THE EMILY DICKINSON INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

Volume 24, Number 1 May/June 2012 “The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality.” Reading Dickinson in the Digital Age EMILY DICKINSON INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

Officers

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

Board Members

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

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

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

Contributing Members

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

EDIS gratefully acknowledges the generous financial contributions of these members.

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

www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org I n T h i s I s s u e

Features Series, cont.

4 Digitizing Dickinson at Amherst 17 Teaching Dickinson By Michael Kelly Discovering the Artist’s Physiognomy 6 Emily Dickinson at Harvard: Past, Present, By Eliza Richards Future Series Editor, Marianne Noble By Leslie Morris Reviews 8 Dickinson Electronic Archives2 http://emilydickinson.org 24 New Publications By Martha Nell Smith and Marta Werner By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor 26 Review of Robin Peel, Emily Dickinson 10 Dickinson and Higginson at Boston Public and the Hill of Science Library Reviewed by Hiroko Uno By Susan Glover 27 Review of Emily and I, CD by Sofie 19 How Many Emilies? Livebrant By Maryanne Garbowsky Reviewed by Niels Kjaer

22 The Cook-Off By Marty Rhodes Figley Members’ News 28 Going Public: The EDIS and the Dickinson Series Museum in 2012 By Cristanne Miller 11 Poet to Poet “Stopless”: Meandering with Emily Dickinson 29 News Briefs By Lisa Williams Series Editor, Jonnie Guerra 32 Annual Meeting: “Emily Rocks”

15 What’s Your Story? 34 Chapter News Reading Emily Dickinson – Aloud By Harold Bond 35 The Sweets of Pillage Series Editor, Georgiana Strickland

Cover Design: Bryan Lindsey Illustration: Elyse Elliott

Back Cover: Above, a nameplate that “may have been used by Edward Dickinson . . . for his downtown Amherst law office.” Below, probably the “blue net worsted shawl” worn by the poet during Higginson’s first visit (L342a).

Both images are from the Houghton Library at Harvard University, in the collection of Dickinson Family Artifacts, http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu//oasis/ deliver/deepLink?_collection=oasis&uniqueId=hou01551

