THE EMILY DICKINSON INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

Volume 31, Number 2 November/December 2019 “The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality.”

Of one Corolla is the West In This Issue

Officers Features Reviews President: Barbara Mossberg Vice-President: Elizabeth Petrino 4 ‘To another Sea’: Dickinson, Environment, and 27 New Publications Secretary: Adeline Chevrier-Bosseau the West: 2019 International Conference Renée Bergland, Book Review Editor Treasurer: James C. Fraser 16 Emily’s Light: An Interview between Artist Robert William Logan Board Members McCormick and Erica Funke, of WVIA Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods Reviewed by Michael L. Manson Renée Bergland Páraic Finnerty Elizabeth Petrino 34 The Emily Dickinson Centennial Exhibition at Yale George Boziwick James C. Fraser Eliza Richards By Krans Bloeimaand 28 Dickinson, Apple TV Series Antoine Cazé James Guthrie Brooke Steinhauser Media Review by Annelise Brinck-Johnsen Adeline Chevrier-Bosseau Li-hsin Hsu (Honorary Member) 35 Elegy for Anne-Marie Paul Crumbley Daniel Manheim Marta Werner By Cynthia Hallen 30 Dickinson Tracks from Perth Stephanie Farrar Barbara Mossberg Jane Wald (Honorary Member) Music Review by Diana Wagner Series Legal Advisor: Louis N. Levine Chapter Development Chair: Renée Bergland Members’ News Nominations Chair: Páraic Finnerty Dickinson and the Arts Chair: Barbara Dana 20 Teaching Dickinson Membership Chair: Antoine Cazé Emily Dickinson Journal Editor: James Guthrie “’Tis Centuries – and yet’: Teaching Dickinson and 31 In Memoriam: Jed Deppman, 1967-2019 the Presence of the Past By Gary Lee Stonum Editor, EDIS Bulletin: Daniel Manheim By Elizabeth Sagaser Series Editor, Marianne Noble 33 “Stratford on Avon – accept us all!” 2020 Annual Meeting Sustaining Members 24 Poet to Poet A Wild Night and a New Road 33 CFP: Special Issue of Emily Dickinson Journal Antoine Cazé Robert Eberwein Wendy Martin By Faith Shearin on International Scholarship in Translation Richard Brantley Judith Farr Barbara Mossberg Series Editor, Jonnie Guerra Diane K. Busker David H. Forsyth Marianne Noble Scott Donaldson Diana K. Fraser Vivian R. Pollak Jane D. Eberwein James C. Fraser Martha Nell Smith Jonnie G. Guerra Front Cover: The title of the international conference, “‘To another Sea’: Dickinson, Environment, and the West,” brings to mind the many poems referring to the West, including the line from Fr1261. Contributing Members Back Cover: A selection of artist Robert McCormick’s watercolors appears on pages 18-19 of the issue. The image on the Carolyn L. Cooley Eleanor Heginbotham Daniel Manheim LeeAnn Gorthey Suzanne Juhasz Dean S. Skelley back cover is in acrylics. It’s title is This Consciousness, from Fr817. Niels Kjaer Robin Tarasov Special thanks are due to LeeAnn Gorthey for her always excellent photographs, as marked. Thanks, too, to Barbara EDIS gratefully acknowledges the generous financial contributions of these members. Mossberg, for providing images from the Saturday morning visit to the sea (on the front cover) as well as the cover photograph of herself adorned with hummingbirds. EDIS is grateful to Barbara for her work in organizing the remarkable EDIS Bulletin (ISSN 1055-3932) is published twice yearly, May/June and November/December, by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. Standard Mail non-prof- conference. it postage is paid at Lexington, KY 40511. Membership in the Society is open to all persons with an interest in Emily Dickinson and her work. For further information, contact Martha Nell Smith, President, EDIS, Department of English, 2119 Tawes Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, or [email protected]. Annual dues are $60.00 for regular members, $30.00 for students, $200.00 for sustaining members, $113.00 for institutional members, $100.00 for contributing members (all of whom receive the Bulletin and the Emily Dickinson Journal), or $20.00 for associate members (Bulletin only). Membership inquiries should be directed to James C. Fraser, Dickinson poems are reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from the following volumes: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. 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, 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 c/o Johns Hopkins University Press, P.O. Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211-0966, USA. Direct changes of address to [email protected], 800-548-1784 (U.S. 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 Canada), or 410-516-6987; fax to 410-516-3866. Address submissions for the Bulletin to Daniel Manheim, Centre College, 600 West Walnut St., Danville, KY 40422, 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, USA or [email protected]. Submission deadlines are March 1 (Spring issue) and September 1 (Fall issue). All articles become the property of the Bulletin. Back Copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Copyright © 1929, 1935 by Mar- issues are available for $5.00 each from the editor. Copyright © 2019 by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. The Bulletin is indexed in EBSCO, Humanities tha Dickinson Bianchi, Copyright © renewed 1957, 1963 by Mary L. Hampson: Little Brown and Co., Boston. Dickinson letters are reprinted by permission of the publishers International Complete, and the MLA Bibliography. from The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1958, 1986 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; 1914, 1924, 1932, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; 1952 by Alfred Leete Hampson; 1960 by Mary L. Hampson. www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org

2 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 3 To Another Sea To Another Sea

“To another Sea”: Dickinson, Environment, and the West Asilomar Keynotes: Decades of Reflection

Asilomar 2019 ecent keynote speakers at Dickinson Society meetings and conferences have often drilled deep into a wide range of topics – Edenic land- Rscapes; Dickinson and the Amherst College meterologist; the dance of Dickinson’s innovative language; Dickinson in the anthropocene. . cean, mountains, forests, brooks – berg’s own initial comments, entitiled “This rected by Ted Gorodetszy, accompanied by OEmily Dickinson never visited the Tremendous Scene – This Whole Experi- Rhapsodist Daniel Neer and second pianist The Asilomar Conference offered, in presentations by writers long familiar as founding figures in modern Dickinson studies, three forty-year west, any more than she visited the sea, but ment of Green,” came the following morn- Eve Kodiak (see page 10). For the evening retrospectives on the experience of studying and writing on the poet through times when her work, and that of women authors generally, were EDIS members who gathered last August ing, when she presented reflections on Dick- keynote address, participants had the rare scarcely welcome in university curricula. In addition to EDIS President Barbara Mossberg herself, author of When a Writer is a Daughter at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pa- inson and the wild that prepared for the next opportunity of hearing Wendy Martin, the (1982), these presenters included Sandra Gilbert, who wrote, with Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979); Wendy Martin, whose cific Grove, west of Monterey, California, days’ papers. Beginning with “A little mad- founding editor of Women’s Studies, reflect- An American Triptych: Ann Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich (1984) helped establish a model way to view women poets writing found that the poet knew the place as if the ness / in the Spring” (Fr1356), and conjoin- ing on her “Fifty Years of Looking at Emily against the grain; and poet/scholar Alicia Ostriker, whose writings about poetry go back to the late 1970s, and who has, in numerous poems checks were given. The tree-surrounded ing it with “Nobody knows this little rose” Dickinson as a Woman.” throughout her career, engaged Dickinson’ voice and sensibility. cabins of Asilomar, designed to harmonize (Fr11), she explored the topic of Dickinson with Julia Morgan’s original design of the and the unfamiliar, the foreign, weaving her It would not be right to discuss Emily Dick- While full-text transcriptions of the addresses await future publication, the following accounts, two by Bulletin staff and one by the author central buildings, were within earshot of the own experiences as an internationally trav- inson at a seaside conference center without herself, may provide some sense of the breadth and power of these addresses. The article begins with Wendy Martin’s abridgement of her talk, surf, and a few intrepid Dickinsonians even elled Dickinson ambassador/scholar into her at least once donning appropriate garb, start- because it speaks to the academic context in which modern Dickinson studies began. braved the waves to kayak among the sea observations about how Dickinson can con- ing early, and visiting the sea – accompa- otters, as swift as eels and as charismatic as nect people from different places and express nied by an obligatory dog (or two). Saturday Wendy Martin arbiters of social practice as well as cultural and poetic values. Dickin- household dogs. one’s interior mysteries. She closed her pre- morning a group assembled at 7:50, bol- son makes it clear in her poetry that life on earth is brief and precious sentation in a different key, by singing “You stered by the fond thoughts of the well-in- “Emily Dickinson: A Portrait of Courage” and that we need to appreciate this fact. As she wrote, “Oh, Matchless On the opening evening, President Barbara are my sunshine.” tentioned but still somnolent fellow travel- Earth – We underrate the chance to dwell in Thee” (L347). Emily Dick- Mossberg welcomed participants to Dickin- ers back in their cabins, set out in a sort of hen I first began working on Emily Dickinson, who was the inson is a poet for the ages and her work will be read for a very long time son’s “inner wild,” a place she called “turbu- Friday morning and afternoon were taken chariot, and read poems to the soft sounds of Wsubject of the middle panel for An American Triptych: The to come. In short, her letters made it clear to me that Emily Dickinson lent and chaotic and shimmering”; and she up with panel presentations (see pages 8-15 the surf of Monterey Bay. Then, following Lives and Work of Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson and Adrienne was a woman – and a poet – who was far ahead of her time. introduced the first keynote speaker, Sandra for summaries of a selection of panels), as another rich day of panel discussions and a Rich, the prevailing view of Dickinson was that she was a neurasthen- Gilbert. (Summaries of the keynotes appear well as a lecture performance of a piece third keynote address by poet/scholar Alicia ic spinster and agoraphobic recluse. Almost all of the scholars who However, at the time I was writing An American Triptych, my portrait on pages 5-7 of this issue.) President Moss- composed by pianist Kit Young and di- Ostriker, people convened in the plaza be- had written about Dickinson up to that time were men who had not of Emily Dickinson as a courageous iconoclast, especially in regard to tween the facility and the ocean for a festive thought about Dickinson, or her work, in a feminist context. religious and poetic conventions, was not well received by traditional banquet around a fire pit. male critics. Here is an important example of the hostility of one tra- Since I didn’t know much about Dickinson when I began my research, I ditional male critic to the feminist interpretations of Emily Dickinson. The conference closed Sunday morning with started by reading all of her previously overlooked letters, which made After I completed writing An American Triptych in the late 1970’s, a Round Table on public humanities that led it very clear to me that Emily Dickinson was a fiercely independent, Harvard University Press expressed interest in publishing this book. into the EDIS Business Meeting. The Round high-spirited and playful young woman who had a wonderful sense Of course, I was thrilled and sent the manuscript to the press without Table, attended by a robust group of 20 early of humor. Certainly, Emily Dickinson was rebellious for a time when delay. After waiting a year for a response, I called the press to inquire risers (a somewhat different population from women were supposed to be passive, pious and passionless. Dickinson if a decision about publication had been made; the Editor assured me those who had set out to visit the sea at dawn was very outspoken: for example, she successfully argued with her of- that she would get in touch with the two external reviewers immedi- on Saturday), addressed the large question of ten very stern and authoritarian father about keeping her own hours in ately and get back to me soon after. Two weeks later, I received the the fate of the arts in the public sphere: “Why order to stay up late at night to write poetry. She also was defiant about Reader’s Reports. One report was very positive and recommended teach Emily Dickinson?” “What poems must accepting the traditional Calvinist religious beliefs of her parents, and publication, and the other rejected my manuscript on the basis that I be taught?” If a case is to be made for public of the community of Amherst in general. As a student at Mt. Holyoke portrayed Dickinson as not being traditionally religious (it turns out funding for poetry, we must be able to artic- Academy, Emily Dickinson was the only student who refused to make that this reader was very religious himself). ulate just what is being sustained. Those in a public statement that she was “a Christian,” which caused her class- attendance proposed a surprising range of mates to consider her one of the “lost ones.” Of course, I was deeply disappointed, especially as a book from Har- poems that they would be reluctant to live vard would have made a huge difference in my career trajectory. I was without, but the question of just what parts Emily Dickinson rejected patriarchy in all of its forms: she rejected an then advised by a colleague to send my manuscript to Cambridge Uni- One of the many attractions in the Monterey Bay area is its wildlife. No one encountered of life the reading of poetry vitalizes went to all-powerful masculine God who decided whether people were “saved” versity Press, which I did; unfortunately, I didn’t know at the time that a mountain lion on the Conference Center grounds, but it was just a short walk to the the heart of what makes the Humanities as and would go to Heaven, or “damned” and would go to Hell. She also the same reader who rejected the manuscript at Harvard was the editor Aquarium, where one could see sea otters, schools of sardines, and a wide array of jellyfish. important now as it has ever been. rejected the authority of patriarchal social structures in which men were of the American Literature series at Cambridge University Press. As

