THE EMILY DICKINSON INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

Volume 22, Number 2 November/December 2010 “The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality.” The Oxford Conference in Retrospect EMILY DICKINSON INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY Officers President: Martha Ackmann Vice President: Jed Deppman Secretary: Stephanie Tingley Treasurer: James C. Fraser Board Members Martha Ackmann James C. Fraser Nancy Pridgen Antoine Cazé Jonnie Guerra Martha Nell Smith Paul Crumbley Suzanne Juhasz Alexandra Socarides Jed Deppman Marianne Noble Hiroko Uno Cindy Dickinson Elizabeth Petrino Jane Wald (Honorary Board Member) Vivian Pollak (Honorary Board Member) Legal Advisor:Barbara Leukart Nominations Chair:Ellen Louise Hart Membership Chair:Jonnie Legal Advisor:Guerra Barbara Leukart Chapter Development Chair: Nancy Pridgen Dickinson and Nominationsthe Arts Chair:Barbara Chair: JonnieDana Guerra Book Review Editor: Barbara Kelly Chapter Development Membership Chair:Nancy Chair: PridgenElizabeth Petrino Bulletin Editor: Georgiana Strickland Book Dickinson Review Editor:Barbara and the Arts Chair: Kelly Barbara Dana Journal Editor: Cristanne Miller Journal Editor:Cristanne Miller 2010 Sustaining Members Martha Ackmann David H. Forsyth Martha Nell Smith Marilyn Berg-Callander Diana K. Fraser Gary Lee Stonum Jack Capps James C. Fraser Ethan Tarasov Sheila Coghill Marilee Lindemann Robin Tarasov Jane D. Eberwein Cristanne Miller

2010 Contributing Members Paul Beckley Donna Dreyer Niels Kjaer Emily Seelbinder Ellen Beinhorn Robert Eberwein Polly Longsworth Nobuko Shimomura Mary Elizabeth K. Bern- Judith Farr Cindy MacKenzie Maxine Silverman hard Alice Fulton Mayumi Maeda George T. Stone Marisa Bulgheroni Jonnie G. Guerra Daniel Manheim Mason Swilley Diane K. Busker Eleanor Heginbotham Jo Ann Orr Richard Tryon Carolyn L. Cooley Eleanor Humbert Carol Pippen Hiroko Uno Barbara Dana Suzanne Juhasz Vivian R. Pollak Kathy Welton Scott Donaldson Lois Kackley Robert M. Russell Tracy C. Winkler

EDIS gratefully acknowledges the generous financial contributions of these members.

Editor’s Note: My sincere thanks to all those who contributed reports on the conference sessions—under a tight deadline and many while recovering from jetlag. Without your efforts we would not have this historical record of an outstanding interna- tional conference. Thanks also to Rebecca Mooney and Lee Ann Gorthey for their excellent conference photos. All unattributed photos are by Rebecca. Finally, thanks, as always, to Barbara Kelly for her outstanding work as book review editor. Georgie Strickland

EDIS Bulletin postage is paid at Chicago, IL 60611. Membership in the Society is open to all persons with an interest in Emily Dickinson and her work. For further information, contact Martha Ackmann, (ISSN President, 1055-3932) EDIS, is publishedGender Studies, twice yearly,Mount May/JuneHolyoke College, and November/December, South Hadley, MA 01075 by The USA, Emily or [email protected] International Society, Annual Inc. duesStandard are $50.00 Mail non-profit for regu- lar 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 Dickinson 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. Address submissions for the Bulletin to Georgiana Strickland, 133 Lackawanna Rd., Lexington, KY 40503 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 © 2010 by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. The Bulletin is indexed in EBSCO, Humanities International Complete, and the MLA Bibliography.

www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org IN THIS ISSUE

T h e O x f o r d C o n f e r e n c e

4 Beneath a British Sky 19 British Connections VII: By Jane Eberwein Repellant Settings, Best Gems: George Eliot and Emily Dickinson 7 British Connections I: By Margaret Freeman Dickinson, Shakespeare and Milton By Martha Ackmann 20 Manuscripts II: Dickinson in Pieces 7 British Connections II: Keats By Geoffrey Schramm By Ellen Louise Hart 21 Sacrifice and Drama in Dickinson 8 British Connections III: By Eleanor Heginbotham Dickinson and the Brontës By James Guthrie 22 Dickinson and the Self By Brad Ricca 9 Global Connections I Dickinson In and Out of Japan, China, and 22 Dickinson and the Arts I: France Imagination’s Muse: By Logan Esdale Emily Dickinson as Creative Inspiration By Georgiana Strickland 10 Dickinson, Gender, and the Woman Writer By Stephanie Tingley 23 Dickinson and the Arts II: Dickinson on Stage—A Roundtable 10 British Connections IV: Discussion Dickinson and Emily Brontë By Jonnie Guerra By Marianne Noble 24 Emily Dickinson & I: 11 Plenary Panel 1 The Journey of a Portrayal By Martin Greenup Reviewed by Tom Daley 12 Dickinson, Nature and God 25 Archival Resources: By Jane Eberwein “Over the fence — I could climb” 12 Dickinson and Class Primary Sources for Dickinson Scholarship By Suzanne Juhasz By Aífe Murray 13 Global Connections II: 26 British Connections VIII: Dickinson in German and Polish Authors Solitude and Suffering By Antoine Cazé By Cindy MacKenzie 14 British Connections V: * 27 Dickinson in New England George Eliot, Vol. I By Michael Manson By Emily Seelbinder 27 British Connections IX: 15 Manuscripts I: Dickinson’s Imagination and Words Dickinson’s Manuscript Books By Mary Loeffelholz By Alexandra Socarides 28 British Connections X: 16 Traveling Feet: Romantic and Religious Visions Dickinson’s Meter and the Lyric By Richard E. Brantley By Jed Deppman 28 Dickinson, (Poetic) Identity, and Keats 17 Plenary Speaker: Evolutionary Enigmas By Martha Nell Smith and Colonial Equations: 29 British Connections XI: Dickinson’s Transoceanic Geography Dickinson and the Brownings By Paraic Finnerty By Mike Yetman 18 Plenary Panel 2 By Paul Crumbley

*There was no panel designated British Connections VI. Continued on Page 39 THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010

Beneath a British Sky By Jane Eberwein “ ouch Shakespeare for me,” Em- Joyce, and Woolf whose writings offer ily Dickinson commanded the instructive parallels. Speakers exam- Ttraveling Mabel Loomis Todd ined episodes from novels that may (L1004). When other friends visited England, she gave them similar instruc- also explored her adaptations of liter- tions: “Should anybody where you go, aryhave forms influenced such as Dickinson’s the sonnet, poems dramatic but talk of Mrs. Browning, you must hear monologue, hymn, and various types of for us” (L266); “perhaps you have spo- lyric that she would have known large- ken with George Eliot. Will you ‘tell me ly through British models. Her interest about it’?” (L553). When she imagined in literary careers (especially those of visiting England, its chief attractions poets and women novelists) engaged were literary ones because of the in- attention in multiple panels, some- tensely personal attachments she had times with reference to pen names and formed to living and dead authors. Yet Dickinson’s personae. her command to Mrs. Todd appears in ley welcomed the many participants. American authors and historical con- a letter abounding in descriptions of He spoke of the suitability of Oxford texts drew extensive analysis as well, the New England summer as she her- to the work on which all would engage self observed it and as Emerson had over the following three days, as well as her attachments to American authors celebrated it. This passion for British the university’s role in his own famil- with speakers finding new insights into literature combined with Yankee pride ial and scholarly life. Cristanne Miller well as the Transcendentalists. The inspired the choice of “Were I Britain (past president of EDIS and, with Crum- poet’sand historical often complex figures—Betsy and uncertain Ross re as- born” as theme for the Emily Dickinson bley, chief organizer of these events) sponses to the class and gender expec- Oxford International Conference. announced upcoming events and made tations of her time brought enlighten- From August 6 through 8, 2010, 119 suggestions for smooth transitions ing insights—whether Dickinson was registered conferees and numerous between closely timed sessions. Nigel said to have experienced those social friends and family members shared in Bowles, Director of the Rothermere, constraints through interactions with a wide range of scholarly, artistic, and and Ron Bush, Drue Heinz Professor household servants or through identi- festive activities at various sites in Ox- of American Literature at Oxford, ex- - ford, England—a college town even old- tended additional welcomes. After one er and more storied than Amherst. This of many brief interludes for coffee and onfication Dickinson with of fictional the cultural characters. and intel Nu- was the eighth international confer- typically British refreshments, con- lectualmerous upheavals papers dealt of withher era, the includinginfluence ence sponsored by the Emily Dickinson geological discoveries about deep time, International Society and, with twenty- twenty-seven sessions held in meeting Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, four countries represented, it was the roomsferees of proceeded the Rothermere to the firstand of three Mans of- or potentially disturbing developments most diverse. Participants came from in scriptural scholarship. Broadening the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, the Institute. the range of inquiry still further were Japan, South Korea, and India, as well fieldPapers College delivered across at a thesebroad sessions lawn from re- papers on Dickinson’s reception in Po- as Australia, and countries in east- land, Germany, and France as well as ern and western Europe, Canada, and ways, with many presenters focusing the United States. Graduate students attentionflected the on conference Emily Dickinson’s theme in complex various Asian cultural insights. Historical de- responses to British authors. There approaches to her work that reflected research with scholars whose books were panels on her responses to the es- this poet ranged from the Civil War to haveshared contributed their findings to these from projects, dissertation and tablished masters such as Shakespeare Commodorevelopments Perry’s likely to forcible have influencedopening of there were lively interchanges between and Milton; to the Romantics, includ- Japan to the West. Many speakers ad- ing Blake, Wordsworth, DeQuincey, and dressed thematic issues such as self, devoted to study of authors from other Keats; and to her contemporaries, suffering, and fame that are central to literaryDickinson traditions. specialists and those chiefly including Dickens, the Brontës, the Dickinson scholarship, and there were Beneath a mild British sky, the pro- Brownings, and George Eliot. Atten- lively presentations on issues related gram began in the courtyard of the Ro- tion was also directed to points of to distribution and reception of her po- thermere American Institute on Friday comparison between the New England ems through attention to manuscript morning. EDIS president Paul Crumb- poet and later writers such as Hopkins, issues, gift culture, and audience. The

4 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010

ongoing work of translating material their lively exchanges of insights and - evidence about Dickinson’s environ- interpretation, several special events ligent homebound women of the poet’s ment and writing became the focus of mixed entertainment with a fuller ex- generationfor its expression experienced of the conflictbetween intel do- a panel on archival resources newly perience of Oxford. Concurrent with mestic duty and their interior lives. She catalogued or otherwise brought to the the conference but at another venue concluded with focus on Dickinson’s attention of scholars at the Dickinson in Oxford were several performances visionary response to “gigantic” Emily Museum, Harvard’s Houghton Library, of Edie Campbell’s one-woman play, Brontë as a model in fortifying herself and Amherst College. Emily Dickinson & I: The Journey of a to meet the divine “Guest.” Translation of Dickinson’s poetry Portrayal, reviewed elsewhere in this Although there was no time avail- across cultures and into diverse artistic issue. able for questions immediately follow- forms also drew attention. There was a ing this presentation, Gordon attended paper on Paul Celan’s translation of her subsequent conference events so that poems into German by way of French; people had opportunities to converse on parallels between Dickinson’s love with her about ideas in her book and of nature and seclusion and the work of talk. There was special interest in her Tao Qian more than a millennium be- talk because her new book, Lives Like fore her time, and recitation of a Dick- Loaded Guns, had been attracting great inson poem newly translated into Chi- attention on both sides of the Atlantic, nese. Conferees enjoyed presentations largely for its theory about epilepsy in on illustrated books, song cycles, and the Dickinson family. This controversial dramatic works. True to expectations of Dickinson scholars, some of the most next afternoon for two speakers who stimulating papers cut across catego- challengedtopic brought Gordon’s overflow conclusions attendance. the ries announced by panel titles, as was Throughout Saturday afternoon a the case when a paper on Blake focused and Sally Bayley played in room 3 of nineteenth-century United States. theshort Rothermere. animated Vibrant film by and Suzie sweeping Hanna significantlyAfter lunch onon hisFriday reception with its in tasty the in its imagery, Letter to the World im- The best attended such event proved mersed viewers in both large-scale and plenary panel featured talks on Dickin- to be the Friday evening banquet at Ori- microscopic depictions of the poet and son’sarray reception of artful in sandwiches, Ireland and theNorway first el College, preceded by a champagne her natural milieu. That evening con- and on a transatlantic dream the poet reception sponsored by the Johns Hop- ference participants gathered upstairs kins University Press. The grand dining at Blackwell’s Bookshop on Broad plenary sessions on Saturday morning, hall, graced by portraits of the College’s Street for another champagne recep- Paulrecorded Giles in a letter. In the first of two- founder, King Edward II, and worthies tion. Attendees discussed their current tions on the New England poet’s trans- from a broad span of centuries since research projects while surrounded by oceanic geographicaloffered illuminating imagination reflec and Oriel’s founding in 1326, provided a a feast of reading matter on display: awareness of developments in nine- grand setting for 135 EDIS members editions of Dickinson’s writings, cur- teenth-century sciences. As his talk and friends to gather for conversation, rent and long-familiar critical studies, and the lively discussion that followed a lecture, and a festive meal. Other con- and biographical works. extended between Oxford and Sydney ferees arrived after the meal to watch Keble College, where most confer- by way of electronic communication, and listen from the balcony as Lyndall the event also called attention to twen- Gordon of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, imbibing the Oxford experience. Dat- - presented her plenary address on ingees to lodged, 1870, provided it was designed a fit setting by Wil for- oceanic imaginative stimuli facilitated “‘The World Within’: Emily Dickinson ty-first-century capabilities for trans- and the Brontës.” In keeping with the style executed in polychromatic brick. urday plenary offered sometimes sur- conference theme, Gordon focused on Fromliam the Butterfield moment inone English arrived Gothicat the prisingby scientific linkages advances. between The secondDickinson Sat Emily and Susan Dickinson’s passion- porters’ lodge to check in and receive and British or Anglicized American ate responses to writings by Charlotte, keys to both one’s room and the mas- writers Erasmus Darwin, Sylvia Plath Emily, and Anne Brontë. Paying special sive wooden door to the College’s main and Ted Hughes, and Virginia Woolf. - gate, one sensed both collegiate ca- Summaries of all these sessions appear son’s highly literary “Master” letters maraderie and seriousness of intellec- elsewhere in this Bulletin. andattention Wuthering to affinities Heights between, Gordon Dickincited “I tual purpose. Although student rooms Rounding out these sessions with tie my Hat – I crease my Shawl” (Fr522) proved spare, conferees enjoyed the

November/December 2010 | 5 “Were I Britain born”

spacious courtyard gardens and gath- Georgie Strickland announced plans ered for breakfast at the largest of Ox- for this conference issue of the Bulletin, ford University’s dining halls. Seated and Cristanne Miller encouraged con- on benches at long wooden tables fur- ference participants to develop their nished with reading lamps to enjoy a papers into articles for submission to full English breakfast, one might think the Emily Dickinson Journal. Jane Wald of oneself as suddenly transported to accepted checks from the Society as Hogwarts or perhaps to the main read- its annual gifts to the Emily Dickinson ing room of a grand old public library. Museum and Jones Library in Amherst. The Keble College chapel attracted Martha Ackmann, as incoming presi- visitors during the conference, some dent, thanked her predecessor, Paul of whom ventured into a side room to Crumbley, for his leadership and pre- admire Holman Hunt’s painting “The sented him with a decorative object for Light of the World” (1853), which is in the United Kingdom, including Lon- - familiar to Dickinsonians because Ju- don, Bath, Yorkshire, the Lake District, trical pieces discovered at the Home- dith Farr featured a version of it in The Stratford-upon-Avon, Wales, and Scot- steadhis office during that recent was constructed renovations. of Mem elec- Passion of Emily Dickinson. A wedding land—some perhaps venturing into the bers attending this meeting extended party Saturday afternoon and evening additional thanks for gratifying experi- reinforced the sense of the College as a as points of origin for branches of the ences before adjourning for lunch and setting for life’s momentous events. Dickinsonvillages identified and Norcross by Cynthia families. Hallen a last chance to visit with old and new Before, during, and after the con- - friends before post-conference travels. ference, lovers of Dickinson imbibed ence was the annual members’ meet- The experience of sharing fresh in- the Oxford ambience and the sense of ing,The which final officialfeatured event a report of the conferon the sights into Emily Dickinson’s poems continuity in time that came of visiting conference’s success, announcement and letters as they are now interpreted England while thinking of its impact on of plans for upcoming events, and in- the poet’s imagination. While strolling along cobblestoned streets to explore were happy to hear that EDIS remains provedin far-flung so stimulating but electronically that three linked days local sites, most armed themselves solvent,troduction active of EDISin support officers. of Dickinson- Members passedparts of all our too twenty-first quickly. Meeting century in world Brit- with conference souvenirs—umbrellas related scholarship, and blessed with for protection against occasional quick active membership from around the poet’s adaptations of English linguistic showers on otherwise warm, dry sum- world, even as it continues efforts to practices,ain fostered metaphors, reflection and on literary the Yankee tra- mer days, and tote bags for collection build membership through its web- ditions, even while highlighting new of conference materials and books (all site and promotion of local chapters. areas of research being pursued in to- embellished with Emily Dickinson’s Warm thanks were extended to the two day’s United Kingdom. Overall, those of image as rendered by Ayiannis Kout- chief planners of this conference, Paul - savakis). Narrow walkways crowded Crumbley and Cristanne Miller; to Jim ties inherent in the conference theme during the day with tour groups turned - ofus privileged“Were I Britain to reflect born” on the came possibili away out to be quiet later as participants sight; and to the talented and helpful with deepened understanding of what headed out for afternoon tea or late- peopleFraser at for Oxford his detailed whose efforts financial brought over is “new” as well as what is “English” in night pub visits to join friends and long planning to fruition—notably Ni- Emily Dickinson’s distinctively brilliant extend the stimulating conversations gel Bowles, Laura Harvey, and Jane gift for seeing “New Englandly.” that began at conference sessions. The Rowson of the Rothermere American Bodleian Library, Ashmolean Museum, Institute, Alta H. Anthony of the Johns Museum of the History of Science, and Hopkins University Press, Ronald Bush Jane Eberwein is Professor of English other scholarly institutions attracted of St. John’s College, Oxford, and Al- Emerita at Oakland University, USA, visitors, as did various eating establish- exandra Manglis, a graduate student editor of An Emily Dickinson Ency- at Linacre College. Another graduate clopedia, and co-editor (with Cindy side pasty stands. People explored student, Rebecca Mooney of the Uni- MacKenzie) of Reading Emily Dick- otherments colleges,from fine admired restaurants street to mimes,street- versity of Maryland, was saluted for inson's Letters: Critical Essays, which and enjoyed the city’s charms: parks, maintaining a conference blog for the will be released in paperback in 2011. pubs, and punting along the river. Many enjoyment of EDIS members not able continued these explorations after the to attend and for taking abundant pho- conference by traveling to other sites tographs to document the proceedings.

