The Emily Dickinson International Society

Volume 21, Number 2 November/December 2009 “The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality.”

emily dickinson in20ternation0al so9ciety general meeting

EMILY DICKINSON: ROYA L — all but the Crown! Queen Without a Crown

July –August , , Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada EDIS 2009 Annual Meeting

Eleanor Heginbotham with Beefeater Guards Emily with Beefeater Guards Suzanne Juhasz, Jonnie Guerra, and Cris Miller with Beefeater Guards

Cindy MacKenzie and Emily Special Tea Cake Paul Crumbley, EDIS president and Cindy MacKenzie, organizer of the 2009 Annual Meeting

Georgie Strickland, former editor of the Bulletin Bill and Nancy Pridgen, EDIS members George Gleason, EDIS member and Jane Wald, executive director of the Emily Dickinson Museum

Jane Eberwein, Gudrun Grabher, Vivian Pollak, Martha Ackmann and Ann Romberger at banquet Group in front of the Provincial Government House and Eleanor Heginbotham at banquet

Cover Photo Courtesy of Emily Seelbinder Photos Courtesy of Eleanor Heginbotham and Georgie Strickland I n Th i s Is s u e

Page 3 Page 12 Page 33

F e a t u r e s R e v i e w s 3 Queen Without a Crown: EDIS 2009 19 New Publications Annual Meeting By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor By Douglas Evans 24 Review of Jed Deppman, Trying to Think with Emily Dickinson 6 Playing Emily or “the welfare of my shoes” Reviewed by Marianne Noble By Barbara Dana 25 Review of Elizabeth Oakes, 9 Teaching and Learning at the The Luminescence of All Things Emily Emily Dickinson Museum Reviewed by Janet McCann By Jane Wald 26 Selected Bibliography 12 Q&A: White Heat By Barbara Kelly By Brenda Wineapple Me m b e r s ’ Ne w s Edited by Martha Ackmann and Kathleen Welton 29 Awards 13 Reflection: “We perish — tho’ We reign —” 30 Chapter News By Nicholas Ruddick 32 Notes and Queries S e r i e s 33 Oxford 2010 International Conference 14 Poet to Poet D e p a r t m e n t s Girl Sleuths and Early Influences: Mary Ann Samyn Responds to 34 Crossword Puzzle: More Words To Lift Emily Dickinson Your Hat To By Mary Ann Samyn By Greg Mattingly Edited by Jonnie Guerra, Series Editor 36 Oxford 2010 International Conference 17 Dickinson and the Visual Arts Registration Form Emily and Isabelle: Beyond Time 36 EDIS Membership Form 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 Em- ily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Copyright © 1929, 1935 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Copyright © renewed 1957, 1963 by Mary L. Hampson: Little Brown and Co., Boston. Dickinson letters are reprinted by permission of the publisher 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. Emily Dickinson International Society

Officers President: Paul Crumbley Vice President: Martha Ackmann Secretary: Stephanie Tingley Treasurer: James C. Fraser Board Members Barbara Dana Cristanne Miller Martha Nell Smith Jed Deppman Marianne Noble Jane Wald Cindy Dickinson Elizabeth Petrino Kathleen Welton Jonnie Guerra Vivian Pollak Ellen Louise Hart Nancy Pridgen

Legal Advisor: Barbara Leukart Nominations Chair: Ellen Louise Hart Membership Chair: Jonnie Guerra Dickinson and the Arts Chair: Barbara Dana Chapter Development Chair: Nancy Pridgen Journal Editor: Cristanne Miller Bulletin Editor: Kathleen Welton Bulletin Editor 1989-1990: Cristanne Miller Bulletin Editor 1990-1991: Margaret Freeman Bulletin Editor 1991-2002: Georgiana Strickland Bulletin Editor 2002-2009: Michael Kearns

2009 Sustaining Members Marilyn Berg-Callander Lois Kackley Scott Donaldson Cristanne Miller Jane Eberwein Gary Lee Stonum David Forsyth Ethan & Robin Tarasov James Fraser Richard Tryon Jonnie Guerra

2009 Contributing Members Martha Ackmann Alice Fulton Domenica Paterno Paul Beckley David Gillies Carol Pippen Mary Elizabeth Bernhard Eleanor Heginbotham Vivian Pollak Richard Brantley Niels Kjaer Robert Russell Jack Capps Mary Loeffelholz Emily Seelbinder Carolyn Cooley Polly Longsworth Hiroko Uno Barbara Dana Cindy MacKenzie Kathleen Welton Donna Dreyer Daniel Manheim Tracy Winkler Robert Eberwein JoAnn Orr Diana Fraser Orlando Ortega EDIS gratefully acknowledges the generous financial contributions of these members.

EDIS Bulletin (ISSN 1055-3932) is published twice yearly, May/June and November/December, by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. Standard Mail non-

contact Paul Crumbley, President, EDIS, Department of English, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322 or [email protected]. Annual dues are $50.00 for regular members,profit postage $30.00 is paid for students,at Chicago, $200.00 IL 60611. for sustaining Membership members, in the Society $113.00 is foropen institutional to all persons members, with an $100.00 interest for in Emilycontributing Dickinson members and her (all work. of whom For further receive information, 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 Univer- sity 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 and other communications for the Bulletin to Kathleen Welton, aka associates, 645 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 800, Chicago, IL 60611 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 © 2009 by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. The Bulletin is indexed in EBSCO, Humanities International Complete, and the MLA Bibliography.

www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org features

Queen Without a Crown: EDIS 2009 Annual Meeting By Douglas Evans

wo Beefeater Guards, fes- Choosing a theme for the 2009 annual meeting of the Emily Dickinson tooned in scarlet and gold, cor- International Society in my hometown, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, Tdially welcomed the esteemed initially presented me with a considerable challenge. With absolutely no guests into the elegant crystal salon Dickinsonian connections to draw on, I decided that Regina’s nickname, of the grand Hotel Saskatchewan. the “Queen City,” would foreground the pervasive theme of royalty in the The august occasion was to herald poet’s letters and poems. By selecting the line, “Royal, all but the Crown—” the 2009 Emily Dickinson Interna- (Fr194) for the poster, I wanted to emphasize the poet’s jubilant tone but tional Society annual meeting in the also the high regard in which we, the members of the Society, hold this royal city of Regina, Saskatchewan, brilliant poet. In addition, imbuing the poster with deep purple and violet Canada on July 31-August 2, 2009. tones decorated with images of a white crown creates a strong allusion to Cindy MacKenzie, professor of Eng- many of the iconic symbols in her work. Meeting and dining in the elegant lish at the University of Regina, who rooms of the Hotel Saskatchewan and Government House and implement- hosted and planned the event, gave ing as much pomp and ceremony as possible, we celebrated Emily Dickin- the convocation, warmly welcoming son’s indisputable queenly stature. the guests, and Paul Crumbley, the — Cindy MacKenzie president of EDIS offered greetings and toasts. Title divine, is mine. And then—the dinner—a ban- The Wife without the Sign— Acute Degree conferred on me— rib of beef, Yorkshire pudding, and Empress of Calvary— quet fit for a queen, of roast prime Royal, all but the Crown— of this conference was “The Queen Betrothed, without the Swoon WithoutEnglish trifle. a Crown,” After and all, the theme three- God gives us Women— - When You hold Garnet to Garnet— ed this theme. Gold—to Gold— dayThe program queen appropriatelyof the conference, reflect of Born—Bridalled—Shrouded— course, was Emily Dickinson—“The In a Day— Queen of Calvary—” (Fr347), “Roy- Tri Victory— al, all but the Crown—” (Fr194), “My Husband”—Women say “Purple—The Color of a Queen, is Stroking the Melody— this—” (Fr875), “Empress of Cal- Is this the way— vary—” (Fr194), “Title divine, is mine.” (Fr194), “A half unconscious the royal color imagery in “Purple— - Queen—” (Fr353) and many more The Color of a Queen, is this—” sion, when she looks into the glass poems referencing the singular, un- (Fr875), one of the few poems that ofthe her difficult own face area and of severesees the depres abyss recognized queen. Dickinson actually titled (one Rud- Nicholas Ruddick, professor of dick had referenced in his Doctoral A special art exhibit entitled “For English at the University of Regina, thesis on Dickinson’s color imagery). Emily”of infinity. was conceived and orga- regaled banqueters with the top- nized by Cindy MacKenzie and Tim ic, “We perish—tho’ We reign—” Long, Head Curator of the Mac- (Fr693). Giving a brief biography Ruddick,The third thatpoem, nature’s “I dreaded indifferences that first Kenzie Art Gallery. Works from of himself and his early encounters teachRobin, us so” not (Fr347), to magnify reflected, our own said the gallery’s permanent collection with the queen (Dickinson), he dis- were selected, and word and image cussed four royalty poems, pointing selection, “Like Eyes that looked on were brought together, revealing out, for instance the interestingly Wastes—”“elevated” status.(Fr693), In he Ruddick’s noted, Dick final- how artists and poets create mean- double-meaning of “Bridalled” in inson gives us a very different view ing. Cindy was asked by Tim early “Title divine, is mine.” (Fr194) and of “queenship”—one that goes into on how to sum up what Dickinson

November/December 2009 | 3 features

Queen Without a Crown: EDIS 2009 Annual Meeting cont., By Douglas Evans was all about. Her response is suc- written to Susan Dickinson and the cinct and memorable: “Metonymy other to Samuel Bowles. Class dis- specialize. Juhasz chooses ten ad- and Ellipsis.” That is what this very cussion focuses on the differences ditionaltopic and poems selecting and five this on which “cluster” to special exhibition was all about. A between them. In the Regina “class” becomes the basis for further analy- sculpture of a dress with crossed David Gillies offered an astute ob- sis. ankles evoked the poem “I cannot servation: that the version to Susan Choosing two fascicles, Trisha dance opon my Toes—” (Fr381). A was “whispered,” while the version Kannan asks students to present to dark, empty box with some cobweb to Bowles was “orated”—two very the class a poem from the fascicles. different tones. Smith —along with The catch is that the student will not “One need not be a Chamber —to many other teachers in the room— know which poem of those fascicles befilaments Haunted—” reminded (Fr407) the viewer in which of also insists that students memorize the instructor will ask him or her to the brain is a haunted house. It was some of the poems. present. interesting that this exhibition was Stephanie Tingley, professor of Emily Seelbinder asks students not based on art that was created English at Youngstown State Uni- to consider two poems linked in because of any particular poem, but versity, asks students to pick one some way, decide which one they it was based on a poem that easily poem from the fascicles. After care- prefer, and write down the reasons conformed with an already created ful reading of the text, they are re- for their choice. (There is no right work of art. quired to go through a series of answer.) Possible pairings might be: Saturday’s agenda included three steps including explication of the “After great pain, a formal feeling consecutive workshops conducted text, inspection of Dickinson’s lexi- comes—” (Fr372) and “Pain—has by three astute EDIS scholars on con, close study of the manuscripts, an Element of Blank—” (Fr760); or the subject of teaching Dickinson. and placement of the poem in the two or more variants of “Safe in their Three exciting and unique methods fascicle. Tingley’s students also look Alabaster Chambers—” (Fr124). were presented for consideration— beyond the text to link the poem Jane Donahue Eberwein chal- utilizing “queen” poems. Emily with other literature, music or art. lenges students to see what the dif- Seelbinder, professor of English at - ferent editors of over a century have Queens University in Charlotte, lets tronic Poster”—making public what done with Dickinson poems. After the students decide much of the di- theThe studentfinal project has is labored creating on an for “Elec the assigning a poem to each group of rection of the class after reading the duration of the class. She showed students and providing them a fac- poems and criticism. Each class, examples of the “Electronic Poster” simile of the manuscript, they are to she noted, goes in a different direc- which utilizes packaged software copy it with absolute precision, no- tion, based on the students’ inter- that enable students to combine ticing punctuation, words, variants, ests. For example, students present text, pictures, and artworks into an and other marks on the page. Then montage projects, such as a Rubik’s individual creation illustrating their Cube with words from the poems, a chosen poem. the various editors chose to do. collage of photos/pictures/poems An afternoon roundtable ses- theyConferees compare discussedtheir findings Dickinson to what of Dickinson, and a tribute to Andy sion, chaired by Marianne Noble, outside of the classroom as well. Warhol with the two “Emilies.” associate professor of literature, Lois Kackley has had experience in Martha Nell Smith, professor of at American University, consisted establishing a chapter in Amherst, English at the University of Mary- of discussion and sharing of “Best Massachusetts. As do those in other land, a recognized expert on the tex- Assignments”—those that worked, “chapters” of EDIS, she utilizes lo- tual manuscripts of Emily’s poems, and those that did not work so well. cal experts in Dickinson to be guest utilizes on-line technology in which Several contributors had previously speakers as well as other scholars students can analyze and compare submitted a sample of their class who have reason to travel to Am- different versions of the poems. Us- assignments for all to peruse. Su- herst. ing the poem “Title divine—is mine!” zanne Juhasz requests that students Presenting the various teaching (Fr194A), she presented two manu- pick a topic, reading through ALL of programs of the Dickinson Museum, script versions of the poem—one Jane Wald, executive director, in-

Dickinson’s poetry they find on that 4 | EDIS Bulletin features

Queen Without a Crown: EDIS 2009 Annual Meeting cont., By Douglas Evans

she show up? Yes, that evening, the torian high tea and luncheon with mortal myth was revealed in all her the Lieutenant Governor, Gordon L. Barnhart (who actually stands in EDIS Board member and actress, in for and reports directly to another aglory, very personified moving performance by Barbara ofDana, the Queen—Elizabeth II). His Honor play, The Belle of Amherst by Wil- spoke to each guest individually liam Luce. She did us proud! Dana after they had toured the Govern- portrayed an exquisite and nuanced ment House; stood in respect to the Emily Dickinson. Not only was she strains of “God Save the Queen” and the Belle of Amherst, but she was “O, Canada,” and consumed a “very the “Queen” as well—“The Queen proper British tea” by “very proper Without a Crown.” Victorian ladies”: orange scones, Bright and early Sunday morn- Devonshire cream, trimmed and ing, the Research Circle met, with tidy sandwiches, and “Queen Eliza- beth cakes” crowned with crystal- long-time leader Ellen Louise Hart. lized sugar tiaras. AmongEleanor the Heginbotham projects in filling process in for on All too soon, the meeting was over. which attendees reported were sev- Fired up and ready to delve into eral fascicle studies, including one their “Johnsons” and “Franklins,” formed attendees of ways the Muse- by graduate student Trisha Kannan; the inspired attendees couldn’t wait um and its staff can educate, inform, several cross-disciplinary studies, to get home to their various schools and excite audiences about Emily including that by George Gleason and local meetings to try out the Dickinson. Their overall goal is to (who also reported on his research new teaching techniques and ideas. establish a larger presence of Emily on a dubious photograph of Dickin- Dickinson. The Museum is dedicat- son) comparing Dickinson’s work ed to educating diverse audiences to that of Georgia O’Keefe; and sev- about Emily Dickinson’s life, family, eral studies based on letters, such creative work, times, and enduring as Stephanie Tingley’s focus on the relevance, and to preserving and in- Holland family letters and Martha terpreting the Homestead and The Nell Smith’s continuing work on Evergreens as historical resources Susan Dickinson and Martha Dick- inson Bianchi. Paul Crumbley and Cristanne Miller both spoke of more Martha Nell Smith, Eleanor Heginbotham, and general public. Stephanie Tingley enjoy the annual meeting. forEDIS the benefit president of scholars Paul Crumbly, and the than one major project nearing called the requisite business meet- completion. Through the years of Emily Dickinson wrote about the ing to order. Of keen interest was EDIS annual meetings and confer- “Queen Without a Crown.” In spite that next year’s international con- ences, this gathering has encour- of her lack of recognition in her life- ference would be held in Oxford, aged and previewed work that has time, Emily was the Queen of her England; he urged all to make the been published and been useful to craft—and she knew it. She reigns crossing. Annual meeting attendee subsequent scholars. Especially forever. - this year, the interaction between matic rendition of nineteen Dickin- conferees—many participating in Douglas Evans is a founding mem- sonGordon poems—recited Porterfield performed from memory a dra ber of EDIS. He served in Project and received with hearty applause. spirit of EDIS. Management at IBM Corporation for 25 years and Disaster Accounting for The workshops all ended—all the work of others—reflected the American Red Cross Headquarters interesting, all challenging, all for 11 years. He is currently work- Later that day, the grand finale thought provoking—and all busi- surprise. Boarding a carriage (bus), ing part-time in a library for an eng- ness put aside—it was now time to courtierscame in a were fitting conveyed and unforgettable to the Gov- ineer pay respects to the queen. Would ernment House for a tour and Vic- ing firm. November/December 2009 | 5 features