Dickinson poems are reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Am-right © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Complete herst College from the following volumes: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Copyright © 1929, 1935 by Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copy-Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Copyright © renewed 1957, 1963 by Mary L. Hampson: right © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; TheLittle Brown and Co., Boston. Dickinson letters are reprinted by permission of the Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.:publishers from The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President andMass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1958, 1986 by Fellows of Harvard College; The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, Ralph W.the President and Fellows of Harvard College; 1914, 1924, 1932, 1942 by Martha Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copy-Dickinson Bianchi; 1952 by Alfred Leete Hampson; 1960 by Mary L. Hampson. Digitizing Dickinson at Amherst By Michael Kelly hen I first arrived at Amherst in the Prior to my arrival at Amherst, all of the Dick- document the death and memorial service for Wspring of 2009, I learned from our inson manuscripts were scanned and loaded Frazar Stearns (Class of 1863), including the finding aid to the Emily Dickinson - Collec into a digital assets management system called letter in which Emily Dickinson describes tion that "The original collection consisted Digitool. This project provides another handy Austin’s grief over Frazar’s death at the battle of 850 poems and fragments of poems; 350 statistic about our holdings: scanning every of New Bern, NC. letters, notes, and drafts to and from family piece of paper in Emily Dickinson’s handwrit- and friends; the daguerreotype and silhouette ing resulted in 2,166 image files. Currently, ac- Information on the hundreds of other Amherst of Emily Dickinson; and the extensive corre- cess to these digitized manuscripts is limited to alumni and faculty who served in the Civil War spondence and publication material of Mabel students and faculty of Amherst College and is also available in the Archives. Dickinson’s Loomis Todd and Millicent Todd Bingham." researchers working on campus, but this is first appearance in print can be found in the about to change. Amherst College is in the pro- February 1850 issue of The Indicator – one of These numbers suggest that Amherst holds cess of implementing a new and much more many college literary magazines that rose and the largest collection of Dickinson manu- robust system called Islandora, a version of the fell during Dickinson’s lifetime. David Todd scripts in the world, but as I delved into the open-source Fedora software. Once Islandora graduated from Amherst in 1875 and returned world of Dickinson scholarship, I began to is up and running we will import our digitized as an instructor of astronomy in 1881, accom- question these suspiciously round figures. Dickinson manuscripts and, at long last, make panied by his young wife, Mabel Loomis Todd. What, exactly, had been counted? If a letter them freely available for viewing over the in- contains a poem is it counted twice? How are ternet. (For those interested in the technical One of my favorite groups of material in our the fragments with just a couple of lines or details of such things, more information about collection is the small file we have on the words counted? When is a fragment a “note” Islandora is available at islandora.ca) Amherst College Aero Club in our Clubs & and when is it part of a poem? Societies Collection. David Todd was a great The strength of the Dickinson collection at promoter of ballooning, and helped to found As with most things Dickinson, each question Amherst College extends well beyond our a student group dedicated to ballooning and led to more questions and on down the rab- holdings of manuscripts in the poet’s hand. flight early in the twentieth century. One can bit hole. In the end, I sidestepped the issue of The Dickinson family played a critical role in also find caricatures of Todd in volumes of the genre entirely and set about simply counting the founding and operations of the college for college yearbook, The Olio, during his tenure the number of individual items in our Dick- nearly 100 years. Samuel Fowler Dickinson at Amherst College. Our holdings in college inson Collection: we have 875 items, which was one of the founders of the college and Ed- history are complemented by the vast collec- range from a torn piece of a chocolate wrapper ward Dickinson served as Treasurer from 1835 tions of Amherst town history available at the to multi-page fascicles. to 1873. Austin Dickinson graduated from Jones Library, just a short walk across the town Amherst College in 1850 then took over common from the Amherst College Archives as Treasurer from 1873 until his death in Frost Library. in 1895. Ned Dickinson did not gradu- ate from Amherst, but he did work in the Mabel Loomis Todd is especially prominent college library for several years. As the among Dickinson connections represented in official archives of the college, we have our collections. We have extensive holdings of a wealth of material that documents manuscripts and other materials that thorough- these formal connections between the ly document Todd’s work on the five volumes Dickinson family and the school atop of Dickinson’s writings she edited during the “the Consecrated Eminence.” 1890s. We hold just over 900 of her transcrip- tions, more than 500 letters, the combined Beyond the immediate family, we have manuscript and typescript draft that was sent outstanding holdings that document to the printer for Poems: Third Series (1896), the lives and activities of other college and her original painting of Indian pipes that figures that had some connection with appeared on all of the 1890s volumes. Emily Dickinson. The silhouette in our collection was cut by Charles Temple, a The Todd family ties continue with Millicent Manuscript of Fr1512, “The way member of the class of 1845. We have Todd Bingham’s editorial work on Dickinson, Hope builds his House” books, manuscripts, and ephemera that beginning with the original typescript and