6 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010 British Connections I: Dickinson, Shakespeare and Milton Chair: Martha Ackmann, Mount Holyoke College, USA; panelists: Cindy MacKenzie, University of Regina, Canada;

By Martha Ackmann Elizabeth Petrino, Fairfield University, USA; Anne Ramirez, Neuman College, USA The readership and literary immortality. such as “Sic transit gloria mundi” (Fr2), Emily Dickinson within the context of Elizabeth Petrino next spoke on two Britishfirst session writers of EDISwho profoundly2010 situated in- “‘Forbidden Fruit’: Dickinson’s Echoes and “Better – than Music!” (Fr378), of Milton’s Eve.” Inspired by the hor- Dickinson“Forbidden adapts Fruit a Milton’s flavor has” style (Fr1482), in “cre- John Milton. - ative, generative ways,” Petrino argued, fluencedCindy her:MacKenzie William Shakespearebegan the sesand- ton among her female literary contem- and questions the legacy of female sion with her paper “‘Essential Oils poraries,rific and vituperativeDickinson drewresponses from to their Mil sumission embodied in Eve. are wrung’: Dickinson’s Poetics and - the Shakespearean Sonnets.” Charles per, “‘The Hardest Miracle’: Images of Knight’s edition of The Works of Wil- DeathAnne and Ramirez Resurrection offered in theShakespeare final pa liam Shakespeare, including the son- nets, was among the books in the the two writers that has received little Dickinson family library. Although the criticaland Dickinson.” attention, One Ramirez affinity observed, between poet did not write a conventional son- is Dickinson’s recurrent image of the net, MacKenzie reminded the audience woman who dies but lives to speak.

them. MacKenzie considered Dickin- by several Shakespearean heroines son’sthat she response nonetheless to the was sonnet influenced tradition by whoThat sufferimage unjust may have rejection been byinfluenced the men and especially to Shakespeare’s Sonnet they love and who appear to die. All but #54, “O how much more doth beauty Desdemona, Ramirez noted, survive beauteous seem,” as well as sonnets #5 and extend forgiveness to remorse- and #6. These three sonnets were ex- works and directly from Milton’s Eve ful males. Dickinson’s descriptions of amined alongside two poems central in articulating her own authorial trans- the experience and aftermath of death to understanding Dickinson’s poetics, gressions. Drawing on the markings in “Essential Oils are wrung” (Fr772) and the 1819 copy of Paradise Lost from these dying and returning heroines “This was a Poet” (Fr446). MacKenzie the Dickinson family’s library, Petrino whosereflect love her transcends imaginative their responses apparent to noted the parallels in imagery and drew focused on Dickinson’s portrayal of or actual death. Approximately a dozen attention to the theme of distillation, sensual and embodied Eden, a charac- Dickinson poems are apt glosses of A an essential element in understanding terization that arose as a logical deriva- Winter’s Tale, expressing experiences Dickinson’s poetics, as it allowed her tive of Milton’s deep association of Eve and emotional states resembling those to “repeat” what she admired in Shake- of Shakespeare’s female characters. speare and relate her concerns about the world through her senses. In poems with flowers and her apprehension of

British Connections II: Keats Chair: Ellen Louise Hart, University of California at Santa Cruz (Emerita), USA; panelists: Edith Wylder, Southwest Minnesota University, USA; Yuji Kato, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan; Martin Greenup, Harvard University, USA By Ellen Louise Hart

This rich, diverse, well integrated set of Keats and then Dickinson felt destined then to “angel or whore.” As Wylder papers began with “Keats’s Awakened sees it, the earlier Keats of “Endymion” Psyche and Dickinson’s Rose,” by Edith aware, the illness’s origin lay principal- “takes the task of creating a redemptive Wylder, an essay artfully delivered to find. “As both poets were acutely spiritual image designed to prepare for by her friend and former colleague mature feminine ideal to supplant the a future appropriately ‘whole’ ideal of Anne Howard, University of Nevada, stillly in thereigning lack of butany modern,sexually sufficientlyunaccom- woman as ‘Wife’ to succeed the me- Reno (Emerita). Wylder argues that by modating Virgin Mother, a once-pow- Keats’s time sexual immaturity was be- erful, stabilizing domestic ideal that transitional creation took the form of coming a serious underlying cultural had gradually regressed to a sexually adieval Pagan Mother.” soul image, Keats’s an laterappropriately and final “illness” in need of a poet’s cure, which untouchable ‘angel in the house’” and modernized, “awaken’d” Psyche whose

November/December 2010 | 7 “Were I Britain born” redemptive tasks Dickinson, as her sions, Dickinson starts with the imper- before it’s close” (Fr1773) in his talk country’s unacknowledged poet, would sonality and disappearance of the self “‘For Poets – I have Keats’: Dickinson later imitate with her “Rose persona” and life,” and she is radically different and Allusion.” Greenup argued that “in representing the “individuating spiri- from English romantic poets such as the second of these poems Dickinson tual journey” of the American soul. This Keats, whose “Ode on a Grecian Urn” responds to and revises not only drama, according to Wylder, Dickinson she alludes to and subverts in “I died Keats but also her own earlier poem,” narrates through the poems of the forty for Beauty” (Fr448). Kato concluded that “in taking the last line-and-a- bound fascicles. that Keats’s “Grecian Urn” “traces the half of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (‘that In the second paper, “Readings on the process in which the narrator’s voice is is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye Margin: Emily Dickinson’s Posthumous need to know’), breaking it down and Poetics and the English Romantics,” to complete a closure that presents the creatively rearranging it as the last Yuji Kato made the claim that “Dickin- narrator,fused with the that urn, of andthe historypersonified as pres urn- two lines of her own poem (‘Parting son’s ‘death poems’ present subversive ence.” In contrast, “Dickinson’s ‘I died is all we know of heaven, / And all we visions of history congenial to contem- for Beauty’ traces the process of the need of hell’), she transforms Keats’s porary postmodernists and poststruc- self’s dissolution to total absence,” and meaning.” Greenup concluded that turalists.” “The dichotomy of the self this is accomplished “through the fu- what Dickinson has done in her allusion and other, or life and death” is repre- sion of two impersonal voiceless voices is “something in between direct sentative of traditional romantic meta- that speak ‘Until the Moss had reached quotation and echo (the very loose physics, yet Dickinson’s “death poems” our lips – / And covered up – Our point to a different approach, Kato ex- Hollander) and is therefore intentional.” plains. “While her contemporary Amer- in history that is not spoken or written ideaEach of allusion,of these as three defined innovative by John ican romantics, such as Walt Whitman atnames,’ all.” that is, until a nonspecific point explorations and the session as a whole and Ralph Waldo Emerson, posit the Martin Greenup focused on “I died make way for continued study of the self as the origin of personal expres- for Beauty” and “My life closed twice Dickinson-Keats connection.

British Connections III: Dickinson and the Brontës Chair: James Guthrie, Wright State University, USA; panelists: Gary Lee Stonum, Case Western Reserve University, USA; Nancy Mayer, Northwest Missouri State University, USA By James Guthrie

Professors Gary Lee Stonum and Nancy while the other is absent; second, the mation is, ultimately, metaphysical: by Mayer discussed how reading the removal of either lover, usually through re-imagining love in “extreme” and “hy- Brontës may have affected Dickinson’s death, threatens psychic destruction perbolic” terms, both writers assert ro- notion of identity—and of how to the survivor; third, a projected re- mantic love’s value as a viable spiritual identities in general are formed. Both union of the lovers—and thus a second alternative to conventional religious Stonum and Mayer partially attributed merging of the composite self—may be belief. Dickinson’s concept of self to overall accomplished in heaven. Stonum also Complementing Stonum’s paper, attitudes about identity formation Nancy Mayer, in “Passionate Reti- adopted by the Romantics. in these romantic Romantic narratives cence: Emily Dickinson and Brontë’s Stonum, in “Emily’s Heathcliff,” sug- asproposed children, that so thatthe lovers the heaven are re-figured in which Lucy Snowe,” suggested that reading gested that Emily Brontë’s only novel, they are reunited resembles an edenic the Brontës’ writings helped Dickin- Wuthering Heights, may have provided state of eternal childhood. son engage in the larger Victorian cul- a basis for Emily Dickinson’s equation Emily Brontë’s and Emily Dickinson’s tural conversation about “the nature of of love with a realization of identity, as portrayals of love in “hyperbolic” terms well as with the self’s potential destruc- jointly represent, Stonum suggested, a - tion. In depicting an essentially eternal kind of apostasy. The supreme love of callyselfhood.” to Villette Mayer, and however, its narrating turned hero her- love between Catherine and Heathcliff, the Romantic couple overpowers and ine,attention Lucy Snowe. to Charlotte That novel’s Brontë, narrative specifi Stonum said, “Brontë’s resolutely anti- replaces orthodox religion, both while - sentimental” novel gave Dickinson a the lovers remain alive and after their enced the development of Dickinson’s schema to follow in thinking about projected reunion in heaven. Stonum ownstyle, narrative Mayer proposed, stance toward may have her influread- how love determines identity. First, the theorized that Brontë’s and Dickin- er. Mayer sees the self of Dickinson’s son’s interpretation of romantic love poems as confronting “the conditions that neither is fully himself or herself as a means of achieving identity for- of subjectivity…in a world crowded lovers complete or fulfill each other, so 8 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010

with others.” While the narrating self for others as an existential approach to ers, generating a tension from which it in the poems is not necessarily “com- the problem of loneliness. The narrat- cannot escape. Mayer concluded with munal,” Mayer said, that voice “always ing self is willing to speak to others, yet a point that usefully echoed, while de- - at the same time, Mayer proposed, the parting from, Stonum’s interpretation: ence of others. self chooses which information it wish- “The excess that is at the heart of the findsBut itselfthe accompanied”narrating self’s by theconnec pres- es to divulge to or conceal from them. Romantic sublime is found not by tran- tion with others—who may be other Self-consciousness itself, according to scending the awkward fact of individ- characters, as in Brontë’s novel, or the Mayer, may be an internalization of the ual identity but [by being] embedded reader—is tentative and problematic. presence of others. The narrating Ro- uncomfortably within it.” Mayer interpreted the two writers’ de- mantic self alternately craves privacy pictions of the self confronting its need from and engagement with these oth-

Global Connections I Dickinson In and Out of Japan, China, and France Chair: Cristanne Miller, University at Buffalo, USA; panelists: Hiroko Uno, Kobe College, Japan; Ningkang Jiang, Nanjing University, P.R. China; Antoine Cazé, University of Paris 7, France By Logan Esdale, Chapman University, USA

The presenters in this panel ap- the determined attitude of [this] small, understanding of Dickinson. He identi- proached Dickinson from the perspec- secluded country.” tive of their home countries, but while Jiang’s “Birds, Nature, and Dao” French understanding: Dickinson is ei- Cazé reported on the issue of reception viewed Dickinson in an Amherst Tao- therfied aa “split modern image” Joan that of Arc has ordominated an early in France, Uno and Jiang discussed how hua yuan, an “imagined reclusive com- Mallarmé. Both images rely too much Japanese and Chinese readers could re- munity.” Like Tao Qian (372-427 AD), on her apparent personality, favoring late to Dickinson’s reclusive lifestyle. who wrote “I wish not wealth or hon- “the mysterious, the mystical and the Uno’s “Emily Dickinson and the ors; / And heavenly abodes are beyond romantic” poet known as “La Recluse Opening of Japan” compared Japanese my reach, / Let me but embrace every d’Amherst.” Epitomizing the one side foreign policy with Dickinson’s emerg- fair day, walking alone,” and “Among is Christian Bobin’s La Dame Blanche ing domestic policy in the 1850s. While the busy haunts of men I build my hut,” (2007), which calls her an “asthmatic in 1854 Japan was forced by Com- Dickinson “cherishes the tranquil mo- angel” and rests on misleading para- modore Matthew Perry to open its ment of rapture.” She was not directly phrases of her poems. On the other borders, the inverse was happening side is Claire Malroux, the “most im- in Dickinson’s life, as she began limit- the two poets established lives “in se- portant French translator to date.” (In ing access to her country. Because the clusion”influenced that by determined Chinese poetry; their relation rather, 2009, Françoise Delphy translated the press in New England closely followed to nature—to experience eternity, they complete poems.) Malroux’s selected Perry’s expedition, and because her fa- mingled with its perpetual wither-and- poems in 1989 truly launched French ther was in Congress at the time, Dick- bloom cycle—and poetic creation. To interest in Dickinson, and although she inson would have known the Japanese express the abstract and to stimulate has discussed the fascicles and other rationale for regulated seclusion—to contemplation in their readers, they publication issues special to Dickin- prohibit Christian missionaries, pro- “often used blanks or breaks” between son, said Cazé, she makes the poet suit tect its unique culture, and develop its or within lines. By projecting them- French modernity in “too pat a way.” internal resources. And just as Japan selves into birds, both poets transcend- had used its exclusive commerce with ed secular constraints. Where Dick- Dutch traders to keep abreast of West- inson wrote “Because I grow - where ern news, Dickinson was coming to rely Robins do,” Qian had written “Their on a select group of epistolary traders. nests conform to natural dreams.” In short, even though Japanese resis- Cazé’s “‘Paris could not lay the - fold’: Dickinson’s (Critical) Absence in son would “have been encouraged by France?” called for a more informed tance was finally overthrown, Dickin

November/December 2010 | 9 “Were I Britain born” Dickinson, Gender, and the Woman Writer Chair: Stephanie A. Tingley, Youngstown State University, USA; panelists: Kelly Lynch, Independent Scholar, Palo Alto, California, USA; Ursula Caci, University of Basel, Switzerland By Stephanie Tingley Both presentations in this lively and “Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White sizes them, but also reshapes the space well-attended session blended skillful Heat,’” Fr446, “This was a Poet – ,” and ascribed to women and even goes be- close reading, personal responses to Fr887, “Severer Service of myself.” In yond, locating female identity in a new, the poetry, and theoretical frameworks the process, Lynch combined close often paradoxical territory. Caci then for thinking about Emily Dickinson and readings of the poems’ texts with her focused on her analysis of Fr387, “The gender. own evocative and often provocative Moon is distant from the Sea – ” and First to present was Kelly Lynch, an meditations on each. independent scholar and psychologist. Ursula Caci’s presentation, titled “In- – ” to show how Dickinson designs an In her paper titled “‘A Bright Capacity terchanging Relationships of Power understandingFr837, “I make Hisof power Crescent relationships fill or lack for Wings’: Dickinson’s Metamorpho- and Gender: The Moon and the Sea,” and gender roles as dynamic, mutual, sis as a Woman Poet,” she spoke about had two parts. First she introduced her and interchangeable, and reveals them what she described as three “alchemi- dissertation project, “Locating Gender as role play. Both poems depict a con- cal touchstones” in Dickinson’s psyche in Space: Emily Dickinson’s Conception troller and a controlled as poetry for and the way in which each is anchored of Gender,” which focuses on how Dick- Dickinson becomes a playful tool for the by a key concept: dwell, distill, dissemi- inson not only exaggerates and over- reversion of conventions that serves to nate. Lynch used these three touch- emphasizes the norms as expected of a reinterpret, challenge, and claim power. stones to explicate three poems, Fr401, woman and thus exploits and empha-

British Connections IV: Dickinson and Emily Brontë Chair: Marianne Noble, American University, USA; panelists: Makhdooma Saadat, Babu Banarasi Das Group of Educational Institutes, India; Brad Ricca, Case Western Reserve University, USA By Marianne Noble

outside. Inundated by bright sunshine, the other paper, Brad Ricca’s “‘Some chair Marianne Noble read the paper new equation given’: Emily Dickinson, - Emily Brontë, and Deep Time.” Ricca dat, who was at the last minute un- had prepared a lovely slide show il- ablefor the to attend.first panelist, In “Emily Makhdooma Dickinson Saaand lustrating his exploration of geological Brontë: Renunciation and the Discov- notions of deep time in Dickinson and ery of the True Self,” Saadat explored Brontë. Both authors, he showed, lived the connections between the two Emi- in areas and eras when geological dis- lys. Both were restricted by nineteenth- coveries were shaking preconceptions century conventions barring women about man’s role in the cosmos. Brontë from writing, and both responded in was probably aware of archaeological similar ways. As Saadat pointed out, digs taking place in locations like York- both lived retired lives, Brontë screen- shire, and Dickinson likewise was thor- ing herself from public view through oughly informed on the research of ge- a pen name, and Dickinson doing so ologist and Amherst College president through choosing not to publish alto- Edward Hitchcock. gether. This form of renunciation was Both authors were centrally engaged coupled with others: both renounced with questions of God as presented the pleasures and rewards of conven- in Christianity, and both found their tional social life for women and the faith rocked by notions of deep time. rewards that widespread readership This concept, Ricca explained, “argues The panel on Dickinson and Emily might have afforded. Both purchased that the earth was formed slowly, in Brontë took place on the sunny open- through renunciation the satisfactions discrete, meandering layers, over an ing morning of the conference, and the of artistry. almost unimaginable span of time by weather turned out to be relevant: a the exact same forces observable in participants trooped back inside for nature today, making the present the The group of roughly twenty-five fire10 alarm | EDIS forced Bulletin the panel to convene THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010

key to understanding the past. Such a the geological nature of his name) en- earth was a different—and prized— view—also called uniformitarianism— gagement in a “dig” in the scene in form of immortality. Ricca went on to clashed with the idea of a world born which he exhumes Cathy’s body. Heath- interpret Dickinson’s searing poem of biblical cataclysm and authority, and cliff privileges a corporeal, earthly “I reason – /Earth is short” (Fr403) raised serious questions about the age form of presence over the more spiri- in the context of Wuthering Heights. of the earth, the centrality of Man, and tual immortality promised by Chris- We may gain immortality in heaven, the truth of the Flood.” tianity. As geology had insisted, the she observes, “But – What of that!” Ricca interpreted Heathcliff’s (note

earth is infinite. To lie near Cathy in the Plenary Panel 1 Moderator: Cristanne Miller, University at Buffalo, USA; panelists: Maria Stuart, University College Dublin, Ireland; Paraic Finnerty, Portsmouth University, UK; Domhnall Mitchell, University of Trondheim, Norway By Martin Greenup, Harvard University, USA

Following an opening morning of ex- reclusive themselves on account of the citing talks in different parts of the English language. long dark winters. Perhaps surpris- Rothermere American Institute, all to Nextfind upa space was Paraicfor the Finnerty Irish use who, of the in ingly, Cold War politics also played a attendees of the conference gathered “‘Dreamed of your meeting Tennyson part in furthering Dickinson’s fame in in Ticknor and Fields’: A Transatlantic Norway. After the Second World War plenary panel. The mood in the packed Encounter with England’s Poet Lau- roomafter lunchwas ebullient in anticipation as scholars of the con first- reate,” presented a richly suggestive tinued their lively lunchtime conver- reading of one of Dickinson’s letters sations ahead of the three talks. The (L320), which addresses Susan, her panel was chaired with aplomb by sister-in-law and most intimate friend, Cristanne Miller. The fact that all three and refers to Tennyson, then regarded were Irish, she pointed out, was merely as the greatest Victorian poet. By also the transatlantic slant of their respec- Ticknor and Fields, Finnerty speculated tivea coincidence, approaches but to Dickinson. a fitting one given mentioning the Boston publishing firm First up was Maria Stuart, whose pa- Susan some of her fears over publica- per was titled “‘Pursuing you in your tion.that DickinsonAlso, Finnerty was suggestedable to deflect that ontoTen- transitions’: Dickinson in Ireland.” With nyson was important to both women poise and authority, Stuart traced out a because he celebrated same-sex love a reciprocal relationship developed fascinating series of interactions be- in his elegy, In Memoriam. Drawing on whereby America wanted to extend its tween Dickinson and a number of Irish Tennysonian motifs, Dickinson was - poets since the 1960s, including John able to spiritualize Susan and remind way wanted to improve its facilities Hewitt, Michael Longley, Tom Paulin, her of the rarity of their love. foroverseas American cultural studies. influence In consequence, and Nor Seamus Heaney, and Paul Muldoon. Last but not least was Domhnall Rockefeller funds were used to pur- Focusing on Paulin, Stuart revealed Mitchell, whose wittily delivered paper, chase American books for Norwegian how Dickinson, in the context of the “Aspects of Dickinson’s Reception in universities. Mitchell, with amusement, nineteenth-century ideological clash Norway,” considered some of the cul- imagined copies of Dickinson’s poems between American English and Brit- tural, historical, and linguistic media- being dropped on Norway by para- ish English, came to be seen by these tors that have helped to familiarize the chute under the Marshall Plan! twentieth-century poets as a crucial poet’s work to Norwegian readers. In- The audience responded enthusiasti- linguistic champion, resisting through terestingly, the image of Dickinson as a cally to such an engaging trio of talks her innovative use of English the im- recluse, long after it was questioned by with an animated set of questions. Cut posed authority of a colonial tongue. scholars, proved useful to Norwegians short owing to time constraints after Regarded thus as an emancipatory trying to relate to her verse. As Mitchell twenty minutes, the discussion contin- model, Dickinson enabled these poets pointed out, Norwegians are somewhat ued in the lobby over tea and biscuits.