Playing Emily or “the welfare of my shoes” By Barbara Dana

n August 1, 2009, I had the But I was scared. Could I honor problem was I couldn’t gain a pound honor of playing Emily Dick- Emily, as I would want to? Could I throughout the following year! Oinson in William Luce’s The hold the stage alone for nearly two In October, I began learning the Belle of Amherst, at the annual EDIS hours? Could I learn the lines?? It lines. I started at the beginning of meeting in Regina, Canada. I had would be a lot of work, too much the play, reading small sections of longed to do the play for years, but work for one performance. But once the text out loud until I knew them. in a fantasy way, not in a “how can I had done the play I could do it at With a one-person show there are, I make this happen?” way. My act- other theaters, I reasoned. I accept- of course, no cues. One has to form ing idol, Julie Harris, had played the ed Cindy’s offer and set to work. a mental connection between one I began by reading the play two or section and another, a reason to go presume to do it. When Cindy Mac- three times a week, not out loud, just from one thought to the next. This Kenzie,“part” magnificently.who was hosting I would the meet not- as a reader, no plans, no judgments, takes time. Once I learned a small ing, asked if I would consider doing no decisions as to how I would play section I ran it every day so as not the play, I thanked her for the some- to forget it while moving on to the what overwhelming offer and ex- next. In addition to this, I recorded plained why I had to decline. Thank the play and listened to it while do- goodness she asked me again. ing the dishes, folding the laundry, Cindy knew of my long-standing making the beds, or walking my yel- career as an actor. We had recently low Lab, Riley. I continued to work co-edited an edition of essays on on the lines every day, progressing the healing power of Dickinson’s slowly through the play in small poetry (Wider Than the Sky: Es- sections and running the sections I says and Meditations on the Healing already knew. By December, it was Power of Emily Dickinson, Kent State going well, but I was having trouble University Press, 2007) and knew a with the recipe. The play opens with lot about each other’s lives having Barbara Dana and Riley a recipe for black cake, which was spent many long months working it, just exploring Emily’s world with- together. in the context of the play. It was Au- have the emotional line of the rest When Cindy repeated her request, gust 2008. I had a year to prepare. ofdifficult the play. to (Dolearn the because raisins itcome doesn’t be- I found myself reconsidering. I had At the same time I decided to see fore the nutmeg or after?) just completed ten years of work on if I could have Emily’s white dress My novel came out in March. I a novel based on the young life of reproduced for the show. I took a - the poet (A Voice of Her Own: Becom- postcard of the dress to Broadway ing to California, New Mexico, New ing Emily Dickinson, HarperCollins, costumer Sarah Timberlake. I re- England,went on myand firstthe Midwest.book tour, I contintravel- 2009). I missed the day-to-day con- ued to work on the lines between tact with “my” Emily. How many ac- of stairs in the heat and humidity of readings and signings, running sec- tors get to study a role for ten years themember Manhattan trudging summer up the long to Sarah’s flight tions of the play on planes and in before playing it, I thought. What studio to ask if she could copy the airports, listening to my recorder a gift! Every actor brings some- dress. She said she could! There I on hikes in the desert near Santa Fe, thing different to a role. That’s as it stood, draped in white, becoming walks along Main Street in Amherst, should be. As I write this, I think of Emily amidst the fabrics, the lace, - a postcard I received from Julie, the the buttons, the sewing machines, vard in Los Angeles. always-generous soul. “You will be the women at work, and Sarah’s andUpon in traffic my jams return, on Sunset photographer Boule Emily in Canada next summer!” she cats lolling in the breeze of the fans Mark Kwiatek came to my house wrote. “Wonderful! Remember You set about on top of the work tables. in South Salem where we did a ARE Emily!” - day of shooting for the poster. Thank you, Julie. Mezzo-soprano Kathleen Shime- The dress was finished just after La bor Day and fit perfectly. The only 6 | EDIS Bulletin features

Playing Emily or “the welfare of my shoes” cont., By Barbara Dana ta joined us for some shots for Wadsworth, her growing reclusive- Whitman’s Leaves of Grass from my our project I Told my Soul to Sing! ness, her deepening estrangement bookshelf along with Helen Hunt that combines musical settings of from Sue, Austin’s affair with Mabel Jackson’s Ramona and my grandfa- the poems with text from my novel. Loomis Todd, Emily’s long and last- ther’s Bible. I took a cup and saucer The Emily dress looked beautiful ing relationship with Thomas Went- from my cupboard and my mother- but the waist opened up when I worth Higginson, etc. I returned to in-law’s antique watch from my jew- sat down. I pinned it closed for the the letters, concentrating on the elry box. I found a stereoscope on E- shoot, then returned to Sarah’s stu- later ones. I explored her adult life Bay. I ordered an apron, a bonnet, a in the biographies of Sewall and shawl, a pen, an inkwell, and a mag- Habegger. I re-visited Polly Longs- nifying glass from various sources bitdio easierto fix theto do problem, in March climbing then in the worth’s Austin and Mabel. on the Internet. I scanned Emily’s heatseemingly of summer. endless flight of stairs, a family photographs from books. I The next question was my hair. bought nineteenth-century looking When photographer Mark Kwi- picture frames in which to put them. atek shot the photos for the poster I purchased a white hanky at Target. I parted my hair in the middle and I wrote out all the poems and let- ters that Emily actually reads in the the pictures, but from the side, the course of the play. I made several bun,pulled or itwhat back. there This was looked of it, fine looked for fascicles, sewing the pages together skimpy. I searched several beauty to use in the scene with Higginson. A supply shops in Manhattan and one small fan acquired at our EDIS con- ference in Kyoto was perfect for the - scene at the dance with James Fran- ingin Westchester that matched to my find hair a bun color. to I add de- cis Billings, who didn’t like rhubarb. cidedto my toown grow hair my but hair could for find the noth next Certain props would be too large to travel with. I sent a list of these to might do it. (It didn’t.) Nils Clausson the stage director in severalThe good months, news which was that I figured actor/ Regina, along with a list of the fur- director/playwright Austin Pendle- niture we would need and a sketch ton agreed to direct the play. I had I had drawn of the basic set for the studied with Austin years before at set designer, Rick Harvey. HB Studio in New York where I also Austin was out of town in May. I studied with Uta Hagen and where found a college student to run lines Austin still teaches today. Austin had The entire play revolves around with me. I spoke the text while she brilliantly directed my play, War in held the script, correcting my mis- Paramus - takes and giving me clues when my fect choice to direct! In February we reclusivefifty-three as year-old Emily was,Emily she talking would to mind went blank. When Austin re- began working. He was together my first a coupleand per of neverthe audience. have toldAt fifty-three, her life’s shy inner and- turned in June, we had six weeks be- times a week. I was fortunate to have most secrets to an audience of two fore I had to leave for Regina and he a deep sense of Emily from having hundred people. To whom would I had to leave to play Herbie in a pro- worked on my novel. However, in imagine Emily was speaking—one duction of Gypsy. We began rehears- the book I had concentrated on her person, two? And who were they? younger years. For the play I had Years ago Julie Harris had shared beginning to feel crazy. I still didn’t to study her later life in depth, the her choice with me. An actor’s se- knowing four all tothe five lines. days I still a week. didn’t I have was further development of her writing, cret, I cannot reveal it here, but I fol- my hair. Pressure was building. But her love relationships, her father’s lowed her lead. we got through the month. The week death, her mother’s stroke and sub- In addition to rehearsing, I be- before I left I found a bun that matched sequent death, the death of Charles gan collecting props. I took Walt my hair color. I knew my lines.

November/December 2009 | 7 features

Playing Emily or “the welfare of my shoes” cont., By Barbara Dana

of the evening, was in total dark- dress, her shoes and my precious the dress. nineteenth-centuryI flew to Regina props with Emily’s in my had solved the problem. Not only ibleThe beneath show the was floor-length a success, thehem re of- heavy(!) carry-on bag. I thought that,ness. I he was had relieved designed to find a beautiful, that Guy sponse, heartwarming. I must re- customs might think I was planning simple lighting plan that featured late my favorite comment. At the to open an antique shop without a the various areas of Emily’s envi- reception after the performance as work permit. But nobody opened ronment. At the apron of the stage, I stood, basking in the light of the my luggage. Cindy welcomed me a spot illuminated her garden. acceptance and appreciation of my royally. Nils and Rick and I found As we began the technical rehears- colleagues, a woman approached the needed furniture for the set at al, or “cue to cue” as it is sometimes me from the far side of the lobby. the Regina Performing Arts Cen- called, everything fell apart. Stop- She was smiling in a tentative sort ter and arranged it in a rehearsal of way, her head tipped to one side, room where I would rehearse for hesitant, yet somehow bold. I read- the week before the show. The rest ied myself for a compliment. When of the week was spent searching she reached me she stopped, her for elusive props including an oil smile fading. “I liked it,” she said, lamp, a teapot, black cake, The At- “but I wish you’d had the right lantic Monthly, the Springfield Daily shoes.” Republican and a picture frame to I guess you really can’t please ev- replace the one that had broken on eryone. Of course Emily never both- ered about that. She did things her all to locate was the wooden box in own way, knowing, I believe, that the flight from New York. Hardest of- being true to one’s own vision is the ished poems. Emily offers the box to way to go—that one’s self is truly all thewhich audience Emily keepsat the some end of of the her play fin one has. as her “letter to the world” so it had As far as being alone up there—it to be right—simple, unpretentious, didn’t happen. Guess who was with not too big. me? Evenings I ran lines with Liza Gil- blom, a student at the University of Regina, and lover of Dickinson. She Barbara Dana will perform The would also be my prompter for the Belle of Amherst on March 11th, performance. Since there would 2010 at the Kirby Memorial Theater be no other actors on stage should ping and starting, skipping whole at Amherst College as well as per- I forget a line, or “go up” as we ac- sections of the play, being inter- form preview scenes from the play tors call it, I decided that having a rupted by Nils and asked to move to to celebrate Emily’s birthday on De- prompter would be wise for peace the edge of the table where the light cember 10, 2009—both for the Em- of mind if for nothing else. was better—these things fractured ily Dickinson Museum. At the technical rehearsal in the my sense of Emily’s reality. Thank theater the morning of the perfor- goodness I was wearing her shoes. Notes mance, Nils and I were joined by the Wearing a character’s shoes is an “the welfare of my shoes” (The Let- lightning designer, Guy Michaud, old acting trick that helps one feel ters of Emily Dickinson, L16 Edited in character when rehearsing. I had by Thomas H. Johnson, The Belknap to insure that the audience could chosen the shoes carefully, off-white Press of Harvard University Press.) seewhose me. job The it previous was first week and foremostonly two with a strap across the instep and a lights appeared to be working in a low heel, comfortable, feminine, yet Credits grid of four. Stage center, where I/ sturdy. The whiteness of the tips Photos courtesy of Mark Kwiatek. Emily would spend the larger part would be a gentle touch when vis-

8 | EDIS Bulletin features

Teaching and Learning at the Emily Dickinson Museum By Jane Wald

istoric sites and museums tiative created by the National En- the poet’s life, persistent mythol- have played an increasingly dowment for the Arts in partnership ogy about her, Dickinson’s writing Hprominent role in American with the Poetry Foundation. The Big practices, and how her poetry came culture over the last century as re- Read’s emphasis on community- to be published. Two other sessions positories of collective memory, based programming coincided per- treated participants to readings values, and history. They serve as fectly with the sense of place vital and interpretations of Dickinson’s centers of conversation—and some- to Dickinson’s work and this year’s poetry with working poets April times controversy—about exciting community-wide celebration of the Bernard, John Hennessey, Marilyn 250th anniversary of the town’s es- Nelson, Susan Snively, and Rich- traditions. They are also centers of tablishment. Strong collaborations ard Wilbur. A workshop originally new findings as well as enduring with local partners undergirded designed for informal discussion solitude and silence can rejuvenate new offerings for young and old, among about 40 participants ended thereflection imagination and reverie, and inspire places creativ where- expert and novice, and for those in- with a standing-room only audience ity. Above all, historic sites and mu- spired by literature, music, dance, of 100. We encourage you to con- seums are physical environments art, history, and nature. One of our sider organizing an Emily Dickinson for learning. Their structures and hopes for these programs was that Big Read in your community; see collections evoke authority and au- www.neabigread.org for details. thenticity in telling important sto- ries and encouraging new insights. staple of the museum’s educational As a learning environment, the presence,School field but newertrips have initiatives long been seek a Emily Dickinson Museum’s unique ways to have a multiplying impact educational tools are the two Dick- year after year on what school-aged inson family homes, the spaces the learners know about Emily Dickin- poet occupied, the landscape she son and her poetry by supporting inhabited, and a large collection of the teachers who teach them. This family objects. Our work is guided past summer, we offered a profes- by a mission statement that places sional development workshop, emphasis on “educating diverse The Homested as it appears today following restoration of “Emily Dickinson: Person, Poetry, the hemlock hedge and spindle fence. The young hemlocks audiences about Emily Dickinson’s will be maintained at a height of about six feet. and Place,” funded by the National life, family, creative work, times, Photo courtesy of the Emily Dickinson Museum. Endowment for the Humanities, and enduring relevance.” This mis- readers new to or uncomfortable for 80 teachers from around the sion along with a set of basic inter- with poetry could test the waters country at kindergarten to twelfth pretive themes—Dickinson’s poetic with the work of one of the world’s grade levels (see www.nehwork- most celebrated poets hailing from shopemilydickinson.org). Our goal creative sensibility, and the social their own community. was to help teachers gain a deeper contextability and of heroutput, life—form influences the on back her- Two among the dozen programs understanding of Emily Dickinson’s bone of the museum’s broad-based organized for the Big Read deserve poetry, the environment in which program of education. special mention. The premiere of she lived, the forces that shaped her Last year, more than 12,000 on- Emily of Amherst, an original four- development as a poet, the multi- site visitors experienced our most act ballet of interpretive biography, dimensional presence she exerted common educational programs— created in collaboration with Am- at home and among her friends and a variety of guided tours, public herst Ballet, is described elsewhere community, and, now, throughout events, and interpretive exhibits. In in this issue. “Emily Dickinson’s the world. Each day, teachers heard spring 2009, the museum experi- Poetry 101,” offered in partnership a lecture on the major topic—biog- mented with new program formats with the local public library, pro- raphy, material culture, poetry, let- and partnerships under the auspic- vided a starting place for curious ters—then broke into smaller group es of “The Big Read: The Poetry of potential Dickinson readers. Two activities related to that theme. Par- Emily Dickinson,” part of a pilot ini- sessions explored the basic facts of ticipants met throughout the week

November/December 2009 | 9 features

Teaching and Learning at the Emily Dickinson Museum, cont., By Jane Wald with mentor teachers who helped me. I created a lesson plan that I’m tigations of Emily Dickinson and her them explore their personal inter- enormously proud of, and I look for- milieu. ests in Dickinson and work toward ward to sharing my newly-gained The Emily Dickinson Museum of- a curriculum project to implement knowledge with my students.” fers a growing range and depth of in the coming academic year. The The museum’s freshest educa- teaching and learning experiences, success and relevance of this pro- tional project is a newly refurbished and it’s an honor to pursue with gram, which will be offered again web site at www.emilydickinsonmu- the Emily Dickinson International in summer 2011, is expressed in seum.org. The upgraded web site is Society the common goal of instill- the representative comment of one intended to provide authoritative ing intellectual curiosity and excite- teacher participant: “This experi- information about Emily Dickinson, ment about Dickinson’s poetry with ence was an amazing opportunity her “life, family, creative work, times, learners of all ages. to immerse myself in Emily Dick- and enduring relevance” to a world- inson and gather with like-minded people. While I always appreciated short essays cover biographical in- Jane Wald is executive director of Dickinson’s poetry, I had no concept formationwide audience. about A the series poet, of herover fami fifty- the Emily Dickinson Museum: The at all of the pivotal role her family, ly and friends, as well as topics such Homestead and The Evergreens. friends, and home played in her life. as Dickinson and cooking, her writ- The poet is an enigma, but many ing practices, and what the town of history for most of her career. Prior She has worked in the field of public mysteries have been unraveled for Amherst was like in the nineteenth to joining the staff of the newly or- century. There is also information ganized Emily Dickinson Museum about the museum’s collections, its in 2003, she was director of The current restoration projects, future Evergreens, owned and operated at plans for furnishing the historic that time by the Martha Dickinson spaces, as well as room for expan- Bianchi Trust, and was on the staff sion on a host of subjects. The new of Old Sturbridge Village. She con- web site aims to satisfy the interests tributed an essay, “’Pretty much all of a range of off-site visitors—from real life’: The Material World of the student learners seeking informa- Dickinson Family,” to the Blackwell tion for a school assignment, to ca- Companion to Emily Dickinson, ed- sual browsers increasingly intrigued ited by Martha Nell Smith and Mary Loeffelholz, published in 2008. Dancers from Amherst Ballet teamed up with the Emily by an enigmatic poet, to researchers Dickinson Museum to march in the Town of Amherst’s looking for direction in their inves- 250th Anniversary Parade in September 2009.