4 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 5 To Another Sea To Another Sea with Harvard, one reader’s report was highly positive and recommend- Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son, and Walt Whitman’s “Song of At the end of her address, Gilbert read two of her own poems, written the sea. Does the image of being “Done with the Compass” reflect the ed publication, but the Editor altered the other reader’s report, which Myself,” Gilbert returned to Dickinson’s most famous sea poem, “I back when she was writing The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), repre- result of successful planning, or an abandonment to orgastic ecstasy? recommended publication, to make it seem as though the second started Early – Took my Dog – ” (Fr656). She recounted the increas- senting two different senses of Dickinson in domestic spaces. The ear- Both, she said. The poem equally embraces the safety of comfort and reader had rejected the manuscript. Today, this would be considered ingly disruptive events in the poem, from the outsetting picnicker, to lier, “Emily’s Bread,” was a poem about confinement, while the later, the wildness of the sea: “Eden” allows us to imagine both at once. grounds for legal action, but at the time, for me to have protested and the defamiliarizing frame of the sea as a house, to the “spidery, stran- “The Emily Dickinson Black Cake Walk,” celebrates what Gilbert has Ostriker read one of her own poems (“Another Imaginary Voyage”: “gone public” would have branded me as an “abrasive woman” and gling, miniaturizing” hands that reach to the speaker, to the embrace by called “the fluidity of her identity.” see below) about love as journey and choice: is sexual transgression “trouble-maker.” Just as Emily Dickinson responded to T.W. Higgin- the “alien salty element,” a personified power that “fills and swallows.” “sin or blessing”? son’s judgment that she “delay” publication, with a jocular defense, I The dubious security of human place to which the speaker retreats, the Alicia Ostriker did my best to make light of what, in truth, was a massive misjudgment “Solid Town,” is thus set against the vast formlessness of nature. What was remarkable about Alicia Ostriker’s address was that she took and ethical breach. Further reminiscences about what it was like to be a woman and a the audience back into poems that we had all known since adolescence, Like the Great Wave of Japanese artist Hokusai, first printed around the scholar in the 1970s came from poet Alicia Ostriker. Looking for liter- poems that, one might have felt, held few further secrets. She opened Of course, it is highly ironic that when the University of North Carolina year of Dickinson’s birth, the sea in Dickinson’s poem “bows from a ary models, Ostriker confessed that it was a long time before she turned them up, as she used them to explore not only her own fascination published An American Triptych in 1984, this book received a highly celestial height.” It has a kinship with other representations of formless to Dickinson. A scholar of William Blake (she edited the Complete Po- with Dickinson but her growth as a poet and as a woman in the twen- positive, full page review in the New York Times Book Review, which powers (and empowered formlessness) by Dickinson, Whitman, and ems [1977]), she found in him an early “hero and guru.” It was not until tieth century. Her discussion of “Because I cound not stop for Death” described the book as important and pioneering work. It is even more artists in other media – think Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden. the next decade, as she wrote Stealing the Language (1986) that she moved from the brutality of the opening lines – Death comes in like ironic that one of my other books on Dickinson – The Cambridge Intro- All are trying to see the infinite in the finite. turned to Dickinson. the KGB or the FBI – to a suggestion of pregnancy (“A Swelling of the duction to Emily Dickinson – was published by Cambridge University Ground”) to a more detached meditation on time. Through the reflec- Press in 2007 – under a different editor, of course! This study of Dick- But why, Gilbert asked, does the poet make the formless power male? In Dickinson Ostriker found what she called “duplicity” – writing in tion on time, Ostriker talked about her own writing about old age. She inson has also been well received. Today, my interpretation of Emily Unlike Whitman, whose Paumanok was male, and whose sea was which “contrary meanings exist with equal force. Her examples were read another poem, titled “Waiting for the Light,” to suggest this very Dickinson as a staunchly independent woman and boldly innovative beckoningly female, a fierce yet loving old mother (mèr/e), in Dick- “I’m Nobody,” a poem she had loved since girlhood, and “The Soul different transformation of Dickinson’s influence. poet is accepted as the standard view, so much so, that people have inson it is landscapes that are more often figured in feminine terms – selects her own Society.” The duplicity lay in the way its almost prissy forgotten that I was the person who first put forth this interpretation. loving, slow, violet. Where the public male artist might seek the danger opening (“selects”) gives way to what she found to be an all-out erotic Ostriker ended by insisting that Dickinson gave her “permission . . . to of the sea, Dickinson dramatizes the private felicities of staying home: come-on. write some of the riskier poems” she ever wrote. She thus ended with It is important to remember that Emily Dickinson continued to write it’s all very well to worship mountains, which in another poem have a celebration of risk – or more precisely of acknowledging the risk brilliant poetry after Higginson’s rejection of her work – still she “far – slow – Violet Gaze – ” and watch over her like “Strong Madon- In keeping with the “wildness” theme of the conference, Ostriker then that is always latent within us. “All of us,” she concluded, “spend time persisted, as we would say today. Her courageous model has been a nas” (“Sweet Mountains – Ye tell Me no lie – ” [Fr745]). The sea is a explored “Wild Nights.” Here, the duplicity lay in the ambivalience of bravely deploring – and enjoying it.” sustaining inspiration to me and legions of women scholars and readers contrary power that menaces and destabilizes. of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. In the question and answer session, Gilbert elaborated that she was Sandra Gilbert trying to move away from the erotic, orgasmic reading of the poem Another Imaginary Voyage that had long been prevalent. Audience members welcomed the greater – for X ollowing an introduction by longtime friend and EDIS President, emphasis on what one person called “the absolute other, the other that FBarbara Mossberg, Sandra Gilbert opened the substantive part of rearranges who you are.” Other questioners wondered about Hokusai. the seaside conference with an address titled, appropriately, “‘His Sil- Could Dickinson have seen “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”? If it When kabbalists declare To wager whether it While I – I can't agree ver Heel’ – Dickinson by the Sea.” Framing Dickinson’s sea with im- came to Boston when she visited, Dickinson would truly have made Each deed we do affects Will or will not appear, Touch is a sin, and so ages out of lyric sea journeys from Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” East Meet West. Beings in other worlds, I picture a small crowd My thought turns round to sex, The fog so thick, the sea Of sleepless townsfolk who Invisible, until Keynote speakers As it inclines to do, A form coagulates, Have waited out the night included three authors whose As needle to true north, And someone calls, “A sail!” And stand at crimson dawn work has been Considering our case, Ready to welcome us known to and Weighing it back and forth. And all things clear. To you, With garlands and with wine. valued by readers No comfort; you would see of Dickinson’s What if we had undressed Yourself step from the deck To tell if I am right, poetry for forty That chaste July, and what Straight into custody; Or you, all books are dumb; years. If we were being watched This is among the secrets Or watched for, as a boat There follows a swift trial, Kept by the world to come. From left, Sandra A sentence swift and crude Gilbert, Wendy Martin, and Reported missing brings (Reflecting guilt and fear) – Alicia Ostriker Alicia Ostriker. A crowd down to the shore, To penal servitude. From the transcript of her address Photo Credit, above center and right: LeeAnn Gorthey

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Dickinson and the Sea (See) Self and Other in Times of Crisis: Dickinson and Literary History By Li-Hsin Hsu Páraic Finnerty Chair: Li-Hsin Hsu, National Chengchi University Páraic Finnerty, Chair and Presenter: “‘Gathered from many wanderings’: The Brontës, Dickinson and Travel Motif” Jeffrey Simons, “Dickinson Hearing the Wind” Eliza Richards, “Dickinson’s Somatic Inquiries” Zoe Pollak, “Dickinson’s Sea Changes” Yumiko Koizumi, The American Scenery through Dickinson’s Window” he panel on “Self and Other in Times of Crisis” comprised Eliza Richards and Páraic Finnerty, who also chaired the session. Both he panel titled “Dickinson and the Sea (See)” provided prismatic glimpses into the connection between Dickinson’s poetic visions and Tpapers considered the language and imagery through which Dickinson constructed her “supposed persons.” The panel moved Tthe natural elements both within and outside her immediate environment, physically and metaphorically. While the notion of the sea (see) from a consideration of Dickinson’s inquiries into psychological states that are often corporeally grounded depictions of thinking and served as one of the main entry points and common threads that pulled all three papers together, the three papers provided a surprisingly diverse feeling to a deliberation of her use of travel imagery to celebrate imaginative freedom over physical confinement. range of perspectives in terms of how Dickinson’s relation with nature and her employment of natural imagery can be conceptualized, experi- enced, or reconsidered. Eliza Richards began her paper, “Dickinson’s Somatic Inquiries,” by noting important recent scholarship on “Dickinson’s brain poems” that locates the poet’s interest in embodied thinking in the context of the emerging science of psychology. Dickinson’s use Jeffrey Simons explored how Dickinson addressed the issue of hearing the wind, asking how the poet felt and thought about the wind, and of words such as “mind,” “heart,” and “soul” to describe thinking and feeling evokes an earlier understanding of psychology as the where “Dickinson’s senses of hearing the wind” came from. By analyzing a wide range of Dickinson poems about the sensory experiences of study of the human spirit or soul. However, a substantial number of Dickinson’s poems use scientific terms associated with anatom- the natural element, Simons noted some “salient patterns” in Dickinson hearing the wind and proposed to read them “as Orphic, ghostly, earthly, ical aspects of the brain and nervous system, reflecting a developing understanding of psychology as the study of mental function- human, and theophanic.” ing and of the interrelationship of mental, bodily, and environmental processes. Richards suggested that a considerable number of Dickinson’s poems could be read as early psychological studies that chart the relation of thinking and feeling by taking into account In the second presentation, Zoe Pollak used Dickinson’s aesthetic “engagement with pearl,” especially “The Spider holds a Silver Ball” (Fr513), bodily processes. Rather than simply using such poems to discuss Dickinson’s psychology or biography, Richards made a case for as an example to explore “the Prosperian qualities of her verse.” That “pearl” occurs 77 times in the Dickinson archive’s manuscript database taking seriously the ways Dickinson’s inquiries into psychological states take into account the relationship of mind, emotion, and suggests how “this organically-formed gem ironically stands as the most linguistically cultivated and conceptually multi-faceted of the poet’s body. Richards highlighted the value of viewing Dickinson’s poems as studies of psychological processes that are not diagnostic or jewels.” By examining “pearl’s associations with opulence and exoticism – as well as recognizing the labor necessary to harvest this luxury,” therapeutic, but strictly observational. The point of these representations of internal experience is not self-expression, but rather they Pollak demonstrated “how Dickinson plays with pearl’s connotations to navigate the tensions between the alluring and distressing aspects of show Dickinson searching for ways to articulate psychological states in poetic form. her poetic transformations”. Páraic Finnerty, in his paper, “‘Gathered from many wanderings’: The Brontës, Dickinson and Travel Motif,” argued that the Brontë Yumiko Koizumi argued that “[a] comparison between Thomas Cole’s famous painting The Oxbow and Dickinson’s poem illuminates the poet’s sisters’ 1846 poetry collection, The Poems of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, was one among many sources that influenced how Dick- anti-picturesque stance.” By contrasting “a bird’s-eye panoramic view of Mount Holyoke” in Thomas Cole’s painting with Dickinson’s “worm’s- inson used travel imagery. While previous scholars have noted the Brontës’ and Dickinson’s similar use of images of imprisonment eye view of the outside world” in her poem “By my Window have I for Scenery” (Fr849), Koizumi showed how “the view from Dickinson’s and bodily confinement, Finnerty identified resemblances between how the Brontës and Dickinson deploy travel imagery to unsettle bedroom window” shed some light on our understanding of “how the poet viewed nature and the world in general from the ground level.” distinctions between restriction and liberation, and the real and the imagined. Dickinson explicitly associates the Brontë sisters with bird-like mobility rather than grave-like stasis in her elegy to Charlotte Brontë, “All overgrown by cunning moss” (Fr146) in Fascicle During the Q & A session, questions were raised about the way Dickinson used convoluted imagery to magnify the multi-layered implications 7. Although the poem begins with a symbol of captivity, Charlotte’s grave-cage, it goes on to celebrate Brontë’s imaginative vastness as well as duplicity of her poetic allusions to the Bible and other literary works. Audience members also made connections between the panel’s through images of journeys to actual, mythic, and otherworldly locations: Haworth, Yorkshire, Gethsemane, Asphodel, Eden, and understanding of Dickinson’s sea imagery and Sandra Gilbert’s keynote speech on the previous day, in which Gilbert read Dickinson’s “I started Heaven. Evoking the travel theme in the Brontës’ works, Dickinson honors them not as figures of incarceration but as wanderers of Early – Took my Dog – ” in relation to her fear of the sea. liberty. Comparing some of Charlotte Brontë’s and Dickinson’s travel poems, Finnerty underlined how these poets similarly used the compact space of the poem to bring together that which is geographically and conceptually distant. Photo Credit, far left and left: LeeAnn Gorthey

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setting of her poem “Better than Music” (Fr378). An accompaniment of clappers, a Dickinson and Other Writers What Miss Dickinson Heard – And Didn’t – rain stick, and other percussive sounds, with the duo pianists serving as choirsters proved By Regina Yoong An Opera for Rhapsodist, Vocal Quartet And Duo-Pianists very evocative, a high point. “Of all the sounds dispatched abroad” (Fr334), “There Chair: Regina Yoong Composed by Kit Young came a wind like a bugle” (Fr1618), and Vivian Pollak, “‘Well, you can tell yourself that’: Gwendolyn Brooks’s Heaven, and Emily other poems provided additional momentum Dickinson’s” By George Boziwick combining improvised sung words with ac- Carol Dietrich, “‘Inland Souls, Thoughtful Shoals, and Partial Wholes: A comparative companying instrumental snatches of Amer- Analysis of Several ‘Sea’ Poems by Emily Dickinson and Robinson Jeffers” ican folk tunes. Here the opera transitioned Elizabeth Petrino, “‘Was the sea cordial?’: Dickinson’s Echoes of Thoreau’s Inner Wild” hat Miss Dickinson Heard – And Didn’t “Wayfaring Stranger,” and “When Johnny son’s noon emerged, transitioning us into the into evening, bringing with it a Sabbath sing- W– is an expansive, sprawling, engaging Comes Marching Home” – all of it drawing “Mid-Afternoon” portion of the opera. There ing school, in the form of a filmed continua- hour-long work. Pianists Eve Kodiak and us into Dickinson’s time and place. was a tangible apparition of the soprano Jen- tion of the opera. ivian Pollak opened by describing how, when Gwendolyn Brooks read the paired Kit Young (who devised the opera) present- ny Lind performing a snippet of her famous Vstanzas comprising “I never saw a moor” (Fr800), she commented in the margin, ed a wide array of imaginative and creative With the sounds of birds, the Pre-Dawn gave “Echo Song” (by Jacob Niclas Ahlström), The film commenced with a vocal quartet “Well, you can tell yourself that,” underlining the word tell in red ink. Brooks was improvisational musical canvases. Integrat- way to the Sunrise. The piano chirped and and the “Bird Song” (M. Taubert) as Dick- delivering beautifully dense harmonies that intervening in a long conversation about a poem that many readers have cherished, but ed into the mix were source readings, often clucked as the strings were plucked and inson may have heard them during Lind’s reminded me of another California compos- often for quite different reasons. During the 1890s, “I never saw a moor” emerged as a fugitive snatches, both as recitations and the sounds of tone clusters – adjacent notes concert in the old Edwards church (L46). er, Daniel Lentz (b1942). These sounds were Dickinson classic, but after that its critical history is murkier. Pollak described its pres- improvised vocalizations of Dickinson’s struck simultaneously on the piano – filled An instrumental version of Lind’s encore of soon contrasted by improvised broad vocal ence on the radio beginning in 1928, before turning her attention to a program Brooks words, poems, and the words of others de- the room. I suddenly felt the happy ghost “Yankee Doodle” (from Dickinson’s music and instrumental counterpoints creating rich might have heard in May 1940, when radio celebrity broadcaster Ted Malone was at livered deftly and creatively by Rhapsodist of the California composer Henry Cowell book) was also heard. “It’s a great thing to be evanescent modalities. An improvisational The Evergreens for his “Pilgrimage of Poetry.” Overall, Pollak suggested that stud- Daniel Neer. According to the program notes (1897-1965) who in 1914 (at the age of sev- great,” intoned the Rhapsodist, as if Dickin- setting of “Dying at my music!” (Fr1003) ies of Dickinson’s reception by mid-twentieth-century women poets can benefit from “the opera follows a large arc of Emily Dick- enteen) debuted his unique tone cluster in- son were offering a loud footnote to her al- produced a web of vocal glissandi over a greater attention to Dickinson’s presence in textbooks, in anthologies, and on the radio. inson’s life as if it were one day by explor- ventions in a performance at the Forest The- ready legendary post mortem on the “Swed- modernist casting of folk fragments eliding ing Dickinson’s depth of auditory artistry ater in nearby Carmel. I’m sure Dickinson ish Nightingale.” Here Dickinson claims into a performance of the beautiful “Broad is Carol Dietrich’s “Inland Souls, Thoughtful Shoals, and Partial Wholes” investigated through improvisation evoking music and would have loved them. a birdsong of her own as the Rhapsodist the Road that Leads to Death” (“Windham” the spiritual intensity of Dickinson’s and Jeffers’ quest for the “secrets of the universe.” environmental sound.” seemed to retort: “I am studying music now by Watts/Daniel Read) from the American Dietrich asserted that both poets understood that humans are neither the privileged The opera’s soundscape grew more expan- with the jays”! (L665). A reading of “Heart tunebook The Sacred Harp (1844) from the source nor the ultimate measure of values. The sea is more than a setting for divine On Thursday afternoon the Kiln lecture hall sive, a muted trumpet (performed by Dan- not so heavy as mine” (Fr88) was accompa- shape note hymn tradition. This transitioned intoxication, enabling one to drink life to the lees. The materiality of the shore-shoal was readied for the opera’s premiere. The iel Neer) accompanied the dawn which was nied by a cleverly improvised and amplified into a lovely fragment of a closing hymn “I complex evokes the edges of consciousness just as the sea embodies the ebb and flow room was darkened to reveal the pre-dawn breaking “opon the town,” (Fr229) and as heartbeat to the Irish tune “Molly Malone.” Walk by Faith and Not by Sight.” of eternity. By using anthropomorphic terms to highlight the dependence of humans hours of a day in the life of Emily Dickin- sunrise swept into mid-morning we were re- A muted trumpet offered a call from an on the sea for sustenance, Dietrich suggested that both poets undergird the relational son. As the audience entered the room, music minded that it might be a Sabbath Day. Ev- imaginary window; and as it had beckoned The final Night segment of the opera elicited whole of sea, humans, and knowledge. from the parlor piano drifted through the air eryone seemed to be off to church as we were the morning, it now called the afternoon to a sense of gradual decay through a beauti- as if Dickinson was just concluding one of greeted by a beautiful rendition of the hymn a close. ful vocal treatment of the words “omnes, Elizabeth Petrino’s “‘Was the sea cordial?’: Dickinson's Echoes of Thoreau's Inner her late night improvisations; but in fact her “Morning Star” (1835) by the Moravian com- omnes.” As the tight homophonic voicings Wild” explored the truth of nature and its deep connection with humans. Petrino assert- day was just beginning. Duo-pianists Eve poser the Reverend Francis F. Hagen. “The As we approached the Dusk the ensemble melded into incantations of the “Amen,” we ed that nature holds the key to understanding nationhood, as nature is bound up with Kodiak and Kit Young provided the sounds bells are ringing Susie” proclaimed Rhapso- presented a momentary reflection on the heard the sounds of crickets, choreographed the human mind. She argued that the poetic imagination in Dickinson and Thoreau al- of nineteenth-century parlor piano music dist as Dickinson’s own service began with “blissful evenings at Austin’s” accompanied by the performers rubbing at their shirt lows readers to reach provisional conclusions which highlight the delusions of living. which included “Di Tanti Palpiti” (by Ros- a hymn-like accompaniment to her poem by more improvised sounds of Dickinson at sleeves, signaling that the Night (and the op- sini, with variations by Edward L. White), “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – I the piano performing a tune that the Rhap- era) was quietly coming to a close. “Believe Me if All Those Endearing Young keep it, staying at Home – ” (Fr236). A “Re- sodist reminded us, “she laughingly but ap- Charms,” arranged by Thomas Valentine sponsorial” was invoked by the performers; propriately called ‘the Devil’”1; and as the Following the performance there was an en- (both from Emily Dickinson’s music book, a with Rhapsodist and audience declaiming Rhapsodist quoted Dickinson’s reference to thusiastic Q and A, which concluded with bound volume of miscellaneous sheet music, a robust antiphonal reading of Dickinson’s her “old odd tunes” (L184) the musicians President Barbara Mossberg offering her with Emily Dickinson’s name written on the ‘“Hope’ is the thing with feathers” (Fr314). commenced a dramatic improvisational thanks, calling the performance “moving and flyleaf), as well as renditions of songs by Ste- profound” which indeed it was. I look for- phen Foster and extemporaneous represen- The bird references and environmental 1 From MacGregor Jenkins’ Emily Dickinson: Friend ward to hearing this work in progress again tations of a variety of other tunes including sounds increased exponentially as Dickin- and Neighbor, 1930. in its evolving iterations. Photo Credit: LeeAnn Gorthey