4 | EDIS Bulletin received a major donation of archival mate- and without express written permission from rial from the descendants of Samuel Bowles. us. We claim no authority over uses of books, Bowles was a close friend of Dickinson and manuscripts, and other materials in our care editor of The Springfield Republican, where that are in the public domain. We will continue seven of Dickinson's poems were published to charge modest reproduction fees to cover during her lifetime. the costs involved in producing photocopies and scans for our patrons, but no additional The Bowles-Hoar Family Papers include publication or use fees. letters from Lavinia Dickinson and a wealth of documentation about this prominent Our goal is to provide students, scholars, and Springfield family. More information about the public at large with access to primary re- the Bowles-Hoar Family Papers is available sources with as few obstacles as possible. To- on our website, including scans of two pre- ward that end, we are adding much more infor- viously unknown daguerreotype portraits of mation about our collections to the Archives & Samuel Bowles III. Special Collections website, including scans of manuscripts and photographs. Eventually, Our book collection is also a valuable re- we hope to see an open-access site which users source for studying Dickinson’s life and can easily click through, from the 1890 edition works. We hold copies of nearly all of of Poems, to Mabel Loomis Todd’s transcrip- Dickinson’s appearances in print during her tions, to the original Dickinson manuscripts for lifetime – The Indicator, The Drum Beat, any given poem. Over time, we will digitize The Springfield Republican, The Round material drawn from our various collections Table, and A Masque of Poets — and every to flesh out the context of Dickinson’s life and Dickinson’s Indian Pipes significant edition of her poems and letters work in the shadow of Amherst College. published since her death. The volume of page proofs for the 1931 edition of Letters material published about Dickinson is sim- Another piece of our outreach strategy is our of Emily Dickinson, which she revised with ply too large for us to attempt anything like department blog, The Consecrated Eminence her mother. Mabel Loomis Todd’s copy of comprehensive coverage, but we do collect (http://consecratedeminence.wordpress.com/). the 1894 edition of the letters with her notes some works to document the changing trends The entire Archives & Special Collections for the new edition is a particularly illuminat- in Dickinson scholarship. staff take turns producing a weekly blog post ing artifact. We hold typescripts (often heav- about items in our collections that deserve to ily corrected) and page proofs for Ancestors’ We also make a point of acquiring creative be better known. So far two of our posts fea- Brocades (1945), Bolts of Melody (1945), works that make use of Dickinson’s life and ture Dickinson connections and she will surely Emily Dickinson: A Revelation (1954), and writings, ranging from Jerome Charyn’s The figure in many more. In addition to these web- Emily Dickinson’s Home (1955). Millicent Secret Life of Emily Dickinson (2010) to The based efforts, we also maintain a busy sched- Todd Bingham donated all of the Dickinson Dickinson Composites (2010) by Jen Bervin. ule of visits from college classes and other manuscripts she inherited from her mother, We are building a collection of Dickinson ob- groups. We work closely with the Emily Dick- along with Mabel and Millicent’s own mate- jects and ephemera – everything from plush inson Museum to support their programs and rials, to Amherst College in 1956. That gift dolls to postage stamps – and we welcome do- provide some training for their volunteers. remains the core of our collection, though we nations in this area. add to it when we can. As I write this, we are putting the finish- Although it will still be several months before ing touches on an exhibition titled “Frazar In 1983, a lock of Emily Dickinson’s hair our Dickinson materials are available in our is Killed” that coincides with the Museum’s and letter to Emily Fowler were donated by new open-access Islandora system, we have series of events commemorating the 150th William R. Bailey in memory of his mother, already taken some steps toward freeing up the anniversary of the Civil War (see page 29). Gillian Barr Bailey. In 2006, three additional materials in our collections. Following the lead Although we do not keep any Dickinson ma- Dickinson manuscripts and an envelope were of Cornell University Libraries, Amherst Col- terials on permanent display, we do frequently donated by Thomas Michie. lege Archives & Special Collections no longer mount exhibitions that include her manu- charges any use fees for public domain materi- scripts. In addition to documents in Dickinson's own als in our collections. hand, we also actively acquire items such as Finally, we are always happy to field questions the 1850 letter from Abby Wood to Abiah Root For Dickinson scholars, this means that every- about our collections. We can be reached by in which Dickinson is mentioned. This letter one can make use of the daguerreotype portrait phone at 413-542-2299 or by e-mail at ar- was acquired by purchase in 2008. In 2011, we of Emily Dickinson absolutely free of charge [email protected].

May/June 2012 | 5 Emily Dickinson at Harvard: Past, Present, and Future By Leslie Morris

