular meetings and organize an annual one-day Dickinson symposium. These events Photo Credit: Andrew Camilleri would be aimed at both academics and general read- ers; teachers and students; Irish and British poets; and others who wished to increase their knowledge of Dickinson. the Browning Society, the Tennyson Society and the Brontë He also has visions of forging links between EDIS and UK- Society, with a view toward promoting the study of transatlan- based literary societies such as the George Eliot Fellowship, tic connections in nineteenth-century poetry.

November/December 2012 | 39 Members’ News

Eliza Richards

liza Richards was elected to a new, three-year, member- ism in the US Civil War.” Taking a cue from her intensive reading Eat-large position on the EDIS Board. Associate Professor of newspapers and magazines, Dickinson treated the question of of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, what it means to experience war at a distance. She is also currently Richards specializes in editing “Emily Dickinson in nineteenth-century po- Context,” to be published etry of the United States, by Cambridge University but teaches a wide range Press in 2013. The volume of courses in American includes essays on Dick- literature and culture be- inson’s engagements with fore 1900, and in poetry the law, the visual arts, eco- and poetics. nomics, and popular culture among other topics. In her research, she ana- lyzes poems within the As a member of the EDIS terms of their circulation Board, Richards hopes and reception in ways to bring more light to the that render them legible sometimes obscure but im- and meaningful to read- portant ways the poet en- ers of today. Her first gaged other writers, current book, Gender and the events, and broader cultural Poetics of Reception in movements. She proposes Poe’s Circle (Cambridge that, following the cue of 2004), argues that Poe’s other author societies such status as an exceptional as the Melville Society, genius figure was forged the EDIS might consider in literary transactions planning joint conferences with his female peers, with other groups in order who were celebrities in to explore the relationships their time though largely among Dickinson and other forgotten today. nineteenth-century figures. She also is interested in promoting further international inter- Thanks in part to the support of a fellowship from the National est in Dickinson’s writings, and recognizes the vital importance Humanities Center (2010-2011), she is currently completing her of cross-fertilization between non-academic readers and scholars second book project, “Correspondent Lines: Poetry and Journal- working on Dickinson in colleges and universities.

Henry Thoreau & Emily Dickinson Meet in Manhattan

Join Them April 5th - 7th, 2013 Henry & Emily was written by Jim Stapleton, who stars in the pro- Stage Left Studio, 214 W. 30th St, NYC duction with his wife, Diana Bigelow. The couple first performed the play in Port Angeles, WA in 1998. Since then they have taken it he play, Henry & Emily: The Muses in Massachusetts is an to many venues in the Pacific Northwest and most recently to Mid- Timagined encounter between Henry David Thoreau and Emily dlebury, Vermont. On the first weekend in April, 2013, they’ll bring Dickinson. The drama centers on the two artists' conflicting needs the production to New York City. for communion and solitude. A good half of the play is in the lan- guage of these iconic New England writers. The general tenor is For more information: www.jimstapleton.com; struggle to find something to chat about over tea. They persevere For reservations: www.stageleftstudio.net.

40 | EDIS Bulletin Members’ News

EDIS 2013 International Conference: “Emily Dickinson, World Citizen”

University of Maryland and American University College Park, MD and Washington, D.C.

n August 9-11, 2013, the University of Maryland and American University will co-sponsor an EDIS international conference. To celebrate O25 years of EDIS fostering intellectual and artistic exchange, “Emily Dickinson, World Citizen” will explore Dickinson’s various forms of belonging and ways in which multiple constituencies “belong” to her, her world. The poet herself may have seen “New Englandly,” but as a cosmopolitan reader, she crafted and cultivated numerous affiliations beyond the local. The focus of the conference’s critical and artistic inquiries is the global reach of her mind and verse from the nineteenth century to the present.

“Emily Dickinson, World Citizen” will take extensive advantage of the many historical and cultural resources in the D.C. area. Anticipated highlights include high tea at the Willard Hotel, where Emily Dickinson stayed when she visited her Representative father and where Julia Ward Howe wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”; a lecture and/or exhibition, followed by a reception, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; and what Emily Dickinson would surely demand if she were coming—a crabfest, with alternatives of course for those who do not eat shellfish.

