THE EMILY DICKINSON INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

Volume 29, Number 2 November/December 2017 “The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality.” In This Issue

Officers Features Series, continued President: Martha Nell Smith Vice-President: Barbara Mossberg 4 Edenic Possibilites: 2017 Annual Meeting 14 Dickinson and the Arts Secretary: Nancy List Pridgen Industrious Angels. Yes. Treasurer: James C. Fraser 7 Music at the Annual Meeting: Jane Ira Bloom By Laurie McCants and The Red Skies Ensemble Series Editor, Barbara Dana By Emily Seelbinder Board Members 8 Stop 6: White Oak Reviews Faith Barrett Páraic Finnerty Eliza Richards By Sharon Hamilton Renée Bergland James C. Fraser Martha Nell Smith 19 New Publications George Boziwick Michelle Kohler Brooke Steinhauser 9 The Scholars’ Circle Renée Bergland, Book Review Editor Antoine Cazé Barbara Mossberg (Honorary Member) By Eleanor Heginbotham Paul Crumbley Elizabeth Petrino Marta Werner 23 A Quieter Passion: a Review of My Letter Stephanie Farrar Vivian Pollak Jane Wald (Honorary Member) 26 Poems by Judith Farr to the World By Susan Snively “The Other Hemisphere” Legal Advisor: Louis N. Levine Local Chapters Committee Chair: Eleanor Heginbotham By George Monteiro Nominations Committee Chair: Páraic Finnerty Arts Committee Chair: Barbara Dana Members’ News Membership Committee Chair: Elizabeth Petrino Emily Dickinson Journal Editor: James Guthrie Series 28 New EDIS Board Member-At-Large: Stephanie Editor, EDIS Bulletin: Daniel Manheim Farrar 10 Poet to Poet “Then There’s a Pair of Us” 29 The Belle Behind Bars: Teaching Dickinson Sustaining Members By Liza Wieland in Prison Series Editor, Jonnie Guerra Mary Elizabeth Bernard Robert Eberwein Trisha Kannan Antoine Cazé Judith Farr Helen Koukoutsis 31 The Many “Lives” of an Emily Dickinson Richard Brantley David H. Forsyth Barbara Mossberg 12 Teaching Dickinson Year Book Jane D. Eberwein James C. Fraser Martha Nell Smith “Old the Grace, but new the Subjects – ” By Krans Bloeimaand By Jane Donahue Eberwein Series Editor, Marianne Noble Contributing Members Felicia Nimue Ackerman Eleanor Heginbotham Marianne Noble Carolyn L. Cooley Suzanne Juhasz Eliza Richards The Bulletin is particularly grateful to Laurie McCants for her contribution to the Dickinson and the Arts series, Barbara Dana Rita Brady Kiefer George T. Slone “Industrious Angels. Yes.” The collage appearing on the front cover contains the “thematic threads” she found Marie Esteve Niels Kjaer Ethan Tarasov herself drawing together as she worked on her play. It features two works by Mexican artist Remedios Varo, LeeAnn Gorthey Eleanor Linafelt Robin Tarasov Sharon Hamilton Greg Mattingly Hiroko Uno Encounter (1959) and Unsubmissive Plant (1961). The images on the back cover include, clockwise from the left, Linda Healy Cristanne Miller Lingling Xiang three photographs taken by Sharon Hamilton at the Annual Meeting, and at the bottom, one of the water colors that Victoria Dickson created to demonstrate Amherst’s “Edenic Possibilities.” EDIS gratefully acknowledges the generous financial contributions of these members.

EDIS Bulletin (ISSN 1055-3932) is published twice yearly, May/June and November/December, by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. Standard Mail non-prof- The Assistant Editor for this issue is Allyson Weglar 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 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. dues are $50.00 for regular members, $30.00 for students, $200.00 for sustaining members, $113.00 for institutional members, $100.00 for contributing members (all of 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 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, Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President 159 Prospect St., Apt 7, Acton, MA, 01720-3654, USA. Membership applications and changes of address should be sent to The Emily Dickinson International Society, c/o 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, Johns Hopkins University Press, P.O. Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211-0966, USA. Direct changes of address to [email protected], 800-548-1784 (U.S. and 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- 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, USA 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 or [email protected]. Submission deadlines are March 1 (Spring issue) and September 1 (Fall issue). All articles become the property of the Bulletin. Back issues are 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 available for $5.00 each from the editor. Copyright © 2017 by The Emily Dickinson Society, Inc. The Bulletin is indexed in EBSCO, Humanities International Complete, and Fellows of Harvard College; 1914, 1924, 1932, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; 1952 by Alfred Leete Hampson; 1960 by Mary L. Hampson. and the MLA Bibliography. www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org

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“ponders this tremendous scene . . . / As if tween artist and audience there must be a of “Emily,” Rosson read the poem as sug- Edenic Possibilities: it were his own.” Dickinson’s redeeming medium, some intervening substance, since gesting that contact requires separation, Enkidu figure is the poet who, instead of interiors are by their nature not open to since the actions of authorship are literally 2017 Annual Meeting claiming mastery of the land, speculates those on the outside. Mabel Loomis Todd’s immaterial. Dickinson was using material in imagination what it would truly mean arrival in Amherst presented an opportu- separation to underscore how privacy is the to “own” the “tremendous” scene. Dickin- nity to realize and explore this phenome- condition of an author’s ability to make in- son’s eco-poetics turned out to anticipate non. Todd wanted to know Dickinson, but teriors intelligible. such activists as John Muir and his disciple was forced to know her in a mediated way; n August 11th and 12th, Dickinson So- candidate at West Virginia University) Julia Butterfly Hill, modern Enkidu figures Dickinson used her letters to Todd to ex- Other writings from the period played with Ociety members convened in Amherst described Staley’s project of reproducing who invite us to register the emergent tre- plore and convey her idea of what author- the same basic model. Obscurity, privacy, is for a concentrated and illuminating explo- the soundscape of Dickinson’s garden. mendousness of nature’s immanence and ship is all about for her. In other words, repeatedly an attempt to be seen as an “en- ration of the 2017 topic, “Edenic Possibili- Staley is in the process of recording the evanescence. physical separation modeled the idea of hanced” way to intimacy. In “Sunset that ties.” The principal highlights were discus- current soundscape at the Homestead, authorship she was trying to define. screens, reveals – ” (Fr1644), the “moats sion groups and keynote addresses by two which she plans to compare to evidence Day two featured two fascinating keynote of Mystery” in the final line – barriers that graduate students taking Dickinson studies of the surrounding sounds in letters and addresses. In the first, Grant Rosson, cur- In late 1881, Dickinson wrote Todd her deny access – nevertheless have the power in new directions, as well as a variety of poems. She hopes to produce a record of rently in his sixth year at UCLA, presented first short note, in which she asked, “The of “Enhancing what we see.” That which musical and dramatic performances. There the “soundscape ecology” of the Home- a talk called “Dickinson’s Interiors: A The- parting of those that never met, shall it “screens, reveals.” Hiding provided an en- was also another session of the increasingly stead as a way of contributing to our sense ory of Authorship in the Todd Correspon- be delusion, or rather, an unfolding snare hanced liberty. Dickinson signed an 1885 popular Critical Institute, for young schol- of what it meant for Dickinson to “listen dence.” The paper comes from his disserta- whose fruitage is later?” Acknowledging letter to Mabel, “America” (L1004; Mabel ars wanting criticism of works in progress. to the world.” tion on geography and nineteenth-century that the two “never met,” she offers a series was in England), in order to emphasize that American literature. In his paper, Rosson of potential alternative models of connec- while public liberty limited Mabel to a par- The three Discussion Groups took place on Terence Davies’ filmA Quiet Passion was addressed the question of how a dimen- tion: “snare,” “fruitage,” “unfolding.” The ticular place, the poet, in isolation, could the first afternoon of the Annual Meeting. the subject of a Discussion Group called sion of Dickinson’s concept of authorship note beckons as it baffles. An 1882 poem extend her boundaries everywhere. A final In one, titled “Dickinson’s Soundscapes,” “Emily Dickinson on Screen – Feature and her ability to communicate it evolved elaborates on the dynamic. “Elysium is as comment from the audience noted, in fact, Marta Werner and Beth Staley (a doctoral Film(s), Documentaries.” Noting that the Society menbers ponder Barbara Moss- through her correspondence with, of all far as to / the very nearest Room” (Fr1590) that “Elysium” could be further rearranged passion generated in response to the berg’s pairing of Dickinson and Gilgamesh. people, Mabel Loomis Todd. opens the encounter of two interiors from to read, “Emily – US.” film has tended to be anything but both perspectives: the auditor and the poet “quiet,” Martha Nell Smith, Barbara My Letter to the World. Susan Snively’s re- Dickinson frequently used the image of the simultaneously “endure” “The accent of a The other keynote was by Clare Mullaney, Dana, Jonnie Guerra, and Jane Wald view appears on page 23 of this issue. house to indicate a less physical interiority, coming Foot” and “The opening of a Door recipient of the Irving K. Zola Award for led a discussion that considered what it the space in which authorship arises. Be- – .” Noting that “Elysium” is an anagram Emerging Scholars in Disability Studies means when a “biopic” is presented as Equally engaging was the session called and winner of the 2017 Graduate Student a work of fiction (or vice versa). Those “Eco Emily,” in which the question on the Scholarship awarded by EDIS for her familiar with Dickinson’s biography table was, “Might Emily Dickinson, an work on Dickinson and disability stud- (that is, anyone attending the Annual avid gardener, be one of the greatest eco ies. Mullaney’s paper was a portion of Meeting and many others likely to see writers in English?” Many of those assem- her University of Pennsylvania disserta- the film) were ready to dismiss the bi- bled in the Alumni House were ready to tion, “Textual Conditions: Disability and ographical dimension of the work, and answer in the affirmative without hearing the Material Text in Turn-of-the-Century they could hardly have been surprised the presentation, but discussion leader Bar- America, 1858-1932.” to learn that Davies admitted to never bara Mossberg, fresh in from Paris, cen- having read the poet’s letters. Hurri- tered the conversation in the poem “A little The paper, entitled “‘Not to discover weak cane Films, producer of A Quiet Pas- Madness in the Spring” (Fr1356), viewing – / ness is / The Artifice of strength – ’: Emi- sion, has now released the companion the natural world, the “whole Experiment ly Dickinson, Strength, and Disability The- documentary (a production initiated in of Green,” as a dynamic becoming, some- ory,” opened with a citation from a notori- response to anxious queries from Dick- thing beyond the power of language to ous early review of Dickinson’s Poems that inson Museum Director Jane Wald, describe. The problem, she suggested, is referred to the author’s apparent “pathetic who watched in alarm as the inaccu- as old as literature. Mossberg invited the dumbness” and “arrested development.” racies multiplied during the filming of group to consider the “King” in the poem Poetic innovation in the nineteenth century Davies’ work). The new documentary, as Gilgamesh, the epic tree-feller, and was not infrequently characterized in terms Werner and Staley took careful readings of whose working title was “Wild Nights the clown as his redeemer Enkidu. In the drawn from physical or mental disability. the ambient soundscape at the Homestead with Emily,” has now been released as poem, Enkidu prefigures the “Clown” who Grant Rosson Clare Mullaney Dickinson, Mullaney suggested, antici-