On the afternoon of October 25, with a revised tour telling the story of 2009, the plaster ceiling in the front Emily Dickinson’s legacy from the per- parlor of the Emily Dickinson Mu- spective of her niece, Martha Dickinson seum’s Homestead fell into the room. Bianchi. After the Homestead passed Although the building was open for out of Dickinson family hands, Bianchi tours, no one was in the immediate maintained an “Emily Room” at The space at the time of the incident and Evergreens to satisfy growing public there were no injuries to staff or visi- curiosity about her aunt’s extraordi- tors. In order to complete a thorough nary poetry. The tour is offered during inspection of the facility and assess the Museum’s regular public schedule. the extent of the damages, the Emily The Homestead will be closed until in- Dickinson Museum closed temporar- vestigations and repairs are complete. ily. For more about the incident, visit www. The Museum re-opened to the pub- emilydickinsonmuseum.org. lic on Saturday, October 31, 2009,

10 | EDIS Bulletin features

Teaching and Learning at the Emily Dickinson Museum, cont., By Jane Wald

AMHERST’S MOST FAMOUS RESIDENT PRESENTED IN EMILY OF AMHERST, A BALLET ABOUT THE LIFE AND WORKS OF POET EMILY DICKINSON

Emily of Amherst was an incredible accomplishment. The dancing, choreography, music, sets and costumes all told important pieces of an unforgettable story. The talent that blazed on the stage made us feel like we

inspired this magical production. were at Lincoln Center, but how appropriate that after the final curtain we stepped outside into the town that Emily of Amherst was absolutely breath-taking! The application of beautiful ballet to retell anecdotes from Emily’s life was ingenious, and blended with the powerful narration through her poetry and related letters

work and performance took place in our small town, but on the other hand...where other than Amherst could and the original musical score,Emily it was Dickinson entirely a bemagnificent so tangibly work brought of art. to life?I can hardly believe this incredible

Quotes from letters sent by audience members who attended Emily of Amherst, May 2009

Emily of Amherst, an original bal- Emily of Amherst was underwrit- let in four acts, was premiered in ten, in part, by a grant from the May, 2009, at The Kirby Theater on Massachusetts Cultural Council the campus of Amherst College in and was part of the Emily Dickin- Amherst, MA as part of the Town of son Museum’s programming for Amherst’s 250th anniversary cel- “The Big Read: The Poetry of Emily ebration. More than 1,000 people Dickinson,” a pilot initiative created by the National Endowment for the along with students from seven Arts in partnership with the Poetry localattended schools the who five performances attended the Foundation. day-time performances as part of a Emily of Amherst represented a venture into creating performing A collaboration of Amherst Ballet art inspired by not only the literary andfield-trip. the Emily Dickinson Museum works of a great poet, but by her the ballet was intended to navigate life itself. Embarking upon the cre- uncharted territory by creating a ation of this ballet represented a biographical “story ballet” of Am- leap of faith that was well reward- herst’s most famous resident. ed by the outcome. By all mea- Created and written by Catherine sures, the ballet was an astounding Poster advertising the ballet, Emily of Amherst. Fair, Amherst Ballet’s Executive Di- Photographs on this flier are by Janine Norton. success! The sentiment echoed by Design by Catherine Fair and Anne Beresford-Banker. rector, and Jane Wald, the Execu- Photo courtesy of Amherst Ballet. audience members that the “this tive Director of the Emily Dickinson show needs to go on” is shared by Museum, the ballet drew upon bio- non-traditional elements of litera- the ballet’s creators who plan to graphical information that seemed ture and poetry as part of the score. tour the ballet in the future. For particularly suited for stage adap- Narration excerpted from Dickin- more information, or to purchase a son’s letters and poems was woven DVD or CD, please contact Amherst poet’s evolution as an artist. The into an original musical score by Ballet. (413) 549-1555 info@am- resultingtation and work, was significant rich in human to the Amherst composer Ted Trobaugh, herstballetorg. emotion and experience, provided who was inspired by selections — Catherine Fair audiences with all the traditional from the poet’s own portfolio of elements of story ballet along with music.

November/December 2009 | 11 FEATURES

Q&A: White Heat By Brenda Wineapple Edited by Martha Ackmann and Kathleen Welton

Q. Why did the story of Thomas ies of materials that were sent to me. images that change with each read- Wentworth Higginson and Emily However, I found Emily Dickinson’s ing. If I had to choose a favorite, and Dickinson appeal to you? letters and poems to be the most cru- of course I am biased, it would be the cial material. letter to Higginson, with that wonder- A. The story of Thomas Wentworth ful opening: “Are you too deeply oc- Higginson and Emily Dickinson’s Q. How did you come up with the cupied to say if my Verse is alive?” friendship interested me precisely title, White Heat? because it had been overlooked or Q. What other projects are in the disparaged both by biographers and I wanted something that was simple, works? by literary scholars. And Dickinson direct, and powerful as well as some- and Higginson had had a friendship thing that would express the passion- The paperback edition of White Heat ate friendship these two shared and, comes out in December 2009. In examine it? The friendship was evi- more to the point, would express the addition, my anthology, Nineteenth- dentlyfor almost something twenty-five important years. to Why her, not or commitment that both of them had Century American Writers on Writ- she wouldn’t have persisted in it, and to daring and doing. The title is from ing, a volume in The Writers’ World, I wanted to see what Emily Dickinson the line “Dare you see a Soul at the is scheduled for fall 2010. Another herself might have seen in Higginson ‘White Heat’?” (Fr401), and one way project in process is “American His- that we have been missing. of reading that poem is that it’s about tory: 1848-1877” (HarperCollins.) the way your passions (for poetry, to Q. Why does Emily Dickinson ap- write poetry, or in the case of Hig- peal to a 21st century reader? ginson to bring justice to the world) Brenda Wineapple’s books include takes you out of yourself. the recently published White Heat: One of the things that I discovered, The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and no matter whether I was speaking at Q. What was the most difficult part Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Knopf a high school, book store, or literary of writing this book? 2008), winner of the Washington Arts festival, is that Emily Dickinson fasci- There was both a narrative challenge Club National Award for writing about nates a hugely wide audience. There the arts; it was also a New York Times is no generation gap. There is no ra- and an analytic challenge. First, the cial gap. Audiences also have lots of analytic challenge. I had to crack my head on the poems. Then, when writ- the National Book Critics Circle award, questions about her. Why was she a “Notable Book” (2008), a finalist for ing about them, I did not want to over- recluse? Was she agoraphobic? Who The Washington Post The Christian burden the reader with analysis and , was the love of her life? But far more Scienceand named Monitor, best nonfictionand The Economistof 2008 in, importantly, readers of her poetry feel stop the narrative, but of course I had to analyze them. Secondly, the narra- among other publications. She is that she is speaking directly to them. Genêt: A Biography tive challenge. Higginson brings the also the author of She is able to articulate feelings that of Janet Flanner; Sister Brother Ger- story forward; he gives it forward mo- we do not know we even have. trude and Leo Stein Hawthorne: A tion. But, as I wrote, “Emily Dickinson ; and Life, which received the Ambassador Q. How long did it take you to re- stops my narrative.” Then, there was Award of the English-speaking Union search and write the book and what the learning curve. For the Civil War for the Best Biography of 2003 and was the research process like? chapter, I had to learn all about battle strategy to make sure that I got the the Julia Ward Howe Prize from the guns all pointing in the right direc- Boston Book Club. Wineapple is the complete. Higginson was a volumi- tion. Director of the Leon Levy Center for nousThe entireletter projectwriter and took his five letters years are to Biography at The Graduate School, scattered around the country. My Q. Can you select one letter or CUNY, and teaches in the MFA pro- main sources were the Houghton Li- poem that gets at Emily Dicken- grams at The New School and Colum- brary at Harvard, the Boston Public son’s essence? bia University’s School of the Arts. Library, the Yale Library, the Jones Library, Amherst Library, and the Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters Massachusetts Historical Society (to provide so much hospitality to the name a few) in addition to photocop- reader. They are like kaleidoscopic

12 | EDIS Bulletin Features

Reflection: “We perish—tho’ We reign—” By Nicholas Ruddick

he speaker in Dickinson’s poetry frequently refers to they are haunted by hopelessness at having beheld terres- herself as a queen or empress. Sometimes she does Tso self-mockingly, as if to say: “I am a drama queen of nothingness revealed by a telescope. But Self can offer to think this way”; sometimes she seems in deadly earnest: Othertrial nature no alleviation as a localized of her reflectiondespair: the of pairthe cosmicare, after infinities all, not “As Christ suffered beyond all men, so I beyond all women.” merely conjoined but identical. For them, to look and to see One of her greatest poems, (Fr693) “Like Eyes that looked constitute two perspectives on the same act. on Wastes —” draws widely from her oeuvre’s explorations However, Self and Other together are queenly. The re- of queenship, following the thread deep into the labyrinth lationship between them is a “Compact” in which Self ac- of female, and human, ego-psychology. knowledges the apparent Other as Self. It would be proba- bly less stressful for Self to project her alienation externally Like Eyes that looked on Wastes— - Incredulous of Ought gions). Yet while the agreement between Self and Other may But Blank—and steady Wilderness— intensifyonto exalted despair, or vilified it is also others a sovereign (as is the act case of accepting with most a hard reli existential truth, and as such it is “divine” because true sa- credness, power, and immortality can only be achieved via Diversified by Night— the aspiration to self-sovereignty. The poet is a “Queen”—a As far as it could see— reigning woman, a great female poet—because of the sover- SoJust looked Infinites the of face Nought— I looked opon— eignty implicit in her recognition of Other as Self, of other- So looked itself—on Me— ness in herself. There is no eternal life: Self and Other will perish equally and simultaneously. But after death, the poet, I offered it no Help— who uses the “royal we” to signify that she is both Self and Because the Cause was Mine— Other, will continue to reign, because of the poetry that she The Misery a Compact As hopeless—as divine— What fascinates me today about Dickinson is her philo- sophicalhas made position of her insight as a poet into working the difficult in the truth immediate of existence. after- Neither—would be absolved— math of the Darwinian revolution. Most of her American Neither would be a Queen contemporaries resisted the new naturalistic worldview or Without the Other—Therefore— tempered it with some sort of Emersonian transcendental- We perish—tho’ We reign— ism. But Dickinson didn’t. She accepted Darwinism’s hard insights into the unimportance of human life in the cosmic order. It seems to me that she also accepted one of its major on in (Fr693) is Shakespearean, suggesting the scale of the consequences: that God, angels, and demons were human poet’sThe queenlymost significant ambition. literary In Hamlet, analogy the DickinsonPrince (who draws is a creations, Others born of the Self then factitiously granted king-in-waiting) contemplates death as an adversary who, an independent existence to give our lives a so-called spiri- though often embodied as Other, actually dwells in him- tual meaning. Dickinson looked the abyss in the face every self, and can be invoked by the self-application of nothing time she looked in the mirror. She was able to endure be- more weighty than a “bare bodkin.” The play’s most iconic moment is one in which Hamlet holds before his own face but as queen among the poets, her word would reign for- Yorick’s skull and addresses it as though the court jester ever.cause she knew how good she was. Her flesh would perish, were alive and present. In contrast, the profound negotia- tions between the poet of (Fr693) and death take place, not in an open grave, but in front of that most domestic of ob- Nicholas Ruddick completed his PhD dissertation on Emily jects, the looking-glass, a location to which the female poet Dickinson thirty years ago. Though he subsequently special- is daily drawn to minister to Self as though it were Other. - (Fr693) is both about an internal state (depression) and inson remains his favorite poet. His latest books are The Fire external reality (the cosmic void). This thematic duality is inized the in Stone: science Prehistoric fiction and Fiction related from fantastic Charles literature, Darwin to Dick Jean suggested by the double meaning of the verb “to look”: (1) M. Auel (Wesleyan University Press, 2009), and a new schol- to seem from an external perspective, as in the phrase, “she arly edition of Jack London’s 1903 classic novella The Call looked heavenly”; and (2) to behold, or direct the eyes out- of the Wild in the Broadview Editions series (2009). He has wards, as in “she looked heavenwards”. The poet, looking at taught at the University of Regina since 1982. herself in the mirror, is struck by the expression on the face

of the Other (her reflection). The eyes of this Other look as if November/December 2009 | 13 Series

Poet to Poet Girl Sleuths and Early Influences: Mary Ann Samyn Responds to Emily Dickinson By Mary Ann Samyn Edited By Jonnie Guerra, Series Editor

am pleased to present Mary Ann Samyn as this issue’s The cover of a new book of poetry proclaims the work featured poet. Samyn won the Emily Dickinson Prize is “searing.” Um, I don’t think so. Painful, yes, I get that. I from the Poetry Society of America in 2002, the James For the writer. Searing, though, involves the reader as Wright Prize from Mid-American Review in 2003, and a well. To write of intensity is one thing; to communicate Pushcart Prize in 2006. She is the author of four poetry intensity—to scorch—is another. Dickinson, as we well collections—Captivity Narrative (winner of the 1999 know, excels in this transfer of energy. Reading her, I Ohio State UP/The Journal Prize), Inside the Yellow am made different— Dress (a 2001 New Issues Press/Green Rose Selection), Purr (New Issues, 2005), and Beauty Breaks In (New ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ Issues, 2009)—as well as the chapbook, Rooms by the Sea (winner of the 1994 Kent State UP/Wick Chapbook Say what you will about Nancy Drew—and yes, there Prize). Her poems have appeared in many literary jour- are complaints to be made—I like her. Always have, al- nals and in the anthologies, American Poetry: The Next ways will. She knew the value of a good question. She Generation and Poetry 30: Thirtysomething American poked around. She made a mental note. She showed Thirtysomething Poets. A special thanks to Jane Dona- up, mostly on time, in her roadster. hue Eberwein for recommending Samyn for inclusion in the Poet to Poet Series. ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ —Jonnie Guerra, Series Editor Having just reread The Haunted Bridge, I can say for cer- tain that any bad rap Nancy may have gotten is not her I can’t write about Emily Dickinson without mentioning fault. She does something helpful or kind, something impulsive or potentially dangerous, and—no matter— the narrator assures that Nancy was the best, the nic- my oldest sister, Ellen, who first read me Dickinson’s est, the most polite, the most well-intentioned, even in poemsAnd I can’twhen mentionI was five, Ellen six, seven, and those eight. impressionable years without also mentioning Nancy Drew—how her occasional foolhardiness. Nancy herself makes no much I loved those books!—and Karen Carpenter, such claims. whose songs Ellen and I listened to in her bedroom. Likewise, the myth around Dickinson is not of her mak- Emily Dickinson, Nancy Drew, and Karen Carpenter: ing. “Wasn’t she crazy?” my students ask me. “She nev- er left her room, right?” they say. “Maybe you’ve never left your room,” I reply. They are girlAnd sleuths I had no and idea, early then, influences. that lots of people don’t like or get poetry. I didn’t know it was hard. Only, special. confused. Resistant. “How haven’t you left your room?” Also, ordinary. Much-loved by my much-loved sister. I continue. Thus, metaphor arrives, right on schedule. No other recommendation was required. ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ Now I am not leaving my room. Or, rather, I don’t have My favorite Dickinson poem? “After great pain, a formal to if I don’t want to. feeling comes—” (Fr372). Of course, I say, as though you I am the lucky recipient of an artist’s residency in Glen can’t help but know. As though it is, unquestionably, the Arbor, Michigan. It’s not that I don’t need time and best. space to write, but, well, the idea of no obligations is perhaps too much time and space. Day One is a little ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

14 | EDIS Bulletin Series

Girl Sleuths and Early Influences: Mary Ann Samyn Responds to Emily Dickinson, cont., By Mary Ann Samyn, Edited By Jonnie Guerra, Series Editor odd. Lyric poetry, as I understand it, comes from the fullness of life, not from isolation. Under It

Though many people assume Dickinson’s life proves —But not in a bad way. More like an agreement — just the opposite, I’d argue that that’s not the case. Be- yond the evidence of her letter-writing and baking and More like a contract: sign here, and here, and here. the like, the poems of course are testament to deep en- Or like the bat we escorted outside. gagement. I go to her work, as I tell my students, the way some people go to the Bible or to an encyclopedia (under the wastebasket but above the cardboard) or, now, to Google: to look stuff up, to find things out. In transit. idea about “being in the world” doesn’t mean she wasn’t. Poetry,Just because after all,her broadens engagement our sensedoesn’t of whatfit some is possible, narrow You don’t like it now, but later — . telling us what we don’t already know or, sometimes, Assuming, of course, the universe is vertical, like Dickinson. what we didn’t know we knew, what we had been reluc- tant to admit to ourselves. Even her face, narrow and inward,

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ as though she had a better idea . . . The point is you can go up, The problem with being a lyric poet, according to an old as in one of those elevators with the gate and the girl: the day. joke, is figuring what to do during the other 23 hours of Floor?, please. If you’re not a poet, if you’re a little suspicious of po- ets, the joke has a dark edge: what’s up with these poets It won’t not happen, if it’s supposed to, they say. anyway? (something / anything) If you are a poet, the joke is no joke, really, and also dark. And it’s not about having a lot of time but, rather, about Yet, this isn’t limpid space, no problem space, paying a lot of attention, gathering the bits and pieces but what the bat understands: that will, in that magic hour, make a poem. you have to squeeze the air out (its high pitch), ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ no matter how small, you have to want it. There’s simply no way, as far as I can tell, to write po- Reprinted with permission of the poet from her book, Purr. etry and not be oneself in the world. (New Issues, 2005)

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ well. Poetry comes from and touches on the totality of

That Dickinson made good use of her time is no joke, any more special than any other activity undertaken in either. alife. day. It Dickinsonis not a rarified couldn’t thing. have It written is not special. the number Or, not of poems she wrote if she reserved poetry for only certain ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ moments. What is compelling, for me, about her work is how it arises from and encompasses many moods, all I suppose some people might be alarmed to hear men- the seasons, both so-called mundane and so-called lofty tion of Karen Carpenter alongside Emily Dickinson. Oh considerations.