10 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 11 To Another Sea To Another Sea

The Western Landscape Crossing Boundaries – Emily Dickinson and the Performing Arts: By Dan Manheim Remediation, Intermediality Chair: Dan Manheim Midori Asahina, “Reconsidering the Epistolary Exchanges between Emily Dickinson and Helen Hunt Jackson as Nature Essayist in the West” By Adeline Chevrier-Bosseau Ryan Heryford, “’the strength to perish is sometimes withheld’: Dickinson’s ‘Western’ Poetics of Decomposition” Chair: Adeline Chevrier-Bosseau Li-Hsin Hsu, “‘To Pastures of Oblivion’ : Dickinson and Western Wilderness,” Participants: Martha Nell Smith, Barbara Dana, George Boziwick xploring the Western Landscapes of a poet who resolutely sought to “see New Englandly” turned out to be more productive than artha Nell Smith opened the discussion by presenting an overview of the representations of Dickinson in popular culture, asking the fol- Eone might have expected. The first speaker, Midori Asahina, of Keio University, addressed an unexplored dimension of Dickinson’s Mlowing question: what does it mean, and why does it matter that this cultural icon is so well-known among scholars and general audience? relationship with Helen Hunt Jackson. Jackson, living in Colorado and California, wrote nature essays that, like those of John Muir a Martha Nell pointed out that Dickinson’s work infuses our culture, and that questions of authority and authenticity are more diverse than scholarly few years later, fed the east coast hunger for accounts of western scenery. Her landscape articles were appearing in Atlantic Monthly and practices often assume. As Adrienne Rich once said, there are multiple Emily Dickinsons and she tends to “proliferate” in a cultural palimpsest that Scribner’s around the same time as she was writing her late letters to Dickinson. They may have influenced the poet’s prism imagery Martha Nell took us through in this session – from TV shows like Jeopardy, TV series like Damages, Cheers, Nurse Jackie, 30 Rock, Breaking in L937 / Fr1664, and Jackson’s boasts about the glories of her lavishly scenic surroundings prompted Dickinson to weigh the relative Bad, Bones, movies like Being John Malkovich or Sophie’s Choice or the recent biopics (Wild Nights with Emily, A Quiet Passion) popular music power of imaginative and actual travel experiences. (Van Morrison, Simon & Garfunkel) …Martha Nell ended this journey through popular culture with the conclusion that the crippled vision of Dickinson is now giving way to a more powerful depiction, with more humor for example, and that all these examples reflect the way scholarship Ryan Heryford also looked to the Jackson correspondence in making a subtle and ingenious argument about how Dickinson’s notion about Dickinson has seeped into the more general culture. of the “West” centered in “sites of decomposition.” A decompositional poetics, he said, raises the paradoxical possibility of becoming through death – “necrogenesis.” If death is final, then the only solace is immortality and immutability; but an alternative poetics would Barbara Dana then went on to present her experience as the lead actress in William Luce’s The Belle of Amherst; for Barbara, the format of the see mutability as the condition of things, in the body and in natural processes. This idea comes into Dickinson’s work through the letters one-person play is uniquely suited to tell the story of Emily. Barbara shared the biggest challenges she encountered while rehearsing the role and in which Jackson contrasted her own friability with the endless horizons of the Western landscape. Dickinson saw no discontinuity be- then touring with the play for over 4 years, and delighted the audience of the roundtable with lively readings of some of the passages of the play. tween landscape and corporeal frailty. In her view, the very changeableness of the land was a connection to the body and to human suffer- ing. In change begins care and sympathy, whether for the failing human body or for the changing inanimate world. Comfortably dwelling George Boziwick presented the great diversity of musical compositions inspired by Dickinson, including Carmel California’s own Henry Cowell, within the time of degeneration and decay, Dickinson is able to espouse sympathy for both the ailing human body and the ever-changing and took us through the evolutions in composition, highlighting how editorial changes in the various editions of the poems infused the composer’s nonhuman world, eschewing the authority of fixed categories and assumptions about eternal landscapes, and offering, instead, possibility understanding and adaptations of Dickinson’s idiosyncratic style. for living and writing in a time when human activity has rendered irreversible impacts on global climate and conditions for life on earth. Adeline Chevrier-Bosseau closed the roundtable by a presentation of the adaptations of Emily Dickinson’s life and work in ballet and modern In “‘To Pastures of Oblivion’ : Dickinson and Western Wilderness,” Li-Hsin Hsu took the signal from Dickinson’s “I send Two Sunsets” (Fr557) dance, focusing particularly on Martha Graham’s Letter to the World, and invited the audience to weigh in on the following issues raised in dance to explore the poet’s attitude toward the development of the Western wilderness in the mid-19th century. Would she celebrate the amplitude adaptations of Dickinson: How could choreographers work to present a less heteronormative vision of Dickinson, and an adaptation of her life and of the west or would she instead, as Hsu put it, “prioritize pragmaticism over aestheticism”? In her reading, the celebrated poem “To make a work that does not rely on the legend of the heart-broken, white-wearing recluse? How does one “dance” Dickinson? How could movement echo Prairie” (Fr1779) revises William Cul- Dickinson’s particular style? How does Dickinson’s language translate into the language of movement? len Bryant’s 1832 poem “The Prairie.” Where Bryant made bees into agents Both Boziwick and Chevrier-Bosseau evoked their current musical and choreographical projects on Emily Dickinson. of cultural amnesia, lulling readers into forgetting about the recent Black Hawk uprising, Dickinson’s image calls atten- tion to the way the prairie functions as a poetic and imaginative construction. Nevertheless, she knew well and occa- sionally exploited certain essentializing formulations of the west and of Native Americans. Over all, Hsu argued, her references to western landscapes re- flect a “delicate balancing act between utilitarianism and aestheticism,” ac- knowledging the imagination’s part in

the creation of the wild, even as she de- Photo Credit, left and right: LeeAnn Gorthey Conversations after presentations and between sessions pended on popular representations for were animated, as people explored common interests. her imagery.

12 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 13 To Another Sea To Another Sea

Approaches to Dickinson’s Sound and Music Dickinson After Darwin: New Environmental Readings By George Boziwick By Paul Crumbley

Chair: George Boziwick Chair: Paul Crumbley Emma Duncan, “Defamiliarizing Faith: Emily Dickinson’s use of Hymn Meter, Scripture, and Metaphor” Anna Goldman: “Darwin and Dickinson Among the Heliotropes” Samantha Landau, “‘Invisible, as music – ’: Sheet Music and Communication in the Dickinson Family” Katrina Dzyak: “Ornithology and Creole: Emily Dickinson and a History of Radical Peace” Wendy Tronrud, “‘Strange plants’: Abolitionism, Black Song and Emily Dickinson” Amy R. Nestor: “’Disclosed by Danger’ 2 – Hauntings: Dickinson, Darwin, Anthropocene”

hile each of the three papers presented in this session covered music in the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson, it is actually the sound of nna Goldman’s paper, “Darwin and Dickinson Among the Heliotropes,” presents Dickinson as a dedicated amateur naturalist Wthat music that differentiated the work of these three fine presenters. Ainspired by Darwin. Goldman argues that during her single year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary Dickinson studied botany, astronomy, and natural history, then mined these fields for metaphors with the same concentration Darwin brought to bear on the Emma Duncan problematized Dickinson as the poet hymnist, showing how on the one hand Dickinson brought tangible and unique clarity to seedlings he observed. Dickinson turned the lens of her attention inward to ponder sky (“Bring me the sunset in a cup – ”), lightning the interpretation of the Christian symbols of belief, reinvigorating them by applying both the familiar hymn meters and the shared language of (Not yet suspected – but for Flash – / And Click – and Suddenness”), and a bird taking wing as “…Oars divide the Ocean, / Too silver the believers of her day. On the other hand Duncan also offered vivid examples of Dickinson’s own poetic editorializing that belied that clarity for a seam, / Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, / Leap, plashless as they swim.” As with Darwin, it was plants, in particular, which (and meter) revealing her acute sense of un-belief. Often Dickinson would offer both sides of the proverbial coin in a single poem thus “[keep- occupied Dickinson’s attention. “This is a Blossom of the Brain” (Fr1112), one poem asserts in its opening line. In “Revolution is ing her] believing nimble.” Examples include “I know that he exists” (Fr365) or “Going to Heaven!” (Fr128). The most striking illustration the Pod” (Fr1044), “Liberty” is in danger of being “Left inactive on the Stalk” and “Revolution is “a “Pod… Systems rattle from.” came in the following passage from her paper: “Dickinson echoes the enduringly popular hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ with the opening lines of her In letter 1038 of the Selected Letters (ed. Thomas H. Johnson), John Milton becomes “the great florist,” while in letter 682, a child’s poem ‘If I’m lost now – / That I was found’ (Fr316), and reverses the order of the hymn which originally states ‘I once was lost, but now am hand is “so little it had hardly a Stem.” Writing to Susan, her sister-in-law (L178), Dickinson confessed that “The cats... have not so found.’” Duncan concluded her presentation by saying that Dickinson’s purpose is not to instill doubt in the reader but rather, “to express the absorbed my attention as they are apt at home” but “as for my sweet flowers, I shall know each leaf and every bud that bursts, while need for criticism and critical thinking. These very large [Christian] concepts, while believed by many, are not easy to believe or understand. I am from home.” This paper draws parallels between the British naturalist-and-writer’s lifelong focus on plants with the American Dickinson’s poetry becomes a tool for exploration, a way to see the strangeness of Christianity more clearly.” poet’s own to throw a different light on her eye for what the chemist and writer Primo Levi calls in A Periodic Table “our silent sis- ters, the plants.” In her paper “‘Invisible, as music – ’: Sheet Music and Communication in the Dickinson Family,” Samantha Landau situates Dickinson’s en- gagement with the classical music tradition as a fluid pathway of communication through Dickinson’s own musicality and the music of her own In “Ornithology and Creole: Emily Dickinson and a History of Radical Peace,” Katrina Dzyak opens by asserting that Dickinson’s time, by extension into that of the next generation of Dickinson’s family. Landau offered vivid examples of both Emily and Susan Dickinson’s poetry is relentlessly opaque. She then argues that the small collection of Dickinson’s Caribbean poems use absence, paralepsis, musical influence on Susan’s daughter (Emily’s niece) Martha Dickinson, who had a notable professional musical career as both a singer and and inconclusiveness to induce relentless opaqueness with the aim of proposing alternative histories. The invariable simultaneity pianist. In her paper, Landau stated that “music represented a form of communication between Emily and Susan, and between Emily, Susan, of silence and the question of war and violence woven throughout her Caribbean poems gradually tell a history of their causal rela- and Martha. In Martha’s public musical career, Emily and Susan’s musical aspirations might have been realized.” Landau elaborated on this tionship, and is, Dzyak suggests, Dickinson’s active and strategic response to questions about the Civil War, its Caribbean roots, and through evidence found in the music holdings of the Martha Dickinson Bianchi Papers in the John Hay Library, at Brown University. Landau’s the afterlives of slavery. Dzyak then reads this particular form of poetics alongside Afro-Caribbean traditions that reject the literary presentation made clear that ownership of the music in the Bianchi Papers crossed generational boundaries, showing just how much Martha’s models of Natural History and Romanticism that drove Western colonial expansion and expression. While not in direct relation to mother and aunt had significant input into Martha’s musical performance, education, and taste. Landau also noted that just as there was evi- these movements of radical resistance and creolization, Dickinson’s poetry stages the ways in which our reading practices come out dence of these musical connections, the lack of evidence spoke just as loudly to the fact that music was so commonly threaded into their daily of this lineage of Natural History and Romanticism, and are, consequentially, trained to elide these non-Western, alternative histories. lives, that its presence was both self-animating and assumed. When our expectations backfire and line after line poses sheer inscrutability, Dickinson’s poetry forces us to confront the circular logic of our interpretive skills, the predictable ways in which our questions prompt certain answers. In this way, the opaqueness that The final paper of the session, Wendy Tronrud’s “‘Strange plants’: Abolitionism, Black Song and Emily Dickinson,” offered a connection -be marks Dickinson’s poetry prepares us to read, listen to, narrate what are otherwise silenced voices and histories from the colonial tween black song and Dickinson’s work through a view of Thomas Wentworth Higginson as folklorist, curator, transcriber, and mediator for the past of the Americas. collecting and dissemination of vernacular forms of musical and poetic expression. Using the sounds of black music that he heard and quietly collected when he was in charge of the Black Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers, Higginson defined himself as a folklorist. As Tronrud In “‘Disclosed by Danger’ 2 – Hauntings: Dickinson, Darwin, Anthropocene,” Amy R. Nestor explores Dickinson’s incorporation of quotes from Higginson’s 1867 article “Negro Spirituals,” “I could now gather on their own soil these strange plants which I had before seen as Darwinian temporal ruptures to explore ruptures that devastated her sense of home, leaving movement, indeterminacy, displacements in museums alone.” The curatorial parallel offered by Tronrud of the intertwining and, at times, vernacular poetic voice of Emily Dickinson was of the human from itself. Exploring these ruptures, Nestor argues, reveals entanglements of life/death, human/nonhuman, animate/ compelling. Here Tronrud argues that Higginson established a parallel between his work with black song and with Dickinson, “transcribing” inanimate – and Matter/Spirit. Spirit, as glimpsed in Dickinson’s landscapes, emerges from Matter’s glancing touch; Life, as shown the words of Dickinson written in a hand that Higginson likened to the “fossil bird tracks” that Dickinson may have studied in the museum in by Darwin’s ever-ascending Tree, is haunted by the ever-gathering dead branches below; both inscribe ghostly enfoldings into the Amherst. Higginson himself notes in the preface to his collected and edited volume of her poems that Dickinson’s words are “like poetry torn unfigurable life to come, if Life there be…. Nestor’s aim is to diffract Dickinson’s and Darwin’s poetics through our present-future up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed.” Tronrud Anthropocenic now. Reading their troubling of the still-foreclosing force of Newtonian time and their entanglements of Matter-Spirit observes that the echoes of a similar antebellum rhetoric of folkloric cultivation are re-sounded in Higginson’s work on Dickinson, and as Tr- as letters left for us, Nestor identifies ghostly Matter engraved upon the surface of the world that echoes the Spirit emerging from this onrud notes, Higginson wants “us as readers to know he is the one out in the field doing the picking of Dickinson’s poems.” Matter’s touch upon the now-future of our Earth. This sets in place an ethics that angles off such touch, an ethics of entanglement, of forking Possibility; an ethics whose Spirit, in its haunting, embodies the power to move us from the Dead Letter we now doom We in the audience were the beneficiaries of the excellent “field work” evidenced in all three papers. Each presenter elicited unique “soundings” ourselves to be, to move us from Newton’s deadened time to the Flash, the Click, the Suddenness of Futurity, its ineluctable but of Dickinson, bringing new and fresh auditory and musical insights into our “circumference” of Dickinson scholarship. indeterminate change.