November/December 2010 | 11 “Were I Britain born”

Dickinson, Nature and God Chair: Jane Eberwein, Oakland University, USA; panelists: Connie Ann Kirk, Writer, USA; Li-hsin Hsu, University of Edinburgh, UK; Richard Brantley, University of Florida, USA By Jane Eberwein

Connie Ann Kirk launched this panel, Brantley took an enlighteningly ex- with its awesomely comprehensive pansive view of the poet’s “intellectual theme, by presenting her paper en- store of transatlantic ‘givens’” with spe- titled “‘Nature is what We know – / cial attention to the tradition of British But have no Art to say –’: Meadows and empiricism stemming from John Locke Moors as Creative Inspiration in Dick- and mediated to her through Emer- inson and the Brontës.” By comparing son, Carlyle, Wesley, Wordsworth, and these two natural environments as Wadsworth. Brantley paid particular attention to the two Emilys, Kirk showed that na- nineteenth-century technology, high- tureimaginative may have influences more effect on on poems writers by lighted by his memorable performance than even they realize. A biographical aesthetic theories, entangled with his of “her twelve-word paean to all kinds parallel Kirk discussed entailed discov- narcotic visions of race, nation, and of steam power,” “Banish Air from Air” ery of nature’s threatening power as empire, are borrowed, mediated, and (Fr963), in relation to a Wadsworth experienced by two-year-old Dickinson - sermon. A comparison of Wordsworth’s caught in a thunderstorm and six-year- etic relocation of humanity within the “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” with old Brontë experiencing the “Eruption physicaltransfigured environment.” into Dickinson’s Situating geo-po De “She went as quiet as the dew” (Fr159) of Crow Hill Bog.” Among complicating Quincey’s sublimely gothic imagina- linked poems of grief to astronomi- factors Kirk addressed were those of tion within the context of British co- cal knowledge and “rational respect literary generation, national character- lonialism in Asia, Hsu argued that his for empiricism.” Brantley paid special istics, and natural terrain. In general, - attention to “Experiment escorts us Dickinson’s representation of mead- last”(Fr1181) as “the signature lyric of ows expressed imaginative freedom thewriting colonial “not hierarchy only reflects that hishe psychotries to Dickinson’s empirical voice,” brilliantly associated with the birds and insects worklogical with.” anxiety, Two but versions also fights of “Safe against in distilling her debt to the heritage of that alighted there and then soared their Alabaster Chambers” (Fr124) re- British empirical philosophy. away, while Brontë embraced the bleak Although time ran out long before and rugged moors themselves and ex- with the English author: “Incorporat- interest did, the audience raised a - ingveal De Dickinson’s Quincey’s concept imaginative of compound affinities number of questions for consider- trast illustrated by “Could I but ride in- experiences, Dickinson registers the ation at the session and afterward. pressed a fixed sense of place—a con disc of the brain as a palimpsest to re- These included questions about Dick- Li-hsin Hsu’s paper, “Asia, Animals, cord and rewrite, expand and contract, inson’s playfulness in approaching anddefinite” Apocalypse: (Fr1056) The and Narcotic“A Day Dream.” Imag- blaze and freeze at the same time.” her topics, her tendency to engender ery in Emily Dickinson and Thomas De In “Dickinson’s Empirical Voice: ‘… nature, and aspects of the “divine” in Quincey,” examined “how De Quincey’s almost as omniscient as God,’” Richard Romantic treatments of nature.

Dickinson and Class Chair: Suzanne Juhasz, University of Colorado (Emerita), USA; panelists: Aífe Murray, Independent Scholar, USA; H. Jordan Landry, University of Wisconsin—Oshkosh, USA; Mary Loeffelholz, Northeastern University, USA. By Suzanne Juhasz

reached a new level just at the moment historical study of Dickinson and her class from a different perspective, and when time was up—always the mark of servants, along with readings of the theyEach interacted of these with fine one papers another examined in pro- an excellent panel. poems, Murray described Dickinson’s vocative ways. As a group they raised Aífe Murray, in “’Peony noses, red use of “literary rituals of recognition,” a complex issues regarding the interface as Sammie Matthews’: Literary Ritu- trope by which the poet signals class to of class with gender and sexuality. They als of (Class) Recognition,” explored her reader by referring to servants and evoked many comments and questions, laborers in anomalous ways to state and the discussion was so lively that it her writing. Using as background her something more dramatically or to ad- how Dickinson figures class position in 12 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010 vance the plot. As illustration, Murray eling of other identity categories such to Shakespeare and Barrett Browning used Dickinson’s changing references as class and sex. In her letters to Sue, in terms of the historical conditions of to the family of “Britain-born” laborer - servitude in three cultures. Dickinson, Dick Matthews—a family with which self with David. Sue and David were in a culture under the sway of market the poet was associated over three or bothDickinson orphans identified consigned both to Sue the andworking her relations alongside an ideology of free more decades—and relationships in- classes who aspired to the middle class. labor, showed aspects of the other volving a high degree of dependency But her love often propelled Dickinson writers in her interest in the eroticized and closeness that challenged class to invert class positions between her- poet-master relationship developed by hierarchy as much as they were based self and Sue, showing Sue possessing Shakespeare, including its cross-dress- upon it. Dickinson’s linguistic rein- wealth, while she in her neediness was ing components, but also in her concern forcement of class boundaries exhibits poor. At the same time, Dickinson as- for gender hierarchy, central to Barrett both comfort and fear, resulting in poli- sociated herself with David’s working- Browning. Dickinson’s poems reveal tics and poetics that were “both conser- class masculinity in his adoration for the failure of recognition for Dickin- vative—and not.” women above his class. Blurring class son’s servant-lover, despite attempts by H. Jordan Landry extended the dis- and gender boundaries between her- way of cross-dressing to erase the ser- course of class to its relation to gender self and Sue enabled Dickinson to write vitude associated with female gender. and sexuality in a paper entitled “‘Whip Austin out of the erotic triangle of her Although Dickinson in her life experi- a crown - Imperial’: Representing Class brother, Sue, and herself. enced intimacy with a female servant, and Gender in Dickens and Dickin- Mary Loeffelholz complicated the son.” Studying Dickinson’s “hijacking” class dimension of writer and “service” male servant in whom she sees the fan- of Dickens’s character David Copper- in “Master Shakespeare, Mrs. Brown- tasyà la Barrettof free market Browning, labor it in is “How finally hap the- ing, Miss Dickinson, and the Servants.” py is the little stone” (Fr1570). lesbian desire precipitated the unrav- She examined Dickinson in relationship field, she showed that for Dickinson, Global Connections II: Dickinson in German and Polish Authors Chair: Antoine Cazé, University of Paris Diderot—Paris 7, France; panelists: Therese Kaiser, Aachen University, Germany; Gloria Coates, Independent Musician, USA; Adam Czerniawski, Independent Scholar, UK By Antoine Cazé

This panel convened three papers pro- Kaiser showed how Dickinson’s poetics model for a hypertextual, digital edition viding original insights into Dickinson’s of concentration, as well as some of her of Celan’s Dickinson translations, con- connections with Continental Europe major themes, such as death, religious tending that “the editorial discussion of in the nineteenth and twentieth centu- doubt, and heresy, bear a strong resem- ries through the perspectives of trans- blance to Celan’s own poetic preoccu- in the question of editing Celan’s trans- lation (Kaiser), music settings (Coates), pations, particularly as evidenced in lationsDickinson’s of her poems works”—thus finds an equivalentoffering a Die Niemandrose (1963). glimpse into an extremely promising - Kaiser also examined the triangular “transatlantic connection.” thesizedand poetic the influence research (Czerniawski). she is currently culture-crossing at play, since Celan— Gloria Coates’s presentation unrav- doingSpeaking for her first, PhD Therese dissertation Kaiser on synCel- who lived in France at the time—relied elled the German thread further back by an’s translations of Dickinson into Ger- on French as well as several American exploring the links between Dickinson man, which occupied him from 1959 to versions of Dickinson to produce his and the early Romantic circles of the 1967. Through a careful study of Cel- German Dickinson. Together with oth- Athenaeum—Novalis and the Schelling an’s typescripts and books, Kaiser has er, more textual detours, this illustrates Brothers in particular. For Coates, been able to chart the development of to what extent Dickinson proved to be the German poet’s sustained relation- a fertilizing ground for Celan’s poetry: through her profession as a composer, ship with his American counterpart “Dickinson’s journey into the German sincethe connection after setting was Dickinson’s made specifically poems - language becomes a creative adventure to music over a period of years (lead- enced his own poetic processes, some- because the linguistic gap is bridged timesand assess to the how point deeply that his Dickinson “reading influ mir- by activating the potential of a third she was commissioned to compose on rors his mental constitution more than language, in this case French.” Even as poemsing to a by cycle Novalis of fifteen and found songs herself in 2002), ex- a professional interest of the transla- early as the 1960s, Celan proved to be periencing them as “Emily Dickinson, tor.” For Kaiser, Celan’s translations of quite aware of the editorial issues at but in another form.” This led Coates to Dickinson are a personal dialogue of stake for Dickinson’s poetry. In conclu- a broader awareness of the Romantic the translator with the original poem. sion, Kaiser showed slides of her own dimension of Dickinson’s poetry and

November/December 2010 | 13 “Were I Britain born”

how this could be expressed in musi- terpart (1821-1883). Although there is treatment of the body—and more par- cal forms. “I had intuitively composed no evidence that either poet knew the ticularly the body in pain—brings her music for the Dickinson poems which other’s work, there are undeniable and potentially close to the symbolism of brought out elements of Novalis’s phi- troubling similarities of tone, theme, losophy,” Coates suggests—Death ro- and formal characteristics, which Czer- siècle aesthetics are to be found in the manticized as a part of Life, a panthe- niawski demonstrated by reading many Parisian-basedBaudelaire, no Norwid. such signs But ofbeyond a fin-de- the istic conception of Nature, the shading examples of the Polish author in his fact that both Dickinson and Norwid of initial happiness into a meditation own English translations. For instance, were “misunderstood and neglected upon mortality and “salvation in the the “awareness of the innovative and in their lifetimes [and became] the eternal night.” Illustrating her talk with leaders of modernism in their coun- a recording of her Dickinson songs, tries,” the congruence between their Coates highlighted some technical as- abouttherefore posthumous difficult nature fame”—and of their indeed, work poetic oeuvres seems to be a case of pects of her compositional procedure, bothleads poets them wereinevitably “rediscovered” to reflect furtherin later scholarly reconstruction. We are left in particular the use of triads as a musi- years to be daring innovators in their with the rather mysterious and un- cal translation of the Romantic literary respective countries and languages. satisfactory explanation of a Zeitgeist “triad” of happiness, pain and suffering, Both were “sensitive to the hypocri- that does not explain anything. Still, at and salvation. sies of the social circles in which they least in Poland, Dickinson and Norwid In conclusion to this panel, Adam participate[d]” and shared a skepti- are now commonly associated, letting Czerniawski took us further East and cal attitude toward religion. Death us marvel at the “miraculous invis- proposed a speculative comparison be- and all things macabre are a constant ible thread that links Emily Dickinson tween Emily Dickinson and the Polish preoccupation. Czerniawski, however, across the Atlantic with a Polish poet.” poet Cyprian Norwid, an almost exact highlighted one point of aesthetic di- contemporary of his American coun- vergence: while Dickinson’s daring

British Connections V: George Eliot, Vol. I Chair: Emily Seelbinder, Queens University of Charlotte, USA; panelists: Barbara Mossberg, California State University, Monterey

By Emily Seelbinder Bay, USA; Margaret Freeman, Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts, USA; Kristin Sanner, Mansfield University, USA - autochthonous expression” to provide all the others,” only to be stunned by the ing connections between Dickinson an interpretation of “We like March” next line, “Bold it were to die.” “How did andThe Georgefirst of Eliottwo livelyproved sessions to be a delightexplor- death get into this,” Mossberg asked, ful parade of purposeful and playful March as a man, “albeit Versace-ish, “with the Blue Birds [of happiness?] personae, some (including two of the perhaps(Fr1194). a Dickinson’s fashionista: identification ‘his shoes are of exercising on his British sky”? And panelists) sporting purple shoes. purple'”—presents an interestingly why British? Around the time Dickin- Barbara Mossberg, in a paper en- gendered complement to the purple- titled “Through the Transatlantic Lens: hoarding “winded lady wearing a hat” poem to Sue, those two avid readers Emily Dickinson’s Transatlantic Soul,” who is invited “right up stairs” with wouldson sent likely the firsthave known been followingversion of with this got us off to a high-kicking start by ap- the speaker of “Dear March - Come in” keen interest the serialization of Mid- plying an approach she described as (Fr1320). Inversions of syntax lead us dlemarch. The March of “We like” may “a reading of Dickinson’s poems as an to “linger over” the line “News is he of therefore be not a month but a place,

14 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010 a “middle ground” on which Dickinson - tion from gender norms….Rather than might “assume a kinship [and] linguis- tapping into the textual corporeality tically insert herself as a partner in con- theirfail or community.succeed to becomeDickinson infinite found play in that the French feminists would even- sciousness with Eliot,” sharing “com- thisers narrative within [the] support finite for boundaries” declaring that of tually name l’écriture feminine, Eliot’s munion with a sister writer.” Eliot was a “‘mortal’ who had already letters show an author busily at work Middlemarch became a place of “play ‘put on immortality.’” Would Eliot have - and possibility” when Margaret Free- found similar qualities in her admirer’s ing characters that would lead to her man stood up to consider “what Eliot work? “Although Dickinson’s writings literaryfinding wayssuccesses. to create Like richher anddecision engag to would have made of Dickinson’s poems - adopt a masculine pen name, however, had she read them.” Though “Dickin- zons of nature,” Freeman argued that the letters show a writer whose keen son’s gnomic writing stands in stark Eliot,are marked “acutely rather aware by theof infinitethe distinc hori- awareness of the limitations placed on contrast to Eliot’s expansive narra- tion between boundary and horizon,” tives,” Freeman introduced the two as would have been better equipped than to circumvent the system.” Dickinson, “kindred spirits,” not only as women most to understand and appreciate onwomen the other writers hand, led turned her to letters find waysinto but also as writers. Using theory devel- “the force of Dickinson’s lyric voice as a form of publication. In these letters, oped by James P. Carse in his book Fi- it moves [in poem after poem] unceas- which are full of “repeated references to nite and Infinite Games, Freeman dem- ingly toward new horizons.” corporeality,” Dickinson developed “an onstrated how both writers “introduce Kristin Sanner turned our attention autobiographical form that allowed her us to the possibility that even within not only to cast an independent, con- “‘I am afraid to own a Body –’: Corpo- trolled representation of the self, but - realto the Independence infinite play ofin otherthe Letters voices inof our finite worlds, we nevertheless can Emily Dickinson and George Eliot,” a the body, to transcend the physical and become infinite players....Both consid- discussion of the carefully constructed creativealso, through limitations the letters’ imposed reflection on women of ciety;ered the they difficulties describe of the being falling an infinite short personae Eliot and Dickinson present- in the nineteenth century.” By insisting thatplayer almost within inevitably the confines occurs of whenfinite theso ed in their correspondence. “Eliot’s in her letters on an “inextricable con- boundaries of conventional attitudes self-fashioning,” Sanner suggested, was nection between...her physical body block the horizon of creative vision.” In “more successful than Dickinson’s, from and her body of work,” Sanner conclud- Middlemarch, for example, Eliot’s nar- a social and professional perspective, ed, Dickinson “not only writes, sends, rator “follows the characters…as they [but] less successful in terms of libera- and is inspired by poetry, she is poetry.”

Manuscripts I: Dickinson’s Manuscript Books Chair: Alexandra Socarides, University of Missouri, USA; panelists: Ellen Louise Hart, University of California at Santa Cruz (Emerita), USA; Trisha Kannan, University of Florida, USA; Kristen Kreider, University of London, UK By Alexandra Socarides

This panel featured three papers stem- son to control the pace of the verse, to Browning (a topic, interestingly, that ming from diverse experiences with, protect the integrity of each syllable’s emerged at several different moments and representing various approaches sound, to draw attention to particu- in the conference). Hart argued that to, Dickinson’s manuscripts. lar words and phrases, and to set out Dickinson’s preoccupation with allit- Ellen Louise Hart, in “‘Speaking of - eration, assonance, and consonance— Pippa Passes’: Alliteration, Rhetorical cally on punctuation and spacing, Hart on organizing sounds and establishing Emphasis, Dickinson’s Visual Strate- suggesteddiverse rhythms. that Dickinson’s By focusing pauses specifi are rhythm—was shared by Browning. To gies of Manuscript, and Browning’s acoustic and interpretive extrametri- that end, she discussed the opening Dramatic Verse,” began by discuss- cal stresses. She read and discussed lines of “Pippa Passes” as they rhyth- ing the “visual prosaic strategies” and the version of “Safe in their Alabaster mically unfold, as well as a section of “complex oral art” present in the manu- / chambers” (Fr124E) included in Fas- Browning’s long narrative poem on the scripts—features of Dickinson’s poetry cicle 10, accentuating the nuanced use life of the poet, “Sordello.” Finally, she to which readers of her printed texts do of sound repetition and expressive em- pointed out that among the literary not have access. Hart argued that cer- phasis. bonds between Emily Dickinson and tain features of her manuscripts—vary- In the second part of the paper, Hart Susan Dickinson, Robert Browning’s ing amounts of space between words in observed that while scholars have paid work is central, as is evident in the allu- a line, dashes of different lengths and great attention to Dickinson’s relation- sions to Browning in Susan’s obituary angles and positions within a line—are ship to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for Emily. visual strategies that allowed Dickin- they have all but ignored that to Robert Trisha Kannan delivered the second

November/December 2010 | 15 “Were I Britain born”

through Keats’s investigation of sleep, erate meaning through what she calls John Keats within Emily Dickinson’s dreaming, and poetry, Kannan showed “a material poetics.” To this end she Fasciclepaper, “The 30.” ‘prison Despite of prior flesh claimsand bone’: dis- that both poets yearned for beauty and looked closely at the details of manu- missing a relation between Dickinson poetry to transcend human experience. script A449. By calling attention to the and Keats, Kannan argued that this Additionally, the poems of this fascicle crease in the manuscript itself, Kreider fascicle can be read in fruitful relation reveal that neither Keats nor Dickinson, produced new ways of understanding to Keats’s works, particularly “To Au- despite their commitment to the power the words that Dickinson wrote on this tumn,” Endymion, “Sleep and Poetry,” and possibilities offered by beauty and scrap of paper (Fr1323). and “I Stood Tip-Toe Upon a Little Hill.” poetry, failed to recognize the inability After the papers there were a number According to Kannan’s reading, Fasci- of poetry to transport poet and reader of questions from audience members, cle 30 investigates nature and dream- completely beyond the human sphere. some asking the skeptical yet impor- ing as particular sources of inspira- Lastly, Kristen Kreider, a practicing tant question of how much emphasis tion and examines several themes that poet, artist, and lecturer in creative we can really put on these manuscripts. concerned Keats—the ideal versus the writing, spoke on “Lyric Encounters: - real; the role of the poet; the self versus The Material Poetics of Dickinson’s proaches currently taken by Dickinson others, and human experience versus Later Manuscript Pages.” Kreider asked scholars.This panel The reflected second a nicepanel array on manu of ap- the potential for poetry to transcend how the spatial and material qualities scripts (held the next day) picked up the mortal sphere. Reading Fascicle 30 of Dickinson’s manuscript pages gen- on several of these issues.