ost people know that the Houghton were until I systematically went through tents of what was originally the Ever- MLibrary holds some 1023 autograph cupboards and closets at Houghton look- greens’ “Emily Room,” created by Martha poems, including 40 fascicles; some 400 ing for items that I found mentioned in the Dickinson Bianchi. We have very little letters; close to 600 books that might have Library’s correspondence files, as I worked documentation about the objects; as we been read by the poet; and furniture and ob- on the introduction to Emily Dickinson’s come across information, we add it to the jects, including the writing desk and chair Herbarium (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap catalog. Any readers who have a published from her bedroom at the Homestead—all Press of Harvard University Press, 2006). reference that illuminates the history of any material that descended by inheritance One of the objects not on permanent dis- of these objects – I think particularly here from Martha Dickinson Bianchi to Alfred play is the bracelet given to Emily by Judge of the Robert Burns souvenir sand-glass – Hampson, from whom it was purchased by Lord, inscribed on the back of the clasp, please do let me know. The descriptions in Gilbert Montague, Harvard Class of 1901, “Little Phil.” the Guide to Dickinson family objects were in 1950, and given to Houghton Library. done by Nan Wolverton, the museum and It is important to remember that Hough- decorative arts consultant also responsible The “Dickinson Collection,” however, is not ton’s Dickinson Room is largely the con- for the furnishings research and plan for the monolithic; it consists of a number of smaller Dickinson Museum. collections, some of which actually predate Montague’s gift to Harvard. If one goes to Papers OASIS (the Harvard finding aids database) and “browses finding aids” for collections The second “satellite collection” I want to listed under “Dickinson,” one finds 15 sepa- highlight is the Dickinson family papers, rate collections – and then one needs to add cataloging of which was completed in 2008. in the various Bianchi, Higginson, and other This collection comprises the papers of Em- collections. ily’s parents; Susan and Austin Dickinson and their children; and Lavinia Dickinson; Realizing that this multiplicity can be con- as well as some Root family papers. While fusing for first time (and even experienced) these papers came to Houghton with the rest researchers, I’ve recently mounted a new of the Emily material in 1950, prior to 2008 “portal” to all things Dickinson at Houghton. there wasn’t a numbered list, so one couldn’t I hope that readers of the Bulletin will spend be sure of locating material in the same some time exploring it, and send me com- place again. Those who have used this col- ments and suggestions for improvements. lection in the past may very well find some new things, now that it has been organized. There has also, in the last five years, been a fair amount of new cataloging of what The “family papers” also include two collec- might be called “satellite” materials to the tions of Martha Dickinson Bianchi papers, Dickinson autograph poems and letters. sorting and cataloging completed in 2009. These materials include objects; Dickinson These are small collections, as the bulk of family papers, particularly from Martha Above: a locket, engraved with the initials “E.N.D.,” Martha’s papers went to Brown University Dickinson Bianchi; photographs; and the holding the braided hair of Emily Norcross Dickin- after Mary Hampson’s death. Houghton holds Dickinson family library. son’s parents. some of Martha’s own poetry and essays, but http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/7154232?buttons=y principally the papers are related to Martha’s Objects work editing and publishing Emily’s poetry. Below: “adjustable woven bracelet with copper The papers include transcripts of Emily Dick- The cataloging of objects was completed in clasp and ornament, ‘Little Phil’ engraved on un- inson letters and poems, copies of Dickinson’s derside of copper clasp, gold braid fringe.” 2007. Not all the objects that came to Har- http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/7154244?buttons=y death notice in the newspapers, photos prob- vard in 1950 are regularly on display in the ably gathered for various of Martha’s publi- Dickinson Room. I myself didn’t realize Both images, as well as those on the next page, are re- cations, and more. The papers also chronicle how many Dickinson family objects there printed courtesy of the Houghton Library at Harvard. Martha’s efforts to get her aunt’s poetry into