14 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 15 where they would have the corpse entombed describing the people in the room, waiting surrounds us on those cold winter afternoons Emily’s Light in a wicker casket. So, I tried to capture the for the woman to die. So, that’s what I would when the shadows are long and slightly dif- feeling of wicker, which is why you see the imagine. This is me throwing myself into a ferent and the earth is slightly askew, not the outline. And then the rest of it just needed to belief. I would hope that when she passed, way we normally see it, things are quiet. She The Bulletin is grateful to Laurie McCants for calling attention to Emily’s Light, an exhibit of paintings by Robert McCormick that be dark. So that’s . . . that’s how I handled the she was flowing to someone who was wait- knew this. She’s sharing this. There is this appeared at the Artspace Gallery in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, from January 17 through February 22, 2019. What follows is a redacted darkness that you mentioned. ing for her and they were soaring past the sky, spiritual side. There is this spiritual life. By version of the transcription of a radio interview with McCormick conducted on WVIA, the NPR affiliate for Northeastern Pennsylvania, past the moon, past the church, into infinity. spiritual I don’t mean churchlike. I’m talking by Erica Funke, for her series ArtScene. Images of paintings from the show appear following page 17. The full transcription (not the EF: There’s a lot of energy there even though about spiritual as in beyond the physical – redaction) was painstakingly prepared by Zoe Zink. this is a quiet, still-focused moment – defi- EF: And the windows are in the shape of a metaphysical I guess is what we’re saying. nitely quiet. church. There are things that echo in terms And she was in tune with that. And it comes rica Funke: Mabel Loomis Todd de- and through his canvases. An exhibit titled know much more than everybody knows – of shape and give us a sense of perhaps the through to me in her poems. Escribes the way she was received by Emily’s Light, with these paintings by Bob that she was a recluse supposedly, she was BM: And it’s interesting [that] you’re pick- sacred space that this is. It’s not a church but Emily as a guest in the Dickinson home. McCormick, has just opened at the Artspace from Massachusetts, her father was stern. ing up on the quietness. Makes me happy there is something sacred about this space. EF: Did you feel like you were conversing She says, “although our interviews were Gallery in Bloomsburg. Nine new paintings, And she wore a white dress. I mean I had lim- because I had to shift my color choices for with her? chiefly confined to conversations between drawing their inspiration from the poetry of ited knowledge. And I remembered hearing this particular project because when I think BM: If you’ll look, the room is actually float- the brilliantly lighted drawing room where I Emily Dickinson. Last spring when Blooms- something about her dashes – apparently her of Emily and the more I read her poems, I ing in the sky. BM: Aren’t I brave talking about Emily as if sat and the dusky hall just outside where she burg Theatre Ensemble’s Laurie McCants dashes annoyed a lot of people. I as a reader thought “quietude,” I thought “softness.” I know her? But it happens when you spend a always remained, I grew very familiar with announced that she would bring her Dick- as a young person always figured, “Well of And I looked for starkness and also a bit of EF: Do you have some other examples with lot of time – and I had other things that I had her voice.” And Mary Cappello takes it from inson-inspired one-woman play Industrious course she put a dash there. She wants you that Calvinistic household in which she lived you? to work on through the months, but this has there, explaining, “Emily’s preference was to Angels to Bloomsburg, McCormick decided to stop and think.” It seems so easy on one – you know, where things were apparently been the main project particularly for the past stand inside the hallway, outside the reach of to see how he could respond to Dickinson’s level – what she’s writing about – but on an- pretty rigid and colors would have been toned BM: That’s A certain Slant of Light. And maybe three months. Now maybe it’s winter vision when a visitor came to call. Standing unique lexicon with his brushes. Emily’s other level, I don’t have a clue. I initially read down. So, these were all things that inform a again, I have her walking out in the snow. She time and I tend to struggle with depression a unseen in a hallway was how she wished to Light is the result. I think it was three or four hundred poems person when it’s time to paint. painted at a certain table and a certain chair in bit when things get dark, but also working on meet you. To face you was too much; after and I narrowed them down to thirty-two that her room, which you know we think Virginia this I was often very sad by the end of a day, all, how could two infinities hope to touch. BM: When I heard Laurie was going to do I felt connected to me, or that I could visual- EF: Let me then just follow up and say that Woolf ‘s A Room of One’s Own. Well here’s wondering what am I doing? Am I succeed- And at the same time, meeting face to face this play, . . . instantly – instantly – a light ly do something with because she uses such if people know your work or go online and Emily Dickinson – quite a bit earlier than Vir- ing? And what’s the point? And I think a lot was too little. That is, face-to-face meetings went off and I went, “I wonder what I could unique imagery, but it’s . . . it’s not something see your work, they know you love color. You ginia Woolf – lucky. That’s why the window of it was picking up a little bit of the emo- made for the predictable awkwardness of fol- do with her poems,” and I started on the proj- you could simply pick up a pencil and draw. just love color. and the chair are just floating there in the tree. tion of the poem and translating it into myself lowing social form: the sentence punctuated ect. And I really was very reluctant to share It was a challenge on many levels – both in- And I questioned a whole lot, what was her and into my work and into my day. But that’s with the proper lilt, the teacup steadied, the this with people because I didn’t know if I tellectually and as a person trying to make art. BM: Mm-hmm. Yes. source of writing? What passion was it? Was what you do. hands held like closed wings in the lap, the could do it. But this involved taking an artist it a man? Was it a woman? Was it death? Was body sitting neither too lightly nor too heav- I respected very much and reading her work EF: There are poems that are very dark. She EF: And your canvases often explode with it love? Was it fear? And that’s the little black I love the power of shadows because of the ily upon the chair. All of this curtailed con- and seeing could I somehow catch her spark doesn’t avoid death, right? color, just wonderful juxtapositions of color. bird in the tree. I want to suggest that. I just magical reality that they have in their own versation, whereas the awkward encounter and turn it into some sort of visual art of my And the thrill that the – want to suggest that there’s something speak- right. I ended up entitling my exhibition with a person who is out of sight, but there, creation. And that, that’s a big step actually BM: No. I began to worry a bit about that. ing to her – to that figure. Emily’s Light. This is the only piece that is offered the possibility of a meeting of minds, – to find somebody else’s passion and to try This is Because I could not stop for Death BM: I do. I do love color. You’re right. not from a specific poem. It’s just trying to a whisper in the dark of truth, a voice listened and connect it with your passion and come up which I knew before and I did like. And that’s EF: And the light in this particular painting, answer that question: Why did she sit down hard for, and heard.” Mary Cappello asks, with a new piece of work that can stand on its probably the most illustrative piece that I’ve EF: That’s the tension. Because though it Bob! You talk about the slant of light. It’s sub- at that desk? And how did she sit down at “To meet without facing, is it more awkward own and not just copy or represent her. So it done. I think that phrase “He kindly stopped may be about a moment of dying, it’s very tle! But if we look carefully, look at all you’ve that desk? And why did she spend so many to face or turn away?”1 was a challenge, but a good challenge. for me” presents a civility, a gentlemanliness alive. We just have these two for example. done. And you’re talking about whites and so years writing what to her were obviously that we associate with the nineteenth centu- And there are some white figures. And you forth, about how you’ve used white and other very important life-giving pieces? If you Bob McCormick is a visual artist, and as EF: Let’s go back a little bit. Bob, you have ry. As I worked my way through the poem, I mentioned her white dress. Talk to us about things to create this sense of light! Talk about look beyond, there’s just a plain room. I kept he says, “a solitary soul,” a searcher, some- taught English in your life, so you are well- would read it again and again and just sketch some of these figures. that for us. ’Cause this is all light. everything very very plain, the desk, the one who explores a landscape – human, and versed in the forms, and novels, and short different ideas, write down different ideas. table, the candle, and the trees outside and the larger than human landscape. And he found stories, and poets, and the various eras. What And somewhere along the way, this particu- BM: As I read about her, I understood that as BM: Yes, and thank you because I don’t moon. And of course there’s that figure there himself compelled to immerse himself in was your past experience with Emily Dick- lar piece – as I worked through it – using a she developed, she began to wear only white. know exactly what I mean. I clearly under- again with the shadow. And I don’t want to [Dickinson’s] world. And to have a “heart- inson? coffin form suggested itself. And I don’t like And so, I thought “Okay, I’ll work with stand in my life many, many times living say too much about that figure but I want to-heart,” if not face-to-face conversation, on macabre. I don’t like to go for that. But it was that.” Now as a watercolorist I’m not always here in Northeast Pennsylvania. I’ve been out viewers to ponder. And I think people who BM: As an English teacher, I ended up teach- there so I followed it. But I knew it needed thrilled with white. Because it’s what you call somewhere and there’s that moment where know Emily’s work and her history – what 1 Words of Mary Cappello in Southwest Review 2005 in an ing an awful lot of British lit, so I didn’t come something else. And in my research, I saw negative painting. I have to do other things you just kinda stop and you look and you feel. little we know – will enter the discussion: essay titled “Dickinson’s Facing or Turning Away.” across a lot of Emily in the classroom. I didn’t images of burials in the 1890s, 1870s, 1860s to make the white show. In this one Emily’s Your awareness is alert to the something that what is her source of light?

16 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 17 Watercolors by Robert McCormick, clockwise from lower left: Divine Intoxication, McCormick’s response to “Exultation is the going” (Fr143); Emily’s Light, the title piece from the exhibit; Because I could not stop for Death (from Fr479); A Certain Slant of Light (from Fr320); and The Last Night that She Lived (from Fr1100).

McCormick is a former high school English teacher, though he had taught only a few of the most famous of Dickinson’s poems. Initially drawn to her work after he saw a production of Laurie McCants’ play Industrious Angels, he says his first reaction to the poems was “Oh man! What did I get myself into? This is really hard.” The exhibit included nine original paintings.