Traveling Feet: Dickinson’s Meter and the Lyric Chair: Jed Deppman, Oberlin College, USA; panelists: Michael Manson, American University, USA; Cristanne Miller, University at Buffalo, USA By Jed Deppman

It was standing room only at the Travel- upon Mary Louise Kete’s characteriza- an “antebellum vogue” for hybridizing ing Feet panel, a testimony to the ongo- tion of sentimentality as a utopian form meters and verses. Her particular vari- ing interest of Dickinsonians in genre, expressing promises “of nonviolated ety of stanzaic forms seems to enable form, and meter. communities, restored losses, and “individual thought” as well as “expres- healed wounds.” Manson concluded sion through communally shared or “Reading Dickinson’s Lyrics.” Against that to understand the ways readers popular forms.” VirginiaMichael Jackson’s Manson wentargument first withthat are summoned to and by the poems, Noting that stanzaic rhythms in “there is no lyric, only lyric reading,” we may not have to “get outside lyric particular “function as the compo- and against the common conception of reading” so much as “get inside more sitional foundation for her poems,” genre as “rule-making and taxonomic,” poems, more genres,” to see both how Miller speculates that Dickinson’s po- Manson argued that genre is the means “insight and experience rely on genre” ems “typically developed” as ideas by which cultures “articulate meaning” and how genre expresses “our private and phrases that “manifested them- and “explain their hopes and fears.” thoughts and our public needs.” selves in a stanzaic pattern, or a unit Citing Thomas Leitch, Manson argued Next was Cristanne Miller with “The of rhythmic completion”; her thought that, while most creative works draw Ballad ‘Wild’ and Dickinson’s Transat- did not “slavishly adhere” to a pattern on many genres, they do so “not in a lantic Lyric Form.” Miller drew from her but found in stanzas a structure that mixed or hybrid way but in a nested book in progress, Lyric Strains: Reading gave force and shape to her thinking or hierarchical fashion.” Thus, where Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century, to through their combinations of rhythm Jackson categorizes a Dickinson poem speak about the origins of Dickinson’s and syntax. If Dickinson had composed such as “This Chasm, Sweet” (Fr1061) forms in English ballads. Miller argued by line or phrase, it would be “unlikely” as simply “a sentimental lyric,” Manson that Dickinson’s stanzaic and metri- that her “shifts away” from initial pat- sees it as emerging from several con- cal forms arose “from the intersection terns would themselves take stanzaic ventional areas. of elite and popular, printed and sung, form, as they frequently do. Building Agreeing with Jackson in the ab- religious and secular, American and on this, Miller elucidated a longstand- stract—that sentimental lyrics encour- European short-lined forms prevalent ing paradox: Why did Dickinson assert - that “she could not drop the Bells” of lyric subject—Manson distinguished enced her experimentation with loos- meter while also acknowledging Hig- theage purposes vicarious of identification the sentimental with lyric the enedin the meter 1840s and and shifts 1850s.” in stanzaicBallads influform ginson’s criticism that her verse was from those of other genres, such as mid-poem. According to Miller, Dick- “uncontrolled” (LL268, 271)? For Dick- narrative or argument, by drawing inson’s myriad forms participated in inson, says Miller, “metrical rhythms

16 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010

[jingling] seem to facilitate the move- from the initiating stanzaic structure.” “in the short-lined verse being pub- ment of thought in language,” while Ultimately, Dickinson recognized “the lished on both sides of the Atlantic.” “that movement of thought may in possibilities for an ambitious, complex, turn impel [‘uncontrolled’] shifts away and powerfully expressive” poetry

Plenary Speaker. Evolutionary Enigmas and Colonial Equations Dickinson’s Transoceanic Geography Introduction: Paraic Finnerty, Portsmouth University, UK; Speaker: Paul Giles, Oxford University, UK, and University of Sydney, Australia By Paraic Finnerty

Paul Giles offered the conference’s sec- - social and religious certainties and ond plenary address, speaking from ry. In this context, Giles demonstrated the University of Sydney via videocon- Dickinson’stween science use and of other geological fields oftheories enqui the “established world’s antipodean ferencing. Giles began by noting the po- about the Earth’s expanded time-scale dimensions.”complacencies Her upside poems down, use imagery to find tential narrowness of scholarship and and the formation of landscape through from the southern hemisphere to sig- academic conferences that focus on one eruption and erosion in her represen- nify reversal and movement away from tation of human subjectivity and per- certainty and to connote inversion, ex- such in-depth, scholarly concentration spective as disruptive, fractured, chaot- tremity, transgression, and fracture in asauthor, a corrective but also to the abstract benefit theorizing. of having ic experiences (Fr143), which implied human knowledge (Fr356, 757). Giles Although Giles spoke against the bio- an “interface between anthropocentric positions Dickinson’s term “circumfer- graphical criticism that has tended to and geocentric perspective.” Similarly, ence” in this terrestrial and geographi- domesticate and sentimentalize Dick- Dickinson followed contemporary ma- cal framework, where it refers to an inson—a poet whom many scholars, rine biologists in presenting the sea intellectual and physical boundary, but including Giles, regard as a disturbing, as the origin of all earthly life (Fr349, also to the mind’s circumnavigations, forbidding, and ambivalent writer—he 1295), and Darwin in her depiction of its antipodean journeys to the other acknowledged the important role bio- the natural world as site of struggle side of the world. Dickinson’s antipo- graphical research has in properly his- (Fr359). In other poems in which she dality is typical of her love of polarity toricizing Dickinson. His talk examined mentions optical instruments, how- and antithesis: her surreal conjoining ever, she recasts astronomy as a form of disparate ideas, concepts, or objects: geology, evolution, and astronomy in of internal gazing that records the un- domestic and global, minuscule and her useexploration of scientific of breakdowns discourses suchin per as- easy and shifting nature of perspective cosmic, mind and matter. sonal identity, cognition, and language. (Fr437, 442, 803, 957). Likewise, in her Giles made a convincing case for In particular, Giles uncovered what he poems that depict the rotating earth, termed Dickinson’s “antipodality”: her seasonal cycles and change, and mi- discourses and her imbrication of their use of tropes of cultural and geographi- gration (Fr633, 900, 1104, 1198) Giles alternativeDickinson’s ways strategic of conceptualizing use of scientific the cal difference, in particular those asso- origin and nature of humanity and the ciated with the southern hemisphere, relationship between the spiritual and physical world. Rather than domestic to indicate personal displacement, dis- theuncovered material—a her reconfiguration continual concern of the of Dickinson and her poetry, Giles chal- tance, and estrangement. Puritanism and Transcendentalism— lenged scholars to explore her contin- The audience was reminded that at in geophysical terms and remapping ual mapping of local and domestic phe- Amherst Academy Dickinson studied of human consciousness within global nomena within a global circuit in which geography. “the rotation of the Earth renders all botany, algebra, geometry, and astron- Giles explained that in this period vantage points equally refractory.” scientific subjects, including geology, the theory of evolution was associated “part of the general public discourse with the southern hemisphere, where ofomy; this that era” scientific and not terminologythe sole domain was Charles Darwin had done much of his of specialists or highly trained techni- research. Evoking such an association, cians; and that in this period there was according to Giles, Dickinson used sci- not such a disciplinary dissociation be-

entific discourse to turn New England November/December 2010 | 17 “Were I Britain born”

Plenary Panel 2 Chair: Paul Crumbley, Utah State University, USA; panelists: Joan Kirkby, Macquarie University, Australia; Vivian Pollak, Washington University, USA; Jed Deppman, Oberlin College, USA By Paul Crumbley

his treatment of the dead queen’s pa- ordinating conjunction “but” in Woolf’s took place in the largest room at the pers. This approach enabled Pollak to To the Lighthouse and Dickinson’s RothermereAs with the first American plenary panel,Institute this andone analyze Ted Hughes’s published assess- poem “The Robin’s my Criterion for was extremely well attended. ments of Dickinson and Sylvia Plath as a Tune – ” (Fr 256), the poem that unites Joan Kirkby’s paper, “Darwinizing self-serving critical narrative grounded “but” with the phrase used in the con- with Emily Dickinson and Erasmus in psychological realism but also con- ference title: “But, were I Britain born.” Darwin,” extended the analysis she had taining its own fairytale elements. Most Deppman employed George Steiner’s initiated in her essay “‘[W]e thought concept of “hermeneutic violence” to Darwin had thrown “the Redeemer” of Dickinson as a mystic precursor for explain the way Woolf’s and Dickin- away’: Darwinizing with Emily Dickin- Plathspecifically, enabled Hughes’s him to characterizationavoid confront- son’s incorporations of “but” inject ex- son,” which appeared in a recent issue ing his own personal foibles by situat- istential uncertainty into the thought of the Emily Dickinson Journal (14.1). ing his life with Plath in the context of processes of individuals. Woolf’s Mrs. There she argued that Dickinson ex- a search for meaning that led to Plath’s Ramsay hears herself stating “We are hibited a Darwinian sensibility prior to highest poetic achievement. “Hughes’s in the hands of the Lord” and is in- publication of Charles Darwin’s The Or- Dickinson,” Pollak argued, “was a di- stantly annoyed that she should have igin of Species (1859). The present pa- version from and a defense against the uttered such an observation. Doing so - tragic particulars of personal history.” serves Woolf’s aim of demonstrating ure of Erasmus Darwin” (grandfather Pollak also pointed out, however, that “the unexpected power of one’s culture per focused on the “larger than life fig through his 1963 review of Charles. R. to interrupt, translate, and freeze one’s the foremost scientist and physician of Anderson’s Stairway of Surprise (1960) thought.” In Dickinson’s poem, the mul- hisof Charles), day. Kirkby whom described Kirkby identifiedDickinson’s as and the introduction to his 1968 selec- tiple insertions of “but” undermine “darwinizing” as a positive feature of tion of 100 Dickinson poems, A Choice her writing even though Coleridge had of Emily Dickinson’s Verse, Hughes did assertions of personal identity as har- coined the term to disparage what he much to elevate Dickinson’s stature in monicallythe speaker’s grounded seemingly in nature. self-satisfied When viewed as the tendency, provoked by Anglo-American letters, even inviting the speaker imagines that a British Erasmus Darwin, to launch wild and comparison with Shakespeare. None- self might “spurn” the “Daisies” of New fanciful speculations about nature and theless, his writing about Dickinson England, she suddenly perceives that the origin of humanity. According to formed a transatlantic drama in which an alternatively formed natural self Kirkby, Dickinson’s darwinizing in her Hughes communicated with his dead could reject the identity that she has nature poems participated in a larger wife and cast himself as “bystander in reconceptualization of the natural a tragedy that had been preordained speaker and Mrs. Ramsay both “think world that had begun in the eighteenth from the start.” themselvessought to affirm. to the In thispoint way of Dickinson’s self-disin- century and was current throughout Jed Deppman’s paper ‘But, but…Emily tegration” when unresolved cultural her formative years. Poems such as Dickinson and Virginia Woolf,” concen- “The Frost of Death was on the Pane” trated on the disruptive force of the co- (Fr1130), “Did the Harebell loose her conflicts enter their private thoughts. girdle” (Fr134), and “The Rose re- an understanding of nature that Kirk- byceived linked his toVisit” Erasmus (from Darwin’s Fr1351) works.reflect Kirkby concluded that Dickinson shared Erasmus Darwin’s view of the natural world as perpetually changing, as “both fecund and unpredictable, but above all alive, sensate even.” Vivian Pollak’s presentation opened with a fairytale overview of Sylvia Plath’s life, replete with an evil king who generated controversy through

18 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010

British Connections VII: Repellant Settings, Best Gems George Eliot and Emily Dickinson Chair: USA; Emily Seelbinder, Queens University of Charlotte, USA; Eleanor Heginbotham, Concordia University, USA Margaret Freeman, Myrifield Institute for CognitionBy Margaret and the Freeman Arts, USA; panelists: Jane Eberwein, Oakland University,

Taking as their theme Emily Dick- than doctrinal aspects of Christianity, consider a broader, more inclusive un- inson’s comment on the portrait of beginning with Scenes of Clerical Life. derstanding of authorial behavior and George Eliot, “God chooses repellant Eberwein thus set the framework for attitudes than were allowed in tradi- settings, dont he, for his best Gems?” the session by placing Dickinson’s well tional Victorian biographical studies of (L692), the panelists challenged the documented attitudes toward her Puri- author narratives. presupposed identity between autho- tan heritage within the context of a lit- Eleanor Heginbotham’s “‘Now, my rial and narrative voice by exploring erary rather than a doctrinaire reading George Eliot’: Emily Dickinson and what Dickinson knew of George Eliot’s of biblical texts. ‘Glory’” focused on what Dickinson life and writings as she developed her When Emily Seelbinder (in “Sup- might have meant by her comment in own poetic stance. The speakers pre- posed [Male] Persons: Narrative L389, “What do I think of Middlemarch? sented nineteenth-century ideas con- Cross-Dressing in Eliot and Dickin- What do I think of glory?” Read closely, cerning religion, gender, and morality son”) rose to boom out “A narrow fel- Dickinson’s “glory” letter follows the that Eliot and Dickinson overturned in low in the grass,” the room jumped to various tones of the novel from its com- both their lives and their writings. attention, and a loud knock was heard ic opening to serious theological dis- Jane Eberwein’s “‘Dangerous fruit on the adjoining wall. (We were sur- cussion. Eliot’s respect for the complex of the tree of knowledge’: Dickinson, prised that Rothermere’s conference lives of her often frustrated, disappoint- Marian Evans, and Strauss’s Das Leben ed, and (in the case of Bulstrode) evil Jesu,” discussed Eliot’s role in unset- poem’s barefoot boy upsets the notion characters reveals a deep psychological tling Christian belief by translating facilities lacked soundproofing.) The understanding of human character that David Friedrich Strauss’s rigorous ex- character. Focusing on the success of may have triggered Dickinson’s fasci- amination of New Testament textual Adamthat narrative Bede before voices the reflect supposed authorial male nation with Eliot’s unorthodox life as reliability that was “repellant” to nine- clergyman “George Eliot” was “outed” revealed in biographies by John Cross teenth-century assumptions. Eberwein as a woman, Seelbinder showed how and Mathilde Blind. Heginbotham’s suggested that Casaubon’s character Victorian critics were astonished and presentation reinforced Dickinson’s in Middlemarch was predicated partly dismayed that such an accomplished comment on Eliot’s portrait that au- on Eliot’s knowledge of Strauss and author could be not just a woman but thorial traits (“repellant settings”) are her relationship to him as translator one with dubious morals, translating disconnected from literary value (“best of his work. Although Dickinson was Strauss’s work and living as Mrs. Lewes gems”). unversed in the “Higher Criticism” of outside the bounds of marriage. The The presenters thus explored and the Oxford Movement, her response use of male narrators, she observed, - to the ministers she knew in personal, is but one of many ways in which El- inson’s comment on Eliot’s portrait. rather than religious, terms resonated iot and Dickinson undermined gender Bothclarified writers the ironicresponded overtones to the of preju Dick- with Eliot’s focus on humanistic rather determinations, enabling readers to dices of their times by bravely refus- ing to accommodate their lifestyles or their writing practices to contempo- rary standards of womanly behavior. The lively discussion that followed started with a question about Dickin- son’s spiritual life and awareness of other mythologies of death and rebirth (Osiris in particular), thus provoking a free-ranging exchange among the audi-

the timely and currently “hot” topic ofence Dickinson’s and panel relationmembers to that nineteenth- reflected century religious concerns and the Higher Criticism of Anglican theology. Photo by LeeAnn Gorthey November/December 2010 | 19 “Were I Britain born”

Manuscripts II: Dickinson in Pieces Chair: Geoffrey Saunders Schramm, National Cathedral School, USA; panelists: Martha Nell Smith, University of Maryland, USA; Alexandra Socarides, University of Missouri, USA; Eliza Richards, University of North Carolina, USA; Marilee Lindemann, University of Maryland, USA By Geoffrey Schramm

Dickinson left a collection of miscel- of taking pleasure in the abundant, live- between Dickinson’s different materi- laneous works that critics have ever ly joys, sorrows, fears, and hopes with als and her shifting poetics, it proposes, since tried to put together into a coher- which they were engaged. After all, in in concrete terms, that if we are going ent body; this panel suggests that we the nineteenth and early twentieth cen- to attempt to read Dickinson’s late po- might do better to leave her work in tury, poetry was, as Susan wrote, their ems, we need to place them in relation pieces and learn to read them and their “Sermon...Hope...Solace...Life.” to her decision to write on household literary legacies that way. In “‘Read Me’: Emily Dickinson in about that paper. the Drawing Room,” Martha Nell Smith paper,In “Acres and we of need Joints/Acres to find a wayof Seams: to talk observed that for most of Dickinson’s Fragmentation and Reconstruction life as An Author, spatters of blood, in Dickinson’s Civil War Poems,” Eliza sweat, tears, and the detritus of draw- Richards located Dickinson’s “It sifts ing room circulation (wine, coffee, tea from Leaden Sieves” (Fr291) in a poet- stains) on her poems have been sealed ic tradition in which winter’s weather away from view. Her poems have been serves as a trope for war. The consis- printed and professionalized, removed tent association over time of the lethal far from the manuscript conditions in capacities of snow with war suggests which she placed them. In “Why We Resist Understanding that in its annihilating force, war resists century technologies now enable op- Dickinson’s Late Fragments, as Frag- - portunities to examine physicalTwenty-first- traces mentary as that Understanding May tions also shows that the interdepen- of nineteenth-century handlings, and Be,” Alexandra Socarides attempted denthistory. technologies But the change of both in thesecommunica figura- to much larger and more diverse con- to disentangle the critical blind spot tion and killing radically transform the stituencies than when access to view regarding Dickinson’s late poetics, ar- way writers think of snow, war, and the her manuscripts was limited to library guing that past critical approaches ei- functions and possibilities of poetry. special collections. Digital surrogates in ther overattribute intention or do away Viewing war at a distance, Dickinson the Dickinson Electronic Archives, Radi- with intention entirely. The poem that draws upon the weather to material- cal Scatters, and Emily Dickinson’s Cor- Dickinson sent to Elizabeth Holland ize—or maybe atomize—the news of respondences: A Born-Digital Textual after the death of her husband(L733, the battlefront. Inquiry enable us to reimagine “How to Fr1564)—a poem originally drafted read a nineteenth-century poem.” They on the back of the recipe for Mrs. Car- writing practice with deep, varied make possible the showing, as well as michael’s coconut cake (A445)—il- rootsBlogging in literary is a and twenty-first-century cultural history. the telling, of the biographies of her lustrates how readers can factor in Marilee Lindemann’s “How Public, Like writings as they were read privately intention without overplaying it. The a B(l)og: Emily Dickinson and a Femi- and in the publics of the sociocultural contours of the paper and the inter- nist Prehistory of the Blogosphere” ex- exchanges of drawing rooms, kitchens, ruption the recipe performs in the amined part of that history by situating bedrooms, and dining rooms. Read un- composition of the poem, as Socarides Dickinson as an important precursor til now anachronistically in print pub- insisted, certainly informed the way to women, especially academics, who lication, as if they had been imagined Dickinson wrote the poem. This frag- blog pseudonymously or anonymously, as prepared for the elegant nineteenth- ment reveals that Dickinson’s choice positioning her as foremother to a com- century letterpress page, the writings of materials was intricately tied to many know so well can now more eas- the struggles she was having with the Madwoman with a Laptop. Dickinson’s ily be resituated into even more capa- movements, choices, and endings of her fondnessposite figure for Lindemann anonymity has sheds named light the cious critical narratives. Those critical poems. Household scraps, as Socarides on both the psychology and the poli- stories are self-consciously anachronis- tics of feminist blogs, many of which tic in reading the traces—stains, torn such struggles by creating more oppor- are produced by scholars and writers paper—of everyday life that surround tunityexplained, for interruption, supported anddigression, intensified and who have published extensively under Dickinson’s own record of her poems, rethinking. While this paper gestures at their “real” names. Further, Dickinson’s and suggest new and generative ways the larger question of the relationship unique textual strategies and perfor-

20 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010

mances can elucidate techniques that this pre-history as an enabling example and construct their communities of are widely used on blogs. Dickinson of self-publication. Dickinson’s care- readers. Dickinson’s stance as simulta- was a pioneer in creating mixed-media ful insistence to Thomas Higginson on neously diminutive yet large and diva- texts that demand both verbal and vi- the distinction between “print” and sual attention. Blogs work similarly “publish” has new resonance in the solo blogger toiling away in obscurity and, thanks to technological advances, post-print era that brought self-edited butesque fueled has parallelsby powerful in the world-making figure of the on even more levels to engage differ- and self-published blogs into being. aspirations. A small blog may, like a ent kinds of readerly attention. Finally, Dickinson’s cultivation of an intimate “small” life, swell like horizons in one’s Dickinson, with her homemade books audience that is a complex mixture of breast, and the blogger knows well that and the hundreds of poems circulated public and private is helpful as a way snarky Dickinsonian desire to “sneer to an audience of intimates, enters into of thinking about how blogs imagine – softly – ‘small!’” (Fr307).