6 | EDIS Bulletin print, and so are important for those studying subtitle, the Dickinson family library. It’s been of reading of some kind: marginal lines and the editing and transmission of the poetry, and my impression, over the last 10 years, that de- crosses, folded pages and corners, or cut-outs. in the reception of Dickinson’s poetry. mand for the Dickinson books has increased – and my impression is supported by the recent The declining expense of high-quality color Family Library special issue of the Emily Dickinson Journal digital photography makes it possible to con- (2010) on Emily Dickinson’s Reading. ceive of a digital Dickinson Library, allowing The final “satellite collection” I want - toad us to make these fragile volumes accessible to dress brings me to the “Future” part of my As most of you probably know, Roger Stod- Dickinson scholars world-wide. I should also dard, now-retired Curator of Rare mention that it is not just page images that are Books at Houghton, closed off access available, but the text is searchable as well. to the Dickinson family books in 1980, as he saw that many of these inherently While we’re talking about the Dickinson Li- fragile nineteenth-century case-bound brary, I should also mention that, as a result of books were suffering from over-use. my poking about in the files, we have “discov- When I became responsible for the ered” a number of books (23 titles) never, for books as well as the manuscripts upon some reason, incorporated into the family li- his retirement, I commissioned a con- brary list that has been available to researchers dition survey of the library, which was since 1950. These new items include a marked completed in December 2006. Unfor- copy of Samuel Bowles’s obituary, George tunately other projects intervened, but, Eliot’s “The lifted veil” cut from Harper’s, in July of 2010 we finally began repair and the copy of The Old Curiosity Shop, from and stabilization of the family books. which Dickinson cut out the images that adorn the manuscript of “A poor, torn Heart” – a The process will be long, but the goal book with her father’s ownership inscription is to digitize, first, all of the books with in it. So, even if you’ve looked at the Library definite links to Emily; second, any list before, look again, particularly at EDR 566 book with markings; and third, every- through 589. thing else, because I know that none of you believe me when I say a book Those who want to keep current with new in- doesn’t have markings! More than 50 formation about the Dickinson Collection at titles have been made available to date Houghton might want to consider subscribing (May 2012), including Emily’s Bible, to the Modern Books and Manuscripts blog Dickens’s Old http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/houghtonmod- Curiosity Shop, ern/ where, for example, we have highlighted and two prim- the re-photographing (without the frame) of ers (all of them the portrait of the Dickinson Children, which showing evidence more clearly shows Lavinia Dickinson hold- of the poet’s pen- ing a picture of a cat; and, occasionally, ad- chant for cutting ditions to the Dickinson Collection, such as pictures out of our acquisition in 2008 of a variant manu- books to embel- script version of “The Wind begun to rock the lish poems and Grass.” We also post information about local letters); works by Dickinson-related events, such as recent lec- George Eliot, Eliz- tures by Lyndall Gordon and Helen Vender. abeth and Robert Visitors to Cambridge, Mass., should also Browning, and know that there is a guided tour of Houghton Charlotte Brontë; Library every Friday at 2 p.m. that includes several poetry the Dickinson Room. There are many ways anthologies; and to keep in touch with things Dickinsonian at the family’s two Harvard! sets of the works Two images from Dickinson’s copy of Emerson’s Poems: above, the inscrip- of Shakespeare. This is an updated version of the talk given at tion from Benjamin F. Newton; below, the poet’s markings on “Each and All.” All contain marks the EDIS conference in Oxford in August 2010.

May/June 2012 | 7 Dickinson Electronic Archives 2 http://emilydickinson.org By Martha Nell Smith and Marta Werner he twin romances of comprehensiv- scholarly communication. The DEA2 in- The materials available in the DEA2 grow Tity and connectivity were the primary tegrates features of the manuscript archive with each volume. With the completion of drivers behind the original idea of produc- and the scholarly journal, and provides an each new volume, the materials of the pre- ing the Dickinson Electronic Archives: experimental exhibition space, as well as a vious volumes will be distributed across from Dickinson’s hand (body), to a con- pedagogical forum. the DEA2’s collection of manuscripts, tran- sumable text on a manuscript or printed scripts, critical editions, critical engage- page (sent by the poet herself via post or The DEA2 will be produced with custom- ments, and virtual classrooms. courier, read aloud by Susan and Lavinia to ized applications enabling high quality interested guests, then reproduced in print representation of the documents for perus- In collaboration with an editorial board by various editors), to access on a laptop or al by all readers; dynamic renderings of comprised of Dickinson scholars, textual some other screen. the documents that allow complex visual- scholars, social and cultural historians, po- izations of potential relations among them ets, and artists, the DEA2 will produce a In 2012, we have decided to build the while resisting the static order determined volume a year for the next three years. The Dickinson Electronic Archives 2: A Critical by codex formats; and deep and broad focus of each of these volumes will be a and Creative Collaboratory for Reading searchability. set of Dickinson documents selected by the Dickinson’s Material Bodies. Our editor(s) for critical engagement. goals are as follows: The editor for each volume will solicit and curate a selection of • Foster a deepened focus on peer-reviewed essays and/or ex- the material bodies of Dickin- hibitions in response to the docu- son’s writings and offer access ments. In addition to the curated to the significant printed repre- space, each DEA2 volume will sentations of these bodies. offer open space for critical and creative commentaries by read- • Create a scholarly environ- ers. ment that showcases the pos- sibility of interdisciplinary and Readers have various options of collaborative research across recording their experience of the genres. documents. They may contribute their reflections and questions in • Explore the potential of the the form of formal meditations, digital environment to reveal add contextualizing materials and new interpretive contexts – ma- links, produce tag clouds, or use terial, cultural, historical, theo- some other appropriate means to retical – for Dickinson’s work. respond critically to the materi- als featured in the DEA2. In these • Open a space for a networked ways, the virtual itineraries made world of scholars, students, and by readers in their passage across readers to expand our methods of the documents will begin to be reading her writing practices, the preserved. genealogies of her reception, and transmissions of her materials. Three-year Plan:

The DEA2 is a hybrid forum for • Volume 1 focuses on those publication and other kinds of Digital image of a letter to Susan Gilbert Dickinson from the early 1880s documents previously curated

8 | EDIS Bulletin of her work confronts and some- times surpasses fixed boundar- ies like doors, walls, and fences, while also playing with the fleet- ing boundaries windows impose. The material documents play with space in a fashion similar to the ways lines are constructed across the page, pages are chosen from shaped scraps, and hand- written words scrape up against printed words and images. Fi- nally, these documents move through space, as letters, in let- ters or pockets, and defy closure while also remaining within the mostly certain boundaries of family and friends.

The DEA2 welcomes engage- ments with these movements across time and space as they are expressed by the Dickinson docu- ments. How do they both defy and encourage enclosure? What kinds of spaces do they explore, Late Fragments from the Archive, showing paper, lineation, editing, and other elements of the material text. inhabit, slip between? How can they be freshly contextualized as as the “Lord Letters.” The volume in- ronment enables readers to reimagine and compositions of, in, and across space? How cludes digital surrogates of eighty-nine rethink the relationships between these has their collection, organization and publi- manuscripts, printed incarnations of the manuscripts. Do they belong together? cation prevented such explorations up to this documents affiliated and used to produce Does a fresh analysis of the physical evi- point, and how can a digital environment Bingham’s A Revelation, Leyda’s Years dence alter theories of affiliations among open up new readings and understandings? and Hours, and Johnson’s Letters (1958), the manuscripts themselves? Do the cuts diplomatic transcriptions from Werner’s in the manuscripts represent editorial mu- Martha Nell Smith is the author/co-author Open Folios, Leyda’s notes on catalog- tilations or changing authorial intentions? and co-editor of five books on Dickinson, is ing at Amherst College and correspon- How has the history of reading Dickinson the Exectuive Editor of the Dickinson Elec- dence at Yale about Years and Hours, and been inflected by past editorial representa- tronic Archives, and, with Laura Vetter, the collections of critical meditations on the tions of these documents, including nar- co-editor of Emily Dickinson’s Correspon- documents and their import for Dickin- ratives of their transmission history? Lib- dences: A Born-Digital Scholarly Edition son study. Of primary interest will be the erated from the singularity of constructed (2008). ontological question of what the manu- address, what can these manuscripts tell Marta Werner is the author of Emily Dick- scripts are. The volume is a case study of us about late scenes of Dickinson’s writ- inson’s Open Folios: Scenes of Reading, a “correspondence” that challenges genre ing? Surfaces of Writing (1995), and Radical boundaries, notions of singular address, Scatters: Emily Dickinson’s Late Frag- and systems of collection. The essays re- • Volume 2 of the Dickinson Electronic Ar- ments and Related Texts, 1870-1886. veal the history of the editorial representa- chives 2, curated by Jessica Beard, will be tion of these documents and open up new an exploration of Dickinson’s space. Many Both are on the Advisory Board of the Har- interpretive possibilities based on a read- of her poems and letters express both a fas- vard University Press Emily Dickinson Ar- ing of material evidence. The digital envi- cination with and fear of enclosure. Much chive.