For this conference in “Scarlet Maryland,” we invite proposals for papers, performances, panel sessions, and other critical and artistic responses to the theme “Emily Dickinson, World Citizen.” Innovative and alternative presentation modes are encouraged. Presentations of research not directly related to the conference theme are also invited. Our “worlding” of Emily Dickinson includes using 21st century media for our knowl- edge exchange. To that end, abstracts of the presentations will be made available to all participants at least 30 days before the conference. Please submit proposals for papers, performances, panels to [email protected] by February 1, 2013. Notifications of acceptances will be sent no later than February 28, 2013.

Look for updates on the conference at http://www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org/node/123.

EDIS Chapter Group Update By Nancy List Pridgen and Lois Kackley

t's an exciting time to join an Emily tions” year-round at 2 p.m. on the first Fri- is a community outreach activity of EDIS IDickinson International Society chapter day of each month, and at 5:45 p.m. on the for any and everyone to enjoy a conversa- group -- or to start one in your area – with third Thursday of each month. tion with others that is unique for readers ongoing research into the newest candidate of Dickinson poetry”: these are the first for a second Dickinson daguerreotype! The EDIS Amherst's Poetry Conversation words participants hear from Lois at the that meets on Friday is typically made up start of the session. The San Antonio EDIS Chapter Group of 12 to 15 members and friends; while the did not meet over the summer because of Thursday group, though it is growing, is Completely separate from EDIS, the Em- scheduling conflict. The group will begin smaller, with four to eight. The format is ily Dickinson Museum sponsors Poetry meeting again at the end of September, and informal, with Lois starting off the round- Discussion each month on third Fridays the first meeting will be devoted to discus- table discussion of three poems and one from September through May, excluding sion of this daguerreotype, as well as to let- Dickinson letter by calling attention to the December. ters and poems sent to Kate Scott Turner. benefits of membership in EDIS. Member- ship applications and reprints of Jonnie The Emily Dickinson Reading Circle, spon- Massachusetts has two meetings each Guerra's Bulletin article written some years sored by the Myrifield Institute for Cogni- month in Amherst at the Jones Library. ago on the origins of EDIS are always on tion and the Arts since 2004, meets in Heath, EDIS Amherst continues its schedule – es- the table, along with sample Journals and Massachusetts, on the second Friday of each tablished in 2009 – with “Poetry Conversa- Bulletins for anyone to take/borrow. “This month from September to May. While this

November/December 2012 | 41 Members’ News group is not affiliated with EDIS, Margaret the new daguerreotype at their September botham, and Nellie Lambert are working to Freeman keeps Circle members updated on meeting. launch this group. the Museum's and the Society's activities and encourages them to join EDIS. All three Meanwhile, Ellen Beinhorn has moved With so much excitement surrounding the Massachusetts groups have overlapping back to her home in the mountains of North new daguerreotype, what could be a better members and occasionally meet together for Carolina and is planning to start another time to start an EDIS chapter group in your special events in Amherst. Emily Dickinson chapter group at the Ap- area? For information about how to start a palachian State University in Boone. group, contact EDIS Chapter Group chairs Ellen Beinhorn has left her very success- Nancy List Pridgen, [email protected]; ful Hilton Head chapter group in Beaufort, A new EDIS chapter group is being orga- or Lois Kackley, [email protected]. A South Carolina, in good hands with Mary nized in Washington, DC, and is planning list of steps for starting an EDIS chapter group C. Leto, and it will resume meeting soon its first event in October: “Emily Dickinson is available on the EDIS website, http://www. after a summer off. They too will discuss and the East.” Judith Farr, Eleanor Hegin- emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org/

EDIS Membership Form Membership in the Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) enables you to participate in the Society’s meetings and conferences, to receive both of the Society’s publications (the Bulletin and the Emily Dickinson Journal), and to help foster the goals of the Society.