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pated such responses in letters ing understanding of constraint. One per- such as an 1883 letter to Sophia son observed that Dickinson’s reflections Music at the Annual Meeting: Holland in which she showed a on disability might have been influenced general resistance to being seen by the time she spent as caretaker of her Jane Ira Bloom and The Red Skies Ensemble within a diagnostic framework. mother. Another asked Mullaney about Drawing a distinction between possible connections between immigra- By Emily Seelbinder disability and “constraint,” a tion and disability, especially given that condition indicating tightness of Dickinson servant Tom Kelly, later one The Jane Ira Bloom Quartet “the vibrant artistry” of Bloom and her The performers’ joy and sincerity helped circumstance, Mullaney cast the of her pall-bearers, had lost the use of an quartet. “Like Dickinson,” McCants said, to convey the appeal of parlor songs such notion of impediment out of the arm. Freak shows, we learned, frequently he Jane Ira Bloom Quartet performed “Bloom is an iconoclast – a female artist as “Charity,” which praises its title virtue individual body and into the en- featured immigrants with impairments, as Tthe entirety of Bloom’s most recent in a male-dominated field; an improviser, as “Meek and lowly, pure and holy, / vironment which the body must though there were some connection be- composing and recording project on like the poet who, late at night at her Chief among the ‘blessed three,’ / Turning navigate. She argued that con- tween the two constraints. Friday night in Buckley Recital Hall piano, created ‘weird and beautiful sadness into gladness / Heaven-born thou straint in Dickinson in turn gave on the Amherst College campus. Wild melodies.’ Each of us has our ‘own’ art, . . .” (words by Charles Jeffreys, music way to “Possibility,” her term for In all, Mullaney demonstrated how poetry Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson, a Emily, and I felt Bloom honored her by Stephen Glover, ca. 1846). It might the condition of authorship. reinforced Dickinson’s imaging of strength, thirteen-part work for jazz quartet and kinship with Dickinson with her music have been cloying, but for the superb rather than any “Artifice of strength,” re- spoken word, is a reimagining of poetry – powerfully dynamic, weaving together musicality of the performers. Dickinson resisted any diagnos- gardless of the specific constraint within and prose adapted from Roger Lundin’s rage, and grace, and wonder.” tic representation of the human which she worked. “Power is only Pain” Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief. Technical coordinator Mark Russo and condition. Her incipient blind- (Fr312), Barbara Mossberg reminded us: This inspiration might seem an unusual sound engineer Jared Libby deserve ness appeared in poems not as an Dickinson may have deliberately immersed choice until one remembers that the art special mention for ensuring that the impairment but as essential to the herself in constraint, her frequent refer- of belief, as Lundin characterizes it, must The Red Sky Music Ensemble music came through with remarkable creation of texts. In “Dont put up ences to her littleness becoming a device be improvisational if one wishes to “keep clarity – no easy feat in an outdoor venue. my Thread & Needle” (Fr681), to highlight the release of power within a Believing nimble” (L750). he sloping, dappled lawn of the Director Trudy Williams set a lively pace, for example, she presents herself little space. TDickinson Homestead was a delightful while curator and musical director George as “blushing” about her stitch- Bloom’s compositions are nimble indeed, setting for the final gathering of the Boziwick varied the nine selections well ing, but the form and content of Other highlights of the Meeting included requiring superb musicianship. The meeting: a picnic and a performance by and elicited energetic performances of the poem contradict any notion an audio tour called “Grounds of Memory,” quartet more than met this challenge, The Red Skies Ensemble of “Dickinson’s each one. of impairment that could be at- narrated by Richard Wilbur, as well as two delivering an energetic and complex Musical Eden.” One of six programs tached to faulty seeing. musical events, including a performance performance. On soprano saxophone developed by Red Skies founders George The highlight of the evening for me was of an original composition by saxophonist Bloom was always in motion, immersed Boziwick and Trudy Williams exploring Rodolphe Kreutzer’s “The Celebrated Mullaney’s talk generated some Jane Ira Bloom, entitled Wild Lines! and a fully in the music. Dawn Clement Dickinson’s relationship to music, “this Overture to Lodoiska,” arranged for piano of the richest general conversa- reprise by Red Skies Music Ensemble of balanced that intensity with a finely program presents rarely performed vocal four hands by Charles Czerny (ca. 1846) tion of the whole meeting. One songs from the poet’s collection of sheet nuanced performance on the piano, while and piano pieces that Emily loved and and performed with vigor and virtuosity by audience member noted that music. (These events are reviewed sepa- Dean Johnson plumbed the depths on played from her own collection of sheet Miller and Banleigh. They performed with certain disabilities enable other rately in this dossier of reports on the An- bass and Bobby Previte wove intricate music, as well as selections of the popular such gusto that one could easily imagine abilities, and another offered the nual Meeting.) rhythms on drums. sentimental songs sung by Lavinia” the young Dickinson sisters relishing the notion that Dickinson’s variants (program notes). challenge of this showpiece and of making might fruitfully be seen as pros- There was also a display of water colors by Each selection included a reading by music together in the Homestead parlor. theses to the body of the text. Victoria Dickson. Dickson, a Homestead Deborah Rush of the text that had These selections are introduced and Dickinson’s dog Carlo, it was garden volunteer and local artist, in a recent inspired it. Rush’s soft delivery was performed by the Dickinson sisters, The Red Skies Music Ensemble’s mission suggested, could have been a issue of the Bulletin described her work: “I sometimes overwhelmed by the music, spiritedly portrayed in this production by is “to present programs that combine compensatory appendage for the enjoy pairing poems with paintings and making it hard to connect the words and Suzanne Lenz (Emily) and Sara Banleigh music and scholarship, making archives poet’s apparent agoraphobia, the applying just the right watercolors to pa- their reimagining. I found I enjoyed the (Lavinia), with Catherine Miller on piano. and special collections come alive through Newfoundland’s very dimen- per to record the beautiful hues and forms concert most when I stopped trying to Attendee Barbara Dana later described research and performance.” They certainly sions condensing the immensi- in Dickinson’s floral world. The poet’s use make these connections and allowed the them as presenting “a beautiful picture at achieved that mission with “Dickinson’s ty of surrounding space. Other of dozens of color words from ‘amber’ music to swirl around me. the side door of the Homestead” and added Musical Eden.” audience members likewise and ‘amethyst’ to ‘umber’ and ‘vermillion’ that it was “charming and heartwarming to Both keynote addresses provoked passionate questions considered Dickinson’s biogra- demonstrates that she often took a painterly This resulted in an appreciation of what see the sisters enjoying each other and the Emily Seelbinder frequently writes about and comments from members of the audience. phy in the light of her emerg- approach in her writing” (v28, n1). attendee Laurie McCants identified as music.” music for the Bulletin.

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My strongest emotional reaction to the audio guide’s contents expected a self-guided tour to form such a central part of my Stop 6: White Oak came, though, from something that did not require my imagina- emotional reaction to the Annual Meeting. It served as a remind- tion because it is still very much present on the front lawn. “Stop er to me that every year this event brings its own sweet surprises By Sharon Hamilton 6: White Oak.” The audio guide informed me that white oak – the sort of experience that Dickinson referred to as the joy that trees are native across Massachusetts and that Austin Dickinson comes with “Bright Wednesday Afternoons” (Fr437) as Jane Ira or me, the tree was the revelation. little signs, you are instructed to enter the appropriate number often brought wild saplings he found in the forest home to the Bloom reminded us so beautifully in her Jazz rendition of these F and hear a description from Wilbur of what this place meant to Dickinson grounds. This great tree might have grown out of one words. Although I was initially disappointed not to have a live Just before the 2017 annual Emily Dickinson International So- Dickinson and her family. You have the option of pressing addi- of Austin’s small, found saplings. The gnarled grey tree loomed tour to report, it turned out (in a twist appropriate to an artist who ciety meeting in Amherst, the EDIS Bulletin’s editor asked me tional keys to hear Dickinson poems relevant to that spot. This above me, its strong branches latticed against the blue sky. I thus seems always to be startling us anew) that even something so if I would be willing to write about Richard Wilbur’s scheduled process proved magical, stop after stop. I especially loved it found myself in the presence of something that had been on the seemingly prosaic as a self-guided audio tour ended up creating tour of the Homestead Museum grounds. As those who attended when the audio guide directed me to look out at something that property when the Dickinson family had lived in this house – for me its own form of bright Wednesday afternoon by bringing the meeting this year will know, that event turned out to be not no longer existed, but that I was invited to imagine I could see. literally a living connection to the past. me in closer contact with the life of this remarkable poet. an in-person walk with this famous American poet, but rather the Museum’s invitation for EDIS members try out its audio My favorite instance of that kind of imagined vista linked to On the audio guide, the Museum’s Director, Jane Wald, adds her Richard Wilbur, winner of multiple Pulitzer Prizes among other guide, which Wilbur narrates. At first I was a bit disappointed. the audio guide’s instruction to look out at Main Street and try touching observation that this tree bears important symbolism major awards, taught at Smith College and was always deeply My assignment had been downgraded to a review of an audio to picture the vast eleven-acre Dickinson family meadow that for us today. “Its widespread branches,” she says, “suggest Em- engaged with Dickinson’s work. Wilbur passed away on Octo- guide! But I decided to undertake this task anyway, and I began had once occupied the other side of the street. “The hired men ily’s fame, grown quite far-reaching since her death.” I had not ber 14. A memorial will appear in the Spring Bulletin. my self-guided tour of the grounds. I was glad I did; the expe- cut the meadow grass at least twice a year,” Wilbur’s mellow rience turned out to be a wonder. voice said in my ear, “to make hay for the livestock.” I felt moved by the impression of how much of the natural world Beginning my tour of the Homestead grounds, I quickly dis- Emily Dickinson could take in by taking no more than a few covered that using the guide meant looking for little numbered steps beyond her own front door. I smiled at the poem the au- The Scholars’ Circle signs on the ground – which had the delightful effect of making dio guide linked to this scene: “To make a prairie it takes a me feel like a child on a scavenger hunt! When you spot these clover and one bee” (Fr1779). By Eleanor Heginbotham

or 25 years, no matter where EDIS meets (Europe, Asia, vari- McDowell’s modified reissue of her garden book; and Stephanie Fous cities in the U.S., including Hawaii), one agenda item has Farrar’s interest in the letters and poems of Lavinia Dickinson. been constant: early on the last morning a large circle of Dickinso- nians gathers. Emerging scholars share dissertations; senior schol- Creative and cross-disciplinary projects included a “Journal” of ars explain their latest books; artists, musicians, general readers, Emily melded with one of its true writer Emma; two different proj- those with specializations outside the literary describe why Emily ects from a husband and wife team, his, a fully realized opera, hers Dickinson has absorbed their time and interests and elicited their a personal approach to the “Still Volcano”; and the work of George talent and imagination. Everyone chips in with relevant tips, and Boziwick and Trudy Williams in finding and arranging sheet music often the conversations spread throughout the day – and the fol- in preparation for performances like the one the team offered later lowing year(s). that night.

Two dozen enthusiasts gathered this year with projects of such va- A number of other projects focused on moving Dickinson further riety and significance that a plea that this part of the weekend, one into “The World” beyond the music-filled parlor. One, for example, Barbara Mossberg declared central to the goals of EDIS, be moved was an extended close reading of “This is my Letter.” Participants to a more open-ended time slot and that it be re-named to invite reported on forays into medicine (more diagnosing of Dickinson even greater inclusivity. With apologies for the necessary simplifi- in light of current practices); into teaching in Taiwan; and into dis- cations, here are samples of 2017’s academic studies: one on bees cussing Dickinson in Japan, where Masaka Takeda has helped to – ramifications and echoes of classicism; one linking Dickinson to translate the film (another topic of hot discussion, but not in this the “visionary” tradition of British Romanticism; one on the bi- session), A Quiet Passion. ographical background for Dickinson’s ephemeral metaphors; and another, a study of the studios and practices of daguerreotypes that The not-so-quiet passions of participants in the Scholars’ Circle, can shed information on those of the Dickinsons. Books and mono- like those in all the years since Ellen Hart invited colleagues into Above, Bulletin correspondents Sharon Hamilton and Eleanor graphs in process include Richard Brantley’s further work on Dick- it, allow early airings of future material proof of EDIS scholarship, Heginbotham, flanking Cindy McKenzie. Right, the “gnarled inson’s experiments in intersections of religion and science; Marta creativity, and friendship. grey tree” that grew out of one of Austin Dickinson’s saplings.