November/December 2009 | 15 Series

Girl Sleuths and Early Influences: Mary Ann Samyn Responds to Emily Dickinson, cont., By Mary Ann Samyn, Edited By Jonnie Guerra, Series Editor

If poetry were otherwise, I wouldn’t like it. Dickinson’s how is what draws me back and back. “Af- ter great pain” doesn’t just tell the news; it delivers it. ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ Hesitation is not merely an idea; it is a physical sensa- tion. Dickinson’s poem replicates that moment that we A friend and trusted reader tells me I have a very practi- have all known: “First—Chill—then Stupor—then the cal notion of poetry. She is right; I do. Poetry is, above letting go—.” all, useful. I go there with my questions. The line is an investigation; the dash, Dickinson’s tool ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ours. of choice; the hesitation, hers first but then, finally, all The thing that made me sing Carpenters' songs in my This is the intensity I mentioned. The feeling I remem- basement when I was 10 is the same thing that draws ber from all those years ago in my sister’s bedroom me to Dickinson and that makes me a poet. The desire when I liked the poems just because of how they sound- to feel better. ed when Ellen read them aloud. And this is the moment that makes me different, and differently alert, each time Not get over so much as go deeper. I encounter this poem. Searing? Yes, I feel so. ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

Solitude, says Thomas Merton, famous hermit and would-be hermit, is not simply aloneness. Certainly not loneliness. Rather, solitude is about more fully paying attention. Back home, I think about solitude and attention and get ready for the new semester.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

“Listen,” I tell my students, “you know how you feel about football or music or your boyfriend or just being away from home? That jumble of feelings? Well, that’s how I feel about poetry, and that’s also what poetry lets me bring to it. That’s what it’s good for. Yes. Really. Mary Ann Samyn Take a moment; let that thought sink in.” Photo courtesy of Brian Ballentine.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ Mary Ann Samyn received her MA from Ohio Univer- sity and her MFA from The University of Virginia where Poetry is not just a what but also a how. The content of she was a Hoyns Fellow. Currently, she is an associate a given poem will not likely differ that much from that professor in the MFA creative writing program at West of other poems. What distinguishes one poem from Virginia University where, in 2008, she was named Bol- another—indeed, one poet from another—is the how. ton Professor for Teaching and Mentoring. Samyn has As Charles Wright says, you have to do it differently and a chapbook, The Boom of a Small Cannon, forthcoming with a deeper disregard. from Dancing Girl Press in 2010.

16 | EDIS Bulletin Series

Dickinson and the Visual Arts Emily and Isabelle: Beyond Time By Maryanne Garbowsky

lthough Emily Dickinson’s and Isabelle Arsenault’s lives pictures/scenes in my head . . . I up against a gray background. The Aare worlds apart, each born wantedsense” to to her. give “At a first,modern they tone provoked to the colorfulof the dress pattern is reflected at the dress’ right hem side in dramatically different centuries book so the poems selected had to connects the two cups creating an and pursuing different lifestyles, inspire me in that way.” One of the ovoid form. The pattern, a delicate Ms. Arsenault was able to bridge seven, “I cannot live with You—,” the leaf motif, provides the only color in the time gap between them in her artist discovered on her own and this otherwise black and white por- sensitive and evocative illustrations was “immediately . . . attracted to” trait of “Despair.” Arsenault deliber- for My Letter to the World and Other it. Of all the illustrations, this one is ately chose the “black, austere” pal- Poems, a 2008 publication of Kids a popular favorite. The teacup men- ette because “the poems inspired” Can Press. tioned in the poem (“Our Life—His it. But she also adds color or what “I wanted to actualize her vision Porcelain / Like a Cup—”) is used as she calls “sparks of light” to suggest to show that these poems from the the bottom half of Dickinson’s white the poet’s “creativity amid a world past were still accurate.” To achieve of dark dresses.” that end, Ms. Arsenault read The Reversal is a technique the art- World of Emily Dickinson by Polly ist uses in her illustrations for this Longsworth to gain some back- book. For instance, one striking ground on the poet and was inspired example is in the poem “Because I by it. “I read the book that was more could not stop for Death—.” In this of a visual biography which I found adroit illustration, we see an up- even more appropriate for me. I side down house next to an upside used it as a reference all through down tree. Here the house is black, the creative process.” One striking a void, an emptiness like a grave dug example was “the black cut-out sil- into the ground, but on the follow- houettes” which “inspired” her for ing page facing the last quatrain the “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.” These house reappears, this time right side up and in white. Next to it is a tree, the “Mourners” in the poem “tread- not bare branches, but a right side ing”black “to figures and fro.” become the images of up budding and blossoming tree. In Challenged by the words of Dick- the house is a door, and a woman inson, Ms. Arsenault, French Cana- dressed in white emerges into eter- dian by birth, “read them over and over again to get a glimpse of their conclusion to a trip to immortality. possible meaning. Poetry even in nityThese upright reversals and composed, and upside a fittingdown my own language can be hard to un- images were carefully designed derstand. But I love the wide range of interpretation it can suggest.” dress. The illustration opposite meaning” in the poems. “Sometimes When she had steeped herself in the poem’s beginning lines shows youby the think poet you to get reflect an idea, “the but double at the the poetry, she and her editor, Tara a woman—Emily—in her familiar end, you’re surprised to see it is the Walker, began to select the poems white dress, the bottom half of which exact opposite.” to be used in the book. “She sent is an upside down cup with cracks The delicate beauty of the illus- me a dozen of the poems”. . . but not starting at the hem. On the next trations begins immediately upon one of them touched her. Thus she page, Dickinson tumbles backwards opening the book. In the frontis- was able to go through the poems with the cup turning right side up so piece behind a translucent parch- herself and “choose the ones I pre- that red tea spills from it. The last il- ment paper bearing the words to ferred, that inspired me the most.” lustration accompanying this poem Dickinson’s “Letter to the World,” a Seven were chosen for the collec- latticed scroll of vines divides the tion: these were the ones “that made upside down cup that is the bottom page in half. When we follow these depicts a profile of Dickinson. The November/December 2009 | 17 Series

Emily and Isabelle: Beyond Time, cont. By Maryanne Garbowsky

book as part of their own personal Dickinson’s “letters” have left a library. legacy, which Ms. Arsenault remark- The last poem, “‘Hope’ is the thing ably reinterprets in her unique visu- with feathers—”, was deliberately al imagery. Like the poet, the artist has sought and achieved a common collection. Since the “selection was goal—to bring to a new generation achosen bit dark...I to be thoughtthe final a poemnice ending in the a world where word and image working together stir and provoke agreed with the order I suggested readers’ imaginations beyond time andto finish was withalso wasconvinced ‘Hope’. that The ‘Hope’editor and ordinary life. had to be the last one.” It is a trium- phant ending, the illustrations be- lines, they lead us to the left side of ing the most colorful in the book. in her second story bedroom. She is illustration that it was chosen for writing,the page holdingto the poet a penshown from in profile which theSo lovely, cover andin fact, back is ofthe the poem’s book. Thisfirst this design grows. As she writes, image portrays the poet with a bird the pen transforms into a living vine red in color perched on the poet’s that scrolls down the right-hand shoulder. The red of the bird’s plum- side of the page, continues on the entire next page, and even extends on the poet’s cheek. As the poem onto the title page. These plantlike continuesage is repeated “And in sweetest—inthe red flush high the Gale—is heard—” the bird is shown interest in botany. The artist, aware ofdesigns the poet’s reflect fascination the poet’s with lifelong the in full color—red, yellow and white subject, admits her own “taste for againstin full flight, a black its andwings stormy extended sky. Carand- organic patterns, . . . a recurrent ele- ment in my work.” brings hope to those in need. Below, Ms. Arsenault chose her medium arying frieze a flowerof swirling in its letters beak, excitedlythe bird for the book carefully, using “black erupts, echoing the hope that Dick- ink . . . to echo Emily’s own medium inson’s words bring to those caught as a writer.” She likes its “austere “in the Gale.” feel” which the artist found “appro- Maryanne Garbowsky is a profes- priate.” She also experimented with sor of English at the County College “collage” using “old handwritten of Morris in Randolph, New Jersey. notes on paper” which she found in She has written two books, The an antique store to refer to Dickin- House Without the Door and Double son’s “pieced together manuscript Vision and numerous articles about books.” Dickinson. Although the publisher’s target audience is young people—10 years Credits and up—it is a book for all ages. Not Material from My Letter to the only are the seven poems favorites World and Other Poems, by Emily of all Dickinson readers, but they Dickinson is used by permission of are interpreted so unforgettably Kids Can Press Ltd., Toronto. Text © and inventively that lovers of Dick- 2008 Emily Dickinson. Illustrations inson’s poetry will want to have this © 2008 Isabelle Arsenault.

18 | EDIS Bulletin Reviews

New Publications By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor

Bleakney, Elaine, ed. Poem in ness in the Spring,” and “Like Rain “they destabilize . . . conventional Your Pocket: 200 Poems to Read it sounded till it curved.” Abrams attitudes towards femininity, dis- and Carry. New York: Abrams Im- and the Academy of American Po- rupting feminine stereotypes and age, 2009. 436 pp. 7.25 x 5.25 x 1 ets published this unique book to the repressive social conventions of inches. Cloth, ISBN 0-8109-0636-5, celebrate the second national Poem their time.” She supports her argu- $14.95. in Your Pocket Day on April 30. ment with a reading of Dickinson’s “I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl United States Poet Laureate Kay Buescu, Helena Carvalhão, and —” and two of Jorge’s poems, con- Ryan introduces this collection by João Ferreira Duarte, eds. Stories cluding, “I do not believe Dickinson - and Portraits of the Self. Amster- and Neto Jorge had a feminist agen- dam: Rodopi, 2007. 332 pp. Pa- da, but I do believe that their work poemdiscussing in one’s “the pocket.” personal Inside signifi the per, ISBN 90-420-2328-4, $97.00; accounts for the contingencies of hardcance cover and benefitsis a tablet from of 200 carrying poems a €67,00. being a woman and a writer. . . .” designed so that each poem can Intended for academic or informed be easily torn out and carried in a Twenty-three international schol- general readers, these essays devel- pocket or purse to savor privately ars examine what it means to rep- oped from an international seminar or share with others. From Catullus, resent the self in biography, auto- in Cascais, Portugal, in June 2005. Shakespeare, John Donne, and Em- biography, and other forms such as ily Dickinson to Theodore Roethke, - Cass, Jeffrey, ed., introd., and Sylvia Plath, Robert Pinsky, and Rita phy, and performance. Their essays Larry Peer, ed. Romantic Border Dove, more than 150 poets are rep- offerpainting, a variety sculpture, of historical, film, photogra social, Crossings. Aldershot, England: resented. Poems, both known and and intellectual perspectives, fo- Ashgate, 2008. xii, 225 pp. ISBN less well known, including several cusing on Emily Dickinson, Alberto 0-7546-6051-4, $99.95. translated from Arabic, Chinese, Giacometti, Henry James, Marie Hebrew, Latin, and Polish, are pre- Kessels, Gerrit Kouwenaar, Gabriel Seventeen scholars, focusing on sented thematically: “Love & Rock- Garcia Márquez, Marianne Moore, the Romantic era, explore “eclectic ets,” “Dwellings,” “Eating & Drink- Caryl Phillips, Mary Pickford, Mar- border crossings . . . into history, lit- ing,” “Friends & Ghosts,””Myself I cel Proust, W. G. Sebald, George erature, languages, genre, and ped- Speak & Spell,””Sonic Youth,””City, Steiner, August Strindberg, William agogy,” demonstrating cross-dis- My City,” and “Spring & After.” The Carlos Williams, and others. In ciplinary approaches. Celebrating poems range from Ron Padgett’s Marinela Freitas’s “Unshaded Shad- the Romantic literary community, two-line “December” to a 30-line ows: Performances of Gender in Em- the editors envisage a “global Ro- excerpt from Walt Whitman’s ily Dickinson and Luza Neto Jorge” manticism” inviting “writers mar- “Mannahatta.” Some poets are rep- (133-46), the author, drawing from ginalized by class, gender, race, or resented by two or three poems; Judith Butler, explains, “To be mas- geography into the canon at the Emily Dickinson is represented by culine or feminine does not involve same time that fresh readings of tra- eight poems from the Franklin edi- giving expression to a naturally de- ditional text emerge.” Authors and tion: “The Heart has narrow Banks,” veloping inner truth: it means per- topics discussed include Elizabeth “You cannot put a Fire out --,” “Are forming and representing yourself Inchbald, Lord Byron, Gerard de Friends Delight or Pain?” “These in sanctioned and expected ways.” Nerval, English Jacobinism, Goethe, Strangers in a foreign World,” “The Describing nineteenth-century the Gothic, Orientalism, Emily Dick- Brain within its Groove,” “There are Dickinson and twentieth-century inson, Walt Whitman, Anglo-Amer- two Ripenings—,” “A Little Mad- Portuguese poet Jorge, Freitas says,

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

November/December 2009 | 19 Reviews

New Publications, cont., By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor

teaching romanticism. In “Learning First-person narrator Emily Dickin- Kopley, Richard, and Barbara from Excess: Emily Dickinson and son provides personal immediacy Cantalupo, eds. Prospects for the Bettine von Arnim’s Die Günderode” Study of American Literature (II). (159-67), Kari Lokke persuasively Dickinson’s life with her family New York: AMS Press, 2009. 355 argues that two German Roman- onin Dana’s North Pleasant fictionalized Street, account 1840 toof pp. Cloth, ISBN 0-404-61598-7, tic women writers, Karoline von 1855, encompassing the year she $122.50. Günderode and Bettine von Arnim, attended Mt. Holyoke and later “might have served as muses” for visited Washington, D.C. and Phila- Intended for upper-division under- Emily Dickinson. Lokke “traces delphia. Dickinson’s story begins graduates, graduate students, and the cultural echoes of Karoline’s when she is nine years old, upset others looking for research ideas, performance of Liebestod, both about moving from the Homestead this is the second volume in an on- in her life and in her art, and sug- to North Pleasant Street, and ends going series that reviews past and gests that they made their way into when she is twenty-four years old, present scholarship on American Emily Dickinson’s poetry” through similarly upset about moving back writers and suggests areas for new Arnim’s work, known to both Dick- to the Homestead. Home for Dick- research. Volume II contains re- inson and her sister-in-law Susan inson meant “safety and belong- view essays on Louisa May Alcott, Dickinson. In “’Ample make this ing”; she did not like change. We James Baldwin, James Fenimore Bed—’: Dickinson’s Dying in Drama meet Dickinson’s dog Carlo and Cooper, Emily Dickinson, Theo- and Arnim’s Liebestod.” (191-99), Vinnie’s cats: Tiger Boy, Tom-Tom, dore Dreiser, Ralph Ellison, F. Scott Lilach Lachman, responding to Lok- Noopsie Possum, Pussy, Roughnaps, Fitzgerald, Margaret Fuller, Nathan- ke’s essay, examines “how Dickin- Snugglepoops, Tender Boy, Tootsie, iel Hawthorne, William Dean How- son transforms the Romantic eroti- and Drummydoodles. Dana weaves ells, Jack London, Marianne Moore, cization of death into a subjective words and phrases from Dickin- Frank Norris, Eugene O’Neill, and interiority, how she appropriates son’s poems and letters throughout Eudora Welty. In her essay on Em- Arnim’s shaping of death, extends the novel, capturing the vocabulary, ily Dickinson (72-96), Mary Loef- syntax. and cadence of Dickinson’s felholz reviews decades of work with new values.” She supports her done by more than 80 Dickinson thesisand modifies with a close it, thusreading infusing of Dick it- a recreated nineteenth-century scholars, deftly places them in con- inson’s “Ample make this Bed—” worldvoice, meldingthat feels fact true. and She fiction provides into text with each other, and examines (Fr804). concrete details to illustrate Dickin- scholarship trends and ongoing de- son’s important but vexed relation- bates—notably juxtaposing the ed- ship with her father, her dreaded iting theories of Ralph Franklin and panic attacks, the deep feelings and Domhnall Mitchell with those of intellectual kinship she felt with her Martha Nell Smith, Ellen Hart, Mar- friend Ben Newton and her soon- ta Werner and others interested in to-be sister-in-law Sue Gilbert, her the “unediting” of Dickinson. Loef- doubts about conventional con- felholz’s suggestions for new re- cepts of religion and marriage, and search develop from her discussion of work that has been done on Dick- to poetry: “The writing of my vers- inson and intentionality, materiali- esfinally had become her conscious nourishment commitment larger ty, education, humor, religion, class, than food or sleep or friend or any.” race, gender, the Civil War, sexuality, Dana, Barbara. A Voice of Her Intended for young adults, this well feminist readings, Bahktian read- Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson. written, insightful novel can be en- ings, and Dickinson’s relationship New York: HarperCollins, 2009. joyed by anyone interested in Dick- to her contemporaries, to the liter- 346 pp. Cloth, ISBN 0-06-028704- inson. ary marketplace, and to other art 7, $16.99. forms. Loeffelholz credits Martha Ackmann, suggesting that “neither 20 | EDIS Bulletin Reviews