18 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 19 Teaching Dickinson Teaching Dickinson

Series Editor, Marianne Noble the poem aloud also intensified that deft final Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29: “So long as men most immediate source for Dickinson’s “Es- move, the speaker’s shift to the present tense: can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives sential Oils.” “What do the poetic framings of this. . . . ” [italics mine]. the metaphor accomplish that the statement “’Tis Centuries - and yet”: “Since then – ’tis Centuries – ” Chris said, half does not?” The question prompted animat- statement of fact, half expression of wonder: Robin was at a different table from Chris and ed responses, as all my students had learned Teaching Dickinson and the Presence of the Past Paige, and as she finished the poem, their not only to understand poems but to embody and yet tables – and corners of the room – seemed lit them. Feels shorter than the Day up together. By Elizabeth Harris Sagaser I first surmised the Horses’ Heads How had they, and I, arrived at this point? Were toward Eternity – At a third table, Courtney, a senior History xchanging hellos and through the semester. With and American Studies double major and Edu- I developed “Dickinson and English Poetry” Esmall talk, students in its ceiling-high bookshelves, We knew these powerful lines were ap- cation minor, raised her hand, offering Sonnet six years ago, drawing on my work in poet- my course, Dickinson and wooden tables and comfort- proaching; we’d discussed the poem in a 5. A student of pedagogy as well as the past, ry and poetics (both historic and cognitive English Poetry, settled in able chairs, it was an ideal prior class as well as read it for this one. Yet she delivered the sonnet as an experienced studies approaches) and my training in ear- for the last class of the se- space for thinking about hearing them now gave us a fresh start of rec- teacher would, addressing all parts of the ly modern literature. The course compares mester. “Because I could literary pasts and presents. ognition: we were not mere passive listeners; room, using intonation and gesture to remind poems by Dickinson with poems by writers not stop for Death – ” and During our first class in the we were witnesses to the speaker’s memory her peers how the poem worked: “Those she admired and read intensely, from Shake- “This was a Poet – ” were room, students had perused and a voice sounding as immediate as if it hours,” and “never-ending time” were the speare and Milton to Keats, the Brontës and on the syllabus, as well as our college collection of Po- were 150 years ago. grammatical subjects, personified abstrac- E. B. Browning, and also with a few poems the Springfield Republican ems 1890, 1891, and 1896; tions who “frame” the beloved’s beauty with she did not read but that are mutually illumi- obituary for Emily by Susan deciphered a letter in Dick- The moment primed the class for revisiting “gentle work” but then “play the tyrants to the nating with hers (by 17th-century poet Kath- Huntington Dickinson. inson's own hand; and had a central theme of the course, that poetry very same” and “confound” an unsuspecting erine Philips, for example, and poets after the “privilege” to “meet” has long been – and still is – a technology summer in winter. Dickinson, such as Elizabeth Bishop and Au- “Who will start us off -to many an “Antique Book” for bringing voices and thought from past dre Lorde). Students also explore contexts for day?” I asked. “Who can (Fr569B) approximating a centuries into the minds of newly present Courtney paused dramatically at the sonnet’s Dickinson's reading and writing, including speak "Because I could not shelf or two of the Dickinson readers, speakers and thinkers. This spring, I turn, then began again, glad to reveal that in her education, correspondence, interest in the stop for Death – ”? family library, including The had particularly emphasized poetry as such a this sonnet at least, time does not triumph; natural world, and American Civil War. And Household Book of Poetry, technology because it aligned with our cam- “summer’s distillation" does – specifically, of course, vitally, students gain close reading They knew I meant, speak ed. Charles Dana, 1865. pus-wide Arts and Humanities theme, Pres- "flow'rs distilled” [italics mine]. They “leese and comparative analytical skill. by heart. Thanks to the ence of the Past. Now I invoked the poems but their show, their substance still lives hands-on, immersive ac- “I’m not sure I have the that first helped students think through the sweet” [her emphasis]. She made it clear that For the course to work, however, for this idea tivities and assignments whole thing – ” one of the concept: Shakespeare's Sonnet 5, “Those this still-living “substance,” along with Dick- of poetry as a kind of technology to capture students were engaged in two said. hours,” and Dickinson’s “Essential Oils – inson’s “Essential Oils – ” was more than per- imaginations and provoke personal invest- through the course, partic- are wrung –.” “I believe a few of you know fume; it was the poetry in our midst. ment, for students to learn to read poems ularly the Table-of-Mem- “I could try, but…” said the these,” I said. “Might someone speak one or from 400 years ago as well as 150 years ago, ory Project I assign after other. the other for us?” “You are probably thinking now of a particu- and for them to get to know Dickinson as a midterm, my question lar poem you read for today,” I said. Though reader herself as well as a poet, I had to find was not unexpected, nor "How about you share it?" I Robin, a sophomore Environmental Studies no one knew this one by heart, everyone nod- particularly immersive, hands-on ways to en- unwelcome. I scanned the suggested. "Paige, you start major considering an English minor, volun- ded, and we opened our books to “This was gage students in poems. I had to crack their room expectantly, trying with the first stanza, then teered the Dickinson poem. “Essential Oils a Poet – .” assumptions and resistances. I had to give to recall which students in Chris, you speak the second, – are wrung – ” she began, quietly but pre- “close reading” a new meaning. this group had included the and if either of you can't re- cisely, and with evident pleasure. When I asked how the three poems framed poem in their project pro- call a word or line, the other the distillation metaphor differently, many In each iteration of the course, I experiment- posals. Photo Credit: John W. Sagaser will prompt." When last discussing the poem, we had recol- hands went up. Thanks to the useful footnotes ed, pruned and honed. A versatile foundation lected delightedly that Dickinson herself kept in Cristanne Miller’s edition of the poems, for much course work proved to be a poem I caught a look of potential confidence in to each other. “Which of you will speak it They glanced at each other and agreed. poems in a drawer. Now “this – in Lady's our course text, students also considered how reading strategy students came to know as “A the eyes of two students. “Oh yes,” I said, for us?” Drawer” (Fr772B) resonated anew, surround- T.W. Higginson’s statement “Literature is at- Very Smart Way.” I’d first created this strat- remembering. “Paige, you’ve been working The impromptu duet absorbed and carried us, ed as we were by books that had long out- tar of roses, one distilled drop from a million egy for a Renaissance poetry course to help with this poem. And Chris, you have been Happily, we were in the Special Collec- emphasizing the poem’s narrative structure – lived their first owners. I also reminded the blossoms” (“Letter to a Young Contributor,” students inhabit and analyze strange-seeming as well!” They happened to be sitting next tions reading room, our alternate classroom a journey advancing stanza by stanza. Hearing class of "this" turning us into collaborators in Atlantic Monthly April 1862), was likely the poems with highly unfamiliar language. The

20 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 21 Teaching Dickinson Teaching Dickinson

strategy works for any poem that represents having right on the page in Miller’s edition, day not only provokes students to notice key guidelines based on “A Very Smart Way”) hear each other’s observations, knowing the students tell me how their Dickinson poems voice, as most poems did and a majority still and they learn how to look at manuscripts on moves in a poem, but also forces them to see and reflecting on a group of poems, and by kind of research, experiment, and reflection sharpen their focus on particular landscapes, do. It also works well for speeches and other the Emily Dickinson Archive. Always they are how attentively they are reading in the first way of this analysis, learning them by heart. that informs these insights. details of birds, and their own processes of kinds of persuasive discourse. struck by Dickinson’s well-known remarks place. At an appointment with me, they hand in their observation. Students from many disciplines on the power of words from a letter to Joseph annotations and informal comparative/reflec- And while I begin most classes speaking a value internalizing poems that call out the When confronting a challenging poem, stu- Lyman. I project these on the screen: Fill-in-the-blanks versions of poems they tive essays, then speak the poems as if they poem by heart myself through the first half dangers of groupthink and uncritical "assent" dents ask themselves, “How do I get a foot- have not yet read work in a different way: were their own thoughts. of the semester, in the second half, as we’ve to default assumptions. Psychology and neu- hold in this poem?” If they reply to them- We used to think, Joseph, when I was an un- students must try their hand at thinking un- seen, anything can happen. roscience students not only find Dickinson’s selves, “A Very Smart Way, My Little Pal…” sifted girl and you so scholarly that words conventionally as Dickinson did. On a snowy From the start, I emphasize that trying to “brain” poems thought-provoking in ongo- (or, “My Literary Pal”), then, there it is – a were cheap & weak. Now I dont know of morning, for example, they might find “It memorize poems in a rote way, abstracting Paige wrote, “I had goosebumps speaking ing ways, but also find the Table-of-Memory plan. The first letter of each word in the reply anything so mighty. There are [those] to sifts from Leaden Sieves” (Fr291B) on their lines from the unfolding sense of the poem ‘Because I could not stop for death’ in class Project gives them actual experience of cog- prompts them to look for different rhetorical which I lift my hat when I see them sitting desks, with lines to complete such as: “It Ruf- would be antithetical to the assignment. And that day! It was a really unexpected moment nitive processes they have studied in class. devices and elements of craft, and a couple of princelike among their peers on the page. fles _____ of Posts – / As ____ of a ____.” indeed, students are surprised and empow- for me, but I think that it would not have been Livia, a pre-med junior wrote, “Throughout letters prompt them to consider how all the Sometimes I write one, and look at his Or, during our unit on the American Civil ered to find that by analyzing and annotating possible without the creative and kind of out- this project, I have learned a lot about my devices and elements work together. In brief, outlines till he glows as no sapphire. (First War, they will find the battlefield photo titled poems, they already know much of a poem side-the-box thinking that this class offered.” powers of attention, perception, memory and A=Address and Apostrophe; V=Verb tenses cited in Richard Sewall’s The Life of Emily A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylva- without even ‘trying.’ Ensuring they know Chris proclaimed it “a very cool experience . . imagination.” Elizabeth, a pre-med senior re- and Verbs; S=Sentences | Syntax | Sound; Dickinson, vII.) nia July 1863 (Timothy H. O'Sullivan) pro- the whole requires them to further discover . the mixing of our various takes on the poem, flected, “As a Biology major with a concen- W=Words; M = Metaphor | state of Mind; L jected on the screen, and on their desks, an for themselves – by reason, empathy, imag- while never sacrificing our unique voices.” tration in Neuroscience, I have learned count- = Line; P = speaker’s Purpose. I reinforce the analytical experiments in “A incomplete poem, including the lines “’Tis ination and sound perception – why each Robin recalled “The space of the room itself less times about how learning occurs in the Very Smart Way” with in-class, hands-on ac- populous with ____ and ____ – / And Men word, phrase, image, and idea in the poem was very inviting to recite in, being surround- brain, and how strengthening neural connec- The mnemonic alone guides students in lots tivities, such as setting up comparisons with too straight to ___ again – / And Piles of leads to the next. Learning poems by heart in ed by all of the literary art and the works that tions is the way to create a strong memory. of situations, including on essay exams, but corrupted versions of poems, either corrupted solid ___ – ” (Fr704). They thus experience this way is the closest kind of reading. influenced Dickinson,” and remarked on the By annotating these poems first and noticing when they first use the strategy, and later by me to make a point about verb tense, per- how readily predictable words and concepts “fluidity,” “passion” and “inflection” of class- particular details, learning them by heart was when annotating for longer assignments, they son, meter, diction, or metaphor (for exam- spring to mind, while it is a different feat en- Additional benefits abound. For many- stu mates speaking poems. Courtney recalled a much more fluid process than I imagined it refer to a handout that elaborates on each cat- ple, “I measured every Grief I met” instead tirely to forge words and ideas that are both dents, the very act of deciding which poems how in the last classes, “we were all able to would be.” egory with useful questions and prompts for of “I measure every Grief I meet” [Fr550]) or surprising and insightful. they want to keep in their minds and lives build off of each other's memorized poems by short experiments. Under “A=Address and corrupted by early editors (the last stanza of involves extra hours of reading and thinking offering lines from our own repertoire,” and And students find the poems they learn useful Apostrophe,” for example, they read: “Who the Todd/Higginson version of “If you were When we first read sonnets, I lead the class about poems. And the project does more than how the project and course “position[ed] all in pervasive personal ways. As Hannah, a ju- is speaking to whom, or to what? What per- coming in the Fall” works particularly well in composing two quatrains of our own any number of lectures could do in teaching of us as teachers and students, experts and nior English/Creative Writing and Studio Art sonal pronouns does the speaker use? How here). Sometimes I distribute stacks of poem sonnet, a humorous one that aims to include students how mightily form, meter and all novices, all at once.” major, wrote, “When I am at a loss for words would the poem be different if – for example lines, one or two line[s] per strip, to unscram- all the students’ first names. They craft the kinds of sound weaving (assonance, conso- or experience emotions I cannot explain, I – the speaker used third person instead of first ble. Other times, pairs or trios of students will last quatrain and couplet as homework, and nance, slant rhyme, internal rhyme, etc.) – Courtney gestures toward a fact I can’t em- will have the internal tool of these poems to and second person, or vice-versa? Rewrite the each compare different elements of craft in I read successful efforts aloud in class. This meshed with provocative thought – engage phasize enough – any four of the nineteen reflect back on. I find a sense of home in these poem in different persons to find out.” When the same two poems (“I dwell in Possibili- work helps them experience the differences attention and facilitate memory. Thus by students in the class I described might have verses.” students answer the questions and do the ty – ” and Emily Bronte’s “To Imagination” in Dickinson’s shorter but still usually iambic learning a Shakespeare sonnet or two, they been the ones who happened to know the experiments – for example, rewriting, “I’m is a rich pairing here), and then we’ll share lines, and to engage in further revealing know for themselves what 18th-c. Shake- poems of that day. In other classes, and in Citations Nobody! Who are you?” as “She’s Nobody! observations as a class. Sometimes I lead full experiments, such as altering Shakespeare’s spearean actor Edmund Kean meant when he individual Table-of-Memory appointments, I Who is he?” – they discover they have some- comparative close readings, particularly for lines to work in ballad measure and said Shakespeare’s verse was “stickable.” As heard many more thoughtful and sometimes Shakespeare’s Sonnets quoted from Shakespeare’s thing important to say about direct address poems that tend to baffle students at first but Dickinson’s to work as pentameter. they speak and hear Dickinson poems, they powerful renditions of poems by Dickinson Sonnets, ed. Stephen Booth. Yale UP, 2000. in the poem. Likewise, they find they have then with a few leading questions and sugges- understand why Susan Huntington Dick- and Shakespeare, as well as a few by Kather- something to say about apostrophe when they tions, open up rapidly and become favorites; The Table-of-Memory Project, a signature inson took such pleasure in reading the po- ine Philips, Keats, Emily Bronte, and an ex- Quotes from Hamlet are from The Norton Shake- rewrite “Burglar! Banker – Father! / I am at the top on this list, fittingly, are “I think I assignment in the course, takes all this analy- ems aloud, and how Mabel Loomis Todd’s cerpt from E. B. Browning. What a pleasure, speare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al., 2nd ed., poor once more!” as “He’s Burglar, Banker, was enchanted” (Fr627A) paired with Keats’s sis a step further. (“Table of memory” comes own reading aloud was pivotal in persuading experiencing these poems afresh, framed by Norton, 2008. Father! / And I am poor once more!” (Fr39) “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” from Hamlet. Speaking to his father’s ghost, Thomas Wentworth Higginson to help her particular student voices and approaches, For the “W=Words” category, students also Hamlet says he’ll “wipe away” all else from edit and publish a first edition of Dickinson’s sometimes infused with surprising observa- Elizabeth Harris Sagaser is an associate play a substitution game, and they learn I also make and distribute fill-in-the-blanks the “table of my memory" so “thy command- work. tions! professor at Colby College. Her teaching to gloss words using the Emily Dickinson versions of poems by which students grapple ment all alone shall live / Within the book and and scholarship center on Renaissance poet- Lexicon (particularly the 1844 Websters), with such lines and metaphoric possibilities volume of my brain / Unmixed with baser Finally, the project yields dynamic, inclusive Learning poems by heart enables well-craft- ry and culture, poetry in the history of ideas the OED, and Stephen Booth’s edition of as: “prompter than a ____” (Fr383) or “The matter” [l. 1.5.99, 1.5.98, 1.5.102-104].) The class engagement. Students are eager to offer ed language and ideas to play a role in ev- (scientific and political), transatlantic poet- Shakespeare’s Sonnets. They learn too about Brain is just the weight of ___ – ” (Fr598). project immerses students in choosing, an- analysis they've gained over hours of working eryday thought, sometimes in unexpected ry, and cognitive poetics. She has published Dickinson’s alternate words, which they love Doing this with poems on the syllabus for the alyzing, annotating (according to thorough intimately with a poem, and they are eager to and important ways. Environmental Science poems and essays as well as scholarship.