8 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 9 Poet to Poet Poet to Poet

Jonnie Guerra, Series Editor not scared these two poetic daughters away from marriage and must have wondered what I was doing, alone in my room, long childbearing, filled as both endeavors seemed to be with such silences punctuated by the ding of the typewriter. great intrusions and losses. And in time I had a daughter (whom I did not name Emily, but “Then There’s a Pair of Us” Yet perhaps my most profound experience with Emily Dickin- Georgia, for another solitary iconoclast). When she was four, on Fr260 son has to do, oddly enough, with motherhood. Studying Dick- a cross-country road trip, Georgia learned two poems by heart: inson in New York, I developed an obsession with the poet’s Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, whom I had assumed was “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” (Fr260). She loved and spoke By Liza Wieland dead, a specter in her daughter’s life. Motherlessness would, I with hilarious and endearing emphasis two particular parts: “the thought, certainly account for the unmoored quality of the po- sweep” in the third stanza of Frost’s poem rose as a grace note, ems, the deep sense of loss. I was surprised and relieved to dis- and “admiring Bog,” the last syllable in Dickinson’s poem, she This issue’s featured poet, Liza Wieland, is Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English and Asso- cover that Emily Norcross was mostly there all along, renowned nearly shouted, like the clang of a joyous bell. ciate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Development at East Carolina University. She is the author of a collection of poetry, Near Alcatraz for her cooking and her cultivation of roses and figs, and dying (2005), as well as of three volumes of short fiction and four novels, including, most recently, Land of Enchantment (2015). Wieland is only four years before her poet-daughter Emily Elizabeth. As I have long understood “I’m Nobody!” to be about privacy and also the fiction editor for theNorth Carolina Literary Review. She has been the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, the Michigan Literary my poem “Mrs. Dickinson,” printed here, attests, I thought a lot anonymity, and the sheer nonsense of fame, as if Dickinson had Fiction Prize, a Bridport Prize in the United Kingdom, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina about what it must have been like to be the mother of a poet – Arts Council, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. In November, she received the 2017 Robert Penn Warren Award, from the especially that poet. I myself had such a mother, who at times Continued on page 27 Fellowship of Southern Writers. I know EDIS Bulletin readers will enjoy the engaging essay and riveting poem that follow.

n the 1980s, when I was a graduate ly that I could take more – and more Mrs. Dickinson I think she must be praying student in New York City, I went surprising – chances on the page. In I (Emily Norcross Dickinson, mother of the poet) prayers no God will have. to a costume party dressed as Emily college, I studied with Mark Strand, Dickinson. I found some punk-ethe- whose work, it seemed to me, chan- By Liza Wieland Some evenings, the silence is terrible, real combination of white blouse and neled poems like “I felt a Funeral, in beating from her room, skirt, pulled on a pair of new Keds and my Brain,” (Fr340). In grad school, I I have been here all along, but I can’t break it. marched three blocks up Broadway to lived alone, cherished and guarded my though my daughter might not know it In my head, questions clatter 117th Street to my friend’s apartment, privacy, and read Dickinson and Eliz- and might have made me spectral, like the tongues of held bells, silently let myself in the front door abeth Bishop. I wrote a dissertation on a comic ghost, scaring myself, fall like stones inside my chest, and hurried across the hall and into the Dickinson that was really a 450-page but it is really for her that I am frightened, choking me while I lie here bathroom. I shut the door. Upon my- essay with 9 citations, profoundly un- she who is more whisper than girl’s body, listening for the skreek of her chair, self. We were a literary crowd; every- scholarly behavior indulged by two a sensation in the house, a hot spirit. the gasping pulse of her thoughts, one got the joke. A little while later, aging Americanists on the brink of re- her breath filling the lungs of the house. someone coaxed me out with a drink. tirement, who, I suppose, had seen all Flesh of my flesh and yet – the footnotes they could stand. like looking into a well At midnight, asleep, she’s nearer, Emily Dickinson has been a force in and seeing myself, but distant, yet I dream of finding her far from home, my life, beginning in 11th grade when I was hired to teach Dickinson at darker, with the strange halo a teacher gave us “Because I could not Dickinson College. In the fall of 1988, water gives when the sun’s behind it. of taking her small self in my arms stop for Death – ” (Fr479) and “After I took 18 seminar students to the To understand her, I had to be like her: – and folding up its fluttery wings, great pain, a formal feeling comes – ” Homestead, where we had a tour, read to be shadowless, or all shadow, I don’t know – kissing the hard beak of her face (Fr372). I did not know yet that Dick- poems at Dickinson’s grave, and spent to see her fully, I had to be mystifying, and making her a girl again inson herself had identified what those the night in two hotel rooms, between as she wanted, be a sightless knot saying, “Emily, Mother’s here. poems did to me: “If I feel physical- which was a bathtub filled with beer. of electric and unspeakable desires, You know your mother, don't you?” ly as if the top of my head were taken This experience became the basis for and so I think I know what she does But her great dark eyes glow, off, I know that is poetry” (quoted in my first short story and for the bril- upstairs, quietly seeing out the years burn me, burn through me L342a). In my imagination, a wall or liant first novel of one of the seminar and the departing birds and waiting – down to the atom of our one name barrier seemed to fall away and reveal Photo Credit: Daniel V. Stanford students, Brocke Clarke. I think it has to do with love and in the combustible force a kind of surrealist abyss of possibility. and saying words so many times of my love and my longing, Think Salvador Dali. The Persistence of Memory. I was just be- I routinely taught Dickinson, Bishop, and Anne Bradstreet as they come back different, we both twist shut our mouths ginning to write poems myself, and it came to me quite sudden- an unlikely triumvirate. Privately, I wondered if Bradstreet had reborn almost into their first wisdom. and I just disappear.

10 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 11 Teaching Dickinson Teaching Dickinson

Marianne Noble, Series Editor with a question, which pretty much assured no sustained conversation of some of their poems. When people asked about Lyndall Gordon’s (microphones, deployed somehow, come with the territory; we have Lives like Loaded Guns, we talked about the challenges Dickinson and our infirmities). I gather this group had encountered problems with one her family have always presented to biographers. When I became ab- “Old the Grace, but new the Subjects – ” or two people dominating discussion and had built protections against sorbed in reading book reviews from the 1890s, we devoted a class to (Fr942) such behavior even though the protections stifled healthy conversation. her literary debut: Higginson’s and Todd’s attempts to deflect atten- It turns out also that program sponsors often consider one session on a tion from then-dominant criteria of poetic judgment that could make By Jane Donahue Eberwein poet sufficient, and I have learned to plan differently when there may her look careless or even incompetent and to direct attention to her not be a follow-up. When uncertain of focus, I sometimes begin with strengths. That class led to a complementary session on Henry Wad- n the year or so before my fall 2007 retirement from Oakland Uni- company, about to retire himself, who wangled his way into one of Dickinson’s own self-introduction, reading her 15 April 1862 letter to sworth Longfellow’s sharp decline from eminence when standards of Iversity, I found myself wondering when or whether I’d find opportu- my closed classes by identifying himself as a “geriatric freshman.” In Higginson and the four poems she enclosed to get a feel for what she judgment that had worked to Dickinson’s disadvantage (metric range nities to teach some of my favorite literary texts – works like Walden, his papers, he loved to comment on how a passage came across as wanted to convey about herself – and how she managed to hide. For the and precision, for instance, as well as patriotic content) came to seem Of Plymouth Plantation, and poems by Anne Bradstreet and Edward “obscure to the freshman mind,” and I doubted he’d stick it out until he SOROSIS group of exceptionally accomplished women of color who less important than her area of greatest strength: originality. When a Taylor. I didn’t worry about Dickinson’s poems, perhaps because EDIS had to call himself a “senior.” He did, though, and even went on to earn wanted to share in Detroit’s Big Read of Emily Dickinson, my goal student commented after class that I’d been quoting Poe several times itself provides opportunities. If I’d wanted to keep grading papers, I a master’s degree and co-author a book with one of his professors. That was to give them a sample of poems reflecting the range and brilliance in both those sessions, I added a class on him before finding my way could have accepted invitations to teach in the Honors College, but I kind of freedom to study whatever one wants with whatever passion of her imagination. As it happened, I had just finished reading Aífe home to the poet they keep requesting. So far we haven’t plunged into wanted the freedom of Howard Nemerov’s “Absent-Minded Profes- one feels turns out to be a reward of retirement for the people I’ve been Murray’s Maid as Muse and was able to call attention to her insights editorial history, but I hope to overcome my fear of computer projec- sor,” “who’d burn the papers and correct the leaves.” teaching as well as for myself. Some of my former colleagues have into how some of Dickinson’s phrasing might have been influenced tion enough to give people a sense of how manuscripts have been con- been among my students (from the sciences as well as English) and we by speech habits of African-Americans in Amherst. For the sessions verted into successive print versions. It has turned out, luckily, that metropolitan Detroit offers me frequent have music experts, engineers, and health professionals all happy to with readers especially interested in psychology, we devoted a night to opportunities to share literary passions with fellow retirees. The first be discussing poetry even when it is a fresh experience. There’s quite poems of emotional extremity. Our spring 2017 class was planned purely as fun. “Some things that fly invitation came from the Society of Active Retirees (SOAR), operated a range of knowledge in the room. Somebody knows where bobolinks there be” freed us to consider virtually anything capable of flight. There through Wayne State University. They needed somebody to talk about may be seen and heard at a Michigan nature preserve; someone else Not all of these events have met my hopes. The first time I talked about were bird poems, of course, but also a bat, and a host of insects: bees, poems. One of the students there immediately enlisted me to repeat thinks of yeast when Dickinson asks Higginson to proof the life of her Dickinson with elderly residents of an upscale retirement community butterflies, even June bugs. Spiritual fliers included both angels and that class for another Elderhostel group in the poems. When we’re stumped by an allusion, near campus, I thought it would be interesting to reflect on how we souls. “We pray – to Heaven” (Fr476) invited us to critique the familiar same area. Other invitations followed from a deft fingers ply smartphones for references. look for different experiences from poetry as we get older. I structured metaphor of souls taking wing (one that Dickinson herself drew on Lunch and Learn program at a Jewish Com- Even better, I notice that mature learners ap- the session to match each Dickinson poem I recalled from my own in letters about her mother’s decline and death). Older students don’t munity Center, and a dinner gathering of an proach poems more respectfully than typical childhood reading with one that I now see as related to it thematically label awareness of death “ghoulish” like many undergraduates; they African-American arts sorority. A group of lo- undergraduates: less likely to grasp at one but richer and more interesting (also, in some cases, less likely to win bring with them a realistic sense of loss. Over these ten years, we have cal friends requested an intensive series of dis- word or image as explaining everything and approval from teachers interested in pupils’ moral formation). Among dedicated classes to the memories of a SOAR organizer and classmate, cussion sessions focused on Dickinson. Such not assuming that a poem means “whatever I the matches were “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” (Fr260) with “I’m and some among us have buried parents and spouses or contended with occasions all require planning on my part by see in it.” They share in lyric poets’ sensitivity ceded – I’ve stopped being Their’s ” (Fr353), “I never saw a Moor” mortal illness. These people were well prepared to confront the rid- way of choosing poems, preparing handouts, to the complex layerings of time. (Fr800) with “To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee” (Fr1779), dling method of the title poem even though the student who plunged and organizing my thoughts, but there is never and “If I can stop one Heart from breaking” (Fr982) with “The Poets into our reading a month early found herself daunted by it and braced any grading. An advantage of teaching poetry I learned quickly, though, that such occasional light but Lamps” (Fr930). That experiment might have worked better herself for the most difficult readings yet: rather than novels or autobiographies turns out teaching stints expose one to surprises. When if anyone in the audience could remember any childhood exposure to to be that students don’t have to do advance I agreed to offer a comparative discussion of poetry except for a lady who grew up in a Slavic-speaking country. There are that resting, rise. preparation either, although some want to. Keats’s “Ode to Autumn” and Frost’s “After Can I expound the skies? These haven’t been sustained programs of Apple-Picking” for my initial SOAR class, I My happiest experiences have been with SOAR. At the end of that How still the Riddle lies! (Fr68) study like classes Eleanor Heginbotham and envisioned sitting with a dozen or so people introductory session on Keats and Frost, I asked if people would be Carolyn Cooley have been offering for senior for intensive conversation. Then came a notice interested in a few sessions devoted to Dickinson’s poetry. Decidedly What next? The woman who introduced me at that session did more citizens in college settings. from the office indicating our room assign- yes! We are still at it ten years later, although there have been detours research than is needed for such rituals and discovered that I used to ment and reporting that there were sixty-some to other poets. “We” varies gradually; some students have been there write about the Puritans. So now I’m committed to a session on Anne Teaching at Oakland prepared me well for registrants. Luckily, many of these people since 2007, but almost every session draws ten or more newcomers. Bradstreet. That, inevitably, will lead us back to the poet whose first teaching seniors. The university’s suburban welcomed opportunities to speak up, ask At first, we encountered familiar questions about how the poet used New England ancestors arrived with Bradstreet, her family, and John location always made it convenient for older questions, and offer insights. Yet when I was dashes and capital letters and why she secluded herself. The first topic Winthrop aboard the Arbella. women in our area to return to school after asked to reprise that class for the neighboring someone in the class suggested was Dickinson’s love poetry, so we raising their families. From my first semester, Elderhostel group, I anticipated the same lev- spent a session on that. To counteract (or maybe heighten) assumptions back in fall 1969, I’d found that such students el of involvement only to be told upon arrival about her fixation on death, we spent a morning on her consolatory Jane Donahue Eberwein is Distinguished Professor of English, emer- were often the most insightful and involved, that what the organizers wanted was for me to poems and letters. Another time we looked into poems that expressed ita, at Oakland University. She is the author of Dickinson: Strategies even if they needed a little fluffing up to build give a talk that would be followed by a short her understanding of what poetry is and why it is important. We’ve of Limitation, as well as many other works, most recently, as co-editor confidence after years out of the classroom. period of questions. There was even a ritual of studied poems on God and religion. Another session focused on Dick- with Cristanne Miller and Stephanie Farrar, Dickinson in Her Own And then there was the owner of a local tire Jane Eberwein with husband Robert Eberwein. passing around a microphone to each person inson’s friendship with Helen Hunt Jackson, with comparative reading Time (Iowa 2014).