New Publications, cont., By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor

the archival resources of the Am- tation,” “Reading,” “Beauty,” “Story,” “three major insights that thread herst area nor the recollections of and “Memory.” In his examination through this volume: the centrality the extended Dickinson family can of the American religious experi- of women poets . . . ; the generative be assumed to be exhausted.” Rec- ence, Lundin quotes throughout force of asymmetries between Brit- ommended for university libraries, the book from Dickinson, discuss- ish and American poetic cultures; this indexed volume is a valuable ing her “shuttling uncertainty” and the unusual temporalites—the resource for both academic and in- and “internal contradictions” as deferrals, reversals, interruptions, dependent scholars. she struggled between doubt and anticipations, prolongations, and faith; her concern about the si- unexpected returns—that are in- lence of God; her skepticism about troduced into literary history when Christianity; her views on science, one attends to the circulation of po- beauty, poetry, memory and belief; etry in transnational context.” her discovery of interiority, about In “No Coward Souls: Poetic En- which Lundin says, she is “one of gagements between Emily Brontë the surest guides”; and her views and Emily Dickinson” (231-49), of Jesus Christ, whom she called, Michael Moon considers Brontë’s the “Largest Lover,” the “Tender “No coward soul is mine” (the Pioneer,” and the “Man that knew poem read at Dickinson’s funeral), the News.” Demonstrating his op- warns that it should not be read timism and faith, Lundin concludes only “as a declaration of spiritual Lundin, Roger. Believing Again: with a meditation on the sacrament independence,” and traces the po- Doubt and Faith in a Secular Age. of communion: “For this sacrament em’s origins to the stoic discourse Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009. brings together love, memory, and of Epictetus. Dickinson quoted the 292 pp. Paper, ISBN 0-8028-3077- the possibility of believing again poem’s penultimate stanza several 7, $26.00. in extraordinary ways.” Index in- times in her letters where “the pos- cluded. sible meaning changes.” Discussing Opening with a personal story that Brontë’s and Dickinson’s shared initiated his long journey to belief, McGill, Meredith, ed., introd. The interests, including “the meaning Lundin traces the evolution of be- Traffic in Poems: Nineteenth- and potential value of suffering,” lief to unbelief from 1789 to 1914, Century Poetry and Transatlan- he compares other Brontë verses a period that “opened in a spirit tic Exchange. New Brunswick, NJ: to Dickinson’s “No Rack can tor- of boundless hope and closed in a Rutgers Univ. Press, 2008. ix, 264 ture me— “ (Fr649). This volume mood of impending doom.” He ex- pp. Cloth, ISBN 0-8135-4229-4, includes essays from two other plores the historical, cultural, and $70.00; paper, ISBN 0-8135-4230- Dickinson scholars: Mary Loeffel- theological developments during 0, $24.95. holz’s “Mapping the Cultural Field: this period as a context for discuss- Aurora Leigh in America” (139-59) - A growing interest in transatlantic and Virginia Jackson’s “Bryant; or, ures such as Auden, Coleridge, Dick- literary study has produced this American Romanticism” (185-204). inson,ing key Dostoevsky, intellectual and Emerson, literary Kant, fig collection of eleven essays that Index included. Kazin, Melville, Milosz, Nietzsche, explore the work of Emily Brontë Thoreau, and Wordsworth, draw- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Mitchell, Domhnall, and Maria ing also from other voices of the an- Browning, William Cullen Bryant, Stuart, eds., introd. The Interna- cient past, Middle Ages, and mod- Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Hen- tional Reception of Emily Dickin- ern era. He applies his scholarly ry Wadsworth Longfellow, George son. New York: Continuum, 2009. research and erudition with clarity Meredith, Maria del Occidente, xii, 320 pp. Cloth, ISBN 0-8264- and grace in chapters entitled “His- Mary Webb, William Wordsworth, 9715-4, $150.00. tory,” “Science,” “Belief,” “Interpre- and others. The editor highlights

November/December 2009 | 21 Reviews

New Publications, cont., By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor

Read and translated worldwide, notes, bibliographies and an index, Protestant theology,” and “shows Dickinson’s poetry is also dis- underscores the universal appeal of cussed by international scholars at Dickinson’s poetry. religious orthodoxy feeds much of the Emily Dickinson International Dickinson’sthat whilst parodies a defiant of rejectionthe Puritan, of Society conferences. This unique Morgan, Victoria, ed., introd., and the connection between industry collection of essays is a gathering Clare Williams, ed., introd. Shap- and revery . . . enables a relational of a dozen international scholars ing Belief: Culture, Politics, and space in which the divine is end- focusing on the wide variety of Religion in Nineteenth-Century lessly re-imagined.” She concludes, ways, past and present, that Dick- Writing. Liverpool, England: Liver- “’tracing everywhere without de- inson has been received outside pool Univ. Press, 2008. xxx, 226 pp. of the United States. Contributors ISBN 1-84631-136-9, $85.00. as to let go of all certainties is per- and the nations they represent sign’ becomes an affirmative action, are Ana Luisa Amaral (Portugal), Twelve essays explore how culture, re-inscribes itself, paradoxically, as Anna Chesnokova (Russia), Carlos politics, and religion intersected faith.”haps the Index ultimate included. sacrifice which Daghlian (Brazil), Marinela Freitas during an increasingly secular era (Portugal), Joan Kirkby (Australia), to challenge and reshape estab- Showalter, Elaine, ed. A Jury Lilach Lachman (Israel), Domhnall lished religious beliefs. Contribu- of Her Peers: American Women Mitchell (Norway), Lennart Nyberg tors focus on various individuals Writers from Anne Bradstreet to (Sweden), David Palmieri (France and topics: Carlyle; Dickens; Dick- Annie Proulx. New York: Knopf, and Canada), Sabine Sielke (Ger- inson; Emerson; Christian theo- 2009. xvii + 586 pp. Cloth, ISBN many, Austria, and Switzerland), - 1-4000-4123-7, $30.00. Maria Stuart (England and Ireland), ence on social reformers Octavia Masako Takeda (Japan), and Mar- Hilllogian and F. JosephineD. Maurice Butler; and his George influ Sho ian de Vooght (the Low Countries). Mac Donald’s novel Wilfred Cum- The editors are interested not only bermede and William James’s phi- womenwalter writers defines ever her written.” book as “theHer in charting international interest losophy of pragmatism; Victorian ambitiousfirst literary undertaking, history of dedicatedAmerican conversion narratives; Christianity, to Diane Middlebrook, traces 350 also in “the interaction between her commerce, and the female bodily years of literature from 1650 to languagein Dickinson and and the her languages influence intobut economy in seamstress narra- 2000, including more than 250 which she was translated.” They tives; the Gothic double; church women, both well known (Em- conclude, “The range and qual- architecture and religious poetry; ily Dickinson, Willa Cather, Edith ity of the responses in languages mass literacy and social change; Wharton, and Nobel Prize win- other than in English and in places and education. In “’Repairing Ev- ners Pearl Buck and Toni Morrison, outside North America—reviews erywhere without Design?’ Indus- among others) and many neglected and articles, translations, theses, try, Revery and Relation in Emily authors such as Lydia Maria Child, monographs, dance, theatrical and Dickinson’s Bee Imagery” (73-93), Constance Fenimore Woolson, and musical performances, visual in- Victoria Morgan reads Fr205, 610, Susan Glaspell. The title of the stallations, paintings, and sculp- 979, 1547, 1630, 1779, and 1788 to book comes from Glaspell’s short “demonstrate how Dickinson’s bee story about a woman accused of obliquities of Dickinson’s writings, imagery conveys her engagement murdering her husband; she is ac- andtures—reflect their ability the constantly complexities to gen and- with religious orthodoxy through a quitted after two neighbor women, erate new readings. In that sense, reworking of the Protestant notion “constituting themselves as a jury of they represent something more of salvation through work . . . her her peers,” conspire to protect her than postcards from abroad: they position as poet, and the connec- from “the patriarchal legal system.” perform some of the work that tion between writing and spiritual- Showalter, one of the founders of - ity are evaluated.” Morgan focuses feminist literary criticism, is a lively, tins . . . from Immortality’ “(Fr820). on “Dickinson’s use of and allusions frank, and intelligent guide through Dickinson herself defined as ‘Bulle to the industry/idleness diptych of this chronologically arranged liter-

This22 | significant EDIS Bulletin volume with useful Reviews

New Publications, cont., By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor

ary history, interspersed by brief and users can magnify documents Yolen, Jane. Illustrated by Nancy biographical essays on selected po- for exciting up-close manuscript Carpenter. My Uncle Emily. New study. Also provided is a transcrip- York: Philomel/Penguin Young - tion of each document for legibility, Readers, 2009. 32 pp. 10.25 x 9.25 dicets scopeand writers of her project,of fiction the and writing non- meticulously detailed information x .25 inches. Cloth, ISBN 0-399- isfiction. concise. Because Writing of about the encyclope Dickinson on the material qualities of the 24005-8, $17.99. (150-03), Showalter says, “to com- manuscript, its history, previous pare any other American poet of printings, correct citation, and ad- In lyrical prose, Jane Yolen tells the the period to Dickinson . . . is to un- ditional editorial notes. The well story of Emily Dickinson’s warm re- derstate her exceptional originality designed table of contents offers lationship with her young nephew and uniqueness.” More valuable multiple approaches to a document: Gilbert, and Nancy Carpenter pro- vides historically accurate, warmly the book connected with Elizabeth by library catalog number, or by tinted pen and ink drawings of life Bishop,is finding Charlotte Dickinson Brontë, throughout Elizabeth poemby first and line, letter by alternative numbers versions,assigned in nineteenth-century Amherst. Barrett Browning, Willa Cather, Su- by various editors. An introduction Gilbert says that his Uncle Em- san Gaspell, Helen Hunt Jackson, describes the project’s history and ily “wears “long, white dresses and Amy Lowell, Carson McCullers, Su- the editors’ plans to update mate- never smokes cigars . . . ‘uncle’ is san Sontag, Harriet Prescott Spof- rials and offer an interactive wiki a joke in our family.” But her gift ford, and Elizabeth Barstow Stod- or blog. The editors favor editorial of “one small [dead] bee and one dard. This indexed volume is a well transparency and welcome “feed- small poem. . . . For Gilbert to carry researched, important contribution back and suggestions about editing to his Teacher” is not a joke. Fear- to literary studies. Emily Dickinson’s writings.” This ing ridicule, he reluctantly takes project is designed “not only to the gift to his teacher who reads Smith, Martha Nell, and Laura show how Emily Dickinson’s liter- the poem aloud in class. The chil- Vetter, eds.; Ellen Louise Hart, ary works have been made for pub- dren do not laugh—nor do they consulting ed. Emily Dickinson’s lic consumption but [also] to enable understand the poem—but unkind Correspondences: A Born-Digital readers to become producers, not words from a playground bully dur- Textual Inquiry. Charlottesville, simply consumers, of literature and ing recess force Gilbert to defend VA: Univ. of Virginia Press, 2008. scholarship.” Available to anyone his beloved Uncle Emily. The punch ISBN 978-0-8139-2378-9, Institu- with access to a computer and the he gives Jonathan manifests itself tions: $221.00 to $295.00; individ- World Wide Web, this digital enter- as “a big red rose blossoming on uals $148.00. For information or his nose.” Gilbert’s rhyming words a free trial, visit www.rotunda.up- century contribution to Dickinson delight his poetic sensibility as he ress.virginia.edu or contact Jason scholarship.prise is a significant twenty-first limps home, where he does not Coleman: [email protected]. Uncle Emily notices his limp and Emily Dickinson’s Correspondences sensesmention that his Gilbert schoolyard has not fight. told Only the is a new online searchable archive truth. She gives him another poem: offering access to documents not “Tell all the truth but tell it slant—” otherwise easily available to view. It (Fr1263) and encourages him to provides high quality digital images share the few things he “forgot to of seventy-four documents: poems say” within a warm family circle. and letters based on thirty selected The last page contains biographical texts sent to Susan Dickinson by the poet, alternate versions of the origi- poem. Intended for children, this nal texts, and related documents. A bookinformation will charm and aboth copy children of the final and “light box” allows documents to be adults and provides rich opportuni- viewed and compared side-by-side, ties for further discussion.

November/December 2009 | 23 Reviews Deppman, Jed. Trying to Think with Emily Dickinson, Amherst: Univ. of Mass. Press, 2008. 278 pp. Cloth, ISBN 1-55849-683-5, $80.00; Paper, ISBN 1-55849-684-2, $26.95. Reviewed by Marianne Noble "Strong draughts of refreshing minds” is the phrase Jed Depp- Deppman’s overall method is to classify some of the ways man uses to characterize what he calls Dickinson’s conversa- Dickinson converses with other thinkers. One dazzling chapter tional poetics. However, it is also a good way to describe Depp- (3) demonstrates Dickinson’s extensive exposure to the domi- man’s own book. His is a “refreshing mind,” both in its dazzling nant philosophies of her day, conclusively silencing any readers intelligence and in its style. The following lively sentence is typ- - ical for this book: “[I]f Dickinson’s connection to postmodern son. By reading her “brain” poems in light of the philosophies thought deserves to be explored further, it cannot be in order ofwho mind might of the find Scottish philosophy Common an inappropriateSense philosophers, lens for Deppman Dickin reveals just how illuminating such an approach is. Some of the guess what she might say about today’s news, or turn out a Dick- other important philosophical attitudes Deppman suggests insonto put Soup on a pyrotechnicalfor the Postmodern theory Soul display,” (8). retrofitThroughout, an argument Deppman to Dickinson adopts are: features this blend of delightful wit, deeply informed thinking, • Accomplished Nietzschean Nihilist. Deppman describes and subtle attunements to the challenges of reading Dickinson Dickinson as “a member of the nineteenth-century avant-garde as a thinker. Deppman is a very funny writer, which is no small feat in a that when God dies . . . the possibility of foundational truth dies book this heady. He not only makes some very complex theo- too,of ‘accomplished’ and second, that nihilists the resulting . . . thinkers nihilistic who possibilities understand, can first, be ries accessible to Dickinson scholars, but he does so with jovial more than just passive or reactive. They can be positive, cre- bonhomie. The picture on the cover sums up the spirit of this ative, and poetic in the widest sense” (21). extraordinary book: a marble sculpture of a girl poring over a • Liberal Ironist. Deppman compares Dickinson to Richard book, with a purple high-top on one foot. There is a twinkle in Rorty’s ideal of a thoughtful, tolerant person who has continu- the eye of both of these important thinkers. Deppman’s central claim is that the best way to approach Em- - ily Dickinson is as a thinker. Such an approach seemed obvious ing doubts about her “final vocabulary”—the words she uses to enough to her family. After her death, her sister Lavinia said Dickinsonjustify how values she lives—and conversations has beenthat exposeinfluenced her tothough other unperpoints that her sister “was not withdrawn or exclusive really. She was ofsuaded view, by considering others’ final without vocabularies. accepting Like their Rorty’s truths liberal nor ironist,dimin- always watching for the rewarding person to come but she was ishing their value for her interlocutor. She reads extensively in a very busy person herself. She had to think—she was the only order to imbibe “strong draughts of refreshing minds,” which one of us who had that to do.” (Bingham qtd. 213). However, carry her through intellectual deserts as water does a camel. recent scholarship has paid less attention to her thoughts than • Weak Thinker. Deppman says that Dickinson likes what to her intense feelings and to the materiality of the techniques Gianni Vattimo calls “weak” thought. This phrase may startle she invented to communicate them. Never turning his back on Dickinson lovers, who do not want anything about Dickinson to those essential techniques, Deppman nonetheless insists that be called “weak.” However, Deppman means it to be high praise. her “poetry is a whole lot more about mind and thought than “Weak thought” is elastic, opposing “strong” beliefs in “clear and about body and feeling” (51). His elaboration of this claim is distinct ideas as the model for truth” and instead appreciating utterly convincing and highly rewarding, meticulously unveil- the interpretive character of every experience of truth (Vattimo ing before our eyes the exceptional relevance of Dickinson’s qtd. 23). Thus, in “Strong Draughts of Their Refreshing Minds,” thought. Dickinson muses that “camel” may not be the right word for her Why is that? What is it about Dickinson’s thought that jibes relationship to her reading. Perhaps a better way to describe so insistently with our own? Well, according to Deppman, the the effects of conversational thought is “elastic,” not committed dominant spirit of our day is post-metaphysical, and so is Dick- to rigid truths but rather open to many new ideas. “Camel” and inson’s. Today’s dominant intellectual trends search for ways “elastic” are both key terms for Deppman’s assessment of her - poetics. dations. Deppman believes that Dickinson can help us in that • Try to Think Poems. While some poems are conversations, search.to find meaningLike today’s and post-moderns, degrees of truth Dickinson in the absencevoices “incredu of foun- others are more self-contained. Some of these, Deppman calls lity toward metanarratives,” and she models ways of thinking “try to think poems.” In them, Dickinson poses herself challeng- deeply and seriously in an anti-metaphysical framework (8). ing thought experiments, and then observes and records the Such thought is not easy, which is why the title of Deppman’s workings of her mind as it encounters its own limits. book is a modest Trying to Think with Emily Dickinson. Often, This book is learned, original, meticulous, playful, and illu- rather than establish a truth, a Dickinson poem is conversa- minating for all readers who say “What?” to Dickinson. How tional. It will engage in dialogue with a thinker regarding “a gratifying. central meaning-giving practice of her culture” and re-describe that practice in other ways (10). Simultaneously, it will provide Marianne Noble, associate professor of literature at American a meta-commentary on its own poetics of conversation. It is University, is the author of The Masochistic Pleasures of Senti- in modeling a conversational response to an anti-metaphysical mental Literature (2000) and is working on a book entitled outlook that Dickinson is most relevant to our own intellectual "Sympathy and the Quest for Genuine Human Contact in Ameri- culture. can Romantic Literature." 24 | EDIS Bulletin Reviews

Oakes, Elizabeth. The Luminescence of All Things Emily Nicholasville, Kentucky: Wind Publications, 2009. 77 pp. Paper, ISBN 1-893239-89-0, $15.00. Reviewed by Janet McCann