Sacrifice and Drama in Dickinson Chair: Eleanor Heginbotham, Concordia University (Emerita), USA; panelists: Paula Bennett, Southern Illinois University (Emerita), USA; Dan Manheim, Centre College, USA; Lin Yupeng, Hefei University of Technology, P.R. China By Eleanor Heginbotham

Appropriate to a session titled “Sac- with “the single issue that seems to this – there is naught” (Fr464). His play have troubled Dickinson most,” the with almost every word of the poem from a farther room rose and the lights choice a soldier made for “death over showed how the circuit her gift makes dimmed.rifice and Paula Drama Bennett, in Dickinson,” author of music foun- life.” Rounding out her discussion with around the world “gives wholeness dational studies of Dickinson and other a return to Browning, Bennett looked and form to the separate entities who women poets, found a place in the dim both back to his early use of the dra- receive it. Her seams include them all.” light for a penetrating and moving pre- matic monologue and forward toward One way of showing how “her seams sentation of “From Browning to the a twentieth-century response to a trag- include them all” is to consider how American Civil War: Dickinson and the edy beyond the scope of commonly ac- Dickinson deploys drama in her poet- American Dramatic Monologue.” Open- cepted literary forms. and toward an ry. That was the subject of Lin Yupeng, ing with an analysis of the prologue to “American Dramatic Lyric.” translator of poetry and of such nov- Robert Browning’s 1889 “fact laden, From Bennett’s focus on the poetic els as Uncle Tom’s Cabin into Chinese. reality-oriented” Asolando: Fancies and form for containing and exploring the His comprehensive paper, “Drama in Facts, Bennett probed the historic dis- - Emily Dickinson’s Poetry and Its Pos- tinctions between “the poet as seer” ody, the session moved toward a fo- sible Causes,” was on one level a virtual and “the poet as maker,” asking, “What cussacrifices on less of grave war in but experimental equally symbolic pros happened to the would-be poet of ro- gifts as Dan Manheim spoke on “Emily mantic vision when confronted with Dickinson and the Enigma of Gift and course in dramatic techniques: conflict - (assassins(frost beheading in apartments, flowers), bodies characters bor- brutality, that any attempt to wrap it cent special EDJ issue, placed many of rowing(Bees, Butterflies,revolvers), Swans),comedy melodramaof manners ina subject‘fancy’s-haze’ so horrifying, or...attribute so filled divine with Dickinson’sSacrifice.” Manheim, poems in co-editor the context of a reof (this was particularly delightful: “Over purpose to it was an affront not just to mid-nineteenth century New England the fence – Strawberries grow”), dia- those who suffered but to the truth- gift culture. In his discussion of the sig- logue (conversations between “Truth” speaking nature of poetry itself?” - and “Beauty”), meta-drama, and more. Dickinson’s answer to this Civil War– thology, Manheim offered his own gifts: As the brief but lively discussion based question was the “dramatic lyr- thoughtsnificance onof agift flower, giving a frompoem, the or Gospelan an period proved, the route from indi- ic,” a term Bennett distinguished from of John (“a gift was a way of perpetu- vidual elements of the dramatist to “dramatic monologue.” An “extraordi- ating a circuit of heavenly love”); from the “dramatic lyric” of Bennett’s se- - Emerson’s “Gifts” (“any gift is a portion lections and the making of all those ate, pointed out Bennett, for a number of thyself”); from twentieth-century dramatic elements into the “gifts” of ofnarily poems flexible in Fascicle genre,” 16it was in whichappropri the Marcel Mauss (the “potlatch [gift] was Manheim’s talk fell into new patterns speaker cannot bear to look directly for the thirty-some Dickinson read- at the carnage. After a close reading of relations within communities”); Lewis ers gathered in the temporarily dark- several examples, Bennett concluded Hyde,a way and of defining others. orManheim adjusting directed power ened room, the soundtrack of the next that the poems of Fascicle 16 wrestle such resources to Dickinson’s “Without

door film shedding still more “drama.” November/December 2010 | 21 “Were I Britain born” Dickinson and the Self Chair: Brad Ricca, Case Western Reserve University, USA; panelists: Cuihua Xu, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, P.R. China; Cynthia Hallen, Brigham Young University, USA; Polly Longsworth, Independent Scholar, USA; Norbert Hirschhorn, Physician, USA By Brad Ricca

This panel showcased a breadth of “little John” country of Fr408 (“Like at Dickinson’s cousin Zebina Montague, speakers and topics. First, conference Some Old fashioned Miracle”). She whom Gordon points to in her book as newcomer Cuihua Xu delivered “‘As if showed also that Dickinson’s direct a sad epileptic to support her claim that a Kingdom – cared’: Emily Dickinson’s maternal ancestors were from Shaft- epilepsy ran in the family. Longsworth Heroic Thinking on Self-Management.” esbury in Dorset, just south of Stone- not only refuted this claim of inherit- Xu, who also translates Dickinson po- henge, the country of Thomas Hardy’s ability, but revealed through primary ems into Chinese, explored the ways in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and she dis- historical documents that Montague which Dickinson’s poetry works within played original slides and documents suffered from a stroke, not epilepsy, a self-managed mechanism designed to from her own pre-conference trip to and she unfolded the rich story of his best maximize the effect of both image these sites to prove that Dickinson was life as a beloved member of the com- and language. Xu argued that Dickin- indeed “Britain Born.” munity. Longsworth concluded her talk son, in poems such as Fr356, “demon- by passing around photos of Montague strates her businesslike shrewdness in separate papers on a shared topic: with his cane, surrounded by friends. weighing the attitudes toward working “WasThe It final Epilepsy?: two panelists Diagnosing delivered Emily Discussion was spirited, espe- for time or for immortality.” Xu cited Dickinson’s Health.” First, Dr. Norbert cially about the claim of epilepsy. Hirschhorn, a public health physician Some audience members wondered if (from Fr175), “My business were so with a background in medical his- Hirschhorn’s and Longsworth’s valu- dear!”lines such (from as Fr176),“My business and “My is, businessto find!” tory, was passionate in his rebuttal of able work did not completely nullify is to love” (from L269) as indicative of Lyndall Gordon’s controversial claim Gordon’s book. Others disagreed. Mar- this sort of economical thinking about in Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dick- tha Nell Smith agreed that any mis- expansive subjects. She also made in- inson and Her Family’s Feuds (2010) takes are unfortunate but wondered if teresting parallels to the translation of that Dickinson suffered from epilepsy. we were judging the book too harshly, Dickinson’s poems into Chinese, whose Hirschhorn presented information because all biographies have errors, in- “business” of ideographical language on how epilepsy was—and was not— cluding Sewall's and Habegger's. Long- allows for closely focused attention to treated during Dickinson’s lifetime, fo- sworth agreed, noting that portions of metaphorical language. cusing on Gordon’s “pharmacological the Gordon book were very good. As a Next, Cynthia Hallen shared with the error” in believing that glycerine would whole, audience members seemed to warm, crowded room some brilliant have been prescribed for epilepsy. Cit- lament that it was the epilepsy portion slides concerning Emily Dicksinson’s ing original medical manuals and offer- that had brought Dickinson back into previously-unmapped English heritage ing several pages of references as sup- the media spotlight. In the end, with in “‘Britain Born’: Emily Dickinson’s port, Hirschhorn persuasively argued the room feeling a bit exhausted, Long- Orthogenetic Paternal and Maternal that, while Dickinson was prescribed sworth suggested that Cuihua Xu read Lines.” With her usual passion, Hallen glycerine, it was decidedly not for epi- a Dickinson poem she had translated presented her primary research trac- lepsy but instead for a chronic cough. into Chinese. This helped to end the ing the poet’s direct paternal ancestors Polly Longsworth added more to this session on a congenial note. to Billingborough in Lincolnshire—the conversation about epilepsy by looking

Dickinson and the Arts I: Imagination’s Muse Emily Dickinson as Creative Inspiration Chair: Georgiana Strickland, Independent Scholar, USA; panelists: Maryanne Garbowsky, County College of Morris, USA; Nicole Panizza, Royal College of Music, UK; Suzie Hanna, Norwich University UK; Sally Bayley, Balliol College of Oxford University, UK By Georgiana Strickland

Fine Arts Committee, approached the session with a discussion of two visual poet through the lens of visual art, mu- artists, American Will Barnet and Cana- widespreadDickinson’s throughout influence onthe artistspast cen in- dian Isabelle Arsenault, both of whom tury.many This fields panel, has organized been profound by the EDIS and Maryanne Garbowsky opened the have produced books illustrating a se- sic, and filmmaking. 22 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010

lection of Dickinson’s poems. Barnet’s inson’s “One Blessing had I than the sultation with Sally Bayley, sound de- The World in a Frame (1989, reprinted rest” (Fr767) and Barrett Browning’s sign by Tom Simmons. In their presen- 2006) offers twenty-four poems and is “How do I love thee? Let me count the aimed at adults, while Arsenault’s My ways” from her Sonnets from the Portu- source of their inspiration: Dickinson’s Letter to the World (2008) presents guese. Playing recorded performances “experimentstation, the filmmakers with hybridity discussed and dual the seven poems chosen for an audience of the songs by soprano Jane Sheldon identities,” by which the poet creates age ten and up. Garbowsky noted strik- (with herself at the piano), Panizza an- “a vast imaginary landscape with an ing differences between the work of alyzed the two scores and spoke of the extraordinary microscopic perception the two artists. Barnet used a carbon many considerations a composer must pencil on vellum, producing somewhat face in translating a poem into music. from animated silhouettes of the Amer- somber black and white illustrations Equally important, explained Panizza, icanof Nature.” actress The Elisabeth film itself Gray was integrated produced are the considerations of the singer with stop-motion object and shadow of [Dickinson’s] life.” Arsenault chose and pianist in choosing how to perform theatre, and it includes a rich supply mixedthat he media,felt best includingreflected “theacrylic, solitude but the work to be true to the intention of of contemporary artistic and cultural limited her palette to dark colors “with both the composer and the poet. These sparks of light, and colors here and include choice of tempo, dynamic and articulative variance, issues of balance daguerreotypes,influences referenced magic inlanterns Dickinson’s and amid a world of dark dresses.” Arse- and phrasing, and aspects of textual otherpoetry nineteenth-century and letters. The film lens alludes technol to- naultthere,” also reflecting produced the poet’scollages “creativity employ- representation (such as word paint- ogy designed “to enhance the sense of ing old handwritten notes on paper to ing and innovative use of consonants scale and location.” Bayley and Hanna represent the poet’s “pieced-together and vowels) to accentuate hidden ves- argued that the reduction and enlarge- manuscript books.” Garbowsky pro- sels of meaning and emotional contour ment of territories and spheres of in- jected illustrations from the two books, within the original poem. Thus the allowing viewers to compare two combined inspiration of the poet, the imagination, a kind of poetic egotism very different but equally inspired re- composer, and the performers results thatfluence permits lie “at her the to heart shrink of her Dickinson’s enemies, sponses to Dickinson’s iconic poems. in new musical experiences that both including God.” Nicole Panizza, in “Titanic Operas: This lively session ended with many English Song Settings of Emily Dickin- and differences between the two poets. questions and continued into an adjoin- son and Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” highlightThis varied and session define closed the similarities with the presented a lecture/demonstration fo- screening of a new eight-minute ani- repeatedly throughout the afternoon. cusing on two songs by English com- Letter to the World, directed ing room, where the film was shown poser Andrew Downes (b. 1950): Dick- and animated by Suzie Hanna in con- mated film, Dickinson and the Arts II Dickinson on Stage—A Roundtable Discussion Organizer and moderator: Jonnie Guerra, Cabrini College (Retired), USA; participants: Edie Campbell, LynchPin Productions, UK; Tom Daley, Boston Center for Adult Education, USA; Barbara Dana, Independent Scholar and Artist, USA; Jim Fraser, Utah State University, USA; Jack Lynch, LynchPin Productions, USA; Barbara Mossberg, California State University, Monterey Bay, USA By Jonnie Guerra

This lively roundtable focused on three ater at Amherst College in March. In tained by Dana’s reminiscences about plays—each representing a unique ap- response to Fraser’s probing questions memorable performances of Belle—in proach to the challenge of Emily Dick- about how she prepared herself to por- Amherst the night Julie Harris, Dana’s inson as a dramatic subject. tray Dickinson, Dana attributed her idol, was present in the audience, and Jim Fraser and Barbara Dana led off success to extensive reading and writ- at the New York Botanical Garden in with a conversation about Barbara’s ing about the poet. In her words, “How May when severe windy weather con- revival of William Luce’s 1976 one- do you play someone so complex and ditions found her reciting “Because woman play, The Belle of Amherst— I could not stop for Death”(Fr479) undoubtedly the most famous drama many years?” To maintain the intensity while holding on for dear life to about Dickinson’s life and work. Jim ofmagnificent emotion withoutthroughout living the with play, her par for- the pole of the performance tent. expressed his admiration for Barbara’s ticularly in the second act, she needed Next Edie Campbell and Jack Lynch masterful performance of the poet, “to get on a wave and let it carry her.” shared the background story of their which he had seen at the Kirby The- The audience was especially enter- co-creation of Emily Dickinson and I:

November/December 2010 | 23 “Were I Britain born”

The Journey of a Portrayal, which pre- Her Servants, which has earned a posi- work on stage in a theater piece titled miered in 1999 and was performed as a tive reception in each of its several Flying with Dickinson, which she per- featured event of the conference. When community theater productions. The forms annually. Hailing Dickinson as Campbell sought Lynch’s advice about play was inspired by Jay Leyda’s “Miss the ultimate “drama queen,” Mossberg how to proceed with her play about Emily’s Maggie” and Aífe Murray’s suggested why the poet has such broad Dickinson, he eventually convinced her scholarship, and privileges the per- appeal through an inspiring reading to focus on the struggle of the creative spective of Tom Kelley, the Irish-born of “Drama’s Vitallest Expression is the process. The strategy of mixing auto- servant of the Dickinson family whom Common Day” (Fr776). Dickinson’s biographical elements from Campbell’s Emily chose as her chief pallbearer and poems, and performers like Barbara own personal history with facts from with whom, the playwright speculates, Dana, Edie Campbell, and Tom Daley Dickinson’s biography took weeks of the poet had a platonic relationship. who bring them to life, offer us, their improvisational work, and Campbell Daley described how the play evolved listeners, new understandings of “the confessed that it was “terrifying” to from a multi-character play to a one- Human Heart.” Mossberg concluded create on her feet. She explained how man drama set in the aftermath of with the important observation on the the play’s main stage business, which Dickinson’s funeral and burial. In the value of the roundtable in opening “a revolves around sewing and ironing revision, Kelley channels the voices of discussion among scholars of Dickin- Dickinson’s white dress, allowed her the other characters. A highlight of the son about what is known and can be roundtable was Daley’s performance known through creative responses that without always making direct eye con- of Tom Kelley’s elegiac address to the cannot be known or expressed in schol- tactto share with the difficult audience. personal Performing memories the deceased poet as he gazes up at her arship—or perhaps that opens up in- play for Dickinson scholars and lovers bedroom window. Whether by Daley’s sights into Dickinson that scholarship proved not as frightening as Campbell poetic gifts, his persuasive delivery, or then can develop further.” a combination of the two, the audience All in attendance concurred that ses- her gratitude for the generosity with was powerfully moved—some to tears. sions on the arts that integrate scholar- whichhad first her imagined, performance and wasshe received.expressed Barbara Mossberg responded to the ship and creative response make fruit- Jonnie Guerra then introduced Tom roundtable with her characteristic ful contributions to EDIS conferences Daley’s play, “Every Broom and Bridg- ebullience. She shared her own experi- and should be continued. et”: A Play about Emily Dickinson and ence of portraying Dickinson’s life and

Emily Dickinson & I: The Journey of a Portrayal Conceived by Jack Lynch, written by Edie Campbell and Jack Lynch, directed by Jack Lynch, performed by Edie Campbell at the Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford, UK, August 4-8, 2010 Reviewed by Tom Daley, Boston Center for Adult Education, USA

Articulating the ambition of countless ter, she never faltered, never failed to playwrights and actors who have found enliven the story of how Emily Dickin- inspiration in Emily Dickinson, Edie, son had inspired and confounded her the narrator of Emily Dickinson & I, ex- struggle to create a successful stage plains, near the beginning of the play, presentation of the poet’s work. “What I want / is to be Emily’s mouth- The script is grounded in well-cho- piece.” She goes on to ask the question sen poems and excerpts from Dickin- that most of her fellow interpreters son, and in amusing and poignant an- forget to ask: “But how do I perform ecdotes from Campbell’s family life and that / without getting in her way?” from her career as actress and would- With wit and brio, Edie narrates the be playwright. In a touch worthy of dissolution of a plan to write a play in Dickinson’s brooding over death, Edie which the script was to be wholly de- relates her father’s tale about his sis- rived from Dickinson’s words. Edie ter, brought to mind by the story of the Campbell, under the skillful direction death of Dickinson’s nephew, Gilbert, of her co-author, Jack Lynch, played at age seven: “When little Edith died, / herself brilliantly in their production the ground was too frozen to bury her. at the Burton Taylor Studio in Oxford. / So my grandparents kept her in her In an intermissionless hour and a quar-

coffin / on the porch / and oiled her 24 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010

little body / everyday / until the spring whoever he was, / he was a jerk.” assails on stilts—they seem to rise out thaw.” Campbell is one of the truly great in- of Edie’s narrative with a natural, easy- One might ask for more of that imagi- terpreters of Dickinson. Her Emily is going, and yeasty graciousness. We are native retrospective, and for less of the robust but unaffected. The actress wax- lifted along with them. bland characterizations, hardly worthy es wise, tender, or brazen without the The script, although a deeply affecting of Edie’s passion (or Dickinson’s) that mawkishness or stentorian abrasive- personal statement, may not possess nudge their way into the script, such ness infecting thespians less keenly at- all the necessary polish to inspire an in- as “Emily remained true to herself and tuned to the nuance of the poet’s words. terpretation of equally stunning power her convictions, / no small accomplish- This play about trying to construct a from an actress less intimately con- ment.” That being said, the comedic play using only Dickinson letters and nected to the narrative. But Campbell’s spirit of Dickinson is often honored poems makes a sprightly springboard execution scored a deep impression, by Edie’s quips, even when bluntly un- for Campbell’s artistry. Dickinson’s one that even the savagely selective poetic, such as this rebuke of the ad- words are not hemmed in by some rick- Emily Dickinson might have found wor- dressee of The Master Letters: “Well, ety garden wall which the interpreter thy of including in her society.

Archival Resources: “Over the fence — I could climb” Primary Sources for Dickinson Scholarship Chair: Aífe Murray, Independent Scholar and Artist, USA; panelists: Leslie A. Morris, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts, Houghton Library, Harvard University, USA; Jane Wald, Executive Director, Emily Dickinson Museum, USA; Michael Kelly, Head of Archives and Special Collections, Frost Library, Amherst College, USA By Aífe Murray

This session on archival resources was a numbered list created. This mate- last October, a potential catastrophe top notch. The audience heard about rial comprises the papers of Emily’s that provided unexpected opportuni- advances made in preservation and parents, of Susan and Austin Dickin- ties to examine previously unknown were pointed to rich resources that son and their children, and of Lavinia may yield new understanding of Dick- Dickinson, as well as some Root fam- structural framing. The Museum direc- inson for scholars. ily papers. The Houghton holds some torsdecorative learned finishes,that there wallpapers, are at least four and The Houghton Library’s Leslie Mor- of Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s own different decorative periods in almost ris had much good news to impart. To poetry and essays, but principally her every room of the house, with wide help researchers navigate the online papers are related to her efforts to swings in style, providing evidence that catalog for a dozen small collections get her aunt’s publications into print. Emily Dickinson’s aesthetic environ- that comprise Harvard’s Dickinson Work continues at the Houghton on ment was not as static as previously Collection, Morris has mounted a new the Dickinson family library collection believed, nor as bland as the current “portal” to all things Dickinson, which in response to demand for the Dickin- twentieth-century house decor. she unveiled for the EDIS 2010 audi- son books. Given the inherently frag- Wald reported that a Historic Struc- ence. Morris followed with a progress ile conditions of these books, Morris ture Report (HSR) and a Cultural Land- report on the more peripheral areas commissioned a condition survey, and scape Report (CLR) on the grounds of the collections—new areas for re- in July the Houghton began repair and have been undertaken to reveal more search that have received particular stabilization of the family books with about the history of the environment the goal of digitizing them all. This pro- and the lives of the inhabitants. These include objects that came to Harvard in cess turned up 23 titles that had never have already solved various puzzles 1950attention through over theGilbert last fiveMontague’s years. These gift been incorporated into the family col- and provided guidance for the recent but have not been on display. Morris exhibition at the New York Botanical has systematically searched cupboards digitized to include page images and Garden and restoration of the hemlock and closets to catalog and digitize all searchablelection. The text. first three books have been hedge and stunning new fence fronting of these objects, which are primarily Jane Wald of the Emily Dickinson Main Street. material from the Evergreens “Emily Museum gave a lively talk about re- Wald pointed out that the Museum - cent advances and discoveries made has a rich collection of approximately cient documentation. at the Dickinson homes and grounds, 8,000 items, the material legacy pri- Room”Dickinson for which family there materials, is still insuffi Mor- including one that arose from the col- marily of the Austin Dickinson family, ris noted, have now been sorted and lapse of the Homestead parlor ceiling but including also furnishings and per-

November/December 2010 | 25 “Were I Britain born” sonal items from the Dickinson family’s Frost Library concluded the session and the rise of collegiate sports. Col- years at the Homestead, including a lot by describing that library’s collec- lege magazines and satires, such as The of “stuff” that in another household tion of Dickinson manuscripts as the Indicator and Amherst Collegiate Maga- might have been thrown away. The Mu- “scraps”—a subject of increasing schol- zine, were also vehicles for student self- seum has prepared a Furnishings and arly focus. He encouraged the audience expression. Austin Dickinson and his Exhibit plan with much detail about the to make full use of the collection’s col- friends were active participants, Kelly two homes, their furnishings, and the lege and alumni material as a source for noted, and this writing scene was part family’s lifestyle. These reports taken Dickinson study. The Frost collections of Emily Dickinson’s youthful, forma- together provide the Museum with a have the potential to yield new under- tive milieu. blueprint for recreating the settings standing of the connection between the Kelly’s stimulating talk was followed and rooms as the Dickinson family poet and the college, such as her im- by a series of questions, primarily for would have known them. mersion in cutting edge sciences being Morris, about access, copyright, intellec- Mike Kelly of Amherst College’s researched and taught at the college tual property, and ephemerality.