22 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 23 Poet to Poet Poet to Poet

Series Editor, Jonnie Guerra one hundred essays about Odysseus in the underworld: a grill that fell cause he was asthmatic – and when the dog tugged at her leash, and I apart the first time we lugged it into the woods on a summer camping moved closer to this mirage, I felt his love for me seeping through that In the essay that follows, featured poet Faith Shearin reflects on Emily Dickinson in light of a personal tragedy in her own life, and she trip beside a Michigan river where we collected flat black stones. window like a velvet breeze; then, he and the window vanished and I does so with the “sheer sanity of vision” and “economy of pain” that Linda Pastan so aptly ascribed to Dickinson herself. Shearin is the was aware of children in costumes knocking on doors. Only later, when author of six books of poetry: The Owl Question (volume 6 of the May Swenson Poetry Award Series, 2002), The Empty House (2008), Many of life's daily details have shifted since Emily was alive; she was a chaplain called from a hallway where my husband was already too Moving the Piano (2011), Telling the Bees (2014), Orpheus, Turning (2015 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize), and, most recently, Darwin’s confined, for example, to travel by horse or train and could not choose sedated to speak, did I understand the meaning behind this astral scene; Daughter (2018), published by the Stephen F. Austin University Press. In addition, Shearin is the recipient of awards from the Fine many vocations other than spinster or wife; there was no significant only then did I see what might have been lost when that shadowy win- Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Yaddo. Her medical help for her failing eyes; her questions about the natural world dow closed. poems have been read aloud by Garrison Keillor on “The Writer’s Almanac” and included in American Life in Poetry. Shearin taught were answered by heavy tomes instead of Google; she learned Latin high school English for a decade and also has been writer-in-residence/visiting writer at Interlochen Center for the Arts, American and botany and how to make bread and knew nothing of tweeting or When Emily wrote “Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly University, Carver Center for the Arts, and West Virginia University. She currently lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, what she terms online banking; but death, it turns out, has remained more or less the stopped for me – / The Carriage held but just Ourselves – / And Immor- “Emily's town.” A special thank you to Adrienne Su who first brought Shearin and her poetry to my attention. same. An early death, like that of her nephew Gib, caused a deep, relent- tality” (Fr479), I think she was saying that death comes for us the way less grief and raised questions about the purpose of our mortal journey; morning comes, the way moonlight seeps through our windows, the I'm familiar with that kind of grief and those sorts of questions. Why do way snow blows over our porches and fills the branches of our trees; some people receive a brief life while others linger and grow old? we are living our lives, as my husband did, trying to attend a meeting A Wild Night and a New Road though he felt a strange ache in his chest; we do not stop for death but When she wrote “The Distance that the dead have gone / Does not at find that death has stopped for us, as when my husband's heart devel- By Faith Shearin first appear;” (Fr1781), I can agree; my husband seemed to sleep at the oped a hole no surgeon could mend. And when Dickinson wrote “The center of a hospital room and looked, at the end, as if he might open Stillness in the Room / Was like the Stillness in the Air – / Between the his eyes and reach for his glasses; the fact of his absence was a thing I Heaves of Storm – ” (Fr591), she gave language to the universal expe- mily Dickinson spent the first decade of the other; two days later I found him in a encountered afterwards: in restaurants where I dined alone, across from rience of departure and silence, of a body growing cold, the experience Eher life in a house that overlooked the wintery hospital attached to a city of ma- an empty chair; on parents’ weekend at my daughter's college (which of a corpse without a soul, of the loneliness of being left behind and the Amherst cemetery, so she witnessed many fu- chines; our final conversation was about happens to be the same Mount Holyoke where Emily was once a stu- elusiveness of the afterlife. Where have the creatures and people we nerals; she saw wooden coffins and displaced Halloween: the children in costumes I was dent) when other fathers rowed across a lake with their daughters while love gone? Will we ever see them again? These are the questions the earth and was familiar with the sicknesses of expecting to arrive on my doorstep that my daughter rowed without one; the beds and tables in my apartment ancient Greeks answered with an underworld in which Charon rowed her era: tuberculosis, measles, cholera, scarlet evening, asking for candy; he stayed on were flat, empty expanses of loneliness; my and typhoid fevers. At Mount Holyoke Semi- the phone longer than usual. husband's clothes were folded into an armoire I nary, where she was a student at the age of 17, could not bring myself to open; his watch wait- Emily Dickinson, Called Back she refused to accept Christianity; certain of its “Sorry to linger,” he said. ed on a bedside table for his missing wrist. notions about heaven did not always seem to Emily lived fifteen years beside West Cemetery, watching comfort her; in November of 1882, after the “You'll be home soon,” I said. When Emily wrote “Parting is all we know of those solemn processions toward silence and, just before she died, death of her mother, Emily wrote: “We don't heaven, / And all we need of hell” (Fr1773), know where she is, though so many tell us” We had our last conversation without I am reminded of my husband's reluctance to she wrote: Dear cousins, called back. Her casket was carried (L785). Just three years before her own death knowing it would be our last: talked about take that final business trip to Colorado, of the by six Irish workmen and, following her instructions, they circled Emily sat at the bedside of her nephew Gib, a trip we meant to take to Vermont to buy way he stood in our bedroom the night before who came down with typhoid fever and suc- syrup and cheese and walk under canopies his flight saying: “I don't want to go to Den- cumbed at the age of eight; there is some spec- of sugar maples before the fall foliage was ver,” as if he already knew Colorado – with its her flower garden, walked through a horse barn, ulation that his death was so distressing it ulti- lost to snow; we considered a chipped tea- dry air and impossible altitudes – meant the took a grassy path through fields to a grave mately hastened her own, which took place in pot, a tire on our jeep that needed replac- Photo Credit: Kerry Stavely end of his life. We parted many times on his the bedroom where she accomplished so much ing; we made fun of the pillows in his ho- journeys to distant countries – Australia, India, lined with evergreen boughs, inside an iron fence; of her writing, after spending seven months tel room; I expected he would be in our kitchen private language I was not aware of until I be- New Zealand – but always he returned with she was called back the way children are called home in bed; the note she fashioned for her cous- by early evening, in time to see the parade of came its last speaker. Only he and I knew the dried kangaroo meat, or a bit of silk, or a story TAD was a terrible telephone answering de- ins during her last days read simply: “Called capes and wings. about a monkey dancing in a park. Just before in the evenings, dusk falling over rooftops, wagons back” (L1046). vice we owned when we were first married, I received the phone call from the doctors in and baseball bats abandoned in the grass, called back In a letter to her friend Elizabeth Holland in which almost exclusively recorded messages Denver I was walking our dog on a street full I have been thinking about death because my 1866, Emily wrote: “When you had gone the from a man named Marty Hanson at Bloom- of Victorian houses, their porches decorated the way dogs are called back from forests, their noses husband of 24 years died suddenly of a heart love came. I supposed it would. The sup- field Hills Schools Credit Union, who liked with bats and ghosts, when I had a vision of attack this past November, while on a busi- per of the heart is when the guest has gone” to remind us we were late repaying a loan; him standing in his college dorm room when pointed towards doorways. ness trip in Colorado; one morning he was a (L318). I have felt this since my husband's only we knew the Red Devil Grill was a thing he was nineteen; he was opening a window be- – Faith Shearin 48-year-old man waiting for a Lyft to take him death: that, in his absence, my love for him we ordered off an infomercial at the end of cause his lungs were bothering him – a thing our first year of teaching high school English to the airport: a dark middle-aged fellow with has intensified, as if memory works asa that happened often when we were young be- Reprinted with permission of Stephen F. Austin Press a suitcase in one hand and a mobile phone in magnifying glass; he and I shared a common together, after staying up all night to grade

24 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 25 Poet to Poet Reviews of Publications

a boat over the River Styx, and the dead arrived with coins under their read aloud, and we were driving towards that coast we loved, where tongues, to a dark shore where they fed on the seeds of pomegranates seals sun themselves on the beach, and whales blow a single stream of Renée Bergland, Book Review Editor and forgot the details of their lives; in this place, gates were guarded by water into the air at dawn, and suddenly the dog vanished, my daugh- a three-headed dog, and heroes might be lucky enough to reach the Ely- ter's hand resting on nothing; then, my husband disappeared, the steer- sian Fields. The afterlife, for Ancient Egyptians, was a place in which ing wheel unsteady, and my daughter and I rode on: our hands in our William Logan. drafts of Shakespeare’s sonnet 2. Other etry and so little given to foolishness. He they would need their organs preserved in Canopic jars, guarded by the laps, unsure of the road or the car's direction, not knowing whether we Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods. Co- essays pair well-known poems with lesser- is more aware than most that criticism is heads of Gods, a place where the objects of this life could be recycled: were about to crash, or arrive at a cottage for a family holiday with only lumbia UP, 2018 known ones: Shelley’s “Ozymandias” with a “idle speculation.” The fact that some pair- the harp or golden bed, the chariot or canoe; it was a place of judgement half our family. poem on the same subject by Shelley’s friend ings work better than others is much like where the goodness of a dead person's heart was weighed against the By Michael L. Manson Horace Smith, while Longfellow’s Hiawatha the historical trivia he explores. Some triv- feather of truth. In the midnight blizzard of that Denver hospital I was What Dickinson wrote about death and grief are relevant more than a is discussed along with several parodies, ia produces more insight than others, but greeted by a doctor who told me my husband's kidneys were failing; century later; they are the very things Queen Victoria discovered when recommend reading William Logan’s es- including one by Lewis Carroll. The pairings all trivia is ultimately trivial. The greatness he wore a white coat and a closed expression when he explained: Your her beloved husband, Albert, died and she went on wearing black for Isay collection Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s are best when the poems illuminate each of the poem remains, inviting readers to husband cannot leave the hospital like this. I did not immediately un- forty years: insisting her servants bring a steaming bowl of water and Woods with a cup of coffee in your favorite other: Shelley’s greatness vs. Smith’s further meditation. The pairing of poems is derstand that the doctor meant my husband was going to die; my mind razor to his empty bedchamber, for a morning shave. morning nook or a glass of wine with a view inability to achieve profundity; Pound’s less important than the brute fact that the worked first on a plan to push his hospital bed through the cold maze of the setting sun. Logan creates that warm call to art vs. Williams’ refusal to answer poems he discusses well reward any effort of corridors to the safety of the parking lot, where I imagined he might When Dickinson describes herself in a letter to T.W. Higginson she says: and familiar meditative entrance into po- such calls. Such pairings provide Logan an at understanding any part of their accom- remember himself. “I have no portrait, now, but am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is ems that mean much to him as well as those opportunity to turn a well-crafted insight: plishments, whether those analyses are bold, like the Chestnut Bur – and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, invested in the history of the lyric as it has “Ozymandias,” for example, “overthrows informed by the New Criticism, cultural When Emily wrote “The Distance that the dead have gone / Does not that the Guest leaves – ” (L268), I know her face all these years later, been understood since Brooks and Warren, convention’s mild tyrannies about how studies, the New Historicism, or his own at first appear;” (Fr1781), I see she was also gesturing towards the nine without a photograph, because her language is specific, witty, alive; she Richards and Winters. My tastes and inter- poems come to be written” or “We’re practice of seeking out the lost world of the months I have lived without my husband: months when I stopped using speaks to me, clearly and accurately, from a small New England town ests are larger, but Logan helped me reread unlikely ever to know who Shakespeare was, poem’s composition. the word we and reverted to using the word I, months when I learned to before I was born. After a move across Amherst, Emily described her poems I knew very well and renewed my ap- he was so many.” Such well-turned insights speak of him in the past tense, mornings when I would awaken feeling, disorientation in a letter this way: “I am out with lanterns, looking for preciation for the material facts that underlie make this book a pleasure. Because Logan’s method is meditative rath- for a moment, ordinary, then remember; these were the months when I myself. . . . They say that ‘home is where the heart is.’ I think it is where their craft. He is a master of historical trivia, er than discursive, Dickinson readers will watched couples talking to one another in airports and felt my face grow the house is” (L182). When I read this I am reminded of how I moved to grounding readers in some part of the world Other pairs, however, are less illuminating: want to read his essay on “After great pain” hot, months when I opened drawers to expired passports or wilted boxes the first house in which I would be a widow instead of a wife and found in which poets created their work. Like any Lowell’s skunks vs. Heaney’s, or Frost’s on their own. It is one of the volume’s stron- of hats, months when I tried to take the dog to the vet but left before her my identity was tied up in my relationship to my late husband; I was un- master, Logan knows his limits, and thus his horse vs. Wilbur’s. Especially disappointing ger essays. Like his other essays, it would appointment because the paperwork required my marital status, months sure of how to introduce myself to neighbors; I could not seem to create book periodically reminds readers that spec- is the pairing of Dickinson’s “After great be enriched by engagement with literary when I looked into photographs where my husband and I went on un- a cohesive narrative of my life. I said I have been recently widowed and ulation might be idle “but idle speculation is pain” with Frost’s “Stopping by Woods,” the scholars and historians who have examined folding blankets for picnics, and dancing under white balloons, his hand realized I was now defined by his absence. I thought of Emily's image not the worst way to attack a poem, so long essay that gives the volume its title. Logan’s more systematically the material and social on my back, utterly oblivious to the fate that awaited us; the distance to of a lantern moving through the dark, of the way she searched for the as it’s no more than that.” He is that rare crit- interpretation of each poem is fascinating, worlds of these poets. For example, he seeks locate my husband's face accurately in memory deepened; the distance same self we all lose eventually: to change, and loss, and, finally, death. ic who sticks with the promise he will never but the pairing only serves the gimmick of to understand Dickinson’s “hidden romantic between the reality of his presence in life, and the lack of his presence in I read Dickinson's observation, “Dying is a wild Night and a new Road” insist on an interpretation. pairing. He concludes that Dickinson and life.” including especially the addressee of death, took time to fully reveal itself. (L463) and remember waking up the morning after my husband's death Frost are “two very different poets, with a the Master letters, but dwells only on men in a hotel room in Colorado, with his suitcase and glasses and laptop; Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods collects life too opaque and a life not opaque enough. and even then without reference to cur- When Emily explained “Death is the Common Right / Of Toads and I think of the first meal I tried to eat without him: a pumpkin muffin essays that were published in Hopkins Which was which remains an open ques- rent scholarship. In an aside about Samuel Men – ” (Fr419), I believe she was talking about the fate we share that stuck in my throat; I remember how I went home to rooms that no Review, Hudson Review, New Criterion, tion.” At such moments, the turn of phrase Bowles’ inability to understand Dickinson’s with all our fellow creatures; shortly after my husband died our family longer made sense, of the way our fish languished in the living room Parnassus, Salmagundi, and Yale Review. is more clever than revealing. Separately in- poetry, he observes that Bowles only pub- dachshund took ill and did not recover; in life she had been a warm, aquarium: his red tail fanning the water; I think of how that fish rose to Each essay pairs two poems: Frost with triguing, the analyses of the two poems do lished poetry “most adapted to the taste of low-slung creature with striped fur and a long snout; she slept pressed the surface when I fed him and hid sometimes in a hollow log, of the Wilbur then later with Dickinson; Lowell not cohere into something larger. the day” before turning on Dickinson, com- against us, her body wrapped around our necks like a scarf; we called way we lived near one another in our two adjacent worlds – one terres- with Heaney; Keats with Donald Justice; plaining that her own taste “was conserva- her professor of slumber or anxiety medication on legs because her trial, one aquatic – without any real ability to communicate, of how I and Pound with William Carlos Williams. I wish I had some better word than gim- tive and sentimental,” including especially a presence calmed us; she barked at everything she found threatening: watched him with pleasure in that other realm where he moved without One essay achieves its pairing by examining mick because Logan is so serious about po- love of “romantic drivel.” At such moments, baby carriages, lawn mowers, tall workmen who came to fix the sink. legs and breathed water; I thought sometimes that my husband was like Our dog had no words, of course, so it was her presence I missed in the fish: gauzy, submerged. I thought of Emily at the end of her life, just the weeks after she died, her dark eyes which did not peer into mine, a few years older than I am now, being called back, of the way she wrote her head which did not rise in the window when I came home, her tail on old envelopes in her bedroom, of her poems which included all the The Bulletin welcomes notices of all Dickinson-related books, including those published outside the U.S. which did not wag when I pulled a roast from the oven; I had a reoccur- words she was considering, written one above the other, of her dashes Send information to Renée Bergland, 3 Barrett Road, Hanover, NH 03755, U.S.A. ring dream in which my husband packed a car for our family vacation and half rhymes, of the way she dwelled “in Possibility / a fairer House Email: [email protected] to Cape Cod, and he was at the wheel, and our daughter sat in the back than Prose – ” (Fr466), her poetry a house the way the body is a house, with our dog, and I was in the passenger seat with maps and books to her lantern casting a light for me out here, in a forest of grief, 2019.