We poets all want a piece of Em- still. Her people mill around her in She was writing... ily. I don’t know how many poems vignettes and snapshots. She reacts, while I was reading to mother, or even books of poems have been retreats. The mystery of her private helping Maggie churn butter, written about her; we take her dress soul is revealed by these poems— on my way to Cutler’s with a off, put it on us, diagnose her, sug- which do not attempt to unveil the request for coconut, graham gest medications for her, steal her hidden Emily, but treat her with lines and her recipes, invent lovers compassion. for her, follow her into her room An intimate look at Emily’s broth- Sheflour, muses sweet that potatoes, her job sugar... was the and allow her to shut the door only er Austin’s affair with Mabel Loomis household, as Austin’s was making behind us. We reach for her avidly Todd gives another original dimen- the money; she concludes that “it but cannot touch her. But this latest sion to the story. The passionate, wasn’t just duty. She is still/ in the book of Emily poems is unusual and daring affair is carried on almost front parlor of my heart.” In other striking for its sense of the real. It in Emily’s presence (she and Vin- poems Vinnie remembers their fa- is like a novel in that it creates real ther’s death, recounts events from people; it is like a biography in that her outward quiet. The reasons for childhood, and considers the effect its assumptions are documented. andnie flee roots upstairs) of the affair and contrasts are explored, with Emily’s presence had on the home. not clinically but poetically and Other characters too look at Vinnie, This collection is unusual too in with sympathy, using facts from the at her photographs, at her public thatAnd, on it istop not of that, simply it is about fine poetry. Emily, principals’ journals, including their and private self. She becomes more but about her family and times as personal codes for a night of love. than just the other sister, the one well. Family members we tend to The poems leap from one per- taken for granted, and becomes a see only vaguely take on life and spective to another, as the charac- individuality as they speak and act ters speak and are spoken of and of the family. positive influence on the wellbeing out their lives in the poems. The col- impinge on the lives of the others in - lection is divided into six sections of this narrow, closed world. Sue be- ment for its melding of historical and This collection is a fine achieve poems entitled “Emily,” “Austin and poetic truth without diminishing Mabel,” “Sue,” “Emily’s Household,” her husband and loving–not neces- either. I can think of only one book “In Amherst, Summer 2005, 2007,” sarilycomes in a love tragic with—his figure, betrayed mysterious by similar in this way—Enid Shomer’s and “West Cemetery, Amherst, Mas- sister. Sue is shut out of her own life, Stars at Noon (2001), which consists sachusetts.” In the last two sections observing it. In this feeling of exclu- of a series of poems about woman the poet more or less joins Emily by pilot Jacqueline Cochran. To make a experiencing her places. Notes at - historical person real without falsi- the end provide solid documenta- uresion, ofshe the identifies household with Emily. is Emily’s tion for her presentation and inter- sisterPerhaps Vinnie, the so most often intriguing overlooked, fig poems with information is a chal- fication and without cluttering the pretation of Emily’s family; she also who emerges as a complex and in- lenge that Oakes has met, and this includes a useful bibliography and telligent woman who escapes noth- collection will have wide appeal. sources for Dickinson lines she has ing and whom nothing escapes. In She has captured her piece of Em- referred to. “Vinnie Outlives Them All” Vinnie ily in a collection for both Dickinson These poems are indeed lumi- thinks about her role in the house, scholars and casual poetry readers. nous. Within her closed world, as Martha to Emily’s Mary, and how which Oakes compares to a snow she kept the household going: Janet McCann, professor of English globe, we see her glimmer, sur- at Texas A&M University, is author rounded by those dear to her, the of Emily’s Dress, a collection of po- rest of the world held at bay. In ems reviewed in the fall 2005 EDIS the spaces between lines we get a Bulletin. glimpse of her at work and at ease. Passion thunders around her. She is

November/December 2009 | 25 Reviews

Selected Bibliography Barbara Kelly Articles published in the Emily Dickinson a four-act ballet will be performed May ald Journal are available online at Project 15-17 at Kirby Theater, Amherst College. of Galileo’s Dialogue and a letter written Muse. Created by Catherine Fair and Jane Wald, by Emily 10 June Dickinson 2009. [Aare 1632 among first the edition many the ballet features more than 70 dancers. treasures stored in a climate-controlled • Archer, Seth. “’I had a terror’: Emily See also: Kathleen Mellen’s “Dancing Em- basement room of North Central College’s Dickinson’s Demon.” Southwest Review ily Dickinson,” Amherst Bulletin 15 May Oesterle Library, Naperville, Illinois, ac- 94.2 (2009): 255-73. [Personal experi- 2009.] cording to Curator of Special Collections ence with panic attacks leads Archer to Emily Prather.] examine the poet’s letters and poems • Carey, Mary. “Town Hosts Scavenger that “comprise a psychological case study Hunt for 250th.” Amherst Bulletin 10 Apr. • Donovan, Patricia. “Emily Dickinson’s without equal in American letters.” In his 2009. [To celebrate Amherst’s 250th 1,789 Poems Will Star at Poetry Month well-researched essay, he illuminates the anniversary, citizens may join a literary Marathon Reading.” University of Buffalo, nature of panic attacks, explaining that scavenger hunt during April by picking Press Release 25 March 2009. [In honor Dickinson “lived her life imprisoned by up clues and small prizes at participating of National Poetry Month, the University a mental illness,” but “her experience of Amherst businesses. Other anniversary at Buffalo Department of English invites panic disorder was a dark, rich soil from activities during 2009 are listed at www. the public to participate in a free mara- which poetry sprouted.”] amherst250.org,] thon reading of all 1,789 of Dickinson’s poems and to sample a piece of her black • Arts Club of Washington. “Literary Cal- • Charles, Ron. “Arts Writing Winners cake at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum endar.” Washington Post 31 May 2009. Named.” Washington Post 16 Apr. 2009. on April 11.] [Poets Jessica Garratt and Lisa Russ will [Brenda Wineapple, author of White Heat: participate in “Flirting with the Masters: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and • “Emily Dickinson Poetry Comes to Life Poets on Emily Dickinson,” the club’s lit- Thomas Wentworth Higginson will share in Joint Recital and Lecture.” Goshen Col- the $15,000 National Award for Arts Writ- lege, Press Release 5 March 2009. [As- Dickinson’s legacy and read from their ing with Michael Sragow, author of Victor sistant Professor of Music Susan Den- eraryown work. series A inreception which writersfollows at reflect the Arts on Fleming: An American Movie Master.] gler, soprano, and Professor of English Club of Washington, May 31.] Ann Hostetler will examine musical song • Chavez, Félix Ernesto. “El Silencio de settings of Dickinson’s poems, present- • Bettendorf Public Library. [Moline, IL] Dickinson.” Lectora: Revista de Dones: Dispatch 22 April 2009. “Emily Dickinson Textualitat 13 (2007): 61-68. [Dickin- World,” in the Rieth Recital Hall on March Poetry Discussion at Bettendorf Public Li- son’s relationship to female silence; writ- ing6.] “Reflections of Divine Mystery in the brary.” [Bea Jacobson will lead a discus- ten in Spanish.] sion of Dickinson’s poems of love and for- • Finnerty, Paraic. “Queer Appropriations: giveness at the Bettendorf Public Library • Chianca, Peter. “Massachusetts Voters Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Dickinson’s on May 7, to commemorate the 123rd an- Pick Gloucester Fisherman Memorial for Love Poems.” Borrowers and Lenders: niversary of Dickinson’s death. Sangeetha U. S. Quarter.” [Gloucester, Mass.] Wicked Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation Local 5 March 2009. [The Emily Dickinson musical settings of a Dickinson poem.] Homestead among other historical sites multiple ways that Dickinson borrowed Rayapati and Robert Elfline will present lost to the Gloucester Fisherman Memo- 3.2from (2008): Shakespeare, n.pag. also [Finnerty asserting identifies that the • Braunagel, Don. “Lynx Theatre’s ‘Dick- rial for placement on the new Massachu- sonnets offered Dickinson models for ex- inson’: More Than a Reclusive Poet.” On- setts quarter created by the U.S. mint.] pressing both traditional love and same- line: www.sandiego.com 24 July 2009. sex love; Dickinson poems discussed are [William Roetzheim’s, Dickinson: The Se- • Clark, Rebecca. “Emily Dickinson Comes Fr 246, 267, 451, 596, 693, and 834 in this cret Story of Emily Dickinson, a non-linear, to Life During Library Performance.” well-researched, well-written essay.] episodic play, portrays the poet as “a fully Shelby [North Carolina] Star 16 Apr. 2009. dimensional woman,” possibly “a victim [Actress and playwright Connie Clark in- • Foerster, Richard. “Herbarium.” of incest”: presented at the North Park corporated a few scenes from her solo- Online: http://poems.com/poem. Vaudeville Theater, San Diego, July 24 - performance play “Emily” into her reading php?date=14382 17 May 2009. [Inspired August 7.] of the poems on April 15 at the Cleveland by Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Foerst- County Memorial Library.] er’s eight-part poem originally appeared • BWW News Desk. “Poetry Corner at in Shenandoah: Washington and Lee Uni- Planet Connections Gets to Know Dickin- • Clay, Carolyn. “Every Broom and Bridg- versity Review 59.1 (2009): 28-31.] son . . .” Online: http://BroadwayWorld. et—Emily Dickinson and Her Servants.” com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=53823 19 Boston Phoenix 24 March 2009. [Tom • Friedlander, Benjamin. “Devious Truths.” March 2009. [Playwright William Roet- Daley’s play examines Dickinson’s rela- Emily Dickinson Journal 18.1 (2009): 32- zheim’s “The Secret Story of Emily Dick- tionship with her Irish servants and “the 43. inson,” a play that is “a quest for answers complexity of the attitudes—sometimes and an examination of possibilities,” will affectionate, sometimes resentful—of the • Friends of Robert Frost. “Lecture.” be performed June 13-20 at Planet Con- Dickinsons’ Irish-Catholic staff toward [North Adams, MA] Advocate Weekly 10 nections Theater, 440 Lafayette Street, their well-to-do Protestant employers”; June 2009. [Friends of Robert Frost will New York] presented April 4 at the Cambridge Fam- begin their “Sunday Afternoons with Rob- ily YMCA Theatre.] ert Frost” series with a talk entitled “Love • Cahill, Pat. “Poet’s Life Celebrated in and Death in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson Republican 10 • Dibble, Susan. “Curator Talks about and Robert Frost: A Study in Contrasts,” by May 2009. [As part of Amherst’s 250th What’s in North Central Library’s Store- Lea Newman, author of Robert Frost: The Ballet.”anniversary [Springfield, celebration, MA] Emily of Amherst, room.” [Arlington Heights, IL] Daily Her- People, Places and Stories Behind His New

26 | EDIS Bulletin Reviews

Selected Bibliography, cont., By Barbara Kelly

England Poetry on June 14, at the Robert • King, Wesley. “The White Symbolic of • McCrum, Robert. “The Best Books for Frost Stone House Museum, Shaftsbury, Emily Dickinson.” Emily Dickinson Journal Obama’s Staff.” Online: http://www. Vermont.] 18.1 (2009): 44-68. guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/ mar/30/obama-reader-staff-books [Em- • Friends of the Wilton Public Library. • Knickerbocker, Scott. “Emily Dickin- “High Tea with Emily Dickinson.” Nashua Isle: Interdisciplin- authors selected by McCrum for a list of [NH] Telegraph 23 April 2009. [Former ary Studies in Literature and Environment ily Dickinson is fifth among nine other New Hampshire Poet Laureate Alice Fogel son’s15.2 (2008):Ethical Artifice.” 185-97. [Close readings of read and why; other authors are Twain, will read and discuss Emily Dickinson’s topMelville, ten books Swift, the Freud, Obama Salinger, officials Wharton, should poems April 25, at the Wilton Public Li- Spider sewed at Night,” “A narrow Fellow Fitzgerald, Keynes, and Mailer. About brary. The public is invited to bring a fa- “Twoin the ButterfliesGrass,” and went“A Bird, out came at Noon,”down the “A Dickinson he says, “After a day in the vorite Dickinson poem to read or recite.] Walk --” show that Dickinson’s “stance to- White House you need a more magical ward nature encourages perhaps the most apprehension of the natural world, plus • Goldberg, Carole. “Sunken Garden Po- important quality of ecological ethics, that those unforgettable meditations on death etry & Music Festival Returns.” Hartford of wonder.”] and immortality.”] [CT] Courant 4 June 2009. [Poet Brenda Hillman and her husband, Robert Hass, • Lederman, Diane. “Events Celebrate • McQuaid, Cate. “Words and Images Co- a Pulitzer-Prize winner and former U.S. Belle of Amherst.” Springfield [MA] Re- alesce: Dill’s Works Share Vision of En- Poet Laureate, will open the 2009 Sunken publican 29 March 2009. [Three months lightenment.” Boston Globe 23 May 2009. Garden Poetry and Music Festival on June of readings, lectures, music, ballet, and the [Lesley Dill’s art will be on display at the 10 at the Hill-Stead Museum in Farm- Big Read will focus on the life and work Smith College Museum of Art, Northamp- ington. Having edited a volume of Emily of Emily Dickinson. Two highlights of the ton, through September 13. Inspired by program include the premiere of Emily of Emily Dickinson, her works include “I “mysterious and compelling . . . a model Amherst, an original ballet created by the Heard a Voice,” “A Single Screw of Flesh Is Dickinson’sfor every poet poems, I know.”] Hillman finds the poet Amherst Ballet, and Gordon Getty’s per- All That Pins the Soul,” “I took my Power formance of his song cycle of 32 Dickinson in my Hand,” and “How ruthless are the • Harvey, Jay. “Rhythm and Verse.” India- poems.] gentle.”] napolis [IN] Star 6 March 2009. [Veteran actress Priscilla Lindsay of the Indiana —. “Amherst’s Past to Come Alive.” Spring- • Merzbach, Scott. “Dickinson Fence, Repertory Theater will join four members field [MA] Republican 30 April 2009. [As Hedge Rehab Near Completion.” Amherst of the Indianapolis Symphony Orches- part of Amherst’s 250th anniversary, Bulletin 3 July 2009. [“With picket and tra to present twelve Dickinson poems an event called “Conversations with the spindle fences and new gate posts, reset with music by Puccini, Schumann, Men- Past” will feature 14 costumed residents stonework and a hemlock hedge planted delssohn, and Tchaikovsky on March 8 at portraying people from the town’s past, inside the fence, the look and feel of 1865 the Central Library, and March 20 in the among them Emily Dickinson’s sister Amherst is returning to the property as Arts garden.] Lavinia and the Dickinson’s maid Mag- part of an ongoing landscaping effort gie Maher. Visitors can see and visit with that included painting the exterior of the • Junior League of Wilmington. “Junior them at West Cemetery, May 2-7.] Homestead in 2005.”] League Lauds Members.” [Wilmington, DE] News Journal 9 June 2009. [Eight Ju- • • Miller, Ashley. “Strait Art Exhibit Fea- nior League members received the fourth Stained Glass Artists.” [Pittsburgh, PA] tures Work from 35 Peninsula Artists.” annual Emily Dickinson Award for their Tribune-Review Loeffler, William. 20 May “Shining 2009. a[Charles Light on J. Sequim [Washington] Gazette 25 March outstanding leadership and volunteer Connick’s life and work will be celebrated 2009. [Jim Stapleton and Diana Bigelow service. Ron Williams, president of Ben- in a series of six lectures and tours in Pitts- perform an original stage work Henry jamin Franklin Plumbing, established and burgh, May 24 - Oct. 25, based on Albert & Emily: The Muses in Massachusetts, an funds the Emily Dickinson Award, noting M. Tannler’s new book, Charles J. Connick: imagined meeting between Henry David that the award is named for the poet in the His Education and His Windows in and Thoreau and Emily Dickinson on April 3 spirit of her poem, “If I Can Stop One Heart near Pittsburgh. Among Connick’s many at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.] from Breaking.”] stained glass windows is a 1939 panel il- lustrating Emily Dickinson’s “There is no • Morales, Ricky. Daily Collegian [Univer- • Kendall, Heather. “A Murder in Two Acts: frigate like a book,” created for the New- sity Park, PA] 17 Sept. 2009. ["The annual Madawaska Valley District High School tonville Library in Boston.] Emily Dickinson Lecture at Penn State is Drama Club Aces Comedy-Mystery.” On- no stranger to notable poets, having host- line: http://www.barrysbaythisweek. • Maciag, Samantha. “U of R Professor In- ed several U.S. Poets Laureate and Pulitzer com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1584091 26 vited to Speak at Emily Dickinson Home- Prize winners," including Robert Pinsky, May 2009. [In Craig Sodaro’s play, Murder stead.” [Regina, Canada] Leader-Post 7 Robert Haas, and Rita Dove. "Elizabeth by the Book, the Raven Society meets on July 2009. [University of Regina professor Alexander, who wrote President Barack an island to select the year’s best mystery - Obama’s inaugural poem, joins the series’ book. Membership in the society is secret: inson scholars participating in a work- list of creative luminaries." Alexander will each person comes disguised as a famous Cindyshop forMacKenzie teachers will entitled be one “Emily of five Dick - read her poems at the Palmer Museum of author. A letter warns that each will die inson: Person, Poetry and Place” at the Art at 7:30 pm, September 17.] by their own words; they must identify Dickinson Museum, July 5-17. MacKenzie the murderer before it is too late. Among also is organizing the annual meeting of • National Endowment for the Arts. "The the nine famous authors, Emily Dickinson the Emily Dickinson International Society Big Read, September 2009-June 2010." in Regina, July 31-August 2.] [NEA grant participants celebrating Emily is the first to die.]