British Connections VIII: Solitude and Suffering Chair: Cindy MacKenzie, University of Regina, Canada; panelists: Mita Bose, University of Delhi, India; Shih-Yuan (Ann) Chou, National Chengchi University, Taiwan; Hyesook Son, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea By Cindy MacKenzie

With a persistent rain falling on the – Took my Dog –,” master’s student Ann lush green gardens outside, an appro- Chou interpreted Dickinson’s reference differences between Catholic and Prot- priately melancholy backdrop was set to a dog in three poems: Fr656 (“I start- estantChristian interpretations. tradition, clearly Donne defining was thein- for a panel of papers on the theme of ed Early…”), 237 (“What shall I do – it trigued by the tension between the no- solitude and suffering in Dickinson’s whimpers so”), and 274 (”Again – his tions of pain in these traditions, and, as poetry. Panelists from three differ- voice is at the door –”). In the context a convert, Son explained, he cherished ent countries presented feminist and of the images evoked in Fr255, “The the metaphorical potentiality of suf- Christian perspectives on Dickinson’s Drop that wrestles in the Sea,” Chou fering and attempted to maximize it to own experience and treatment of the found a pattern in each “dog” poem connect worldly signs with their spiri- subject. that appears to be part of a larger nar- - In “The Victorian New England rative. She argued that to read them ing the gap between the human and the Sappho: The Volcanic Genius of Em- in isolation from each other is to lose divine.tual significance, The rhetoric while of alsosuffering emphasiz also ily Dickinson,” Mita Bose discussed the held a profound fascination for Emily difference between the suffering ex- all four poems, Chou explained, the Dickinson, who repeatedly addresses perienced by British women authors speakera significant experiences part of theirdifferent meaning. levels Inof the question of pain in a similarly am- and the American poet as Dickinson danger that threaten her sense of sub- bivalent manner in her poetry. In “Read expresses it in Fr256, “The Robin’s my jectivity. When confronted by a “man” – Sweet – how others – Strove –” (Fr Criterion for Tune.” Referring to the 323), Dickinson illustrates her belief contrasts in references to landscape, sake of the beloved, but she still needs that human salvation has nothing to do Bose pointed out the polarities be- toshe maintain is willing a to sense sacrifice of her herself autonomy. for the with bodily pain. However, she consis- tween “Robin” and “Cuckoo,” “Butter- Chou posited that the dog may be a tently chooses the rhetoric of suffering cups” and “Daisies,” “orchard sprung” symbol of this much-cherished posi- and relies heavily on the imagery of and “Britain born.” By turning inward tion or may represent the speaker’s physical pain to express her religious to her private world, Bose asserted, attachment to her independent way of ideas and metaphysical thoughts. Dickinson created a reverberating in- life. The dog can be seen as the speak- A lively discussion followed these ternal energy, a “counter-force” that er’s bodyguard, her source of courage, three thought-provoking papers. Fol- produced her formidable power. Later, or a symbol of rationality. Bose defended the feminist approach In “The Rhetoric of Suffering in the made our way to Blackwell’s reception to a question regarding the particular Poetry of John Donne and Emily Dick- tolowing enjoy this further final conversation. panel of the day, we suffering of women in a patriarchal so- inson,” Hyesook Son provided substan- ciety. tial contextual background for physi- In “The Dog as Dickinson’s Ordinary cal suffering as a source of mystical Subjectivity: The Case of ‘I started Early insight and self-transformation in the

26 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010 Dickinson in New England Chair: Michael Manson, American University, USA; panelists: Jean McClure Mudge, Independent Artist, USA; Alexandra Manglis, Oxford University, UK; Robin Peel, University of Plymouth, UK By Michael Manson

In a brisk, deceptively light narrative, in her letters to Thomas W. Higginson. her a “Thoreauvian seat.” Jean McClure Mudge, in a paper en- Alexandra Manglis, in a patient anal- Finally, Robin Peel, in “‘Burglar! titled “Emily Dickinson’s Idiosyncratic ysis entitled “Excavating Emily Dickin- Banker – Father!’: Marx and Massachu- Tie to Ralph Waldo Emerson,” used son and Henry David Thoreau in the setts in the Age of Edward Dickinson, her intimate knowledge of Dickinson’s Works of Susan Howe,” demonstrated Whig,” enlarged a conversation that house and life to reveal how Emerson that, even though Howe mentions Tho- has previously centered on the analysis offered Dickinson “a way of life,” en- reau only four times in My Emily Dickin- of economic metaphors in Dickinson to abling her to “epitomize … his ideal: son, she in fact uses him to help her lin- examine her borrowings of a number the scholar-poet at home.” While many guistically excavate Dickinson’s work. Inspired by Stanley Cavell’s descrip- economics, that “suggested there were Mudge carefully revealed the stitchery tion of Thoreau’s method of discovery lawsof scientific and forces strategies, that took including no heed from of thathave bound described the two Emerson’s together. influence, Organiz- as a phenomenological act of “placing God.” While analyses focusing on imag- ing her talk chronologically, Mudge fol- ourselves in the world,” Manglis found ery have usually seen Dickinson as sati- lowed the course of near-misses that Howe frequently placing Dickinson “in rizing economic commerce, Peel argued led to the extraordinary accident that various relations” with authors such as instead that Dickinson evinces “a more two who lived so close and shared so Mary Rowlandson, Anne Hutchinson, profound recognition of the unstop- much never met. But with each miss, Mary Dryer, and Jonathan Edwards. In pable forces at play on earth.” Although Mudge demonstrated the tighter stitch- an intriguing turn, Manglis then argued he agreed that Dickinson was not fa- es connecting them. She examined the that Thoreau’s act of “impounding” miliar with abstract economic theory, pencil marks Dickinson left on her cop- the land around Walden Pond, turning he examined the work of Tocqueville, ies of Emerson’s poems and essays; she the land into literature, is picked up by Darwin, Marx, and Engels to show how found newspaper reports of Emerson’s Howe, who not only makes Dickinson they shared a new perception of human activities reappearing in some form in “my Emily Dickinson” but also shows possibility. As much as Puritans “never Dickinson’s thought, poems, and let- that Dickinson impounded many texts underestimated” the “forces of evil,” ters; she found connections even in ranging from Shakespeare to Edwards they believed God would prevail, while Susan Dickinson’s misquotations of “within her own invisible borders of Dickinson’s statements about Emerson rhyme.” The result is that Howe liber- and in Dickinson’s changing signature ates Dickinson “from the attic,” giving society”the new as scientific well as their ideas “implacability.” emphasized the “autonomy of the influences driving British Connections IX: Dickinson’s Imagination and Words Chair: Mary Loeffelholz, Northeastern University, USA; panelists: Karen Foster, Dickinson State University, USA; James Guthrie, Wayne State University, USA; Jorge Hernández Jiménez, Universidad Nacional Autónoma, Mexico By Mary Loeffelholz

“British Connections IX” began in blood age of blood and the passage of breath lation of the Betsy Ross legend that and ended with consideration of the through Dickinson’s earliest collection emerged in 1870; she had enough hope Atlantic shore distantly binding James of her poems, linking them to her rela- of its patriotic accessibility to present Joyce’s “Proteus” to Dickinson’s poems. tionship with Susan and her challenges it to Higginson as a possible candidate Karen Foster spoke on “‘But cannot to linguistic prescriptivism. for an Amherst charity bazaar. Behind dance as well’: The Blood of Language In “Mean Girls with Knives: Dick- in Select Emily Dickinson Poems.” Tak- inson and Great Britain Have It Out,” between Great Britain and America, ing her interpretive point of departure James Guthrie, by contrast, presented Guthriethe poem’s suggested, feminization may lieof Dickinson’sthe conflict from a late, aphoristic fragment—“The a Dickinson who at least tentatively - Blood is more showy than the Breath / ship of Betsy Ross—another female But cannot dance as well –” (Fr1558), accommodation between her own de- expertpoetic in identification measuring, cutting, with the and artisan stab- Foster explored Dickinson’s emergence mandsexplored of whether poetry sheand could those find of somelater bing symbols together. in her poems of 1858. Citing “I spilt nineteenth-century U.S. public culture. In “‘Signatures of all things’: Portray- the dew” from Fr5 (“One Sister have I “My Country’s Wardrobe” (Fr1540), als of the Interruption in Dickinson and in the house”), Foster traced the spill- Guthrie argued, is Dickinson’s trans- Joyce,” Jorge Hernández Jiménez com-

November/December 2010 | 27 “Were I Britain born” pared the “Proteus” episode of Ulysses mathematics) not by limitless outward sented by Guthrie, the autocontexts of to Dickinson’s poetics. Assisted by Der- extension but by the endless possibility Dickinson’s oeuvre explored by Fos- rida, Jiménez discerned in both writ- of interruptions between signs. ter, and the comparative perspective ers the practice of what he called, in Further discussion touched on offered by Jiménez—before the pan- methodological differences among the characterized (like a seashore in fractal papers—the historical contexts pre- discussion, a kind of “fractal” infinity, el’s very finite period interrupted us. British Connections X: Romantic and Religious Visions Chair: Richard Brantley, University of Florida, USA; panelists: Linda Freedman, Selwyn College of Cambridge University, UK; Alan Blackstock, Utah State University, USA By Richard E. Brantley

Linda Freedman, author of a forthcom- Whitman started to generate their own Blake and Dickinson individually ap- ing book on Emily Dickinson’s religious mythography. Even at the end of the propriated this tradition only to sub- imagination, spoke on what Christina nineteenth century, Higginson (who vert it. Blackstock, for his part, under- Rossetti called Dickinson’s “wonder- had little regard for Whitman) pushed took a synoptic examination of works ful Blakean gift.” That gift, in Rossetti’s a Blakean Dickinson. This Dickinson, in which both writers perform this words, was Dickinson’s “startling reck- in Freedman’s view, survives in Brit- subversion. His presentation set texts lessness for poetic ways and means.” ish and American circles. Dickinson’s by Blake and Dickinson alongside un- Rossetti, Freedman observed, echoed “wonderful Blakean gift,” as Freedman cannily parallel works by Watts, Wes- Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s pref- concluded, remains crucial to transat- ley, et al., and he established thereby ace to Dickinson’s Poems (1890); there, lantic meanings of Romanticism and that Blake and Dickinson challenged Higginson had used a comparison be- religious vision. the theological, educational, and sty- tween Blake’s Songs and Dickinson’s Alan Blackstock, who has published listic norms that hymn tradition had poetry to excuse or at least explain on G. K. Chesterton’s view of Victorian advanced. the unconventionality of Dickinson’s literature and on nature writing of the Due to the unfortunate circumstance poetic form. On the basis of Rossetti’s American West, spoke, too, on religious that Victoria N. Morgan was unable to and Higginson’s views, Freedman ar- - attend the conference and present her gued that Dickinson bore comparison son. Blackstock was interested not just paper on “Reading Dickinson through with Blake as a poet of “genius,” “in- inaffinities the two between poets’ radical Blake disruption and Dickin of Wattsian Dissent,” there was plenty sight,” and “extraordinary vividness poetic language, their penchant for of time for discussion. It was lively. of descriptive and imaginative power.” gnomic utterance, and their cryptic im- The vital lectures by Freedman and Freedman emphasized not only how agery that hints at a complex private Blackstock assured a corresponding Blake represented a triumph of vision- mythology. Nor was he concerned with intensity from a wide range of panel ary poetic essence over poetic form but Blake and Dickinson as just mystics or participants. Several applauded Freed- also how his achievement contextual- poet-prophets with a message acces- man for her respectful recognition of izes Dickinson’s originality. Freedman sible only to initiates. Turning toward Higginson’s centrality to Dickinson also stressed that Higginson formed cultural milieu, Blackstock sketched studies. Several others lauded Black- his opinion of Blake within Emerson’s the relationship between these two stock for his refreshing lack of conde- Transcendentalist and Lydia Maria poets and Protestant hymn tradition scension toward the hymn tradition Child’s abolitionist circles. Thus Blake’s from which Dickinson took her bear- American reception began before par- Wesley, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld. ings even when she wrote against it. allels between Dickinson and Walt Scholarsexemplified have by examined Isaac Watts, ways in Charles which

Dickinson, (Poetic) Identity, and Keats Chair: Martha Nell Smith, University of Maryland, USA; panelists: Marianne Noble, American University, USA; Ryan Cull, New Mexico State University, USA; Michelle Kohler, Tulane University, USA By Martha Nell Smith

Each of these papers explored various reaching after fact & reason.” sympathy—as Dickinson understood aspects of what Keats called “negative In “The Presence of the Face: Dick- it—is central to her project precisely capabilities,” as readers/writers inhab- inson’s Mirror Neurons,” Marianne for its role in quelling the anxieties it a capacity “of being in uncertainties, Noble explored the meaning for Dick- of skepticism. Noble observed that Mysteries, doubts without any irritable inson of “sympathy.” She argued that Dickinson uses the word variously: to

28 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010 express the empathic, or understand- conduit for projecting possessive im- depicts “the coming into being of Eng- ing of what another feels because one pulses toward others and the world. lish climatic space” out of its tropical is or has felt the same way; to express Keats critiqued this “egotistical sub- alternatives in colonial regions; such concern and regret for the misfortune lime” throughout much of his career, emergence is effected through the com- of others, above all for a death; to sug- promoting instead an impersonal or bination of cooling and clearing, which gest a shared approach to the world “disinterested” aesthetic. However, his function to “temper a space that would that unites people in a select society. otherwise risk overabundance, disease, Her famous published Valentine begin- to sustain this aesthetic and ethic un- and decay.” Bewell’s analysis of the “de- ning “Magnum bonum, ‘harum scar- derpoignant the pressures final works of findboth himimpending unable tropicalization” of autumn likewise ac- um’” (L34) declares: “All choice spirits illness and love. Though Dickinson was counts for ways in which Dickinson’s however distant are ours, ours theirs; a great admirer of Keats and shared poems similarly merge images of au- there is a thrill of sympathy – a circula- his worries about egotism in the lyric, tumn with the discourse of disease and tion of mutuality – cognationem inter she never held out hope for a disinter- tropical imagery. But whereas Keats nos!” Sympathy understood in this way enacts the removal of any tropical ex- unites “choice spirits” in a small circle looked on Wastes – “ (Fr693) engages cesses from autumn in order to invent a - theested allure model and of selfhood.power of “Likethe egotistical Eyes that temperate national climate, Dickinson’s standing, in a nuanced and thorough sublime, enabling her to conceptual- poems reverse this impulse and, in fact, understandingof spiritual affinity of one and anothershared underbased ize a more mutual mode of relation. take such reversal as their theme, for upon a shared outlook. Candor, then, “He was my host - he was my guest” she casts placid fall imagery as either is a crucial component of Dickinson’s (Fr1754) suggests that sociality must euphemistic or deceptive, and actively sympathy. The facades that society re- be grounded principally on ethical reinscribes autumn as diseased, ex- quires of us—such as those requiring rather than epistemological grounds, cessive, and foreign or otherwise un- Emily to love the poor—impose divi- familiar. While Keats’s poem is mark- sive veils of deceit and performance. and foremost a matter of obligation edly unfeverish (in contrast to both the The sympathy that unites scorns false ratherthat engaging than understanding. otherness must In so be doing, first tropics and Keats’s other odes), Dick- connections, scorns the world of whin- such a poem indicates perhaps still-un- inson’s poems aggressively reassign ing and pitying, reveling instead in a tapped resources within the lyric genre pathology and strife to an autumnal - for understanding positive, more gen- discourse that has been de-patholo- ty and an aristocratic realm of authen- erative forms of sociality. gized. Dickinson’s reversal is perhaps ticitymore Nietzscheanbeyond good affirmation and evil. Butof beau only Proposing a connection between best understood in the context of what the select few can understand and be Keats’s ode “To Autumn” and a cluster was at stake for each poet in articu- trusted. of poems about autumn that Dickin- lating a national landscape. If Keats’s In “Interrogating the ‘Egotistical Sub- son wrote the same year she mentions mellow autumn is mired in England’s lime’: Dickinson’s and Keats’s Internal Keats in a letter to Thomas W. Higgin- colonial politics, Dickinson’s bloody, Critiques of Romanticism,” Ryan Cull son, Michelle Kohler’s “Dickinson, Ke- over-ripened autumns posit an Ameri- argued that Dickinson and Keats wor- ats, and the Disease of Autumn” illumi- can landscape infected in part by a par- ried that Romanticism promoted a self- nated points of contact between Keats’s ticularly violent year in the Civil War. centered sensibility that narrowed the ode and Dickinson’s 1862 poems. As scope of poetry and that made it the Alan Bewell has argued, Keats’s poem

British Connections XI: Dickinson and the Brownings Chair: Michael Yetman, Purdue University (Emeritus), USA; panelists: Vincent Dussol, University of Montpellier 3, France; J.D. Isip, California State University, Fullerton, USA By Mike Yetman

We had two thought-provoking papers. forward in Aurora Leigh. The echoes same time warning against its lethal Vincent Dussol’s “Auroran Widths” re- of Revelation, in both Aurora Leigh consequences, is found in both poets. and Dickinson’s work, led Dussol to as- Dickinson’s frequent implied blending of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s epic sert that the closing book of the Chris- of Cavalry/Calvary encapsulates what onvisited Dickinson’s the question work ofin thegeneral. influence Dus- tian Bible is the pivotal intertext for Dussol called Dickinson’s “hesitation,” sol argued that Dickinson’s speakers’ comparing the practice of the two po- or ambivalence, toward traditional frequently warlike stances and use ets. Revelation’s ambiguous message notions of the hero and the heroic. Ac- of martial imagery run counter to the showing violence as a necessary part cordingly, for Dickinson heroism can feminized epic of reconciliation put of Christ’s ultimate triumph and, at the mean anonymity equally as much as re-

November/December 2010 | 29 “Were I Britain born” nown. Dussol cited epic practices com- dal matters, her stance on the place of inson and Browning on the status and mon to both poets: casting the role of religion in human experience, and her importance of faith and doubt in their the poet in the role of the epic hero (cf. thinking on the God question in gen- thinking. He enlisted the testimony of Wordsworth’s “The Prelude”), interact- eral are well known. But Isip rightly Browning spokespersons as disparate ing with the dead, emphasis on quest reminded us of the ongoing value of in their thinking on the question of - chronic uncertainty in the poet’s en- God, faith, and doubt as the narrator tion to what he called “holistic, global gagements with these matters. Dickin- of “Pauline,” the “wandering speaker” apprehension.”or pilgrimage, andDussol finally ended an with inclina an son’s uncertainties cannot in all hon- of “Christmas-Eve and Easter Day,” eclectic discussion of Dickinson’s pos- esty, he argued, simply be dismissed in and the dramatic speakers Bishop favor of neatly consigning her to either Blougram, Fra Lippo Lippi, Caliban, by her example of broken grammar the atheist’s or the believer’s camp. The and David in “Saul” to demonstrate andsible disjunctive far-reaching narratives—on influence—mostly writ- undecidability of such questions in the Browning’s nuanced, complex, and of- ers as diverse as e. e. cummings, Susan poet’s thinking enabled her fruitfully to ten contradictory stands on these mat- Howe, Fanny Howe, Brenda Hillman, revisit them in letters and poems with ters. He concluded that “what is clear… Bernadette Mayer, Sharon Olds, and dramatically varying results through- throughout Browning’s body of work Eleni Sikelianos. out her life. is not only that he doubted ‘blind faith’ J.D. Isip’s paper was titled “Em- Though Dickinson warned against but that he longed to understand what ily Dickinson and Robert Browning: A equating her poems’ speakers with it was that attracted people to it. What Shared Heresy.” The “heresy” explored herself, critics do it anyway, especially is shown again and again in Browning, is the vitality of the equal status of when there is corroborative evidence Isip implied, is that there is no such faith and doubt, Christian belief and - thing as an airtight case to be made for atheism, in the thinking of both writ- tive” stand on a subject. This has al- the ascendancy of either doubt or faith; ers. Isip has concluded that Dickinson waysfor what been they true take in the to becase her of “definiRobert hence, as with Dickinson, the need for and Browning were “forerunners…in Browning as well, who went out of his a never-ending examination and reas- creating language spaces that allow way to invent a universe of characters sessment of centrality of each in the po- for…faith-based awe and doubt-based patently not himself. Isip argued for a et’s exploration of human experience. frustration.” Dickinson’s doubts on cre- compatibility of mind between Dick-