12 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 13 Dickinson and the Arts Dickinson and the Arts

Barbara Dana, Series Editor the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble in be a playroom/workroom. Very much like PAPER CUTTING AND THE WORK OF Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, Industrious the attic in my own house! Where I made THE HAND Angels is hand-made by Laurie McCants, this play! And what is “made” in the play in collaboration with director/lighting includes these things: paper flowers, a Dark and light also play in the work of Industrious Angels. Yes. designer Sabrina Hamilton, scenic de- paper-chain of hands, a cardboard tree, two Emily-inspired artists who, in turn, signer F. Elaine Williams, and composer a pop-up haunted doll house, a shadow inspired me – Mary Frank’s shadow-pa- Guy Klucevsek, who has created a haunt- play of the ghosts that haunt that house, per-cut depiction of Dickinson’s seraphic By Laurie McCants ing score with piano, violin, accordion, an imaginary garden made of paper and “Fellow in the Skies” and Lesley Dill’s and toy piano.” glue, a story, a play. paper sculpture-kite, “Divide Light #2 (Healing Man).” “God permits industrious Angels – ing a play about Emily Dickinson. That’s lighting designer Sabrina Hamilton and “I felt my life with both my hands Here’s a guide to my collaged inspira- Afternoons – to play – ” (Fr245) been done to DEATH. No, no, no, I am I conducted a week-long residency of To see if it was there – “ (Fr357) tional images: More traditional women’s “handiwork” NOT making a play about Emily Dickin- workshops with students and community is represented by paper-cutting, pictured s I prepare to once again perform son. NO.” folks. I will perform it again in Amherst It’s amazing how a deadline can jump- SILHOUETTE/SHADOW in the 19th-century illustrations of anon- AIndustrious Angels, my solo in early August 2018, and I hope to then start creativity. In the early days of ymous crafters, and flower-pressing, in a play, this coming summer in Amherst, But something happened in that house. take it on tour. working on my play, I assembled a The interplay of dark and light so in- print from Emily Dickinson’s own “Her- Massachusetts, the place of its birth (and As I stepped out of that bedroom into that collage of images I had gathered over trinsic to shadow puppetry (and poetry) barium,” which she assembled, with some yes, the birthplace of Emily Dickinson), hallway (in a certain slant of light), I was Though I’ve found that it plays well and several months to accompany a due-the- fascinates me. I knew I needed to have pride, I imagine, in her childhood. it strikes me that my play’s birthers, suddenly struck with a loaded memory. easily for audiences of all ages, it’s a dif- next-day grant application. I didn’t get shadows in my play. Hence, the image of its mother-nurturers, its inspirational Actually, two memories. One, my mother ficult play to describe. Here’s what I’ve the grant, but I got a lot of ideas that led the ancient Egyptian puppet of a wander- REMEDIOS VARO “industrious angels” were all women. read me Emily Dickinson poems when I come up with: to the thematic threads that eventually er (a tribute to what I had learned from I drew breath from their work – artists, was little, and two, I was actually reading made their way into the final play. The my Cairo collaborators), the cut-out In 1968, when I was 16, my family made a performers, thinkers, animators, crafters, an Emily Dickinson poem to my mother BRIEF: Industrious Angels is a solo hand- very process of assembling the collage girl-dancer (created by pioneering pup- driving trip from Tulsa to Acapulco, with cartoonists, poets, and yes, I share a legacy at the moment of her death. Bang. Bang. crafted-story-spinning-shadow-puppet- informed the form of my performance peteer/animator Lotte Reiniger), and yes, a stop-over to visit the museums in Mex- with my own mother, who had a bit of all YES. memory-play-with-music evoking the – as I cut out the photo-copied images, the silhouette-profile of child Emily, re- ico City. I was struck then by the strange of these bound up in her complex being. secret creative lives of women, mother/ arranged and glued them on the page, vealing and obscuring all at once. paintings of Remedios Varo. They haunt- Those two memories always manifest daughter bloodlines, and the ghost of Em- I realized that since ed me for years, until To begin at the beginning. Summer, 2007. I themselves in my body. Whenever I ily Dickinson.” childhood I have 2000, when I drove was driving to Amherst, feeling guilty, as I describe that striking moment to anyone, been enraptured by down to the National hadn’t done my “homework” for the course I find my left hand opening, rising to the LONG: “In a shadowed attic, crammed the sound of scissors Museum of Women I was about to take at the Ko Festival of sky, my right hand opening, lowering to with curio cabinets, work tables, chests cutting paper (Girl in the Arts in DC with Performance – “Creating Solo Theatre.” I the earth, my entire body doing – what? and drawers (containers for mementos Scout arts-and-crafts- the special purpose of was supposed to arrive at the first class with “Spreading wide” to “gather Paradise”? and unmentionables), a daughter searches snowflakes, Mothers’ seeing the first-ever an idea. My head was absolutely empty. Or Perhaps. Perhaps preparing to birth my for what it is that ties together her mother, Day tissue-paper major exhibit in the maybe it was too full. I had just emerged play. herself, and an elusive poet. A story about flowers…). Collaging USA of Varo’s paint- from a long, twisty, ultimately triumphant the crafting of stories, Industrious Angels my inspirations taught ings. I was surprised collaboration with three strong-willed, It’s not really about Emily Dickinson. was conceived by actor/creator Laurie me that “process” at how vividly accu- culturally-confounding artist-members Yes, she’s in it. As a shadow. She’s in it as McCants on a visit to Emily Dickinson’s must actually be rate were my teen- of an Egyptian shadow puppet theatre one of my many mothers – among them a home, where the poet wrote, in secret, a part of my play. age memories of her company. I was exhausted. I had no idea witch, a child, my own mother, and my- the almost 1800 poems that were found, A play, after all, is work! They haunt me what I would make a solo show about. At self, mother to my self. hidden away in chests and drawers, after “make believe,” and still. For my collage, that particular moment in my life, I had no her death. The story unfolds through pup- as I made my collage, I picked “Encounter” idea who I was. I developed my play over the next few petry, paper-cutting, music, movement, it became clear to me (1959), a self-portrait summers in Amherst, in collaboration with light and dark, and the weaving togeth- that I must actually of the artist discov- Our teacher was the gifted play- my director, composer, and designers, and er of words. It is a dance of the hands “make” something to ering her hidden self, wright-clown, Cirque du Soleil performer I premiered it in Amherst in 2011 at the honoring women’s handiwork: mending, “believe” in as my and “Unsubmissive Michelle Matlock. She sensed my empti- Ko Festival. I have performed it since at preserving, ordering, adorning, writing, play unfolds before Plant” (1961), de- ness. She encouraged me to go outside. my artistic home in rural Pennsylvania, hiding. my audience. This led picting a biologist’s So, I walked across the campus over to the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, and I to my realizing the perplexed pursuit to Main Street to visit the Homestead, all the have toured it to Allegheny College, where Developed at the Ko Festival of Perfor- setting, the “place” Actor, director, writer, teacher, student, and theatre-goer “know” nature. Both time thinking to myself, “I am NOT mak- prior to the performance, my director/ mance in Amherst, Massachusetts, and for my play: it had to Laurie McCants, as photographed by Sabrina Hamilton. images evoke for me

14 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 15 Dickinson and the Arts Dickinson and the Arts

the search for mean- grown woman, a lump in in my house. I live in my house because thinking about mothers. Let’s all make amidst the milling about of folks young ing embodied in any a chair at a desk, turned my mother had the forethought to save up plays about our mothers.” So, OK. Here and old, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I sort of experimental to stone with “writer’s money for me. She saved for me some- we go. turned, and a young man, a creative writ- exploration – in art, in block.” Barry’s com- thing that she called by its old-fashioned ing student who had been in one of our science, in poetry, in ments continue: “Fairy name, a “legacy.” I found other mothers that summer previous workshops, whispered to me: plays. Varo’s images tales and myths are of- along the way to making my play. Cindy “If I can ever write a story half as good manifest themselves in ten about this very situ- I was quite surprised to discover that my MacKenzie and Barbara Dana, editors as your mother’s, I will be in heaven.” I Industrious Angels in a ation: a dead kingdom. play has a happy ending. Considering of Wider Than the Sky: Essays on the looked up and said, “Mama, did you hear variety of ways. In the Its residents all turned that I had initially identified my “central Healing Power of Emily Dickinson (a that?” half-hour as the audi- to stone. It’s a good way conflict” (we are taught in school that all book I bought at the also sadly no longer ence arrives, I busy my- to say it, that something plays must have a “central conflict”) as existing Jeffery Amherst Bookshop) led I’m not sure I actually believe in heaven. self at a desk (much like alive is gone.” (Or, as “Loneliness vs. Solitude,” the outlook for me to the realization that my play would, Like Emily, my church is here on earth. Varo’s biologist’s desk), Emily might say, “I felt a happy ending was not very promising. indeed, have a happy ending. And that to But take a look at my collage, the one I folding and cutting pa- a Funeral, in my Brain” And then I really got down on myself earn that happy ending, the journey of the had created several years before, at the per flowers which will [Fr340]). Barry then when I realized that really, the “central play, just as wise cartoonist Lynda Barry beginning of my making Industrious An- come into use later in says: “In a myth or a conflict” was my mother and me. “Oh, had warned me, would require “Courage gels. There is a snippet of my mother’s the play. Also, in one fairy tale, one doesn’t no,” I thought to myself another sum- and terror” and facing “failure or what handwriting, matched up with a snippet of of the darker moments restore the kingdom by mer later, wandering once again around seems like failure . . .” Emily’s handwriting. The word that they of the play, I open a passivity, nor can it be downtown Amherst, “I’m NOT making a share is “heaven.” Yes. small chest (much like done by force. It can’t be play about my mother. That’s been done Unlike Emily, who, even though she hid Varo’s chest holding her done by logic or thought. to DEATH. No, no, no. I’m NOT making her writings away in chests and drawers, Most special thanks to Lynda Barry, Anne hidden self) and reveal So how can it be done?” a play about my mother. NO.” So, I stum- knew she was good (there’s plenty of ev- Carson, Barbara Dana, Lesley Dill, Sara what’s in it – a glass jar, bled into Food for Thought again and idence that Emily was proud of the work Felder, Mary Frank, Sabrina Hamilton, containing a ghost-like How can it be done? bought another book, a then-newish vol- of her hand), my mother thought of her- Susan Howe, Cindy MacKenzie, Michelle shadow-child, lit from The very question I was ume by the renowned (and much admired self as a failure because very little of her Matlock, Lotte Reiniger, Remedios Varo, within. This glass jar asking myself. And right by me) poet Anne Carson. I walked a half writings had been published. After my Elaine Williams, and, of course, Emily represents a very specific memory from the book over. On the back cover was a below, she’s drawn an octopus, a “magic” a block away, sat down at the bar at ABC mother’s death, I found her poems, es- Dickinson and Billie Lee McCants. my own past that scares me still. drawing of what looked to be a barnacled cephalopod (a recurring image in the book, (Amherst Brewing Company), ordered a says, short stories hidden away in chests shark, wielding a pencil and a paintbrush this creature seems to be for Barry an id- drink, and opened up the book. The very and drawers. I chose to read/share/act one To face my fear, which I really had to do in its fins, exhorting the inhabitants of a iosyncratic symbol of subconscious inspi- first poem was about her mother. of her stories, Underneath the Garden, Laurie McCants co-founded the Blooms- to make my play, I breathed in inspiration small rowboat – an owl, a monkey with ration). Emblazoned on the octopus’s head as the culminating event of my play. It’s burg Theatre Ensemble (BTE) in 1978, from Emily – “Nature is a Haunted a bird perched on its head, and a ghost. are these words: “You must get the jar.” SLEEPCHAINS a powerful story – funny, sad, moving, where she co-created Hard Coal, Our House – but Art – a House that tries to be In a cartoon balloon, the shark is shouting beautifully written. My mother should Shadows, (with Egypt’s shadow-puppet haunted” (L459) – and from her acolyte, at its presumed students: “OK! Welcome I got the jar. The jar is in the play. I was Who can sleep when she – have been proud of the work of her hand. theatre company Wamda), and Susque- the poet Susan Howe, who said of Emily, to Writing the Unthinkable!” I bought the made bold by Barry’s words: “Monsters hundreds of miles away I feel that vast hanna: Mighty, Muddy, Crooked Riv- “she studied Terror.” I also borrowed book. and dangerous tasks seem to be part of breath Underneath the Garden is good. Au- er of the Long Reach. BTE was named bravery from what might seem a most it. Courage and terror and failure or what fan her restless decks. diences love it. It gives me great joy to the 2016 “Outstanding Theatre” by the unlikely source – a cartoonist. In one of Starting on page 51, a telling tale unfolds seems like failure, and then hopelessness Cicatrice by cicatrice share it with them. I have found, in the National Theatre Conference. In 2010, those Amherst summers, I was stumbling in Barry’s bright, raw, child-like drawings and the approach of death convincingly. all the links sharing of my mother’s story, that she Laurie was named an “Actor of Distin- around downtown, in something like of a grown woman, an artist, remembering The happy ending is hardly important, rattle once. shares imagery with our shared beloved guished Achievement” through a Fox despair, because I wasn’t at all sure I had her girl-self, seeing that girl-self holding a though we may be glad it’s there. The real Here we go mother on the shipless poet – there are references to hands, and Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship, the guts or the artistry to handle the scary glass jar and playing alone, whispering to joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble ocean. dirt, and blood, and terror, and shame, and funded by the William & Eva Fox Foun- part of the story I needed to tell in my the jar in great seriousness: “There was a in the story, your kingdom isn’t dead.” Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go. gardens, and Paradise. dation and administered by Theatre play. I wandered into the (sadly no longer remedy. It was a potion and the girl dis- Communications Group. She served as existing) Food for Thought bookstore and covers it and the village is saved.” On a AT THE CENTER, MAMA So, OK. Here we go. A moment I will ever cherish occurred co-President of the Board of the nation- found on the “new arrivals” shelf this side-bar to the drawing of the girl holding following my performance of Industrious al Network of Ensemble Theaters. She book: What it Is (subtitled The Formless her “magic” jar, Barry writes: “I believe a The image in the middle of my collage is And as it turned out, the Ko Festival Angels at Allegheny College. After the recently directed the world premiere of Thing Which Gives Life Form: Do You kid who is playing is not alone. There is a very blurry photograph of my mother as workshop that I was taking that sum- play, I always invite the audience up on Anthony Clarvoe’s play, Gunpowder Joe. Wish You Could Write?) by Lynda Barry, something brought alive during play, and a child. She is holding her favorite doll. mer was led by another terrific play- the stage to explore the set, which is cun- Her solo show, Industrious Angels, pre- whose cartoons in the Village Voice I had this something, when played with, seems That doll is on the set of my play. Along wright-clown, Sara Felder, who kicked ningly crammed with enticing chests and miered at the Ko Festival of Performance so much enjoyed over the years. I turned to play back.” The next page pictures the with a lot of other mementos that now live off the first class by saying, “I’ve been drawers, nooks and crannies. That night, in Amherst, Massachusetts.