November/December 2009 | 27 Reviews

Selected Bibliography, cont., By Barbara Kelly Dickinson include Lebanon Opera House 2009. [After touring Columbia and El Sal- but I’m hanging in there. . . . The internet Improvement Corporation, New York Bo- vador with Columbian playwright Patricia works in strange ways.”] tanical Garden, and Lower Eastside Girls Ariza’s Emily Dickinson, the Olin Theater Club of New York.] Presenters bring it to Los Angeles for its • Weekes, Julia Ann. “Music Program High- premier in the English language, March lights Emily Dickinson as Literary Leader.” • Nield, Christopher. “A Reading of ‘Civili- 7 and 8, at the New Los Angeles Theater Online: http://www.newhampshire.com/ zation Spurns the Leopard’ by Emily Dick- Center. Prof. Wendy Martin will respond article.aspx?headline=Music+program+ inson.” Epoch Times, Northern California to questions after the performances.] highlights+Emily+Dickinson+as+literary Edition, 25 June 2009. [Nield analyzes +leader&articleid=2861 26 March 2009. J492, concluding “On a personal level, we • Scheurer, Erika. “[S]o of course there [Nanette Perrotte will perform in “a one- can relate the leopard and the keeper to was Speaking and Composition - “: Dick- woman show that combines Dickinson’s the battle between our inner desires and inson’s Early Schooling as a Writer.” Emily poetry with an original score of rock, our external duties to society. We can’t act Dickinson Journal 18.1 (2009): 1-21. pop and jazz fare.” The program, “Emily on every whim or fancy, yet we mustn’t Dickinson—Zero at the Bone,” co-written suppress that idiosyncratic thought – that • Surya, Vasantha. “Flights of Imagi- by Perrotte and Sebastian Lockwood, will unexpected inspired idea – that could be nation.” [Madras, India] Hindu 21 be presented March 26 in the New Hamp- our moment of genius.”] June 2009. Online: http://www. shire Institute of Art’s French Auditorium. hindu.com/mag/2009/06/21/sto- An audio CD and free sampler is available • “On Stage.” [Batavia, NY] Daily News 2 ries/2009062150180500.htm [Surya of- at Amazon.com.] Apr. 2009. [Susan Glaspell’s 1931 Pulitzer fers short meditations on four Dickinson Prize-winning play Alison’s House “opens poems: “I measure every Grief I meet,” • Wells, Bonnie. Amherst Bulletin 17 April after Alison Stanhope, the playwright’s “I stepped from Plank to Plank,” “I could 2009. [The Dickinson Museum and the stand-in for Emily Dickinson has been National Endowment of the Arts spon- dead for 18 years”; the dismantling of the unto itself.”] sor “The Big Read,” a series of four free house “stirs up a hornet’s nest of feelings suffice for Him, I knew —,” and “The Soul public presentations that will open with a and secrets.” The play will be presented • Testa, Carlo. “Letteratura e Rivoluzione lecture by Martha Ackmann on April 21; at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Nel Cinema Italiano (1971-2002).” Studi also scheduled are Marilyn Nelson, April Society April 3-5.] Novecenteschi: Revista Semestrale di Storia 28; Cindy Dickinson and Tevis Kimball, della Letteratura Italiano Contemporanea May 5; and poets John Hennessey, Richard • Otterbein, Holly. “Susan M. Hess Talks 35.75 (2008): 11-20. [Film adaptations of Wilbur, and Susan Snively in a panel dis- More about ‘I’m Nobody.’” Philadelphia Dickinson’s “Good Morning—Midnight” cussion, May 12.] City Paper 29 May 2009. [Artist and au- and Russian and Italian literature; written thor Susan M. Hess’s exhibit, “I’m Nobody: in Italian.] • Willis, Elizabeth. “Dickinson’s Species of A Journey of Healing, Weaving Truth with Narrative.” Emily Dickinson Journal 18.1 Trust” contains 24 tapestries illustrating • “U.S. Artist to Give 2009 Shenkman Lec- (2009): 22-31. Emily Dickinson’s poetry and demonstrat- ture.” [Guelph, Ontario, Canada] Exchange ing the therapeutic value of the poems Magazine for Business/ Economic Develop- • Wilson, Eric G. “The Gift of Financial as Hess confronted her experience with ment/ Entrepreneurs 5 March 2009. [Roni Insecurity.” Chronicle of Higher Educa- childhood abuse. The exhibit runs June Horn, an internationally recognized artist tion 3-21, at Crane Art in Philadelphia.] often inspired by Emily Dickinson, will de- Dickinson’s “A nearness to Tremendous- liver the third annual Shenkman Lecture ness 55.32 — / An (17 Agony April procures,” 2009). [Reflecting Wilson says, on • Poetry Foundation. “Poetry Everywhere.” in Contemporary Art at the University of “the monetary inconveniences many of us Online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/poet- Guelph on March 11.] are now facing . . . force us to question . ryeverywhere/ 2009. [WGBH Boston, . . the idea that a good life is inseparable David Grubin Productions, and the Poetry • Washington Post Staff. “Beach Buddies.” Foundation produced 23 videos intended Washington Post 14 June 2009. [The Wash- showing how bad events can lead to great- to reach a wide audience via the web and ington Post fromness; financialdiscusses security.” elegy as aHe lament cites Lincoln,for loss PBS television. Poems from Yeats, Whit- character they would like to accompany but also as a celebration of what remains; man, and Frost to Sharon Olds, Adrienne them for a asked day atnovelists the beach. which Garrison fictional and concludes his insightful essay with Rich, and Billie Collins include Dickinson’s Keillor chose Emily Dickinson because “I Zen poet Mizuta Masahide’s “Barn’s burnt “I started Early—Took my Dog—” a video think she needs to get out of that cold dark down—now I can see the moon.”] animation introduced by Garrison Keil- house in Amherst and spend a sunny day lor.] at the beach where, I am pretty sure, she • Xlibris Press Release. “Breath Torn would slip into a two-piece and lie under Away by September 11th.” [Falmouth, • “Pulitzer Nominee Barnstone to Speak at a parasol and we’d have hot dogs and cold MA] Globe Newswire 6 July 2009. [Poet Howard County Annual Library Meeting.” beers and talk and talk and talk.”] William E. Dickinson, who claims Em- Boonville [MO] Daily News 13 Apr. 2009. ily Dickinson as his ancestor, has written [Aliki Barnstone, a two-time Pulitzer Prize • Watson, Bruce. “Finding the Shyest Face Breath Torn Away by September 11th, a nominee in poetry and author of Changing on Facebook.” Amherst Bulletin 26 June book of poems that “celebrates the human Rapture: Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Develop- 2009. [Watson found Emily Dickinson on spirit and how it weathered the tragedy.” ment (Univ. Press of New England, 2007) Facebook. Apparently, “rather than lying He has written three novels, a short story, will speak at the Howard County Public safe in her alabaster chamber, Emily has and more than one thousand poems.] Library in Fayette, April 23.] been at the keyboard.” Having “joined 5 billion others on Facebook,” he says, “it’s • Rodriguez, Juan. “Emily Dickinson, a Play nice to know Emily is just a click away. But . . . Done with Latin American Sensitivity.” it’s also been heartbreaking. I’ve ‘friend- The New LATC, Press Release. March ed’ her several times. She hasn’t replied,

28 | EDIS Bulletin Members’ News

Awards Submitted by Martha Nell Smith on behalf of the Committees (Special thanks to Paul Crumbley and Eleanor Heginbotham)

2008 EDIS Graduate Student her, the committee noted that her support. A minimum stay of one Fellowship project—“Rereading Dickinson’s week in Amherst is required. Recip- Poetry in China”—“is especially ients also may use the fellowship to Jessica Beard of the University timely and important as the global initiate a lengthier stay in the area. of California at Santa Cruz is the reach of Emily Dickinson extends Preference will be given to persons recipient of our 2008 EDIS Gradu- and as our transnational contacts with completed PhDs who are in the ate Student Fellowship Award in are more and more easily facilitated early stages of their careers. order to develop her dissertation, by technological advancements. We The Scholar in Amherst Program “’Bound—a trouble—‘: Emily Dick- applaud your ambition to use ‘re- was inaugurated in 2002 by a gener- inson, the Archive, the Canon and search questions inspired by Chi- ous donation from Sylvia F. Rogosa, the Classroom.” She will use the nese readers’ cultural imagination made in honor of her daughter, Viv- funds for archival research in both and Chinese readers’ actual expe- ian Pollak, second president of the the collections at the Houghton at rience of re-reading Dickinson’ in EDIS. The 2003 award was named Harvard University as well as at Am- order to ‘explore Dickinson through in honor of Myra Fraser Fallon, herst College. Beard is interested a Chinese perspective which enters mother of EDIS Treasurer Dr. James in an editorial theory and practice into the dialogue with Western Dick- Fraser. The 2004 award was named that allows Dickinson’s work to be inson scholarship and highlights in honor of renowned Dickinson both graphical and lyrical without elements about Dickinson’s work scholar Brita Lindberg-Seyersted necessarily following a biographi- which Western Dickinson scholars and those in 2005 and 2006 for Pro- cal narrative. Besides attending to fessor Everett Emerson to recognize visual aspects of Dickinson’s work, recognition.’” his contributions to Dickinson stud- Beard will be analyzing Dickinson’s may have failed to give a sufficient ies as well as early American litera- innovations in design apparent in ture. The 2007 Scholar in Amherst the later “scraps” and fragments as Award honored Suzanne Juhasz well as in Dickinson’s “bookmak- and Jane Donahue Eberwein, Dick- ing.” At present her stated goals 2010 EDIS Scholar in Amherst inson scholars and founding mem- are two-fold: “a careful analysis of Award bers of the EDIS. The 2008 Scholar Dickinson’s visual poetics as well in Amherst Award honored Roland as an editorial methodology and an EDIS invites applications for the - edition that help uphold them on a Scholar in Amherst Program. The national Dickinson scholar and avid mass-produced page.” Co-directed scholarship, which is awarded an- supporterHagenbüchle, of EDIS. an influentialThe 2009 award inter by Carla Freccero and Jody Greene, nually, is designed to support re- honored Everett Emerson. Beard’s committee includes Kirsten search on Emily Dickinson at insti- To apply for the 2010 Scholar in Gruesz, who did extensive work tutions such as the Frost Library of Amherst Award, please submit a on The Classroom Electric (http:// Amherst College, the Jones Public curriculum vitae, letter of intro- classroomelectric.org) in the late Library, the Mount Holyoke College duction (written by the applicant), 1990s-early 2000s. Archives, the Dickinson Homestead, a two-page project proposal, and a the Evergreens, and the Amherst brief bibliography, by May 15, 2010, Historical Society. to Paul Crumbley at paul.crumb- The award is a $2,000 fellowship [email protected]; inquiries may also 2009 EDIS Scholar in Amherst to be used for expenses related to be directed to Martha Nell Smith Award that research, such as travel, ac- at [email protected] and Eleanor Yanbin Kang of Guilin University commodations, or a rental car. Upon Heginbotham at heginbotham@csp. of Electronic Technology, Guilin, completion of their research in Am- edu. Letters of recommendation are Guangxi. P.R. China is the recipient herst, recipients will write a letter not accepted as part of the applica- of the 2009 EDIS Scholar in Amherst to the EDIS Board outlining what tion packet. Award. In our letter congratulating they achieved as a result of EDIS

November/December 2009 | 29 Members’ News

Chapter News

Emily Dickinson Chapter Groups ed that a meeting be held Sunday ing. Although some local chapter on the Rise morning for any EDIS members in- groups formed earlier still remain, By Nancy List Pridgen terested in setting up local groups. concern was expressed that EDIS August 2 at 8:30, this meeting was has no list of these existing chapter he Emily Dickinson Interna- held. Ten EDIS members were in at- groups. tional Society is experiencing tendance, including several board If you are sponsoring an EDIS Ta revival of chapter groups— members. Some of the items dis- chapter group or an Emily Dick- local Emily Dickinson interest cussed included those mentioned inson interest group; or if you are above that had been discussed at interested in sponsoring a group in EDIS. At the EDIS annual meeting the board meeting. Also, it was the future, please contact me at pos- heldgroups July potentially 31–August affiliated2, 2009, in with Re- suggested that EDIS provide to the [email protected]. I would also gina, Saskatchewan, Canada, Lois chapters regular news from the Em- like to hear from you if you have Kackley presented a report describ- ily Dickinson Museum. EDIS might any comments or suggestions about ing her successes with an Emily help chapters present a marathon Dickinson group in Amherst, MA. reading of Dickinson’s poems. During the annual EDIS board Jane Wald suggested that chapters groups affiliating with EDIS. meeting, two board members (Cyn- might coordinate membership with Nancy List Pridgen is a board thia MacKenzie and Nancy Pridgen) the Museum, as well as EDIS. It was member of EDIS. shared their successes with Dick- pointed out that this would have to inson events they had held in their be worked out with Johns Hopkins Who Are We? Where Are We respective neighborhoods. As a re- University Press, who manages Going? sult, a discussion about local chap- EDIS membership and publishes By Ellen Beinhorn ter groups ensued, and an ad hoc the Journal. committee on chapter groups was Several attendees at the Sunday n 2008, I attended the EDIS 20th set up. Nancy Pridgen was chosen morning meeting expressed inter- anniversary conference and cel- to be co-chair of this committee, est in starting groups in their ar- Iebration in Amherst, MA. The with another co-chair to be chosen eas. Those attendees who have held conference meetings were accom- from the membership at large. Dickinson meetings felt the most plished, the attending scholars let- The board discussed possible re- effective outcomes have been in tered, and the atmosphere—aca- bringing together readers of Dick- demic. - inson’s poetry and offering commu- I came to the meeting as an in- tionquirements fee, possibly and benefits $250, wouldto groups be structor in the Osher Lifelong chargedwho affiliate for each with group.EDIS. A In registra return, with EDIS would provide connec- Learning Institute (OLLI) program a group would receive a set num- tionnity with and the conversation. bigger picture. Affiliation It was at the University of South Carolina ber of copies of the Emily Dickinson suggested that lists of faculty and where I have been teaching courses Journals and Bulletins. EDIS would students from various local colleges on Emily Dickinson. It was a very also provide several forums for re- might provide contacts for potential different experience from that of porting chapter activities and dis- membership of chapters. typical college teaching. The partici- cussions among groups—the Bulle- Three tasks remain: Choosing pants were self motivated—ages 50 tin, the EDIS web site, and the EDIS a co-chair for the ad hoc commit- to 70, who were sincerely seeking Facebook page. Separate chapter tee on chapter groups; revising the programs which would nurture and activities could be scheduled within guidelines for chapter groups to af- enrich their lives. an annual EDIS meeting. A list of The older generations tend to potential speakers, or speakers bu- approval of the EDIS board for these withdraw from an active society reau, from various geographical ar- newfiliate guidelines. with EDIS; and Kathleen receiving Welton, the eas could also be provided. editor of the Bulletin, expressed an and more isolated. Communication Several board members expressed interest in helping to prepare guide- isto a find necessary themselves passage becoming for mental more the hope that the chapter groups lines for chapter formation. Guide- stimulation and further interest in would encourage individual mem- lines prepared several years ago are life. The poems of Dickinson pro- bers to join EDIS. It was suggest- now in need of revision and updat-

30 | EDIS Bulletin vide a commonality that fulfill these Members’ News

Chapter News, cont. needs. Besides teasing the mind, second readings and more profound up to lay the groundwork for EDIS her verses reverberate with com- examination of Dickinson’s poems. charter groups. It is essential for passion and love. At the completion of six, ninety neophyte groups to have guidelines. The idea of continuing education minute sessions, there was an en- This is a problem for chapters try- is an ancient and revered one. The thusiastic agreement that more ing to establish themselves. When - was needed beyond a lecture series. our new members gathered for the blage waiting for opportunities to What resulted was the establish- bepresent exposed day to findspoetry a and huge the assemarts in ment of the Beaufort County EDIS of them were tentative about the an informal environment and this is ‘scholar’first time, aspect it was ofapparent Emily Dickinson. that most where EDIS is needed. The empha- The success of this effort can be ac- They kept searching for “anchors” sis on establishing new chapters to complishedChapter, the infirst more in South areas Carolina! serving to throw out and rules to follow. countless lovers of Dickinson po- Our culture is so oriented toward An article, “First Experiences of etry. printed, directional matter that it afulfill New this Member” need is inimportant. the EDIS Bulle- It would take another essay to put can’t be overcome. So, in retrospect, tin, November-December 2008, by into words my experience in form- I should have had a printed format ing this new chapter. The energy available to ease anxieties. Then EDIS on the Web. I was struck by and imagination, verve and spirit we could have moved forward com- hisGreg words Mattingly that he tells had ofbeen his “besieg finding- of the participants was astounding. fortably and ease into our own ap- ing Emily Dickinson on my own.” He One of our members elected to per- proach to the meetings. describes himself as a “wayfarer.” form The Belle of Amherst, and did As it developed they surprised My belief is that there are many, so shortly thereafter. themselves with their own abilities many more pilgrims out there and Another sought detailed research to knit together and enjoy not only that EDIS needs to hold her beacon about Thomas Wentworth Higgin- Emily, but each other. Today this higher to guide them in. son and his relationship with our initial group is bringing a friend or The importance of forming new Beaufort, S.C. area. From a signed acquaintance to the meetings and chapters is critical. There are “kin- book of letters, she learned that we are getting bolder and better at dred spirits” and “wayfarers” in Higginson lived in Beaufort during attacking poems not easily under- great plenty to assure the continu- the Civil War where he commanded stood. The word ‘scholar’ has faded ity of Dickinson’s rare genius. his own troops and a town was sub- into the background in favor of what My classes at USC, Hilton Head, sequently named after him—Hig- they perceive to be Emily’s poems S.C. were initially based on my re- ginsonville. Yet another member on their own terms. cent book, Emily and Me, a small started to create poems based on We hear a great deal about “Amer- volume of Emily’s poems and my his reaction to chosen Emily poems. ica’s declining social capital” and portraits of her words. The “faces” This was no small success for Dick- every few years or so somebody characterized what I mused to be inson. A new band of enthusiasts announces that ‘poetry is dead’. Or- the mood and image depicting Em- came into the fold. What we need ganizations such as EDIS are critical ily’s poetry. The art work provided to strive for at this point is to hold in reaching out to our elder commu- a startling consequence. The stu- the group together, in part, by direct nities. It is a stewardship that has dents, piqued by the faces, asked for contact with the Mother Chapter great potential. We need a healthy, and other chapters throughout the new audience for America’s great- country. est poet. So how do we proceed? The orga- I have repeated my plea several nization has a unique opportunity times, as Cicero often did. It is not to use its prestige to extend outward only allowed, but it was and is some- from academic circles. Simply by times necessary. recognizing that vast audiences are Emily belongs to all. We need to available and are waiting. How can take her from between the pages EDIS start initial programs to make and put her into our lives. overtures for the elder population? Meanwhile a pilot program could Ellen Beinhorn is an artist, sculp- be initiated by a special board set tor, educator, and poet.