26 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 27 Reviews of Publications Reviews of Publications

Logan fails to exercise a historical imag- Dickinson party. In this episode, as in most of the others, are broadly drawn but well-acted, and pro- shows Ben announcing that has always Dickinson and her peers are all clearly figured ination. He could have learned much from Apple TV series created by Alena Smith the show’s characters engage in an unexpect- vide an amusing counterpoint to Dickinson’s been more attracted to Austin. Throughout as members of Generation Z. They speak like scholars who have seen how much Dick- and starring Hailee Steinfeld as a young ed amount of sexual activity. Indeed, through- main relationships. Actress Hailee Steinfeld the series, Dickinson’s relationships are the youth of today (I laughed out loud when inson’s reading contributed to her genius, Emily Dickinson out the series, sex functions frequently as an bounces off the other actors, switching from passionately ambiguous. Dickinson said “we need to throw one of our learning how to read through her eyes and easy punchline, driving home the point that feminist rebel to petulant teen to perturbed classic Dickinson house parties”). They take sensibilities, not ours. By Annelise Brinck-Johnsen Emily Dickinson was a human being who at sister to jealous lover in the blink of an eye. Despite the show’s clear desire to frame Dick- opium and then dance to Lizzo. There is a mi- some point surely experienced desire. There She superbly masters dialogue that goes from inson the poet as presciently “woke,” the show nor subplot in which a character gives a nude One function of criticism is to criticize, and he remarkable and often outrageous is oral sex of all varieties. There is manual ridiculous to heartbreaking to hilarious in a falters somewhat when it comes to race. Wiz self-portrait sketch to one suitor, only to have given that scholars rarely criticize these TApple TV series Dickinson presents a stimulation beneath a Christmas dinner table. single thought. The panoply of Emily Dick- Khalifa plays Dickinson’s imaginary friend it shown to the rest of his friend group, clearly days, poets have an opportunity to lead. Al- twenty-first century kaleidoscope view of the There is sex between two minor characters insons that Steinfeld portrays may not be the and mentor, Death, and there are other char- meant as a sexting analogy. There is even an though Logan has acquired a reputation for poet: emotions explode in a swirl of super- on a desk before a wedding. There is public ones of my imagination, but they are mes- acters of color throughout the series. Despite extended scene in which Lavinia Dickinson controversial pronouncements on contem- saturated color while electronic dance music masturbation. The sex rarely serves to further merizing. this inclusion clearly being intentional, the and her friends discuss how the Republican porary poets, his judgments in this volume plays loudly on the soundtrack. The effect the plot or showcase emotional relationships, exact message seems muddled. A flamboy- Party is the only truly “woke” party, due to its of classics are usually pat, unedifying. The is dizzying, beautiful, and often absurd. But and the effect is somewhere between a Judd *Spoilers Ahead* antly dressed Asian male peer of Dickinson’s firm anti-slavery stance. contrast between Shelley’s masterful “Ozy- somehow, it comes together. In an interview Apatow movie and an early season episode of proudly proclaims that his father is a samurai, mandias” and Smith’s much weaker version with the New York Times, Alena Smith, the Game of Thrones. In the first half of the series, the main which is why he has access to the most fash- The incongruities among the period set, leads to a sharp discussion of craft, but the creator of the series, explains, “People feel relationship is that of Dickinson and Sue ionable fans, and the show pauses for a mo- characters, words, and actions are clearly in- essay on Longfellow’s Hiawatha is limited very possessive about Emily Dickinson, for I mention the sex because it has been the fo- Gilbert, and Sue’s upcoming marriage to ment to let the import of that statement sink in, tended for comedic effect, but the episodes by the distance between one era’s taste and a good reason. Because nobody understands cus of many other reviews, and its inclusion is Austin Dickinson is the main source of before moving on to the next joke. An episode also capture the universality of the emotions another’s. Logan tries to erase this distance her, everybody feels like their little keyhole a clear artistic choice. Yet despite all the sex, conflict. Dickinson and Sue have a romantic focusing on fugitive slave laws (“I am afraid Dickinson can evoke in her poems. Although by arguing that as early as 1856 a London into her is the right one.” The view through Dickinson the poet is always the focal point of and sexual relationship in the show, as do to own a body”) does so through the lens of the series is flawed, it was clearly born from reviewer understood that Whitman might Smith’s cinematic keyholes are startling and the series. Dickinson changes radically from Sue and Austin, and tensions among the three an amateur dramatic production of “Othello.” love. I can only applaud its desire to introduce “‘push Longfellow into the shade,’” but sometimes incongruously twenty-first centu- one episode to the next, while other charac- frequently erupt. This relationship changes Dickinson is determined to force the family’s Dickinson in all her ambiguities to a younger the point remains congratulatory. Nothing ry, but for this reviewer, they are also often ters revolve around her in order to draw out with the introduction of Benjamin Franklin groom, who is black, to play the character of generation. Since watching it I have been rec- in the essay shakes readers from present shockingly, weirdly, right. different aspects of the poetry. The show is Newton half-way through the series. The Othello despite opposition from everyone in- ommending it to all the youths I know. tastes and concerns. Readers learn a lit- sharpest when Dickinson is contrasted with Newton of this series is shown as a mentor cluding the groom himself. The actual impact tle about the art of parody, and one wants other well-known figures. John Mulaney’s de- and potential suitor of Dickinson. They of an employer’s daughter trying to force a Although the series does not stake out a clear Annelise Brinck-Johnsen completed a Mas- more from an essay subtitled “The Name piction of a fame-hungry and bean-obsessed discuss poetry, kiss, promise to not-marry man into amateur theatrics because of his race position on any of the questions scholars de- ter’s degree Women’s Studies at Oxford Uni- and Nature of Parody.” I was happy to see Henry David Thoreau pulls no punches, and each other and exchange not-marriage vows, seems less idealistic than coercive, and the sit- bate surrounding Dickinson’s personal life, it versity and is currently studying law at Co- Logan cite Charles Calhoun’s biography of Zosia Mamet’s no-nonsense business-minded before Newton unfortunately dies (it is uation is not examined thoroughly. Similarly, is emphatically clear about Dickinson’s aes- lumbia. She is a regular reviewer of works Longfellow because Calhoun helps readers Louisa May Alcott is deserving of a show of implied that he dies in the Dickinson house in a later episode, the groom remarks ironical- thetics and the impact of her poetry today. of works of fiction, particularly young adult see why Longfellow’s contemporaries val- her own. Dickinson’s interactions with these with Dickinson herself tending to him). ly to his wife that “these white people really The show highlights the queer possibilities of fiction, that involve Emily Dickinson. ued his contributions. Unfortunately, Logan Dickinson’s poems, and celebrates their radi- characters highlight her positioning within the However, Ben is also coded as queer. One know how to throw a party,” when the party seems to have learned little from Calhoun, cal antiracist and antisexist sentiments. American literary canon: an iconoclast driven scene about Ben’s fantasy of a circus shows is devolving into embarrassing pandemoni- and because Logan does not seek out other by a love of nature and poetry as opposed to him kissing a man, while another about um. While this remark is amusing, it seems strong scholars of the nineteenth century, he The series does not strive for historical accu- fame or fortune. Dickinson’s nightmare of her own funeral almost negligently ahistorical to pretend that remains trapped in contemporary tastes that racy so much as it dwells in the possibilities two servants of color would be in- are already a century old. Logan struggles hinted at by Dickinson’s poems. Although the Dickinson’s relationship with her family and vited guests to a party thrown by the Purrless my cat can stroll away to move his thinking past his own historical series has a loose plot arc, it functions more as friends, on the other hand, is more prone to Dickinson family. Rejecting human cheer. moment, but he is masterful at embedding an anthology. Every episode offers a distinct variation. Edward Dickinson oscillates be- To the same corner wends its way the masters in their history. Readers seeking gloss on Dickinson as seen through the lens tween supportive pride and stern patriarchal The politics are not fully thought And forms a furry sphere. to see familiar poems in fresh ways will en- of a specific poem. Each one is titled with a force. Emily Norcross Dickinson is played out, but overall I find the ambiguity joy his “idle speculations” about the world line from a particular poem, which has a re- beautifully by Jane Krakowski as a woman so to be an excellent way to showcase How cordial is the mystery of their composition. lation of some kind to the action of the epi- obsessed with homemaking that it verges into the various ways of looking at Dick- Of feline solitude. sode. They all end with Dickinson reciting the parody. Lavinia Dickinson is boy-crazy, but inson and her poetry: after all, Dick- Until I beckon spaciously Michael L. Manson teaches in Washington, poem. Dickinson’s language, much more than also often more aware of political and social inson’s own thoughts and politics And he returns for food. DC, at Georgetown Day School. His article her life, is the driving force here. issues than her sister, and Austin Dickinson is have been hotly discussed for years. on Dickinson’s metrical grammar appears an immature man-child who continues to fall More broadly, the show functions Felicia Nimue Ackerman in Blackwell’s Companion to Emily Dick- The most widely-reviewed episode, “Wild upwards because he is the only son in a prom- The Carriage held but just Hailee as an extended riff on what it means inson. Nights,” portrays a raucous and ahistorical inent family. Dickinson’s family members Steinfeld and Wiz Khalifa to be relevant and modern in 2019.

28 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 29 Music Review In Memoriam

Dickinson Tracks from Perth Jed Deppman, 1967-2019

By Diana Wagner By Gary Lee Stonum

ohn Erickson (Jed) Depp- 18-year-olds. Jed actually began here was a time when its own without any need Jman died peacefully on to teach this course several years Tmusical settings of Emi- for or allusion to Dickin- June 22, 2019, age 52, with before his diagnosis and could not ly Dickinson’s poetry had to son. his family at his side. Jed have known its personal relevance. be unusual, and so one could was a distinguished teacher expect something innovative The single word track list- and scholar who made The aptly uncanny link of that and unexpected. Having be- ings in the liner notes would significant contributions both course with the last decade of his come more commonplace benefit from a reference to professionally and personally life is redoubled by his attention to in the last 20 years, Dickin- the full first line of each to EDIS. His passing is Dickinson, a poet not inaccurately son-inspired musical settings poem in this collection. mourned by the many who understood as someone fascinated contain fewer surprises, and Younger readers of poetry, loved and admired him. by death and the dying. In his may even run the risk of being especially those with a pen- final essay, “Coda: Living and predictable, at best, or cliché, chant for pop electro music Music for Emily is available at http://www.beautifullosersband. He was born June 13, 1967 Dying with Emily Dickinson,” at worst. Such is not the prob- com/music-for-emily/. The Beautiful Losers first formed as a band and curiosity about Dickin- in Washington, D.C. and forthcoming in The Oxford lem with Music for Emily, by in the late 80s, continued with varying personel for several years, son, might wish to be able lived most of his youth in Handbook of Emily Dickinson Western Australia-based The disbanded, then reassembled in 2014. to read the entire poem. The Middlebury, Vermont. After a (eds. Cristanne Miller and Karen Beautiful Losers. packaging is thoughtfully BA at Amherst, he received the J. Sanchez-Eppler), he concluded: done. The cover sports the MA and Ph.D in comparative Photo Credit: Formosa Deppman “We can identify impressive With poetry vocals by Nikki Jones, this * * * ubiquitous daguerreotype of Dickinson, literature from the University moments we have witnessed or 16-track CD opens with a bass-percus- Still, there are tracks in this collection that while the inside contains pages from her of Wisconsin. There he met the love of his Jed came to Dickinson and indeed to imagined, work them into dynamic images, sion ostinato that makes no suggestion are delightful both for their lyricism and beautiful herbarium. The liner notes help- life, Hsiu-Chuang. The couple braved the American literature after working primarily and use them to organize our attitude toward that “I went to Heaven – ” (Fr577) is the for their musical arrangements. For ex- fully include a numbered track listing, a two-career gauntlet of academic couples in theory. Other scholarly work takes up life and death. Similarly, we can always poem to follow. The techno-pop music ample, “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died feature from which the back cover of the in the humanities, acquiring positions in James Joyce, Jacques Derrida, Paul Valéry, rethink the limits of who and where we are. that emerges, thanks to Hurb Jephasun’s – ” (Fr591) opens with Jephasun’s elec- CD would benefit alongside Nikki Jones’s Kentucky and Texas before arriving together Jean-Luc Nancy, genetic criticism, and We have always been connected to so much – organ, seems a bit of a mismatch to the tric piano and a cheerful pop rhythm from wistful and confident photo. at Oberlin College in 2003. Hsiu-Chuang translation. He is also the author of an as yet our loved ones, people who have died already, text of this poem. Nevertheless, Jones’s Shaun Hoffman’s percussion. For this became a professor of Chinese and cinema, unpublished novel entitled “Taking Chemo our childhood, our past and future selves, our reading and sometimes-singing is placed much-anthologized poem, Jones sings For teachers working with students from Jed a professor of comparative literature and with Nietzsche,” about which more below. past and future places – that we can always in the musical setting with considerable the poem text and the entire arrangement middle school to college, Music for Emily director of the comp lit program. think about new ways to belong to them.” forethought. She is not simply reading comes together beautifully. The listener may serve as an inventive and contempo- Jed was diagnosed with stage IV colon poetry over a musical background. might find him or herself with an ear- rary approach to Dickinson. Young read- It was at Oberlin that he began publishing cancer in 2008, with an expectation of only Jed’s long and statistically remarkable worm, singing “I could not see to see – ” ers might be inspired to write their own his best-known, ground-breaking Dickinson a few years to live. During the ensuing, survival after the diagnosis depended on The less techno-pop “An awful Tempest for some time after listening to this track. pop, rock, or urban versions of Dickinson. criticism. Emily Dickinson and Philosophy remarkable eleven years before his death, he extended bouts of chemotherapy, radiation, mashed the air” (Fr224) opens with a Anything that gets young people thinking (2013), an edited collection with an introduction taught full time, helped raise two beautiful and experimental treatments. These form piano piece that crescendos into, well, Jephasun’s piano opens a beautiful ren- about poetry deserves a listen. primarily authored by Jed, consolidated and accomplished daughters, traveled the the factual basis of “Taking Chemo with a musical tempest. In this piece, howev- dition of “The wind took up the northern his reputation for taking her intellect with world, lived abroad including several year- Nietzsche,” which concerns two cancer er, the music is merely background and things” (Fr1152). The musical arrange- utmost seriousness; Trying to Think with long stints in Taiwan, and wrote some of patients, a retired professor (who resembles both Jones’s reading and the musical ment, although sharing the repetitive na- Scholar and folk singer Diana Wagner, Emily Dickinson (2008) first established that his best work. Except for the baseball cap Jed not at all) and a punk kiddo (ditto) piece could stand independently without ture of the other tracks, doesn’t distract who edits the What’s Your Story? series for reputation and continues to be one of the most covering chemo-induced balding, you would nevertheless fascinated by and continually the listener missing one or the other. In from Jones’s reading of this lesser known, the Bulletin, is Director of Graduate Pro- influential Dickinson monographs of the 21st have hardly known he was ill, quoting Nietzsche. Spoiler alert: they die. several other tracks on this album, the but very lovely poem. grams and Associate Professor of English century; numerous contributions to other But the point or at least one of the points of musical tracks could stand completely at Salisbury University, in Maryland. She collections, to the Emily Dickinson Journal, He also continued to teach a freshman seminar the text is that it is a comedy. Laugh out loud on their own, though some of the musical The final Outro track is a brief 1:15 of is volunteer programming manager at the and to other venues rounded out his Dickinson in the art of dying. The class, in addition funny at many points and profound at others. settings are so repetitive that one wishes club pop, with no poetry text and nothing community radio station, WBYC, and she scholarship. A regular, valued contributor to the usual readings and classroom work, Dickinson’s poems were longer, to allow that recalls earlier tracks. This is one of has a folk show that runs on the local NPR to EDIS conferences, he is remembered paired the students with residents of a nearby That would be Jed. If I may be permitted for more rhythmic and melodic variation. many musical tracks that could stand on affiliate, WSDL. especially for his wit and conviviality on these old-age facility who would predictably have personal observations, because we were occasions. different perspectives on death than Oberlin friends and wound up living a few hours’