16 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 17 Reviews of Publications

Renée Bergland, Book Review Editor The Rhyme of the Rail By John Godfrey Saxe Pictures of Possibility inson’s friends are Ralph Waldo Emerson, unclear. The book often juxtaposes facts and her brother Austin Dickinson, and “Bird,” a counter-facts without distinguishing between Rosanna Bruno bird who appreciates Dickinson’s poetry. them. The overall effect is unsteadying and John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) is today remembered, if he is remembered at all, for his retelling of the ancient fable, “The Blind Men The Slanted Life of Emily Dickinson. An- confusing for a reader familiar with Dickin- and the Elephant.” In his day, though, he was best known for “The Rhyme of the Rail.” Close study of the poem will suggest where it, drews McMeel, Riverside, NJ 96pp. In the book’s introduction, Bruno describes son; my guess is that readers who don’t know as well as many of his other works, was published. EDIS member Jonathan Morse sends it in suggesting that, while it now requires the project as originating in high school, much about the poet’s work would be even footnotes for full intelligibility, it may be productively paired with Dickinson’s “I like to see it lap the Miles – ” (Fr383) and Whitman’s Charles Bukowski, Emily Dickinson, et. al. when she was “floored by the immediacy of more baffled. For example, while it could be “To a Locomotive in Winter,” both for differences in form as well as its different – perhaps more demotic – attitude toward rail travel. Rue des Cordeliers: Portraits of a House. [Dickinson’s] voice and her unusual use of amusing for a Dickinson scholar to imagine Kerber Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 160pp. language,” but the book shows far more in- (as Bruno does) that “Hope is the thing with terest in “the poet’s persona and the myth of feathers” was inspired by a sociable parrot inging through the forests, Stranger on the right, Market-woman careful Poetry for Kids: Emily Dickinson her life” than in her use of language. Though named Hope, an uninitiated reader would SRattling over ridges, Looking very sunny, Of the precious casket, Susan Snively, ed. Moondance, Lake For- Bruno frankly describes herself as an “ama- have no way of knowing that Bruno was jok- Shooting under arches, Obviously reading Knowing eggs are eggs, est, CA, 2016, 48pp. teur” scholar, the “slanted” vision of Dickin- ing. Indeed The Slanted Life of Emily Dick- Rumbling over bridges, Something rather funny; Tightly holds her basket; son presented in the pages is antithetical to inson might be viewed as the most definitely any form of scholarship. Bruno manages to 2017 book about Dickinson published this Whizzing through the mountains, Now the smiles grow thicker, – Feeling that a smash, Reviewed by Annelise Brinck-Johnson Buzzing o’er the vale, – Wonder what they mean? If it came, would surely combine surface level understanding of Dick- year, drawing as it does on a combination of Bless me! this is pleasant, Faith, he’s got the Knicker- Send her eggs to pot inson (there is an OKCupid profile, where what has been termed “meme culture” and a t was my pleasure to review three very Riding on the Rail! Bocker Magazine! Rather prematurely! Dickinson writes “I spend a lot of time think- carelessness with regard to clear delineation Idifferent books that framed Emily Dickin- ing about: Death”) with whimsical “alterna- of facts and imaginary situations that has be- son with visual arts: a graphic novel / comic Men of different “stations”1 Stranger on the left, Singing through the forests, tive facts” (such as Dickinson asking for an come common in popular debate. The vision book, an art photography book, and an illus- In the eye of fame, Closing up his peepers, – Rattling over ridges, Easy-Bake oven for Christmas) and a mock- of Dickinson presented is interesting enough trated children’s anthology. Reading them Here are very quickly Now he snores amain, Shooting under arches, ing attitude towards Dickinson Scholarship to be highly reproducible, but not far enough together allowed me to consider the fraught Coming to the same. Like the Seven Sleepers; Rumbling over bridges, (mock-ups of “scholarly” works detailing from reality to clearly function as satire to relationship between art, episteme, and exe- High and lowly people, At his feet a volume Whizzing through the mountains, Dickinson’s practice of witchcraft and strug- those with little specialized information. gesis. Questions of factual accuracy, artistic Birds of every feather, Gives the explanation, Buzzing o’er the vale, – gles with gluten intolerance). Though Bruno’s expression, and even straightforward instruc- On a common level How the man grew stupid Bless me! this is pleasant, book appears designed for popular appeal, it This is not to say that The Slanted Life of tion are particularly pressing in 2017. The Traveling together! From “Association”!3 Riding on the Rail! could confuse those who do not have a solid Emily Dickinson is a bad book. The drawings books I review here bring these questions to grasp on Dickinson’s life and facts. are well done, and the slanted life present- Gentlemen in shorts, Ancient maiden lady the fore. ed is wonderfully imagined. However, with Looming very tall; Anxiously remarks Notes Bruno writes about the affection that Dickin- attacks on made-up scholarship and humor Gentlemen at large, That there must be peril In The Slanted Life of Emily Dickinson son felt for her dog Carlo – quoting directly consisting primarily of presenting inaccura- 4 1 Pun: “station” can mean either rank in society or the (2017), a graphic novel / comic book written from a Dickinson letter – then a few pages cies as facts, the experience of reading this Talking very small; ’Mong so many sparks: place where a train stops. Gentlemen in tights, Roguish-looking fellow, and illustrated by Rosanna Bruno (profiled in later writes of Dickinson’s failed attempts to book is immensely uncomfortable. There With a loose-ish mien; Turning to a stranger, 2 There is a tweed pattern called “temperance.” the Fall 2015 issue of the Bulletin), the read- “develop some lines of her poetry into reality may well be a time for joking about Dickin- Gentlemen in gray, Says it’s his opinion er is confronted by a vividly imagined world TV shows,” and then about Dickinson’s “short son’s life, but for this reader the effect here 3 “Stupid” means stupefied, and “association of ideas” Looking rather green; She is out of danger! of what we in 2017 might call “alternative lived stint as an advice columnist,” and her is timely in the worst way – and the political is a philosophical theory of how one thought leads to facts.” Taking her starting point in Emily dabbling “in writing detective stories.” Some and philosophical implications of such work another. It was influential among the Transcendentalists, Gentlemen quite old, Woman with her baby, but you see Saxe wasn’t a Transcendentalist. Dickinson’s life and work, Bruno imagines of these ideas are clearly meant to derive their are far from amusing. Asking for the news; Sitting vis-à-vis:5 and depicts speculative, counterfactual sce- humor from their ludicrous implausibility, 4 Yes there was. On warm days, with the windows in the Gentlemen in black, Baby keeps a-squalling, narios such as Emily Dickinson’s enjoyment but others are less clearly marked as fiction, At another end of the epistemological spec- cars open, steam engines were hazardous to passengers’ of marijuana or a Facebook page where Dick- and what exactly they are meant to mock is trum I turn to the truly gorgeous Rue Des In a fit of blues; Woman looks at me; clothes. But in nineteenth-century slang, a spark is also Gentlemen in claret, Asks about the distance, a flirtatious man. Sober as a vicar; Says it’s tiresome talking, 5 In the nineteenth century the term referred to a pair of Gentlemen in Tweed, Noises of the cars vehicle seats arranged with the rear one facing forward 2 The Bulletin welcomes notices of all Dickinson-related books, including those published outside the U.S. Dreadfully in liquor! Are so very shocking! and the front one facing backward. Send information to Renée Bergland, 3 Barrett Road, Hanover, NH 03755, U.S.A. Email: [email protected]

18 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 19 Reviews of Publications Reviews of Publications