November/December 2009 | 31 Members’ News Notes and Queries

President’s Note on New EDIS Com- What’s Your Story? mittees By Georgie Strickland By Paul Crumbley Have you ever had an encounter During this summer’s annual meet- with Emily Dickinson’s life and work bership. To achieve these goals as ing in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, that changed your own life? If so, the well as to preserve the legacy of Emily the EDIS Board of Directors voted to EDIS membership committee would Dickinson for further generations, we establish two new ad hoc committees: love to hear about it, and we believe have established a subcommittee for the Committee for Chapter Develop- Bulletin readers would too. For the the EDIS Bulletin that includes: Mar- ment and the Dickinson and the Arts “What’s Your Story” series column, ed- tha Ackmann, Barbara Dana, Barbara Committee. These committees exist ited by Georgiana Strickland, we seek Kelly, Georgie Strickland, and Kathleen for the purpose of formalizing EDIS personal stories that demonstrate the Welton. Please let us know if you have dedication to two important areas that power and attraction of Dickinson for ideas that can increase the apprecia- have long been of interest to members. today’s readers. (See the past three tion of Emily Dickinson. From the time of its founding, EDIS issues for examples.) If you’d like has encouraged the establishment of to submit your story, please contact EDIS Bulletin Goes Electronic chapters, but efforts to clarify proce- Georgiana at [email protected]. dures for creating chapters and artic- In May 2009, EDIS signed an agree- - ment with EBSCO to digitize the EDIS Dickinson and the Arts ship have waxed and waned. This new Bulletin and provide subscriptions to By Barbara Dana committeeulate the benefits exists toof ensurechapter that member chap- libraries around the world. In addi- EDIS has now established a commit- ter concerns receive continuous atten- tion, all issues from the past 20 years tee to promote interest in connections tion and that the discussion of chapter between Emily Dickinson and the arts. business is a formal component of our and will be available to EDIS members We welcome information about new annual meetings. Nancy List Pridgen, athave www.emilydickinsoninternationbeen converted to electronic files- works pertaining to Dickinson in mu- one of three EDIS members-at-large, alsociety.org in 2010. Thanks to the has generously consented to serve a following for their support and assis- visual arts, etc. Committee members co-chair for this committee. Nancy tance with these projects: Paul Crum- aresic, drama, Barbara literary Dana, fiction, chair, dance, Georgiana the will identify the other co-chair as she bley, James Fraser, Michael Kearns, Strickland, Maryanne Garbowsky, and becomes acquainted with members Barbara Leukart, Martha Nell Smith, Jonnie Guerra. We look forward to ar- similarly dedicated to chapter forma- and Kathleen Welton. ranging panels, performances, exhibi- tion and support. The Dickinson and tions, and articles in connection with - EDIS meetings and publications. Con- Note from the Editor ing interest many members have ex- pressedthe Arts inCommittee Dickinson’s reflects role in the the grow arts. We hope that you enjoy the redesign com or Georgiana Strickland, Georgi- Barbara Dana, who performed The of the EDIS Bulletin. Much gratitude [email protected] Barbara Dana, wolfkoda@mac. Belle of Amherst at the 2009 annual to the following for their assistance meeting, has consented to be chair of in creating this new look for the EDIS this committee, along with Georgiana EDIS Bulletin Subcommittee Bulletin: Martha Ackmann, Barbara Dana, Paul Crumbley, Jonnie Guerra, Strickland, who organized the 2002 The EDIS Bulletin, the Society's semi- Eleanor Heginbotham, Michael Kearns, annual meeting around the theme annual newsletter goes to all members Barbara Kelly, Martha Nell Smith, and of “Dickinson and Song,” Maryanne of EDIS, as part of membership, and Georgie Strickland. Thanks to those Garbowsky, and Jonnie Guerra, the is aimed at a broad array of readers, of you who contributed content to this current membership chair, past EDIS both scholarly and non-scholarly, with issue as well as to Michael Kearns, for- president, and editor of the “Poet to an interest in Dickinson. It covers the mer editor of the EDIS Bulletin for his Poet” series for the Bulletin. This com- work of contemporary poets and art- mittee will help establish procedures expertise and assistance with transi- tioning of the necessary procedures to for including the arts in annual meet- of outstanding Dickinson scholars, publish a high-quality Bulletin. Please ings and conferences while also see- pastists influenced and present; by Dickinson; news of the profiles Emily feel free to contact me with articles for ing to it that news of artistic events re- Dickinson Museum; reviews of pub- future issues, comments, and ques- lated to Dickinson reach members in a lications and performances of works tions: [email protected]. timely fashion. As with the committee dealing with the poet; news of the on chapters, this committee seeks in- Society and its activities; and other put from all members. feature articles of interest to the mem-

32 | EDIS Bulletin Members’ News

Oxford 2010 International Conference The EDIS 2010 International Conference will take place August 6-8 at the Rothermere American Institute, Ox- ford University, England. The conference theme is “‘were I Britain born’: Dickinson’s Transatlantic Connections.” Registration for the conference will begin on Thursday afternoon. The conference will begin Friday, August 6 with a full day of meetings followed by a reception and banquet at the Oriel College main dining hall. Oriel College was founded in 1436 and its dining hall manifests the best characteristics of architecture and college dining during the late Medieval period. On Saturday, August 7, there will be a reception at Blackwell Bookshop, across from the Bodleian Library. Attendees are also invited to attend a premier exhibition of art work by contemporary British artists Suzie Hanna and Stella Vine, responding to Dickinson’s poetry and life as well as the theater production Em- ily Dickinson & I: The Journey of a Portrayal, a widely acclaimed one-woman play about writing, acting, and getting into Emily Dickinson’s dress, devised by Jack Lynch and Edie Campbell, directed by Jack Lynch, performed by Edie Campbell, LynchPin Productions Theatre Company.

Plenary speakers and panels:

“‘The World Within’: Emily Dickinson and the Brontës” • Lyndall Gordon, St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University • Paraic Finnerty, University of Portsmouth • Maria Stuart, University College, Dublin • andPaul Technology Giles, Oxford University/University of Sydney • Sally Bushell, Lancaster University • Domhnall Mitchell, Norwegian University of Science • Vivian Pollak, Washington University • Jed Deppman, Oberlin College

Emily Dickinson daguerreotype copyright: Amherst College Archives and Special Collections

See page 36 of the Bulletin for a registration form. Further information and registration forms are also available on the EDIS web site, or you can register online at: https://associations.press.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/edis/2010_edis_con- ference_registration.cgi. For all conference-related inquiries, please contact Paul Crumbley at paul.crumbley@ usu.edu or Cristanne Miller at [email protected].

November/December 2009 | 33 Departments

Crossword Puzzle: More Words To Lift Your Hat To By Greg Mattingly

34 | EDIS Bulletin Departments

Across 3. Appearance; look; manner

5. Gray or tawny with darker streaks or spots 7.4. A1. personThe wings addicted of a bird, to excessive or specifically indulgence the distal in sensual or terminal pleasures segments thereof. 2 Feathers 9. 1. Any member of the open star cluster sometimes known as “The Seven Sisters.”. 2 A group of seven French poets of the latter half of the 16th century. 3 (usually lowercase) any group of eminent or brilliant persons or things, esp. when seven in number 10. Dry; withered 12. Light made of thick wicks covered with wax, used in the streets at night; lamp; illumination

15. 1. Also called corselet. defensive armor for the torso comprising a breastplate and backplate, originally made of leather. 2. Zoology.14. Pertaining a hard to shell or befitting or other a covering holiday celebration,forming an indurated or other gala defensive occasion shield 17. Rascal; rogue; scoundrel; coward; spiritless craven; timid creature; frightened thing 22. The point in the orbit of a planet or comet at which it is nearest to the sun. 24. 1.That which nourishes; nutriment; food. 2. That which sustains; means of support 27. A dark blue color (ED’s spelling). 28. A red dye prepared from the dried bodies of the females of an insect, Dactylopius coccus, which lives on cactuses of Mexico, Central America, and other warm regions 31. The act of placing in a tomb; burial. Down more carpels, that, at maturity, split apart (dehisce) to release the seeds within 2.1. InA hot, botany, dry, adust-laden type of simple, wind dryblowing fruit producedfrom Northern by many Africa species and affecting of flowering parts plants. of Europe A dehiscent structure composed of two or 4. Apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer

DOWN)6. Botany: One of the individual leaves, typically green, that lie under the more conspicuous petals of flower. Collectively, when 8.the A flowercoarse isbroad-leaved in bud, these weed leaves bearing enclose prickly and heads protect of theburs more that stickdelicate to the floral clothing parts within.(The collective name answers 28 10. In Aramaic, a cry of despair; expression of incomprehensible agony; question that Christ asked when he was suffering on the cross 11. City in Switzerland; a luxurious resort 13. A common North American songbird (winters in South America), member of the blackbird family, preferring meadow and grassland habitats, and whose song strikes many listeners as joyous or ecstatic 16. 1. the surface, outer face, or outside of a thing. 2. the outward appearance, esp. as distinguished from the inner nature 18. 1. Anthropology: a member of a small-statured people native to equatorial Africa. (ED’s spelling) 2. (lowercase) anything very small of its kind 19. Silent; reverent; quiet; saintly; holy; nun-like; according to a certain order of monks who wore white robes

21. To pledge by promise of marriage; betroth. 23.20. ABotany: beltlike The fastening petals of for a aflower garment, considered esp. a cassock. collectively Perhaps a bee could be said to wear one? 25. Musical instrument; small one-sided drum with loose metallic jingles on the sides (ED’s spelling) 26. A curtain, especially either of the the inner two, of the three curtains of the Biblical (Exodus) tabernacle, representing pas- sage through stages of spiritual progression in Christian faith

30.28. ABotany: rough, the prickly outermost case around group theof floral seeds parts. of certain (The plants,name of such the asan theindividual chestnut part answers 6 DOWN) 29. A perfume or essential oil obtained from flowers or petals Answers to Last Puzzle Across 28. Thill - J647 9. Resurgam - J70 30. Dimity - 401 1. Badinage – J1466 31. Curricle - J647 12. Peruke - J283 32. Tulle - J712 3. Apennine - J534 14. Tippet - J712 5. Adamant - J398 34. Gimlet - J244 15. Orleans - J283 10. Tuscarora - J3 35.33. ChrysoliteWhiffletree - -J24 J1636 16. Cenotaph - J1192 Greg Mattingly is a for- 11. Potosi - J119 17. Cordillera - J534 mer corporate trainer 13. Cerement - J984 Down 18. Seraph - J214 soon to move from the 20. Eclat - J1307 2. Amethyst - J318 19. Teneriffe - J300 Boston area to Orange, 22. Pippin - J3 4. Capuchin - J15 21. Goblin - J430 MA. 23. Ransomed - J215 6. Domine - J318 24. Surplice - J324 25. Let - J283 7. Dun - J1575 27. Mechlin – J374 26. Atropos - J11 8. Dower - J505 29. Doges - J216

November/December 2009 | 35 Oxford 2010 International Conference Registration Form This page may be photocopied for multiple use

Conference Registration Form Complete this form and make your check or money order payable, in U.S. funds to EDIS, Inc.

Please print or type your name and affiliation as you wish them to appear on your conference badge. Mailing address ______Name, title & affiliation ______

Email ______Telephone (home)______(office) ______(fax) ______Conference fee ❒ EDIS member registering by June 15, 2010 $115.00 ❒ Non-member registering by June 15, 2010 $145.00 ❒ Non-member/registering after June 15, 2010 $145.00 Banquet at Oriel Dining Hall ❒ $30 per person Theater Tickets: Emily Dickinson & I ❒ $20 per person Send to: EDIS; c/o Johns Hopkins University Press; P.O. Box 19966; Baltimore, MD 21211-0966

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

Mailing address ______Name, title & affiliation ______

Email ______Telephone (home)______(office) ______(fax) ______Please check if this is: ❒ new address membership renewal ❒ Annual Membership Category: Sustaining Member ❒ $200.00 Institutional Member ❒ $113.00 Contributing Member ❒ $100.00 Regular Member ❒ $50.00 Student Member ❒ $30.00 (All of the above Members receive both the Emily Dickinson Journal and the Bulletin) Associate Member ❒ $20.00 (Bulletin only) I have included an additional tax-deductible contribution of $______to support the Society’s programs.

Mailing address ______Name, title & affiliation ______

Email ______Telephone (home)______(office) ______(fax) ______Use additional page for further gift memberships. Please make check or money order payable, in U.S. dollars, to EDIS, Inc., and send to: EDIS; c/o Johns Hopkins University Press; P.O. Box 19966; Baltimore, MD 21211-0966 www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org

36 | EDIS Bulletin NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION U.S. POSTAGE paiD The emily Dickinson inTernaTional socieTy CHICAGO, IL PERMIT NO. 2422

EDIS Bulletin c/o aka associates, inc. 645 N. Michigan Avenue Suite 800 Chicago, IL 60611 e D is 2009 a nnual m eeT ing eDise 2010D is 2010inTerna a nnualTional m ceeonferenceT ing e D is 2009 a nnual m eeT ing EDISe 2010D is 2010 Interna a nnualtional m CeeonferenceT ing Volume 21, Number 2 November/December 2009 “The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality.”

August 6-8, 2010 EmilyEmily with with Beefeater Beefeater Guards Guards EllieEllie Heginbotham Heginbotham with with Beefeater Beefeater Guards Guards SuzanneSuzanne Juhasz, Juhasz, Jonnie Jonnie Guerra, Guerra, and and Cris Cris Miller Miller Cindy MacKenzie and Emily Ellie Heginbotham with Beafeater Guards Suzanne Juhasz,with Jonnie Beefeater Guerra, Guards and Cris Miller with Beefeater Guards

Cindy MacKenzieSee and Pages Emily 11-12 Inside thisSpecial Issue Tea Cake Paul Crumbley, EDIS President and Cindy MacKenzie and Emily Special Tea Cake Paul Crumbley, EDIS President and CindyCindy MacKenzie, MacKenzie, Organizer Organizer of of the the 2009 2009 Annual Annual Cindy MacKenzie, OrganizerMeeting of the 2009 Annual Meeting

GeorgieGeorgie Strickland, Strickland, Former Former Editor Editor of of the the Bulletin Bulletin NancyNancy and and Bill Bill Pridgen, Pridgen, EDIS EDIS Members Members GeorgeGeorge Gleason, Gleason, EDIS EDIS member member and and Jane Jane Wald, Wald, Georgie Strickland, Former Editor of the Bulletin Nancy and Bill Pridgen, EDIS Members ExecutiveGeorge Gleason, Director EDIS of the member Emily Dickinsonand Jane Wald,Museum Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum

OxfordOxford University University OxfordOxford University University Oxford University

Follow us on . JaneJane Eberwein, Eberwein, Gudrun Gudrun Grabher, Grabher, Vivian Vivian Pollak, Pollak, MarthaMartha Ackmann Ackmann and and Ann Ann Romberger Romberger at at banquet banquet GroupGroup in in front front of of the the Provincial Provincial Government Government House House Jane Eberwein,and Ellie GudrunHeginbotham Grabher, at Vivianbanquet Pollak, Martha Ackmann and Ann Romberger at banquet Group in front of the Provincial Government House Follow us on . and Ellie Heginbotham at banquet "Emily Dickinson Society (EDIS)" "Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS)" Cover Photo Courtesy of Emily Seelbinder Cover Photo Courtesy of Emily Seelbinder www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org Photos Courtesy of Ellie Heginbotham and Georgie Strickland www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.orgwww.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org Photos Courtesy of Ellie Heginbotham and Georgie Strickland www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org Bodleian Library Oxford All Souls College Bodleian Library NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION U.S. POSTAGE PAID CHICAGO, IL PERMIT NO. 2422

EDIS Bulletin c/o aka associates, inc. 645 N. Michigan Avenue Suite 800 Chicago, IL 60611

Inside this Issue See Pages 6-8 See Pages 9-11 See Page 33

Bodleian Library

Oxford All Souls College

Bodleian Library