30 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 31 Members’ News Members’ News

drive away, my family and his enjoyed our Foucault discoursing on Heidegger. They kept as his parents, siblings, cousins, nieces and visits together most every year, watching the giggling at points which I, no francophone nephews. girls grow up and later feasting on the lunch and wishing that M. Foucault would at least the grown-up Formosa and Ginger prepared actually quote the German rather than some In lieu of flowers, the family requests that for us in nearly his last year. Followed by a French translation, well, I just smiled politely, donations be made to the Comparative joint string recital. Are they the little kids who snuggled down in the back seat and wished Literature program at Oberlin College in chalked our driveway a few years before? that like Jed I had a near-native command of Jed Deppman’s memory or to the Colorectal The one who is now at Yale? French, not to mention his fluency in Spanish, Cancer Alliance, 1025 Vermont Ave NW, Portuguese, and Mandarin. Suite 1066, Washington, DC 20005. Not that I always got his jokes. Driving back from an Amherst conference, Kate Allen (née * * * Please contact his sister, Ann Deppman Dunning) sitting shotgun and Jed at the wheel Jed is survived by Hsiu-Chuang and their at [email protected] with any ques- of my trusty Prius, they listened to her tape of two daughters, Formosa and Ginger, as well tions. “Stratford on Avon – accept us all!” Dickinson and Shakespeare

n collaboration with the Emily Dickinson Museum, the 2020 EDIS Annual Meeting will be held July 31 to August 1 in Amherst. This year’s Ifocus is Dickinson’s great love of Shakespeare and this theme will shape the usual features of our Annual Meetings such as reading groups, EDIS Membership Form tours of the Dickinson Museum, performances, readings, seminar-style discussions, and talks. Membership in the Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) enables you to participate in the Society’s meetings and conferences, to receive both of the Society’s publications (the Bulletin and the Emily Dickinson Journal), and to help foster the goals of the Society. Come join EDIS’s own Shakespeare Reading Club to consider if Dickinson was correct when she declared “While Shakespeare remains Liter- ature is firm” and “He has had his Future who has found Shakespeare.” The plan is to read some of Dickinson’s favorite works by Shakespeare, Name, title & affiliation ______Mailing address ______such as Antony and Cleopatra and Othello, and to discuss his relevance for the poet and her culture and his place in our twenty-first-century ______society. The good news is that the Dickinson family’s 8 volume edition of Shakespeare has been digitized by the Houghton Library, Harvard Telephone (home)______(office) ______(fax) ______and is available via this link: https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/archival_objects/1787359. email ______

Please check if this is: new address___ membership renewal ___

Membership Categories and Rates: Call For Submissions: Special Issue of The Emily Dickinson Journal Joint EDIS-ED Museum _____$110 Regular _____ $60 Student _____ $30 International Dickinson: Scholarship in English Translation Associate (receives only the Bulletin) _____ $20 Institutional _____$130 ecause English is the dominant language in work, the editors invite scholars to submit recently published or forthcoming work, to be Dickinson studies, scholarship published abstracts in English of no more than 500 published in abstract form. For a third section, Contributions (added to membership fee) B Sustaining Member $_____($150 or more) in other languages is often overlooked. With words proposing the translation of a peer- we seek abstracts (250-300 words) of PhD Contributing Member $_____($50 – $149) the goal of promoting scholarly dialogue across reviewed essay or book chapter published dissertations on Dickinson defended in the last General Contribution $_____ languages and cultures, we invite submissions in a language other than English in the last five years, or still in progress. It is our hope Scholar Travel / EDIS Institute $_____ for a special issue of The Emily Dickinson five years. This may be work you published that this issue will bring new perspectives to Total Amount Enclosed $_____ Journal devoted to translations into English or work familiar to you; if the work is not an international readership. The issue offers a Gift Memberships of recent critical work on the poet published your own, please secure the permission of the unique opportunity for international scholars Name, title & affiliation ______in other languages. As Domnhall Mitchell author to translate it into English as part of to make their work more widely available, and Mailing address ______and others have noted, interest in Dickinson’s your proposal. We will review the abstracts for English-speaking scholars to enrich their ______writing continues to grow in Europe, Asia, and extend invitations to scholars to translate critical perspectives on Dickinson. Telephone (home)______(office) ______(fax) ______Latin America, and other parts of the world: the proposed work into English in full or in email ______currently there are major translation projects part for publication in the fall 2020 issue of Please submit abstracts for all three sections Use additional page for further gift memberships. underway in places like Japan, Taiwan, China, The Emily Dickinson Journal. to all 3 editors of this issue, Adeline Chevrier- Please make check or money order payable, in U.S. dollars, to and Brazil. Global interest in Dickinson’s Bosseau ([email protected]), Li- Johns Hopkins University Press Journals work, however, has surpassed global scholarly To maximize the diversity of the scholarly hsin Hsu ([email protected]) and Eliza Publishing Division P.O. Box 19966 communication networks, which tend to be work presented in the issue, a second section Richards ([email protected]). Provide any Baltimore, MD 21211-0966 restricted by national and linguistic boundaries. will feature abstract-length presentations necessary permissions, the bibliographical www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org of books, chapters, and peer-reviewed, information for the original publication or TEL: 800/548-1784; FAX: 410/516-3866 Seeking to represent a nationally diverse published articles. We therefore also invite dissertation, and a short cv. Deadline for FED ID #: V52-0595110/Canadian GST #: 124004946RT range of critical perspectives on Dickinson’s scholars to send 500-word summaries of submission: January 15, 2020.

32 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2019 | 33 The following “Prefatory Note” was written by Martha Dick- The Emily Dickinson Centennial Exhibition at Yale University inson Bianchi for the 1930 Dickinson Centennial Exhibition at Yale. (See previous page.) By Krans Bloeimaand Elegy for Anne-Marie

f the three major exhibitions of Emily students the art and craft of letterpress print- twenty of the sixty-six items displayed. These Prefatory Note To Ann-Marie Vinde Dickinson-related artifacts mounted be- ing. His team of student type-setters, printers included the 1847 daguerreotype of Emi- O Emily Dickinson discovered for herself that “the admirations and con- Translator of Emily Dickinson and Ford Madox Ford tween 1930 and 2017 for which detailed cat- and binders were largely responsible for the ly, thirteen Dickinson poems in manuscript tempts of time show justest through an open tomb,” and that – alogs were issued, the event that took place production of the catalog. originally sent by Emily to Susan Dickinson, nearly ninety years ago in Sterling Memo- Emily’s personal copy of The New England The dying, as it were a height, rial Library at Yale University is probably Using materials that were most likely already Primer, the original manuscript with correct- Reorganizes estimate. Translation was her expertise. the least known about. One possible reason on hand for the project, Rollins and his team ed proof sheet of Susan Dickinson’s memori- Denouncing publication as “the auction of the mind of man” only justifi- is that only 75 copies of the exhibition cat- produced a thin octavo consisting of sixteen al tribute to Emily that appeared in the May able by poverty, not one of the volumes herein catalogued forty-four years She moved from word to world in grace – alog were printed. Of these scarce volumes, pages. The case featured a narrow tan cloth 18th, 1886, issue of the Springfield Republi- after her death had her own eyes beheld. She was the expositor of her own Interpreting the gist of truth at least 20 copies are held in various librar- spine and tan paper-covered boards decorated can, and so on. Mabel Loomis Todd’s work faith; the reserve of one “born New Englandly,” enforced by the mystic With love that helped her hand replace in her make-up, shunned the market place and as far as possible kept her ies, leaving 55 copies unaccounted for, less with fragile-looking leafy stems. The boards is represented by eleven Dickinson-related own mind – the one in my collection. By comparison, lacked stamping or labels of any sort. The books that she edited or co-edited. It was Ma- One sentence for an equal thought – 1,800 total copies of the 2017 Dickinson student printers hand set the type using four dame Bianchi’s involvement that made the Impregnable to inquest, One meaning for another sense – exhibition at the Morgan Library in New varieties of Cloister: light face, medium face, Yale exhibition “the official celebration of the However neighborly. She captured idioms of time In native lyric resonance. York were issued in a series of two press italic and old style. The paper was off-white centenary.” Alfred Leete Hampson was also Yet how whimsically she was elfing her ‘Boston pedant’ if she exclaimed, runs. The fact that the Yale catalog was es- “Linton” from moulds made by W. Green given credit for his “assistance in the compi- “This then is a book!” – sentially made-by-hand with text printed on Son & Waite for the English paper merchant lation of [the] catalogue.” The chief cataloger, She taught the brilliant and the meek – English watermarked paper using an Albion F.J. Head & Company. The paper bears the however, was William H. McCarthy Jr., who For her father’s library, always under her hand, climbed from floor to ceil- She crossed the channel for her friends – hand-operated press, made this rare ephem- watermark of “FJH” and was introduced to prior to December, 1930, had already estab- ing, – including not only complete sets of the more sedate British poets but Secured the children of her nest – various editions of the works of Lord Byron – that elegant object of the Bequeathed her heart – bestowed her best. eral item attractive to Dickinson bibliophiles, the market in the 1930s. There are three ad- lished a relationship based on friendship and lifted eyebrow of a hundred years ago. Books were the accompaniment then as now. Credit for the completion of this ditional watermarks: the shrouded head of trust with Madame Bianchi and Hampson. of her days and nights from her youth up; and her three poems beginning project is owed to the guidance of Carl Pur- Christ, the date 1399 and a raised hand with Beginning in the mid-1940s, it was McCarthy “Unto my books how good to turn,” “A precious mouldering pleasure ‘tis She guided me from Park to Hägg ington Rollins (1880-1960), who was the first a ring on the thumb, a possible reference to who cataloged all of Bianchi’s Emily Dickin- to meet an antique book,” and “There is no frigate like a book,” are among At Stockholm’s University – her most familiar and oft quoted lines. Printer to Yale University and founder of the the Pope. None of these have any relevance son holdings and it was he who brokered the Propounded works that Poets make – Bibliographical Press in Sterling Memorial to Emily Dickinson, but might be interpreted sale of all the poems, letters and other artifacts Her “bulletins from immortality” were set down without thought of an Translating Light’s diversity. Library. Rollins founded the Press to teach as the paper mould-maker’s homage to “me- that Hampson inherited from Madame Bian- outside audience, and not even the scant few of her friends mentally near- diaeval laid patterns and watermarks.” Before chi to Harvard University in 1950. Made by est her were aware of the extent of her work. Certainly no one could have And now she moves to other realms – been more unsuspecting of the honours in store for her – except as chrys- Traverses new dimensions there – being cased in, the text pages were stitched to- hands long vanished, the Yale catalog, as an alis infer firmament. gether with string, not unlike a Dickinson fas- emblem of Emily’s centenary, artfully rep- Reversing mortal pains to odes cicle. The resulting product is not without its resents the important role played by books It seems indeed the final paradox of a supreme Paradoxer that Emily Dick- That celebrate a brighter sphere. faults. There are several typos in the text, the and reading in the life of the poet. inson, who fled all publics, all renowns, should only have run the faster toward her own. Yet it is in entire accord with her definite statement sent I see her at the Blue Hall feast – most egregious being the dropped “g” in Rol- her “Sister Sue” – lins’ middle name (“Carl Purinton Rollins”). Acknowledgments I see her walking on the stairs – Three other typos are acknowledged under Eternity will be I see her greeting loved ones gone – Press run numbers for The Networked Recluse are cour- the heading “Errors Discovered in the Press” Velocity, or pause, I see her free from this life’s cares. tesy of Mark Edington, Director of the Amherst College Precisely as the candidate on the verso of a flyleaf. The entire project, Press. Preliminary was. Her Presence honors one and all – from type setting to hand binding, probably took less than three weeks to complete. Thanks to Simon Barcham Green for his expertise on the Martha Dickinson Bianchi She wears a sapphire velvet Gown paper and watermarks used for the catalog. While dancing in the Golden Hall The catalog’s Prefatory Note was written, ap- Thanks to Lee Schrunk and Joanne Alexander for their Of laureates and Triple-Crowns. Citation propriately enough, by Martha Dickinson Bi- assistance in identifying the type faces used in the printing of the catalog. anchi (see below) and dated The Evergreens, Emily Dickinson, Yale University Library, December Tenth MCMXXX (1830:1930, An Exhibition Commemorating the Centenary of the Birth of Cynthia Hallen, 1 February 2018, Provo Utah November 13, 1930. Martha’s involvement in Finally, thanks to Charles Beecher Hogan (1906-1983), Emily Dickinson). New Haven: The Bibliographical Press in the Sterling the exhibition wasn’t limited to the catalog’s the original owner of my copy of the catalog and ardent Memorial Library, Yale University, December, 1930. preface. She officially opened the celebration bookman and bibliographer, for his careful stewardship of The first page of artifacts in the exhibition. with an address and lent to the exhibition the book now handed down to me.

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