Cordeliers: Portraits of a House, a work pleasurable. This is a work that truly dwells and appealing children’s book that gives stress correspondence theories of truth or of alienation and individuation” (11) by ad- poet, poem, and object as integrated or lev- which provides no information about Dick- in “a fairer house than Prose.” young readers a chance to read the poetry representationalism as the basic function- dressing “how an object carries and even eled entities in the same ontic playing field. inson, true or false. Instead there are beauti- themselves. I am most drawn to the irrele- ing relationship between mind and world carries out human attention.” fully composed photographs of a medieval Finally, Poetry for Kids: Emily Dickinson vant – or at least to the tangentially-connect- (heretofore the mainstream approach to In her discussion of Dickinson, Davis ar- Provençal town-house turned artists’ resi- provides a good basic introduction to Dick- ed – work of high art. I am most troubled, yet aesthetic and metaphysical questions in After treating Thoreau and his “poetics of gues that contemporary modes of criticism dence. According to the publisher’s website, inson. Edited by Susan Snively and whim- also most intrigued by, the inaccuracies of A Western circles). This counter-poetic prac- touch” in Chapter 1, Davis turns to simi- that focus on historical or material condi- the house belongs to “the specialist in Amer- sically illustrated by Christine Davenier, the Slanted Life. What would Emily Dickinson tice offers a strategy for “how to adjust, lar qualities in Dickinson’s writing, argu- tions reinforce the same mind-world her- ican studies, writer, and exhibition organizer book covers well-known as well as some make of alternative facts? approach, and encounter” that Davis links ing that “the work of noticing, attending, meneutic that Dickinson worked against. David Galloway.” Ten photographers did lesser-known poems. The illustrations are with more classical models of poetry (11). and loving what is seen” is a “shared poetic According to Davis, questions concerning residencies there, and a collection of the energetic and charming, and the introduc- She suggests that Thoreau, Dickinson, and project” for both writers that “makes their the nature of manuscript, craft, and genre Annelise Brinck-Johnsen is a graduate stu- resulting images was edited by Christoph tion provides a reliable overview of Dickin- Whitman saw the poet’s task much as the work at once poetic and ornamental.” Here as they are materially-inflected simply dent in Women’s Studies at Oxford University Benjamin Schulz to form Rue Des Corde- son’s life, painting a portrait of the poet as Greeks did: as an occasion-based mode Davis associates poetry with ornament miss the point. She claims that Dickinson liers. good-natured and accessible to children. The of response to the world. Insofar as poets based on what she sees to be the essential, saw poetry as engagement with an in- rest of the book is equally accessible. Words use language as “a means of marking out classical function of each: that is, to “mark effable material world, not as a separate Interspersed with the photographs are snip- that might be difficult for young readers are persons, objects, and the world – or real- out” objects for praise, or to draw attention aestheticization that comments on reality pets of text – excerpts from Bukowski, defined at the bottom of each page, while ity itself – for attention and praise,” they by adorning. This work of ornamenting at- from across an abyss. If Dickinson was Theo Davis James, and Voltaire, poems in French, Ger- the poems are summarized at the back of perform an existential and metaphysical tention foregrounds interaction, contact and curious about “the status of the object,” Ornamental Aesthetics: The Poetry of At- man, and English. Although the book is not the book. For example, as Snively explains process that Davis describes as ornamental. interrelation between a poet and her object she was not curious about it in the way tending in Thoreau, Dickinson, & Whitman about Dickinson, it is framed by two poems “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers – ” (Fr314), as opposed to the poet’s doubtful capaci- that some previous Dickinson scholars Oxford University Press 2016, 245 pp. of hers: “The Props assist the House” (Fr729) “The poet sees hope as a brave bird that sings Davis describes the shift to ornament as a ty to represent or reconstitute that object. have claimed. Instead, Davis argues for and “I Dwell in Possibility” (Fr466). The through storm, cold, and loneliness, yet never radical realignment in the larger history of Drawing on Heidegger, Davis argues that a more metaphysical treatment of object placement of these poems as the book’s con- asks to be fed ‘a crumb.’ The giving comes Reviewed by Kylan Rice aesthetics. “At issue here is not simply a lit- Dickinson’s concern with the aesthetics of and thing in Dickinson’s work and – per- clusion leads the reader to reflect back on the from hope and the poet speaks in grateful erary historical claim,” she writes, “but the ornament depends largely on distance from haps counterintuitively – seeks to redeem photographs gathered within, to consider the awe.” I did not bristle at these summaries as possibility of thinking of poetry as a way (or a loss of contact with) the object by the a Dickinsonian poetics essentially con- meaning of “house” and “home.” much as I did at Bruno’s speculations, but I Theo Davis’s new book, Ornamental Aes- of relating to the world, rather than as an poet-subject. cerned with experience and personal en- must admit to some hesitation about the proj- thetics, reveals striking aesthetic congru- expressive object.” Sketching out the his- gagement with the world. The true star of this genuinely engrossing work ect of explaining Dickinson this way. I am ence between Thoreau, Dickinson, and tory of this notion, Davis shows how the Davis’s most provocative claim is that is the photography. Divided into sections by not convinced that it helps young readers to Whitman, while making philosophically poetry of attending carries inherently polit- “Dickinson’s ornamentation looks past the The structure of Davis’s book is fluid and photographer, Rue Des Cordeliers presents inform them that there are single, orthodox radical claims about “counter-poetics.” Da- ical freight and further links this mode of centrality of loss to representation that has reciprocating, folding and unfolding like a photos that range from standard interiors interpretations of Dickinson poems, and at vis engages with a diverse group of critics ornamental aesthetics to Marxist-Hegelian been critical not only to Christianity but river current. Her lively “personal” voice, highlighting the unique interior design of times the explanations seemed forced to me. and philosophers, including Anne Carson, and Heideggerian traditions – epistemes also to Western culture and poetic history.” larded with allusions to continental the- the house to unsettling still lifes of artfully I had similar hesitations about the division of Susan Stewart, Martin Heidegger, and that foreground the individual and her phe- Rather than claiming her distance-oriented ory and Buddhist scholarship, can seem arranged dolls’ heads and other objects. My the poems into four “seasons” with appropri- Buddhist commentators. She repudiates nomenal experience of the world as a way aesthetic heritage, Davis argues, Dickinson somewhat idiosyncratic. However, Da- two favorite sections explore the idea of home ately seasonal drawings. (What makes “This recent trends in materialist and historicist of making the individual legible in her re- developed her own ornamental aesthetics vis’s essayistic style enhances this sleek in ways that are particularly enriched by their is my letter to the world” a particularly win- criticism in favor of connections “between lational milieu. by asking “what being grounded in the treatment of Thoreau, Dickinson, and juxtaposition with Dickinson’s poems. Mary tery poem? I had a sense of an uncanny return and across texts from different time peri- world means.” For Davis, this point is es- Whitman, which borders at times on an A. Kelly’s piece “Conversations” consists of to the Higginson-Todd edition.) Yet although ods and even different cultures” as she tries In her prose style, Davis practices what sential to grasping the force of Dickinson’s aesthetic and critical manifesto. Her writ- photographs of empty chairs and sofas. Shot I have some concerns that the didactic ele- to establish “the substantive identity of the she preaches. She explains that she uses work: she was concerned with an essential ing is entirely consistent with her essential from various positions, the images position ments of this collection could circumscribe artistic and philosophical commitments at “a more individual, if not personal, way un-groundedness in being. Davis demon- claim: that Thoreau, Dickinson, and Whit- the viewer sometimes in conversation any truly magical possibility, my guess is that stake” in particular works without regard of writing, partly in resistance to the new strates how this interest results in repeated man’s counter-poetics offer us a new ap- with the lacuna on the chair, confronting most young readers would be able to over- for temporal or historical partitions. models of knowledge production that per- portrayals of “unsettled ornamental plac- proach to writing a phenomenal world that an absence, sometimes on the sidelines look the explanations and enjoy the poems meate contemporary universities, and part- ing-upon,” suggesting that “for Dickinson, is in essence fluctuating and co-construct- projecting questions onto an empty room. The and the artwork. Undeniably attractive and Davis describes Thoreau, Dickinson and ly out of a commitment to retaining the ornamentation structures her exploration of ed – an approach that foregrounds the es- other outstanding piece is Jens Komossa’s readily accessible to every age, this book per- Whitman’s artistic and philosophical com- individual element of reading” (32). Thus, the transient nature of all phenomena, lead- sential work of ornament as a means of “Wandbilder,” a series of minimalist analog forms its introductory function well, with a mitments as an “ornamental aesthetics,” ar- Davis attempts to “get closer to the life of ing to an at times painfully vibrant sense marking-out, honoring, and giving praise. photos of wall, light, and shadow that capture great deal of whimsy and charm. guing that all three advance poetic projects experience, and hence the life of persons” of the mutually fluctuating contact of mind the serene and melancholy beauty of an that dwell on the “relationship of attention (35) in her own writing, emulating the and object.” Because Dickinson did not see empty house at twilight. Beyond Kelly’s and Inaccuracy, irrelevance, or instruction – per- . . . to objects” (116). Further, she asserts nineteenth-century ornamental aesthetics the mind or a subject’s phenomenal experi- Kylan Rice is pursuing his PhD at UNC Komossa’s sections, the images in this book sonally, I am most comfortable with recom- that these writers offer a “counter-poetics”: that she describes as attempts to “redeem ence as distorting or interfering with truth- Chapel Hill, where he studies 19th-Century are generally thought-provoking as well as mending the instructional – the responsible a turning away from aesthetic modes that human experience from modern conditions ful contact with reality, she was able to see poetics.

20 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 21 Reviews of Publications

The Heart’s Many Doors: American Poets All of the images contain at least one human way roofs clamp houses / to their floors and Respond to Metka Krašovec’s Images Re- figure, each distinct in the evocative posture or corners,” later offering a description of “pa- A Quieter Passion: a Review of My Letter to the World sponding to Emily Dickinson gesture it adopts. Jackson likens them to me- pers stacked and weighted with a smoky / riv- Richard Jackson, ed. Wings Press, 128pp. dieval illuminated manuscripts, but these rich- er stone.” Bradley Paul, reflecting on a typo in By Susan Snively ly expressive pairings recall William Blake’s the word “Weight” in a printing of Dickinson’s Reviewed by Jordan Greenwald illustrated poems much more. The pairings, poem, imagines “an h that fell; / an h subject to mily Dickinson has inspired supposed (but non-credible) however, are not so much illustrated texts but gravity so / an h that is a thing.” Thus Dickin- Eartists in many genres: drama, epileptic fits. Although brief o read Dickinson’s poetry is often to rather something akin to dialectical images, in- son’s remark about another’s grief – “I wonder biography, fiction, documentary scenes from A Quiet Passion Timagine abstractions taking solid shape. dependent works put into illuminating conver- if It weighs like Mine – ” engenders new lines films, songs, dances, paintings, appear in My Letter to the World, Love, hope, despair, faith, time, grief: by sation. Krašovec, in fact, even drew some of rich with images of gravitational pull. sculpture, and works that mix they do not intrude on its narrative means of conceit, Dickinson gives these the images before finding the verse that would them up. Her “letter to the world” integrity. Instead, the film awakens abstractions concrete form. One might say accompany them. Amid the collection of poems – many focused arrived first in November, 1890, viewers’ desire to dwell among the that Dickinson likes to flesh them out, which on the weighty subject of mortality – one can edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and poet’s unanswerable questions – perhaps speaks to her fixation on the fleshlier The volume’s poets adopt a wide range of ap- also find dashes of humor. Chris Merrill, for Thomas Wentworth Higginson. antic spiders that dance among her abstractions of pain and death. All of the proaches to parsing the relationship between instance, reimagines Dickinson’s “Dying Todd and Higginson altered intricately spun webs. aforementioned concepts are incarnated text and image. Some fuse elements of both Eye” as a brooch custom made for a woman her spelling, punctuation, and in The Heart’s Many Doors: American in what is indeed double ekphrasis. For in- whose husband is having an affair. In a poem word choice to evade criticism The dozen or so Dickinson Poets Respond to Metka Krašovec’s Images stance, in response to a Munch-esque image titled “There’s Something Very Unscientific of her unconventional ways. scholars interviewed for the film Responding to Emily Dickinson, a collection of a lone figure shrouded in darkness, Cathy About Zombies,” Josh Mensch riffs on one of Yet Higginson got it right in his don’t try to construct a unified field of eighty-one poems by forty-one American Wagner writes a flat description from the per- Krašovec’s images: “You find a branch grow- introduction to the poems’ second theory of Emily Dickinson. Their poets, accompanied by eleven drawings by spective of the figure itself: “in a cold white ing out of your back / Unlike you, it has a fu- edition in 1891, when he called her respectful, imaginative, often the Slovenian artist. Aptly described by editor veil. / I covered my ears at the gray noise. / I ture.” “a wholly new and original poetic funny interviews take the audience and poet Richard Jackson as an exercise in wasn’t given eyes.” When her poem ends “I genius.” in many directions at once, an “double ekphrasis,” the volume pays homage would be / still and set apart / for company,” Devotees of Dickinson’s poetry, readers of approach that seems exactly right to Dickinson’s talent for capturing the ideal it nods also to Dickinson’s “solitude of space” contemporary poetry, and those with special In 1955, when her 1,789 poems, for the poet who “dwelled in in the concrete. in the poem inscribed below. Emilia Phillips, interest in ekphrasis will all find much to ap- by Thomas H. Johnson and Possibility” (Fr466). Among the meanwhile, responds to both works with an preciate in this volume. Theodora Ward, were collected experts are film director Terence Perhaps known best for her paintings, Metka anecdote of a subway ride in which the speak- and published by Harvard, readers Davies, scholars Christopher Krašovec was invited to hold a retrospective er wonders if her adjacency to another rider is Jordan Greenwald is a PhD candidate in saw Dickinson’s letter to the world Benfey, Polly Longsworth, Martha of her work by the Museum of Modern Art in indeed “what it’s like / to live in another body, Comparative Literature at Berkeley. with the poet’s original spelling, Ackmann, Marta Werner, Martha Ljubljana in 2012 – the first time such an hon- its heat entering / into mine.” Both poets work punctuation, and vocabulary. Nell Smith, Leslie Morris, Elisa or had been given to a female contemporary through Krašovec’s image to give concrete Surprises appeared on every New, and Cristanne Miller; novelist artist. Each of her drawings in this volume is form to Dickinson’s ideas, even if they arrive page. Since then, evidence of Jerome Charyn; Amherst College paired with a handwritten Dickinson poem at remarkably different results. These poems Noteworthy Publications Dickinson’s shape-shifting has archivist Mike Kelly, Jen Benka of or, more often, selected verses that invite the are works of ekphrasis, no doubt, but also acts attained a kind of divine wackiness. to a rapt audience of Dickinson friends, the American Academy of Poets, George viewer to divine a correspondence between of translation. Long-time Dickinson Society member Rich- Re-reading the poems in manuscripts, fans, and obsessives. Boziwick, composer and musical director word and image. In some cases, that corre- ard Brantley has published Transatlantic in print, or online, we never know from of The Red Skies Music Ensemble, and spondence is easy to decipher: above the first The poems are assembled in groups of around Trio: Empiricism, Evangelicalism, Roman- poem to poem which Dickinson we are Hurricane Films produced A Quiet Dickinson Museum Executive Director quatrain of “A wounded Deer – leaps highest seven, corresponding to the image to which ticism (Culicidaea Press), a collection of his going to meet: the brilliant schoolgirl, Passion in 2016. Directed by Terence Jane Wald. These experts discuss the – ” (Fr181), for instance, one sees a human they respond. The result is eleven rich inter- essays and reviews, spanning his full career. the mischievous playmate, the flirtatious Davies, it garnered much praise, poet’s loves, friendships, family, home, figure crouched above a deer’s upturned head textual constellations with shared points of One entire section, “Essays, Third Series,” young woman, the lover whose “heart had including an extravagant claim that it was education, religion, passion for nature, in the foreground, while in the background reference. One pleasure of reading the volume is devoted to Emily Dickinson. many doors,” the poet who reshaped the “the best film ever made.” My Letter to musicality, writing habits, and posthumous another figure leaps, ostensibly exemplifying is the surprising recurrence of certain images. English language. Her “infinite variety” – the World is resolutely a documentary, publication. Each blooming subject “the Ecstasy of death – .” In other cases, the Responding to a drawing of two descending Marta Werner, with Jen Bervin the author to quote her favorite author, Shakespeare steadier in its pace than A Quiet Passion, buzzes with contradictions that shine and relationship between word and image is more figures paired with Dickinson’s “I measure of The Gorgeous Nothings (New Directions – brings energy and joy to My Letter and more subtle in its voice. Narrated sting – the shine from Dickinson’s radiant difficult to trace: above “I’ve seen a Dying Eye every Grief I meet” (Fr550), Richard Jack- and Christine Burgin Gallery 2013), has to the World, a new documentary film by Cynthia Nixon, who reads the poems imagination, the sting from her readers’ / Run round and round a Room – ” (Fr648) son writes, “In winter squirrel nests appear published a selection of the images from from Hurricane Films, directed by Sol in a mild, dutiful manner, the new film humble attempts to penetrate her enigmas. hover the likenesses of a skull, a rabbit, a horse clamped to bare branches. / You can feel grav- that work in a new cloth edition called Emily Papadopoulos and produced by Roy avoids the melodrama of the earlier and a person with arms outstretched, suspend- ity making its claims.” Leslie Ullman writes Dickinson, Envelope Poems (New Directions Boulter and Andrea Gibson. The film film, with its ghastly death-scene and a Scholar and writer Martha Ackmann, ed in murky darkness. that “The Noticing / holds things in place / the and Christine Burgin Gallery 2016). premiered in Amherst on September 14 nearly unbearable depiction of the poet’s whose interview opens the film, speculates