Name, title & affiliation ______Mailing address ______Telephone (home)______(office) ______(fax) ______Email ______Please check if this is: new address___ membership renewal ___

Annual Membership Categories: Sustaining Member (added to joint or regular membership) _____$150 or more Institutional Member _____$115 Contributing Member (added to joint or regular membership) _____$100 NEW: Joint EDIS/Dickinson Museum _____$100 Regular Member _____$50.00 Student Member _____$30.00 (All of the above Members receive both the Emily Dickinson Journal and the Bulletin) Associate Member __ $20.00 (Bulletin only)

I have included an additional tax-deductible contribution of $______to support the Society’s programs. Gift Memberships Name, title & affiliation ______Mailing address ______Telephone (home)______(office) ______(fax) ______Email ______Use additional page for further gift memberships. Please make check or money order payable, in U.S. dollars, to EDIS, Inc., and send to: EDIS; c/o Johns Hopkins University Press; P.O. Box 19966; Baltimore, MD 21211-0966 www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org

42 | EDIS Bulletin Residue of Adz

Professor Todd, the Transit of Venus, and the Sounding of Mars hanks to Jonathan Morse for calling the Dickinson Society’s attention to an interesting piece of information that circulated at the time of the Trecent Transit of Venus, on June 5, 2012. Amherst College Professor of Astronomy David P. Todd (husband of Mabel Loomis Todd) made a series of images of the 1882 Transit, which can be viewed as a film at http://media.skyandtelescope.com/video/Transit1882Todd320.mov.

The photograph at right, from Todd’s later years, shows him with C. Francis Jenkins (seated), listening to radio signals from Mars. The photo- graph appeared on a page from Shorpy.com, http://www.shorpy.com/node/12482, and is explained in a 1924 article from the Washington Post:

The mystery surrounding strange radio signals heard in various parts of the world in the “nearest-to-earth” visit of Mars on Friday and Saturday was deepened yesterday, when the film in the special machine operated here to record such “signals” was developed photographically.

The result was a curious picturization of radio phenomenon. Thirty feet long and six inches wide, the chemically treated film showed, black on white, everything that was “picked up” out of the air in about 29 hours with a receiving apparatus adjusted to a wave length of 6,000 meters. . . .

C. Francis Jenkins, inventor of the “radio photo message continuous transmission machine” used in the experiment in his laboratory . . . doubted that the recorded radio sounds had anything to do with Mars. He declared, however, that it was the most curious phenomenon ever photographed by his apparatus.

In his own contribution to the Shorpy string, Morse quoted Polly Longsworth’s sad assessment of Todd’s last years:

During his late fifties David’s behavior grew increasingly erratic, which led in 1917 to his being eased off the Amherst faculty into early retirement. . . . David was institutionalized in 1922, and spent his last seventeen years in a series of hospitals and nursing homes. The end- less schemes and designs that always preoccupied him culminated during those final years in a great plan he called “Vital Engineering,” a program for eternal life. GIB’S OBITUARY

By George Monteiro

In The Life of Emily Dickinson (1974) Richard B. Sewall reprints “Death of a Promising Boy,” the obituary of Thomas Gilbert Dickinson that appeared in The Amherst Record on October 17, 1883. Sewall does not identify its author, commenting only that the unsigned piece is evidence that “Gib,” the eight-year-old boy, had become “something of an idol of the town’s, beloved by all.” Years later, John Evangelist Walsh remarks that this “fine” obituary “was written by some Amherst acquaintance of the family, strangely never identified.” That identification can now be made. The author of that obituary was H. Humphrey Neill, who, at the time, was Williston Professor of Rhetoric, Oratory, and English Litera- ture at Amherst College, and a friend of Gib’s father Austin Dickinson.

On October 4, 1883, as the young son of Susan and Austin Dickinson lay gravely ill (he died the next day), Professor Neill wrote to Austin Dickinson: If there is anything in the wide world I can do for you I would like to do it. If I can go anywhere or stay anywhere that will help you tell me – There are times when a man has the right to let his heart out, and mine has gone to you. Don’t answer unless you can use me – Yours The envelope, postmarked “Amherst/ Oct. 5 1883,” is addressed, “Mr. A. Dickinson Esq/ Amherst/ Mass.” In the same folder, first seen at “The Evergreens” but now part of the Martha Dickinson Bianchi Papers, Special Collections, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, is the clipping from The Amherst Record for October 17, 1883, entitled “Death of a Promising Boy.” At the bottom, in Susan Dickinson’s hand, is the notation “written by Prof. Neill.”

November/December 2012 | 43 Follow us on

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