Dickinson and the Question of Fame Chair: panelists: Tom Mack, University of South Carolina, USA; Andrey Logutov, Moscow State University, Russia; Paul Crumbley, Utah State University, USA Elizabeth Petrino, Fairfield University,By Elizabeth USA; Petrino

This panel engaged several peren- reaction to her fellow countrywoman’s be called a “private audience.” In both nial questions in Dickinson studies: work and recorded in her diary her Dickinson’s and Hopkins’s view, a poem What was her view of fame? Why did personal response to the poems and is very similar to natural phenomena she choose not to publish? How do we to the appraisal of British critics. Mack that often “go unnoticed” (Hopkins) as understand her view of poetic immor- explored several parallels between they manifest themselves indiscrimi- tality and the literary tradition? Based the two writers’ intrusive treatment nately and anonymously. Poetic works on the audience’s vibrant and ongoing at the hands of editors and the thread should “happen” rather than impose interest in the topic, it appears that the of misogyny running through reviews themselves on the reader or produce questions have not yet been completely of Dickinson’s poems. He concluded direct meanings. Logutov contended answered. The three panelists present- that both writers were alienated from that both poets used the metaphor of ed intriguing readings of Dickinson’s their native land or social life in a way “breath” to describe the true essence of attitude toward notoriety through the that may have deepened their thinking poetry. Branded with the poet’s name, lens of other writers. about these topics, as neatly conveyed however, their texts can no longer func- In “Emily Dickinson and Alice James: in James’s memorable line: “Patriotism tion as natural living phenomena and ‘How dreary – to be – Somebody,’” Tom is a centrifugal emotion intensifying at are doomed to enter the “auction of Mack argued that Alice James read the outskirts.” publication.” the Higginson/Todd edition of Dick- In “Emily Dickinson and Gerard Finally, in “‘Behold the Atom — I inson’s poems as she was nearing the Manley Hopkins: The Making of One’s preferred —’: Emily Dickinson Read- end of her British residency, 1884 to Public,” Andrey Logutov explored the ing Fame in Emily Brontë’s ‘No coward 1892. While in England, she scanned convergences between these poets’ soul is mine,’” Paul Crumbley argued the newspapers to discover the British strategies for constructing what could that Brontë’s poem communicates a

30 | EDIS Bulletin THE EDIS OXFORD CONFERENCE, 2010 version of fame that both poets may - trinsic – stand –.” have shared and that may have been mation: “There is not room for Death, / These readings inspired the audience fundamental to Dickinson’s under- Norlarly atomtaken that by the his poem’smight couldclosing render affir to consider further the implications standing of her work as a poet and her void: / Thou – THOU art Being and of fame for Dickinson. Several ques- relationship to future readers. Crumb- Breath, / And what THOU art may nev- tions arose regarding how to interpret ley contended that “No coward soul is er be destroyed.” These lines resonate editorial changes to the writers’ works mine” anticipates the mediating force in a powerful way with Dickinson’s - of print culture and represents the po- words in “Of all the Souls that stand ems. The reaction of audience mem- et’s rededication to the aims that sus- create –“ (Fr279), where she describes bers,and their who inflectioncontinued in to Dickinson’s discuss these po tained her as a private writer, even as the culmination of “this brief Drama in ideas after the panel ended, suggested her work entered the public sphere. In that this topic will continue to inter- fact, Dickinson may have been particu- is – and that which was – / Apart – in- est future generations of her readers. the flesh” as a time “When that which Dickinson’s Ethics and Poetics Chair: Gary Lee Stonum, Case Western Reserve University, USA; panelists: Logan Esdale, Chapman University, USA; Merve Sarikaya, Baskent University, Turkey; Shira Wolosky, Hebrew University, Israel By Gary Lee Stonum

As the very last panel of the conference, Dickinson simply does not use such losopher, who might otherwise seem we found ourselves crowded for discus- marks in anything like a consistently an unlikely couple, and then proposed sion time, despite the three interest- meaningful way. a series of parallel themes in their writ- ing and varied papers. Logan Esdale’s Merve Sarikaya’s “A Kristevan Analy- “Adornment Practice in Dickinson’s sis of ‘My Life had Stood a Loaded Gun’ crisis whereby “what had seemed foun- Studio” linked the poet’s references and ‘One need not be a Chamber to be dationalings. Both had, testified as through to a metaphysical a torn veil, to adorning and adornment in letters Haunted’” delivered exactly what her suddenly shown empty.” The result for - title promised, reading the two poems ishes—underlining, quotation marks, (Fr764 and 407) partly according to becoming rather than stable being. and otherpoems such with sigla. her manuscriptEsdale noted flour that Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject and Bothboth wasaccordingly a world ofinsist flux, ofupon perpetual what partly according to her distinction be- Nietzsche calls perspectivism and common to Dickinson’s manuscripts tween the male symbolic order and the Dickinson proclaimed in saying “We inthese 1861 nonalphabetic and early 1862 flourishes (Franklin num were- female semiotic that can intrude upon see – Comparatively” (Fr580). Both bers 195-289, especially 232-74) but it in poetic language. Sarikaya linked writers accorded a high place to the rare before or afterward, and that the abjection to the Gothic elements in human will, Nietzsche most famously marks Dickinson included on the fas- both poems, especially the overtly Wal- in his extension of Schopenhauer, and cicle manuscripts generally did not polean “One need not be a Chamber to Dickinson in such poems as “To be alive appear when the poem or an excerpt be Haunted.” She also showed how the is Power” (Fr876), for which Wolosky was sent in a letter. Curiously, how- unstable subjectivity speaking in each gave a detailed reading. Both also usu- ever, her letters otherwise abounded poem could be accounted for by Kriste- ally understood reality as constituted in such marks both at this time and at va’s theories. by representation or even by language others. An obvious question is whether In “Dickinson and Nietzsche: Poet- as a representational mode, Wolosky the italics and question marks repre- ics, Ethics, and the World of Becom- argued, while acknowledging that sented a paratextual code—emphasis, Dickinson was less adamant about this irony, disavowed wording—but Esdale biographical similarities between the proposition. showed that this cannot be the case. Americaning,” Shira poet Wolosky and the first German noted somephi-

November/December 2010 | 31 NEW PUBLICATIONS

By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor

Chapman, Margaret, and Kathleen Crumbley, Paul. Winds of Will: Em- poems with spiritualist implications, Welton, eds. Illustrated by Reuben ily Dickinson and the Sovereignty of and three indexes. This instructive Negrón. Poetry for Beginners. Dan- Democratic Thought. Tuscaloosa, AL: book offers a unique approach to Dick- bury, CT: For Beginners: Steerforth University Press of Alabama, 2010. xv inson and her work. Press, Hanover, NH, 2010. 151 pp. Pa- + 278 pp. Cloth, ISBN 0-8173-1703-4, per, ISBN 1-934389-46-1, $14.99. $53.00. Federico, Annette R., ed. Gilbert & Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic The editors have compiled a practi- Taking his title from Dickinson’s After Thirty Years. Foreword by San- cal introduction to poetry in a concise “When the Winds of Will are stirred” dra M. Gilbert. Columbia, MO: Univer- and well-organized format that should (Fr 1044), Crumbley’s well-researched, sity of Missouri Press, 2009. 272 pp. appeal to young adults, their teachers, scholarly, yet accessible study explores Cloth, ISBN 0-8262-1869-8, $42.50. and others wanting to review the vari- the political aspects of Dickinson’s ous forms of poetry and how to read, writing with close readings of selected Federico and thirteen fellow schol- understand, and write poems. The poems and letters. He says, “Dickinson ars chart “some of the different direc- editors aim “to share the joy of poetry contributes to an established tradition tions taken in feminist literary criti- and to make learning about poetry as cism and Victorian studies” since the meaningful and memorable as possi- - 1979 publication of Sandra M. Gilbert ble.” Highly imaginative, bold black ink craticof democratic culture.” writing The choices that affirms Dickinson the and Susan Gubar’s “The Madwoman in drawings illustrate most pages. Begin- makes,primary hersignificance assertions of choice of individual in demo the Attic: The Woman Writer and the - Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagina- of poetry, the book features poems Fr ity when creating multiple and often tion, considered a “threshold work” of 340,ning 479,with andEmily 930. Dickinson’s Chapter two,definition “Get- contradictorysovereignty, and meanings her rhetorical in her flexibil poems feminist history and theory. Federico’s ting the Meaning of Poems,” introduces force readers to make interpretive excellent introduction reviews Gilbert vocabulary that represents the look choices. The poet’s multiple voices, and Gubar’s ideas and the reception, (stanzas and line breaks); the sound Crumbley says, “can easily support the - (rhyme, rhythm and meter); and the simultaneous perception of conformity tended to “recognize and honor” their sense (imagery, word choice, conno- and resistance,” her work balancing “contributionsinfluence, and legacyto feminist of their criticism,”work. In “the robin of predictability” with “the some essays respectfully question and themes) of poetry; all bold-font terms phoenix of re-birth.” He also examines challenge original stances taken by tation, figurative language, tone, and nineteenth-century Spiritualism, “a re- Gilbert and Gubar. Focusing on Louisa “Seeming Free but Fettered Fast,” pro- ligious movement that was distinctly May Alcott, Jane Austen, Charlotte and videsare clearly a sampling defined. of poetic Chapter forms: three, ep- democratic in origin,” and shows how Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, George ics, odes, elegies, ballads, sonnets, Dickinson appropriates spiritualist Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Toni Morrison, sestinas, villanelles, limericks, Islamic language and concepts in her writing. Mary Shelley, and others, the contribu- ghazals, Malay pantoums, haiku, con- The book contains an introduction tors also discuss feminist theory and crete (visual) poetry, prose poetry, and - pedagogy, Milton studies, genre stud- free verse. Chapter four, “Each Age a ereignty”; “Democratic Rhetoric and Lens,” focuses on more than 100 classic theand Gymnastic five chapters: Self”; “Assertions “Dickinson’s of Uses Sov ecofeminism. In “Mimesis and Poiesis: poets and poems from ancient times to of Spiritualism”; “A Version of Fame,” ies, film, race, postcolonialism, and in which Dickinson’s correspondence Reading of Emily Dickinson” (237-55), write their own poems. An appendix with Helen Hunt Jackson, Susan Gilbert LuciaReflections Aiello onchallenges Gilbert andGilbert Gubar’s and providesthe present. an Chapterannotated five helps“Timeline readers of Dickinson, and Thomas Wentworth Gubar’s analyses of Dickinson’s poetry, 100+ Poets from the Last 3,000 Years”; Higginson is examined as a form of col- suggesting that the authors underesti- “50+ Poets Writing Today,” divided into laborative gift exchange; and “Copy- mate her innovative work, interpreting a dozen movements; and “Resources,” right, Circulation, and the Body,” where her art “as a coping mechanism” result- for further reading. A good value, this we learn why Dickinson opposed the ing from psychic anxiety. Informed slim book contains a wealth of easily copyright movement. Included are 45 by Dickinson scholars, Aiello offers understood information. pages of notes and works cited, a list of interpretations of eight Dickinson po-

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]

32 | EDIS Bulletin NEW PUBLICATIONS ems (J288/Fr260, J741/Fr776, J199/ alive with detail and heartfelt emotion sity Press, 2009. 224 pp. Cloth, ISBN Fr225, J657/Fr466, J732/Fr857, J106/ 1-60258-147-0, $29.95. Fr161, J1123/Fr1187-88, and J488/ mislead novice Dickinson fans unfamil- Fr475), concluding with a discussion iarthat with its mixture established of fact biographical and fiction couldfacts. Thirteen scholars of American lit- of Plato’s parable of the cave. Offering erature, humanities, theology, history, provocative reassessments of Gilbert readers have not met before. and political science focus on “the in- and Gubar, this book includes notes, Gioseffi introduces a Dickinson most tersection of religion and literature in biographical sketches of contributors, Levy, Andrew. A Brain Wider Than the United States from Emerson to the and an index. The Sky: A Migraine Diary. New York: present.” Among the individuals and Simon & Schuster, 2009. 289 pp. Paper, topics discussed are John Cotton, Emily Gioseffi, Daniela. Wild Nights, Wild ISBN 1-4165-7250-3, $15.00. Dickinson (about 20 pages throughout Nights: The Story of Emily Dickin- the book), Frederick Douglas, Jonathan son’s “Master,” Neighbor and Friend Motivated to understand his migraine Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Na- and Bridegroom. Austin, TX: Plain headaches, Levy examines the folklore thaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Her- View Press, 2010. 377 pp. Paper, ISBN and history of migraines and the variety man Melville, C. Wright Mills, Flannery 1-935514-44-2, $22.95. of symptoms, causes, and treatments O’Connor, Phillis Wheatley, Richard from ancient times to the present; he Wright, the African American experi- ence, various major religions, and secu- a bittersweet love affair (1857-1865) Carroll, Darwin, Freud, Hildegard, Jef- larization. Contributors are Katherine betweenGioseffi’s Emily page-turning Dickinson tale and imagines William ferson,profiles Kipling, possible Nietzsche, migraineurs Picasso, Lewis Elvis Clay Bassard, Lawrence Buell, Andrew Smith Clark. Thwarted by Edward Dick- Presley, Van Gogh, and Woolf; explores Delbanco, Denis Donoghue, Stanley inson and the career ambitions of the relationship of migraines to creativ- Hauerwas, Roger Lundin, Elisa New, Clark, the lovers privately marry them- ity or the absence of it; and provides Mark A. Noll, Barbara Packer, Albert selves in the Pelham Hills. Although personal insights about the reasons J. Raboteau, John Stauffer, Alan Wolfe, Dickinson remains true, Clark, a young and Ralph Wood. The book evolved science professor at Amherst Col- “nerve-storms.” About Dickinson, Levy from Notre Dame University’s Evangel- lege, marries his mentor’s daughter, isfor concise,migraines knowledgeable, and the benefits and of thesesug- ical Scholarship Initiative, the Erasmus and becomes a Civil War hero and the gestive. He says, “What a migraine in- Institute, and the American Literature founder of what is now the Univer- duces remains a stunning testament to and Religion Seminar (“an experiment sity of Massachusetts Amherst. Emo- what Emily Dickinson meant when she seeking to prove the compatibility of tionally invested in Clark, Dickinson, wrote, ‘The Brain – is wider than the tolerance and passion”). The book’s ti- heartbroken, reconciles herself to Sky – ‘ (Fr 598), the poem that inspired tle is from Edwards, “the greatest theo- his title. She details “so many different logian this culture has produced,” of- storyteller, cleverly incorporates Dick- kinds of pounding inside the human fering a tribute to his wife, who “seems inson’sspinsterhood. poems, capturing Gioseffi, a the compelling intellec- head – a funeral inside the brain, the to have someone invisible always con- tual, cultural, and political ideas and versing with her,” and from scholar voices of the nineteenth century, from - Jenny Franchot, who described the the stern Calvinist voices of Mary Lyon ernbreaking migraining of floors, reader the buzzing sees a ofwhole flies, “invisible domain” of religion in Ameri- and Reverend Aaron Colton to the do- differentthe driving level of coffinto her nails slant – rhymes, that a mod and can literary studies. Lundin says these mestic Irish lilt of Margaret Maher. The wants nothing more than to travel back essays show that “polyphonic play has author defends using the 1890s po- in time and bring her a cup of hot dar- long marked the religious and cultural ems and rewrites the Master Letters, jeeling.” He discusses “I felt a Funeral, life of the United States, just as it con- the originals copyrighted until 2030. in my Brain” (Fr 340) and concludes tinues to animate the conversation our She chooses an 1860 photograph of that Dickinson’s genius is her ability literature carries on in the presence of unproven provenance “because it rep- to describe “assaults upon the human the Invisible or in the shadows cast by resents the mature poet, and her own nervous system” as “a nearly universal its absence.” Included are an introduc- pronouncement that she had ‘a gypsy experience.” Readers need not have tion, notes, and index. face.’” Inspired by Ruth Owen Jones’s suffered from migraines to appreciate “’Neighbor – and friend – and Bride- this informative book lucidly written Novak, Barbara. Voyages of the Self: groom –’: William Smith Clark as Em- from personal experience. Notes, a bib- Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in ily Dickinson’s Master Figure” (Emily liography, and index are included. American Art and Literature. New Dickinson Journal York: Oxford University Press, 2009. helpfully advises Dickinson scholars to Lundin, Roger, ed. Invisible Conver- 217 pp., Paper, ISBN 0-19-538791-0, 11.2; 2002), Gioseffi- sations: Religion in the Literature of $24.95. spite distracting typos, the novel is so America. Waco, TX: Baylor Univer- Examining the meaning of the self in read her nonfiction afterword first. De November/December 2010 | 33 NEW PUBLICATIONS

American art and literature, art his- from one Bird / Is better than a mil- different styles but says that “all three torian Novak pairs writers and art- lion words” (Prose Fragment 97, wrote . . . for the same reason: in reac- ists: Jonathan Edwards with John Letters 3:926); nonetheless, she cre- tion to ever-mounting assaults – sci- Singleton Copley, Ralph Waldo ated 222 poems referring to birds. - Emerson with Fitz H. Lane, Henry Schuman and Hodgman, trying to rep- litical – on Christian understandings David Thoreau with Native Ameri- resent as many species as possible, ofentific, the origins philosophical, and purpose historical, of human po cans, Walt Whitman with Frederic Ed- select 37 bird poems “that show Dick- existence. Virtually every word writ- win Church, William James with Win- inson’s acute perception of the habits ten by the three can be traced, more slow Homer, Emily Dickinson with and qualities of the birds she knew.” or less directly, to threatened belief.” Alfred Pinkham Ryder, and Charles Including both Johnson and Franklin He advises readers to approach liter- numbering, most poems are featured ary criticism skeptically: “To follow parallels and patterns between them on one side of each two-page spread, any poem, one must pay attention, andOlson their with works. Jackson Illustrated Pollock, with finding 62 juxtaposed with a stunning color il- black and white photographs and 17 lustration on the other side. The 28 it but to what the poem itself says – color plates, this erudite and clearly illustrations are by early ornithologist thefirst, words not to itwhat uses, has the been ways said it about uses written book completes a trilogy: artists: John James Audubon, Allan them, and the ways in which it puts the other two titles are Nature and Brooks, Mark Catesby, Louis Agassiz them together.” He includes informa- Culture: American Landscape and Fuertes, John H. Hall, Thomas Nuttall, tion readers need to independently Painting, 1825-1875 and American Robert Ridgway, Cordelia Stanwood, examine a poem, demonstrating Painting of the Nineteenth Century: and Alexander Wilson. The book’s scansion and providing a helpful glos- Realism, Idealism, and the American title is “a phrase [Dickinson] used in sary of 91 technical terms. In “Sort- Experience. In “Dickinson and Ryder: describing the natural environment” ing with Emily Dickinson” (63-152), Immortality, Eternity, and the Reclu- (L193). The editors say, “Dickinson the author describes the rhetorical, sive Self” (103-33), Novak describes mentions 26 bird species in her po- stylistic, prosodic, and thematic va- both poet and artist as “shy, reclusive, ems,” was so knowledgeable about eccentric New Englanders with eye birds, their habits and habitats, even poems present, supplying Franklin problems.” They were “profoundly their unique vocalizations that she poemriety and numbers difficulties and thatsample Dickinson’s lines to spiritual religious mavericks,” knew is “in the class of skilled and experi- illustrate his points. He concludes, the Bible and Shakespeare, were enced birders.” The editors conclude, “Arising from a pervasive sense of drawn to Emersonian transcenden- “Birds were an inseparable part of loss or want, owing to time and talism and Gothic romanticism, exhib- Dickinson’s world. She brings them change and resulting in feelings of ited “strong androgynous elements,” to us in her poetry, where we see and bewilderment, loneliness, and insta- - hear them through her eyes and ears. bility, [Dickinson’s ] poems explore, ity and ‘metaphysical anxiety,’” and . . . Many readers familiar with the again and again, potential avenues of shared“fluctuate[d] themes between of immortality mystic seren and songs of birds but less so with the ca- escape from these conditions into an eternity, drawn particularly to sea absolute zone of knowledge, commu- imagery. Both Dickinson’s haiku-like beauty and pleasure in her words.” nion, and permanence.” Included are poems and Ryder’s paintings, “often Readersdences of need poetry not may be ornithologists find unexpected to a preface, afterword, and works cited, no larger than four by eight inches,” appreciate this beautiful anthology, a but no index. are “small in size” but “large in ambi- lovely gift for anyone who loves art, tion,” forerunners of “modernist exis- nature, and poetry. Included are an Vendler, Helen. Dickinson: Selected tentialism.” Supporting Novak’s essay Poems and Commentaries. Cam- are dozens of Dickinson poems, con- bibliography, and two indexes. bridge, MA: Belknap Press: Harvard cluding with “The Soul’s Superior in- introduction, notes, artist profiles, a University Press, 2010. xiv + 535 pp. stants” (J306). Notes, a bibliography, Spengemann, William C. Three Cloth, ISBN 0-674-04867-6, $35.00. and index are included. American Poets: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Herman Mel- Vendler selects, presents, and ex- Schuman, Jo Miles, and Joanna ville. Notre Dame, IN: University of amines 150 Dickinson poems, both Bailey Hodgman, eds. A Spicing of Notre Dame Press, 2010. xv + 226 pp. well known and less known, from Birds: Poems by Emily Dickinson. Paper, ISBN 0-268-04132-8, $28.00. the Franklin readers’ edition, with Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Univer- Johnson numbers also provided. She sity Press, 2010. 88 pp. Cloth, ISBN In three erudite essays, one on each “aims to bring readers to a deeper ac- 0-8195-7069-7, $22.95. poet, Spengemann acknowledges quaintance with Dickinson the writer, Emily Dickinson wrote, “One note Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville’s the inventive reconceiver and linguis-