22 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 23 that Emily Dickinson was “a kind of this relationship helped to bring about the Emily’s 150th birthday. Above the packed poet as a pale, wistful teenager? It is Philadelphia ascend to a niche in what World features stunning graphics of the outlaw” in both her biographical life and publication of Dickinson’s poems. After auditorium, as opinions flared, one could appropriate that among the musical pieces Richard Sewall called “the Dickinson poet’s herbarium that glide through the her poetry. The phrase sets the theme the poet’s death, Emily’s devoted sister almost see faint puffs of smoke. A wild in the film’s superb soundtrack is Charles cult.” Wadsworth appears briefly in background, and include plants Emily for others’ variations. Novelist Jerome Vinnie sought an editor for the treasure- debate took place among a number of Ives’s “The Unanswered Question.” A Quiet Passion, but the moment is found on her home ground: clammy Charyn calls Dickinson “all-powerful” in trove of hundreds of poems found in participants whose brothers were Trappist tender rather than sensational. In his locust, interrupted fern, cannabis sativa, her radical, explosive effects. Her dashes, the house, first asking the well-read Sue monks. Much was said, sometimes at high As with the earlier film, A Quiet Passion, 1974 biography, Richard Sewall wrote and hundreds of other native plants. The he says, “express violence.” Scholar Marta Dickinson to take up the task. When Sue volume, about whether poetry required a My Letter to the World omits some that the cult had grown ripe by June, poet’s skill at cultivation, her welcoming Werner, who has delved into Dickinson’s moved too slowly, Vinnie, eager to have vow of silence. subjects important to those familiar 1891, as Alice Ward Bailey wrote in ways with children, and her appearance, texts, calls her “a terrifying force.” the world learn of “my sister’s genius,” with Dickinson’s biography. Although The Springfield Republican. By the time described by her young friend MacGregor Harvard professor Elisa New speaks of asked Mabel Loomis Todd for help. Sue A special treat in My Letter to the World is her sister Vinnie, her father Edward, her Martha Dickinson Bianchi died in 1943, Jenkins as “a beautiful woman,” Dickinson’s “uncompromising process,” and Mabel, rivals for Austin Dickinson’s the interview with Mike Kelly, archivist brother Austin, and her sister-in-law Sue others had crowded in to challenge the would have been visible to observant a radical authority achieved by breaking affection, could never have worked at the Robert Frost Library at Amherst appear as important actors in the poet’s myth, or to supply one of their own. passersby through the clear panes of the rules. About Dickinson’s religious life, together. Whatever one thinks of Mabel, College. Dickinson’s preservation of her emotional life, we miss the presence of Sewall writes with his customary wisdom: conservatory. “Secretive ways” aside, her Leslie Morris, Curator of Modern Books she served as amanuensis, editor, and work shows how deliberately she sewed Maggie Maher, her friend and servant – “It is hard to convey a mystery, like love eagerness to learn the mysteries of nature and Manuscripts at Harvard’s Houghton champion publicist. “She was the perfect her poems into bundles and stored them. “warm and wild and mighty” – who aided or religion. For all her obliqueness and gave the poet the privilege of revealing Library, observes that Dickinson “speaks choice,” says Chris Benfey. “Good to hide, and hear ‘em hunt!” in the preservation of her poems. Maggie her secretive ways, Emily Dickinson her generous selves. of a God of Nature, not of the Church.” (Fr945) she may have whispered as she surely deserved a larger part, as did Judge establishes an intimacy with her readers Scholars Martha Nell Smith and Polly The film’s expert insights – too many to threaded her needle. Kelly displays some Otis Phillips Lord, her father Edward’s as do few other poets. Such an intimacy Sol Papadopoulos, Terence Davies, Longsworth express differing views of enumerate here – are enhanced by the treasures from the Amherst collection, best friend and the recipient of the poet’s leads to a possessiveness the skeptics Andrea Gibson, Mary MacLeod, and the poet’s passionate love for her sister- confident voices of Benfey, Boziwick, including a poem, “The way Hope frisky letters to the man she called “my find hard to deal with. As Millicent their colleagues have the gifts not only of in-law, Sue Dickinson. Smith has long Ackmann, Smith, New, Miller, and others builds his House,” written on a house- lovely Salem.” Lord, Edward Dickinson’s Todd Bingham, something of a skeptic filmmaking, but of devotion to the poet. believed that Emily and Sue were “deeply with long experience writing and teaching shaped piece of paper. Dickinson wrote best friend, has been described by scholars herself, once said, ‘They all think they The images of natural miracles produce a intertwined” lovers; Longsworth agrees about Dickinson. Whatever their earlier on any handy scrap, including the backs Richard Sewall and James Guthrie as the own her.’” Sewall adds a further insight: breathtaking joy. We see images of light- that the two women were in love with experience as readers, students, and fans of telegrams, discarded letters, even a great love of the poet’s later years. that when the subject of the cult is “a struck, rippling water – an actual pond, or each other, but “not in the sense that we of the poet, viewers are persuaded both chocolate wrapper, proving, as Kelly said, woman, sensitive, fragile, with legends of the sea Dickinson claimed never to have use the term ‘lesbian’ today.” Still, she to read more, and to relax into a pleasure that Parisian chocolate could be obtained The Amherst area, with its five colleges, blighted romance…suppressions external seen? A wind-tossed field of golden grass says, “there was an awful lot of kissing.” shared by thousands. Musician George even in Amherst. Always carrying pencil town libraries, a well-read populace, and repressions internal…give added recalls the “gazing grain” of “Because Longsworth turns this subject like a prism Boziwick, founder of The Red Skies and paper no matter what her household and throngs of writers, is a tough place piquancy to the agony and ecstasy that I could not stop for Death” (Fr479) with many gleaming facets. Christopher Music Ensemble, points out the use of tasks, Emily the poet was armed for to make definite pronouncements about all may read in her published poems. The The film’s interior scenes recreate 19th Benfey covers an impressive range common hymn meter in her poems, as poetry, and packed some heat. Emily Dickinson – or to defy mystery appeal is, for many, irresistible.” It still is. century staid familial tableaux, complete of subjects, including Emily’s intense she worked variations on its familiar by wishing them away. A hunger to have with lace curtains and thick chairs that involvement with Sue, and Sue’s attempt pulse. As with the poet’s impressive Another mystery Kelly explores is the all unanswered questions settled at last The proliferation of Emily Dickinsons, look almost comfortable. Other images to suggest revisions to Emily’s poems, a range of reading in many subjects, her existence of a daguerreotype, discovered is likely to remain unsated. We always like the fecundity of the poet’s garden, remind us that Dickinson witnessed the controlling gambit that threatened their music book, as Boziwick wrote in a blog in a cache of random papers in a want more, and the poet, exulting in her has become perennial. Harvard scholar maelstroms and miracles peculiar to New friendship. for Harvard’s Houghton Library, showed Springfield antique shop, now on loan in mysteries, must have known that they Elisa New draws an analogy between England, especially in changing seasons. her “keen interest in the piano repertoire the Frost Library archives. Is it Emily? were the key to fame. Dickinson’s poems and her garden, My Letter to the World reawakens the To the subject of Austin Dickinson’s of the day.” It is “uncommonly large,” How old is she, and what is she thinking sources of love and labor combined. audience to the small-town Amherst affair with Mabel Loomis Todd, which containing over a hundred pieces. as she faces the camera with a mysterious Emily Dickinson’s letters, another trove Visitors to the Dickinson Museum are known to many of its citizens, and invites began in 1882 and lasted for thirteen smile? Pictured sitting next to a woman of astonishing reading, prove that she often startled to learn how expert the poet others to visit the homestead where a great years, Benfey brings a canny clarity to In contrast to some participants in who may or may not be her friend Kate had a richer, more complex, and more was at digging in the dirt and bringing poet reinvented poetry, for the world. his interpretation of the romance between earlier Dickinson symposia as far back Scott, Emily has her arm around Kate’s passionate life than the afflicted creature forth flowers and fruit. Today, after the the unhappy Austin and the charming, as 1980, these experts never proclaim chair, a gesture some interpret as a sign portrayed by her niece Martha Dickinson Museum’s impressive reconstruction narcissistic Mabel Loomis Todd. The their opinions or raise verbal fists in of intimacy. Jerome Charyn argues that Bianchi in the early twentieth century. of Emily’s conservatory, visitors can Author of four collections of poetry and pair evaded scandal, he says, because indignation. Their devotion to Dickinson the photograph reveals Emily as a fully- Bianchi helped to encourage the belief behold one of her kingdoms, rich with founder of the Writing Center at Amherst Mabel’s tolerant husband David willingly has led them to “judge tenderly.” This grown woman, “filled with sexual desire.” that Emily had suffered a disappointment southeastern light. Reportedly she grew College, Susan Snively has been screenwrit- participated in the cover-up. David Todd, approach is one of the film’s great (The other woman in the daguerreotype in love for a married man, and decided jasmine and pomegranate there, and er and narrator of two documentaries, See- the Amherst College astronomer, trained strengths. Some Dickinson veterans who looks sad and hostile.) Will we ever to retreat from the world, refuse social allowed neighborhood children into ing New Englandly (2010) and “My Busi- his eyes both on his wife’s earthly desires attended the recent premiere may recall a know for sure, or are we stuck with the gatherings, and always wear white. Thus the tiny kingdom to watch a chrysalis ness is to Sing”(2012). She has also written and on the stars. The complex geometry of 1980 conference in Amherst celebrating daguerreotype of 1847, showing the did the minister Charles Wadsworth of unfold into a butterfly. My Letter to the one novel, The Heart Has Many Doors.

24 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 25 Wieland, Continued from page 11 Restoring Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom: 2015 Emily’s Economies somehow foreseen the Kardashians. It’s also about friendship and complicity. These are The Other Hemisphere When they lifted up the floorboards, Sometimes on a sheet of not original or ground-breaking observations – I am, you will recall, many footnotes they found that someone had been walking in circles wrapping paper short of a scholar. Dear Preceptor – at the side of the room nearest the window Often on a fragment of so that (looking out) what could be seen were the church opposite, stationery Georgia went away to college last week. She is, not unlike her mother, a lover of ritual The word – said – lives, a person running, perhaps the circus animals parading up from the Occasionally on an invitation and symbolic gesture. We had planned our last evening together, the pair of us, songs we say I, and my word railroad depot, or possibly a drunk, or birds The fold of an envelope would listen to that would make us ugly-cry (we wanted to get that over with privately if Said here, in this place – poised on the fence surrounding the firehouse, A torn bill or possible), past events we would recall with fondness, promises we would make, and ad- lives still – a century or maybe the firemen themselves, chafing at minutes wasted advertisement, vice we would give. It all came to pass, as planned. Unplanned, she began to recite “I’m to the year when my when they might have been playing with their children On a recipe, receipt or discarded Nobody!” ending with the laughing ring of “Bog.” head was first turned or chopping wood; it was possibly someone obsessed message of sympathy, Away from the things with figures, someone yearning after the most perfect figure Once on the flyleaf of her father’s copy of In these first weeks without her, I am experiencing that poem in a whole new way, as a of this world – of all, the one with no ending, just like God – Washington Irving's Sketch Book, different kind of nobody. I don’t know what’s become of the part of myself that’s been a Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – a woman who walked But always with a generous heart full-on mother for 18 years – it feels sometimes like blank, nothing, absence, a huge hole Against evanescence – on the circumference, claiming it was her “Business,” Emily Dickinson wrote poetry. in my chest, like I can feel the wind whistling though it, and I can’t breathe. I’m drowning to last long – to bear the spirit who put on white and called herself a “Bride,” in the bog. This poem suddenly sounds to me a little “the lady doth protest too much, of the body, to hear my although she never married but lowered cakes Her methods could appear eccentric methinks.” The nobodies of the first two lines really only exist at all because there’s some- letters echoing in the blues in baskets to the children of other girls who deemed But she saw “New Englandly” one else present, the “you” who isn’t supposed to tell, a somebody to share the experience. and reds of Brazil – her “mad” after much deliberation, after·watching So practiced strict economy. where the sun arcs her maid, Maggie, send visitors and old friends away across Northern skies – through the front gate, explaining “Miss Emily Her words that soared into the ether can't see you now, she's busy, she's sorry she cannot” Were often cramped like postscripts The Marathon Poetry Reading Themselves go out – I said – but “she has to oversee a tulip bulb pushing up Between performances of household tasks. at the Library of Congress: 12/8/2014 Speaking of poets whose through the earth in that container on her windowsill Modestly, she would not accord them words do not yet have and besides, she's had a letter from that man The benignant latitudes of space. In the grand library hung with flags of her country the right to expire – she admires, Otis (I think) or Sam or Wentworth, They come to celebrate her birthday. One by one she'll be fetching some scrap or oddment of used parchment The Muse, however, who also knew how to bake, They come: the school teacher, the actress, the businessman. As for me – I to send him words like kindly angels to keep him company Sew, garden and launder, was never offended, The librarian, anxious to know “Who was 'Master’?” breathe – I breathe in her absence” because she was so often absent, For she knew how earnestly, how lavishly, how perfectly The psychiatrist, fascinated by her white dress and reclusion, the air of Bahia – tending the jasmine in her conservatory until it breathed Emily would always serve her. The college professor who worships “the mimicry of her dashes,” Mr. Higginson – I perfume like the memory of an imagined love The lonely housewife who selected her society for comfort: thought you would for whom she wrote hundreds of poems few people Judith Farr One by one they come. It is her one-hundred-eighty-fourth birthday. like – to know – knew about and those who knew did not value so it was fortunate that she had those day lilies Instructions are brief: “Read each poem in order, Your Scholar she claimed looked like her (her hair was red, Announce your own name first. Identify the poems by number.” her skin freckled by the summer sunshine) Judith Farr, Professor of English emerita at Georgetown. has long To only a few she gave titles – later, if she had the chance, George Monteiro, lilies she might offer to a perfect stranger, been a celebrated critic of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. She is best Some time between baking, watering flowers, making tea. Salvador, Brazil, 1986 (since much madness is divinest sense) known as the author of The Passion of Emily Dickinson (1992) But their tenderness, glamour and acuity resisted titles, saying “These are my introduction,” fleeing and, with Louise Carter, The Gardens of Emily Dickinson (2004). Those words that came to her like a flight of birds, needing rest. afterwards to her upstairs bedroom where Her more recent work explores the connections between poetry and Eternity awaited her like a wilderness only painting, particularly the Hudson River School. However, she be- Now it is almost evening in the grand salon. They read on. she could shape into a brilliant garden, an gan as a poet and won a contest sponsored by Marianne Moore In her father’s house, however, in the hallowed room George Monteiro’s poetry has frequent- everlasting world without end. when she was a teenager. Moore’s advice to her: “If you want to be Where Emily’s dress hangs, there is silence. ly appeared in the Bulletin. Professor of a poet, never get married and steer clear of the Giantess.” Reckless The shadow of her light form flits, luminous, across the page English emeritus at Brown, he has written Judith Farr of the warning, she has recently finished a book of poetry that in- As they read. She is present here. She speaks to them. critical works on topics in US, Portuguese, cludes several inspired by Dickinson. and Brazilian literature, including, of Judith Farr course, Emily Dickinson. He has also writ- ten many poems about other writers.

26 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 27 Members’ News Members’ News

New EDIS Board Member-At-Large The Belle Behind Bars: Teaching Dickinson in Prison

Stephanie Farrar Susan Goldwitz moved from university teaching to the “Changing Lives Through Literature” program in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and from there to various positions teaching incarcerated inmates. Not long ago, at the state prison in Concord, she was teaching a course in poetry and essays, to introduce “new ways of thinking, developing deci- tephanie Farrar is an by EDIS and the Literary sion-making skills, and reworking identity issues.” She frequently avoided telling her students who an author was, SAssistant Professor of Translation Research Cen- so they would not classify the work before they had read it. English at the University ter at Fudan University, in of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. Shanghai in 2014. Also, on ne man began the class sitting in the back row with his arms crossed and an expression I interpreted as, “try to show After doing her Bachelor’s an EDIS sponsored Modern Ome this is worth it,” a mixture of defiance and defense. He was large, maybe in his 30s or 40s, black, muscular, and and Master’s degrees at the Language Association pan- silent. I noticed, though, that he came to every class, and after a few weeks passed, he moved up a row. When this event University of California, el, she presented a paper occurred, he chose a seat all the way up in the front row. Davis and San Diego cam- about Lavinia Dickinson’s puses, she did her PhD at 1898 typeset manuscript The poem we discussed was “The Brain – is wider than the Sky – ” (Fr632). The discussion was lively; enough time the University of Buffalo. of experimental poems. had passed for the class to be comfortable speaking with me and each other about weighty subjects of self, thought, and Now a junior scholar tran- She recently wrote a book God; hands went up without my calling. When we were finished, the silent student in the front row raised his hand for sitioning into her first ten- chapter on narrative black the very first time. “Who wrote this poem?” he demanded. I took a breath, asked for divine assistance, and said that her ure-track job, she is pleased poetry during Reconstruc- name was Emily Dickinson and that she lived in the 19th century in Amherst, not far from where we were; she wrote to have the opportunity, tion, and she continues her almost two thousand poems, just a handful published during her lifetime, and those often edited without her approval, as a member of the EDIS research on the poetry of many about religious ideas, and others about nature; she lived in her father’s house and rarely left it. Whew. Board, to contribute to the the Civil War. profession beyond her cam- He pushed his chair away, stood up, pointed two fingers on the end of an outstretched arm to the floor in two big swoops pus and to foster interest She has assisted in admin- and said, “That CHICK is REAL!” in Dickinson beyond the istrative activities related to academy. hosting a Dickinson mar- athon reading, putting on With Cristanne Miller and a departmental reunion for EDIS MLA 2018 Jane Donahue Eberwein, alumni, and preparations for “Of Strangers is the Earth the Inn”: Still Life, Scale, and Deep Time in Emily Dickinson Farrar co-edited Dickinson the Modernist Studies Asso- in Her Own Time (Iowa ciation Conference of 2011. This year’s EDIS session at MLA, “Of Strangers is the Earth the Inn,” will feature a cluster of papers sounding the 2016). The collection, subtitled, biographies, as well as those in the intertwining motifs of still life, deep time, and scale for reading Dickinson in the shadow of the anthropocene. A Biographical Chronicle of Her popular imagination. In addition to engaging members of Life, Drawn from Recollections, In- the public in the delights of poetry Chair: Marta L. Werner, Professor of English, D’Youville College terviews, and Memoirs by Family, Farrar’s Dickinson-related work in general, Farrar particularly looks Friends, and Associates, is just that also includes a chapter on the po- forward to helping the organization Presenters: – an assortment of materials pre- et’s use of popular discourses of grow even more inclusive, to help- Isabel Sobral Campos, Assistant Professor of Literature, Dept. of Liberal Studies, Montana Tech senting a documentary biographical masculinity in the context of the ing the Society to honestly engage Zachary Tavlin, PhD candidate, Dept. of English, University of Washington portrait of the poet that complicates Civil War, which she presented at with historical evidence of Dick- Amy R. Nestor, Assistant Professor of Literature, Dept. of English, Georgetown University – Qatar some of even the more subtle im- the conference, “Emily Dickinson inson’s relationships to race as we pressions conveyed by the standard Dwells in China,” co-sponsored deal with her material culture. Respondent: Keith M. Mikos, Lecturer, Dept. of English, DePaul University

28 | EDIS Bulletin November/December 2017 | 29 Retouching Mabel EDIS Membership Form onathan Morse, using an Adobe Photo- Membership in the Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) enables you to participate in the Society’s meetings and conferences, Jshop program and Lucis filter, has re- to receive both of the Society’s publications (the Bulletin and the Emily Dickinson Journal), and to help foster the goals of the Society. touched the familiar image of the aspiring editor and journalist Mabel Loomis Todd. Name, title & affiliation ______The filter is used to produce High Dynamic Mailing address ______Range effects, increasing contrast and gener- ______al luminosity. HDR techniques are designed Telephone (home)______(office) ______(fax) ______to create effects similar to those experienced Email ______by the human iris, which receives consider- ably more complicated information from the Please check if this is: new address___ membership renewal ___ world than a normal camera can simulate. Membership Categories and Rates: Joint EDIS-ED Museum _____$110 Compared to the Lovell image, the HDR Regular _____ $60 version shows more of the texture of the Student _____ $30 dress and the hat, as well as a greater sense Associate (receives only the Bulletin) _____ $20 of the composure and expressiveness of the Institutional _____$125 face.

Contributions (added to membership fee) Sustaining Member $_____($150 or more) Contributing Member $_____($50 – $149) General Contribution $_____ The Many “Lives” of An Emily Dickinson Year Book Scholar Travel / EDIS Institute $_____ By Krans Bloeimaand Total Amount Enclosed $_____ Gift Memberships n a letter dated 3 December, 1894, Mabel sign in green on the title page, and a regular most-likely tipped-in. Whether this thirteenth Name, title & affiliation ______ILoomis Todd pitched the following idea to trade edition that lacked the above-named drawing was initially rejected or meant to be Mailing address ______E. D. Hardy of Roberts Brothers, Publishers: special features. Both issues contained the used in a later edition remains a mystery. ______“how does the idea of an Emily Dickinson same number of illustrations, twelve. More- ______Year Book strike you? I talked with Mr. over, the book seemingly generated enough Telephone (home)______(office) ______(fax) ______Niles over a year ago about it, and he thought interest over the years to warrant its re-pub- Email ______it a fine idea, and seemed to think it would lication three more times under different im- sell largely.” (see Millicent Todd Bingham’s prints between the years 1976 and 1992. Use additional page for further gift memberships. Ancestors’ Brocades, p311). Todd envisioned Please make check or money order payable, in U.S. dollars, to a book “daintily bound for Christmas 1895,” Of interest to Dickinson bibliophiles is a Johns Hopkins University Press Journals Publishing Division with a text consisting of what she called “365 possible sixth “life” for the Year Book, for in P.O. Box 19966 flashes” or epigrams taken from Emily’s my collection is a copy of the second issue Baltimore, MD 21211-0966 poems. As we all know, fifty-four years passed with a warm inscription from Helen Arnold www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org before Mabel’s idea came to fruition. The Year to the book’s illustrator, Louise B. Graves. Book was finally published under the imprint Of singular significance is the fact that the TEL: 800/548-1784; FAX: 410/516-3866 of The Hampshire Bookshop, Inc., with a illustration for December used in both issues FED ID #: V52-0595110/Canadian GST #: 124004946RT publication date of 15 May, 1948, the sixty- opposite page 113 and printed on dull paper second anniversary of Emily’s death. was augmented in the Graves copy with a dif- ferent illustration printed on clay-coated pa- With the book’s text edited by Helen Arnold per. This thirteenth illustration incorporated and illustrations drawn by Emily Dickinson’s an alternate ED quotation and appears at the second cousin, Louise B. Graves, two issues end of the December section. Thus, the artist A reproduction of the “thirteenth illustra- Members are invited to endow a named award. To do so involves a gift of $1000 to the Society. were marketed: a signed, limited edition of possibly adorned her personal gift copy from tion,” included in the Year Book copy sent 100 copies with a hand-colored circular de- Helen Arnold with a drawing that Graves from Helen Arnold to Louise B. Graves.

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