34 | EDIS Bulletin NEW PUBLICATIONS tic shaper of her perennial themes: natural, intellectual, moral – with her intelligence into puzzled and active nature, death, religion, love, and the abstractions crossed with her images, response,” often leading “into a thick- workings of the mind and of thought.” with her unexpectedly conversational et of speculation.” Addressing Dick- Beyond thematic study, she focuses tones, from grave to gay.” Dickinson inson’s sentiments and strategies, on Dickinson as “inventor of a new has an “unmatched capacity for con- Vendler’s Socratic approach ques- form of poetry on the page” and em- centrating, into a small poem, an un- tions Dickinson and the reader while phasizes the “imaginative and linguis- offering illuminating explications of tic ‘Screws’ that Dickinson applied often counterintuitive logic, a keen the poems. Her book, intended as “a to emotional experience in order to analyticalqualified passion,penetration, an and intricate an unpre and- book to be browsed in,” merits a place extract and frame its essence.” She dictable vision.” Being “a poet of im- on any Dickinsonian’s bookshelf. An says, “The more we read this poet, the plication rather than of statement, she introduction, works cited, and index consistently provokes the reader’s more she fills up our atmosphere – Book Reviews of first lines are included. Charyn, Jerome. The Secret Life of power, and he is her “Calvary” (18). cally through her life beginning with Emily Dickinson. New York: W. W. “I’m ashamed to describe the elec- her Holyoke days to her death. He Norton, 2010. 348 pp. Cloth, ISBN tricity of my contact with his raw, red includes real characters in her life 0-393-06856-6, $24.95. skin – my cheeks are ablaze with the – Mother, Father, Austin, Lavinia, delight of it” (38). Sue, her niece and nephews, Samuel Reviewed by Maryanne Garbowsky - Bowles, Judge Otis Lord, Mary Lyon Poet Billy Collins undressed her in inson - and her love for him continues – as well as invented characters like his poem, and now Jerome Charyn throughoutHowever significantthe course Tomof her is lifeto Dick – he Zilpah Marsh and Rebecca Winslow, exposes the seamier side of the iconic is not the only reprobate with whom who both come to sad ends. poetess. Why is it that authors delight she falls in love – or should I say lust? In the next to last chapter, Dick- in fantasizing about this other side of A better candidate for a suitor might inson agrees to an interview with Dickinson as they imagine it to be? be Brainard Rowe, an Amherst tutor. Carleton West who like Thomas Could it be the voice of the poems, However, he turns out to be a drunk- Wentworth Higginson comes to visit which like some siren entices them to ard and a cardshark. But this is the (336). Although she does not permit the unseen and unknown? excitement this Dickinson craves. He him to see her, he does “peek through To be sure, Charyn invents a “wild” introduces her to rum when she goes . . . the door” (338). At the end, the side, and for authority quotes the to Tardy Tavern and thus he becomes poet is reminded of Tom in the per- poet’s brother who referred to her as “Domingo” to her “Currer Bell.” Their son of Dennis, the blue-eyed boy in his “wild sister” (12). Whatever the encounters are related in graphic de- the barn. In her imagination or de- reason, Charyn dives headlong, full- tail: Sitting on his lap, she experiences lirium, she visits with him in the barn steam ahead into a tantalizing web of “Vesuvius . . . right under me” (110). and recreates the famous “Because I imagination. The book’s short chap- Earlier on she had described “Brain- Could Not Stop for Death” as she is en ters allow the reader to speed along, getting quickly tangled in its sticky some curious harpoon that swelled gown though she is uncertain “whose butard’s did manliness not sting” against (102). my flanks, like brideroute toI am” death (348). finally wearing a bridal learn that the young Mount Holyoke Need I go on? The poet as envi- The novel is built on a layer of se- coedthreads. has aWithin “thing” the for first Tom chapter, the Handy we- sioned by Charyn is swept away by lected truths, more falsehood and man: “I am in love with Tom” (19) every man – or rather every low class - and admits to thinking obsessively man – ready to give up her social sta- tion. We cannot take it seriously about his tattoo, “a blue arrow and tus and privilege to be with him. In sincefabrication it was since not meant it is a to work be. of Read fic heart” (19). one instance, she prepares to leave it, and smile at Charyn’s cleverness Tom is an orphan brought to Mount even her beloved dog Carlo for Rowe, as he retains Dickinson’s words, im- Holyoke to work; neither educated who waits for her at the train station. ages, ideas, even her random capi- nor mannered in social graces, he He is her Egypt, she his Daisy (161), talization. What he has done is what “reeks of sweat” (18), yet this does and she wants to be with him as his many lovers of the poet have already not prevent the nascent poetess from “mistress” since he “has not promised done – imagined our own Dickinson. being smitten. In her imagination, he to marry me” (166). - becomes her “Sultan,” and she part of Charyn leads us on a merry chase tween with our own hypotheses, our his “Harem” (17). She is “mouse” to after Dickinson and her passionate ownWe fill fantasies. in the gaps, Charyn, the spaceshowever, in hasbe his manhood (18); a Daisy under his escapades. He follows chronologi- done it at book length, more than 300

November/December 2010 | 35 NEW PUBLICATIONS pages. Regardless of his inventive- there are inexplicable errors, as well, sends Mabel coded messages telling ness, it is not meant to convince or like not knowing that on her visit to her to back off. Austin is the King and teach us anything new about the poet. Washington, D.C., Dickinson stayed Mabel takes on the role of Lady Mac- The unknowns in her life, inspired by at the plush Willard Hotel, and not beth plotting Susan’s death. Sister La- the voice of the poems, will continue at “Mr. Cratchett’s boarding house,” vinia is Joan of Arc seeking to destroy “to tease us out of thought,” and this is and that the “friend” that she visited the Todds through fraudulent legal the way I like it. When it comes down in Philadelphia on her return trip was action. Village gossips spread false to it, I prefer Emily Dickinson with the actually her cousin, Eliza Coleman. rumors and there is talk of “witch- mysteries unsolved. Gordon’s story centers on her claim like concoctions,” and Mabel sees a that the poet appears to have suffered plot to destroy her health by a long Maryanne Garbowsky, a professor of from epilepsy, a condition she be- dead Susan. We learn much about English at the County College of Morris, Mabel’s menstrual cycle and the Randolph, New Jersey, has published particularly shown in the poem “My sexual frigidity of Mabel’s daughter, two books on Dickinson, The House Lifelieves had much stood influenced – a Loaded her Gun.” work, The as Millicent, presumably caused by the Without the Door and Double Vision. linchpin of her claim is that a Boston Dickinson family’s plotting. Thomas doctor gave Dickinson a prescription H. Johnson, to whom many are grate- for glycerine, a medicine she believes ful for compiling Dickinson’s papers, Gordon, Lyndall. Lives Like Load- was then prescribed for that condi- is described as “sweating” as he sits in ed Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her tion. However, glycerine was the as- the back of a taxi pleading with Mil- Family’s Feuds. New York: Viking pirin of nineteenth-century medicine, licent Todd Bingham to give him the Penguin, 2010. 489 pp. Cloth, ISBN and a patient who consulted a phy- manuscripts in her possession. Gor- 978-0-670-02193-2, $32.95 sician for almost any undiagnosed don points to sources she believes symptom was likely to get it as one of support these characterizations and Reviewed by George Gleason the prescribed medicines. Epilepsy it all makes for colorful reading. At British author Lyndall Gordon has is thought to have a hereditary ele- least for this reader, however, it has a written a fascinating account of Emily ment, and Emily’s nephew Ned may little too much of, shall I say, narrative Dickinson, her family, and the inter- have had it, but the suggestion that panache. family feud initiated by her brother Emily and a cousin did is just a guess, Gordon is a serious scholar and au- Austin’s affair with Mabel Loomis which Gordon herself concedes. Dick- thor of biographies of several other Todd, the young Amherst College pro- inson’s symptoms, if accurately de- fessor’s wife who later became Dick- scribed, are equally consistent with acclaimed study of Charlotte Brontë. any number of ailments, including Sheliterary is a figures,popular includingwriter in aEngland, widely swipes at earlier biographers who she certain types of migraine headaches, and the book enjoyed a good run saysinson’s “got first lost editor.in the byways She takes of fancy,” hefty and the secondary effects of fever and there before being released in the other delirium–inducing illnesses. In effort to tell the whole story. She is fact, not long before her death, when audience here. However, those inter- particularlyand she claims critical her of book Richard is the Sewall, first Dickinson suffered a week’s bout of estedUnited in States. learning It will more likely about find Dickin a wide- of whom she says future readers, pre- headaches, vomiting, and periodic son would do well to start with Rich- sumably after reading her book, will unconsciousness, she was again giv- ard Sewall’s biography; and for more see how he “succumbed to the vast en glycerine (along with arsenic and insight into the Austin and Mabel af- treasure trove of Todd untruths.” strychnine). She said afterward that fair, to read Polly Longsworth’s Austin A recent article in the New Yorker and Mabel, which not only puts it in magazine said of American biog- she had fainted and lain unconscious, context, but also provides the text of rapher Stephen Ambrose that he hardlyit was a the statement first time consistent in her life with that a their correspondence so that readers suffered from narrative panache, a lifelong condition of epilepsy. can make up their own minds. condition where a fondness for em- Gordon believes the snubbing of - Mabel by Austin's wife, Susan, laid rative. Gordon’s book comes very the groundwork for the ill feelings George Gleason is a lawyer and in- closebellishment to that sacrifices type of panache. fact to the While nar that lingered into the next genera- dependent scholar who is currently it shows evidence of solid research, tion, and that it also infected Dickin- working on a comparative study of as expected from a senior research son’s biographers and archivists. Her Emily Dickinson and the painter Geor- fellow at Oxford, historical records gia O’Keeffe. are too often reduced to selective one characters. Dickinson, secluded in or two word quotes which obscure hertale upstairsis filled withbedroom literary for fearand offantasy scan- context and sometimes source; and dal if word of her epilepsy got around,

36 | EDIS Bulletin MEMBERS’ NEWS

Nominations for Member-at-Large, 2011-2014

Several years ago the EDIS Board of Di- rectors changed the Society’s bylaws to expand the number of Member-at- Large seats from one to three. We have staggered their three-year terms, so that a Member-at-Large election occurs each year. The Nominations Committee welcomes nominations, including self- nominations, for candidates who wish to stand for election to serve a three- year term as a Board Member-at-Large Dickinsonians gather for the last hurrah, the membership meeting. Photo by LeeAnn Gorthey to begin in the late summer of 2011 and to conclude in 2014. Currently, Nancy to receive hard copies of the ballot and for applications is January 15, 2011. Pridgen holds this position. candidate statements to contact Jonnie The Members-at-Large have the Guerra with their request. same responsibilities and opportuni- EDIS Awards for 2011 ties for service to the organization that all EDIS Board members have. These Bulletin Editor Position Open EDIS has for several years offered two include the following: becoming fa- awards annually to promising scholars miliar with the Society’s bylaws; con- The EDIS Board of Directors is seeking working on projects focusing on Emily ducting Society business by serving on an editor for the Bulletin. Candidates Dickinson. The Scholar-in-Amherst fel- committees; reading the EDIS Bulletin should be familiar with Emily Dickin- lowship of $2,000 is intended to fund and the Journal; following discussions son’s life and work as well as current research in the Amherst area. Prefer- on e-mail; attending annual meetings; issues in Dickinson scholarship. The ence is given to persons with complet- checking the Society’s web site for in- Bulletin editor also should have ex- ed PhDs who are in the early stages of formation and updates; staying cur- perience in writing, editing, and de- their careers. Past winners are Paraic rent with Homestead and Museum ac- sign and be able to write copy as well Finnerty (2002), Angela Sorby (2003), tivities; writing for the Bulletin; and, as solicit articles from the mem- Magdalena Zapedowska (2004), Jed depending on location, sponsoring or bership. Familiarity with InDesign Deppman (2005), Alexandra Socari- participating in activities with a local or Publisher software is advised. des (2006), Aífe Murray (2007), Yan- chapter or your community generally. The Bulletin editor is a member of bin Kang (2009), and Renée Bergland An ongoing issue for EDIS is increasing the EDIS Board of Directors. The Bul- (2010). membership, and Members-at-Large letin is currently published twice a The Graduate Student Fellowship of are asked to contribute to this goal by year and, beginning with the Spring $1,000 is intended to support research having their ears tuned to members’ 2011 issue, the editor will work expenses relative to a dissertation or preferences, interests, and concerns. with the Society’s website commit- other major project. Past winners are Please submit names to Jonnie Guer- tee to migrate Bulletin copy to the Aaron Shackelford (2006), Karen An- ra, Chair of the Nominations Commit- EDIS website. In addition to editing ex- derson (2007), Jessica Beard (2008), tee, at [email protected] or 1812 perience, candidates should be detail Trisha Kannan (2009), and Beth Staley Garden Street, West Lafayette, IN oriented, committed to meeting dead- (2010). 47906 USA, by February 1, 2011. Can- lines and publishing the Bulletin on- Interested applicants for both awards didates for the position are asked to budget. The editor position is unpaid, should consult the EDIS website, www. - but expenses related to publishing the emilydickinsoninternationalsociety. tions and interests to be distributed to newsletter will be reimbursed. Mail- org. The deadline for applications for allprepare members a statement of EDIS forof theirconsideration. qualifica ing regulations require U.S. residence. both awards is May 15, 2011. The Board of Directors is considering Interested candidates should send a whether or not to conduct the spring cover letter, resume, and samples of their election electronically. The Nomina- work to Martha Ackmann, EDIS Presi- Forthcoming EDIS Meetings tions Committee invites feedback from dent, Gender Studies Program, Mount members about this new format and Holyoke College 01075 or by email to At its August meeting, the EDIS Board encourages members who would like [email protected]. Deadline announced plans for meetings over

November/December 2010 | 37 MEMBERS’ NEWS

the next three years. The 2011 annual Martha Nell Smith and Marianne Noble We look forward to hearing progress meeting will be held on the campus are heading the organizing committee. reports about forthcoming groups in of Amherst College on July 29-31. The Watch future Bulletin issues and the France, China, India, and elsewhere in theme will be Great Debates and the EDIS website for details. the months to come. If you offer any gathering will feature a series of panel type of presentation on Dickinson pe- discussions and conversations focusing riodically, please tell us about it. My on some of the most perplexing issues email is [email protected]. I look surrounding Dickinson’s life and work, News from EDIS Chapters forward to hearing from you! such as why she didn’t publish, what literary characteristics make a Dick- By Nancy List Pridgen inson poem Dickinsonian, and why EDIS Chapter Chair the poet became a recluse. Historians, Academic Meetings Dickinson scholars, authors, and long- EDIS Chapter growth has remained time readers will serve as panelists for steady in the United States in recent Modern Language Association a lively exchange of ideas. EDIS will be years, while interest is growing inter- cooperating with the Emily Dickinson nationally, with potential formation of MLA’s 2011 annual meeting will be Museum in organizing the meeting. groups in China, India, and France. Ad- held in Los Angeles from January 6 Check the EDIS website and the spring ditionally, the EDIS board has shown through 9. EDIS will sponsor two pan- Bulletin for details. strong support for both chapters and els: On Thursday, January 6, at 12:00 Looking further ahead, the Board local Dickinson presentations through noon, “Dickinson’s Afterlife” will in- settled on Cleveland for the 2012 meet- policy changes voted into effect at the clude papers by Julie R. Enzer, Universi- ing, hosted by Case Western Reserve board meeting in Oxford, August 5, ty of Maryland; Logan Esdale, Chapman University. The theme will be “Emily 2010. University; and Seth Perlow, Cornell Rocks,” with an emphasis on Dickin- Three chapters remain active, in Mas- University; with Alexandra Socarides, son in and around the popular culture sachusetts, Florida, and South Carolina, University of Missouri, presiding. On of her time and ours. Gary Stonum, Jed and their sponsors have sent progress Friday, January 7, at 12:00 noon, the Deppman, Brad Ricca, Jim Farrelly, and reports. Their sponsors are Trisha second panel, “Dickinson Forming His- Stephanie Tingley will be the meeting Kannon, University of Florida; Ellen tory,” will feature papers by Jessica Gar- organizers. Beinhorn, Beaufort, South Carolina; ratt, University of Missouri; Joshua Jen- And still further ahead, EDIS will and Lois Kackley, Amherst, Massachu- sen, Claremont Graduate University; hold its next international conference setts. Tricia is planning the chapter’s and Phoebe Putnam, Harvard Univer- in the Washington, D.C. area in August sity, with Martha Nell Smith, University 2013, hosted by the University of Mary- of Maryland, presiding. For further in- land and American University, with the Ellen’sfirst fall group meeting is eager and isto hoping contact to other join formation, contact Alexandra Socarides theme “Emily Dickinson, World Citi- EDISwith angroups undergraduate to share ideas. fine Thearts goalgroup. of at [email protected]. zen.” The conference will explore Dick- Lois’s group is to encourage beginning inson’s politics, her understanding of and experienced readers to respond American Literature Association citizenship, and her engagements with to Dickinson’s poems in a discussion group. In addition to these chapters, ALA will hold its twenty-second annu- the global reach of her mind and verse. several EDIS members hold Dickinson al meeting at the Westin Copley Place international cultures and influences— presentations once or twice a year. in Boston, May 26-29, 2011. EDIS will The board is discussing ways to en- - courage and foster chapters. One deci- dress “The Many Lives of Emily Dick- sion made this summer is to present inson.”sponsor Papers two panels. are invited The first on willbiogra ad- each group with a copy of each Emily phies of Dickinson, recent or older, on Dickinson Journal and Bulletin. To help defray costs for chapters or individual on consideration of how these works EDIS members who present Dickinson affectfictional our works understanding based on of her the life, poet’s and events, the board has voted a stipend life or work. The second panel is open of up to $250.00, which presenters can to papers on any aspect of Dickinson’s apply for by sending a formal descrip- life or literary work. Please send pro- Retiring president Paul Crumbley passes tion of the event to be offered, details as - the torch to incoming president Martha to where and when it will be held, and formation to Stephanie A. Tingley (sat- Ackmann. expenses likely to be incurred. [email protected])posals and academic by January affiliation/bio 15, 2011. in

38 | EDIS Bulletin IN THIS ISSUE

Conference Reports Continued 36 Lyndall Gordon, Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds 30 Dickinson and the Question of Fame Reviewed by George Gleason By Elizabeth Petrino 37 Member News 31 Dickinson’s Ethics and Poetics Nominations for Member-at-Large, 2011-2014 By Gary Lee Stonum Bulletin Editor Position Open New Publications EDIS Awards for 2011 32 Brief Reviews Forthcoming EDIS Meetings By Barbara Kelly News from EDIS Chapters By Nancy List Pridgen 35 Jerome Charyn, The Secret Life of Academic Meetings: Modern Language Association; Emily Dickinson American Literature Association Reviewed by Maryanne Garbowsky

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 Pres- ident 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 Martha 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 Lette Hampson; 1960 by Mary L. Hampson. 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.

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