May/June 2012 | 9 Dickinson and Higginson at Boston Public Library By Susan Glover, Keeper of Rare Books

he Emily Dickinson Papers at the the Dickinson manuscripts are but a ton MA 02129. Departmental hours are TBoston Public Library includes a small part, to the Boston Public Library Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Friday, 9 small but interesting collection of cor- in 1896. At the time, Higginson knew a.m. – 5 p.m. and Thursday, 11 a.m. – 7 respondence and poems that Dickinson of no other institutional collection with p.m. Advance appointments can be made wrote to Theodore Wentworth Hig- this specific collecting scope. Others through the BPL website at http://www. ginson, her mentor. It numbers only 70 that he cited in a letter to the library on bpl.org/research/rb/regform.htm or by letters and 43 autograph poems but il- 11 February 1896 focused exclusively telephone at 617-859-2225. lustrates the warm friendship that devel- on the works of women only, not works oped between Dickinson and Higginson about women. Believing that a collec- as well as her responses to his editorial tion of this sort would attract scholars, suggestions. This collection is part of the he wrote, “the great changes that have Forthcoming in the Fall larger Galatea collection devoted to the gone on within recorded history in the 2012 EDIS Bulletin history of women gathered by Higgin- social, industrial, and educational posi- son and donated to the library in 1896 by tion of women, render all this an impor- A review of The Gorgeous Noth- Higginson himself. tant theme for special study, and a proper ings: Emily Dickinson’s Enve- basis for a separate department in every lope-Poems, edited by Jen Bervin The relationship that developed between large library.” and Marta Werner. them was warm and affectionate on both sides. Dickinson came to appreci- The collection numbered 1,084 at the The Gorgeous Nothings is equal ate Higginson and his gentle criticism time of the donation and now exceeds parts artist book and act of archi- of her work. She rarely signs her letters 4,000. It is a collection rich in 19th val scholarship, based on Emily with her name but with such self-effac- century printings including treatises on Dickinson’s late compositions on ing terms as “your scholar” or “your such diverse topics as the history and envelopes. The edition includes gnome.” The Finding Aid for this collec- condition of women, education, health a portfolio of nearly fifty high- tion can be found at: http://archon.bpl. and hygiene, relations and comparisons resolution double-sided color fac- org/?p=collections/controlcard&id=42. of the sexes, rights of women, work and similes with visual transcriptions. influence of women, and women as au- Marta Werner’s lyric essay, “Itin- In addition to Dickinson’s manuscripts, thors, editors, and translators in many eraries of Escape: Emily Dickin- the collection also contains various pub- languages. The Catalogue of the Galatea son’s Envelope-Poems,” provides lished editions of her poems as well as Collection of Books Relating to the His- the scholarly, historic, and poetic critical studies of her work. Additionally, tory of Woman in the Boston Public Li- context for these exquisite late there is correspondence from Mabel Loo- brary of the City of Boston can be found writings by Dickinson. The edi- mis Todd, the editor of Dickinson’s post- on the Internet Archive at: http://www. tion is accompanied by a guide humously published works, to Higginson archive.org/details/catalogueofgalat- with a bibliographic directory for concerning the publication of these works 00bost. the fragments, and a series of vi- from the Boston Public Library collection. sual indexes. The entire collection of Emily Dick- The library also holds the papers of inson manuscripts at the Boston Pub- The Gorgeous Nothings is pub- Thomas Wentworth Higginson himself, lic Library has been digitized and lished in New York City by Gra- the man who played such an important posted on FLICKR (http://www.flickr. nary Books. role in Dickinson’s life. Included in this com/photos/boston_public_library/ collection is correspondence to and from sets/72157604466722178/), and it will There are 60 copies in the edition, Higginson from 1854-1907, illuminating soon be available through an online edi- each numbered and signed by Jen not just his role as a writer and theolo- tion of the works of Emily Dickinson Bervin. 50 copies are for sale and gian but as an ardent abolitionist as well. planned by the Harvard University Press. 10 are hors commerce. The originals are located in the Rare Higginson donated his collection of Books Department of the Boston Pub- The price is $3,500. books by and about women, of which lic Library, 700 Boylston Street, Bos-

10 | EDIS Bulletin Poet to Poet

Jonnie Guerra, Series Editor

I am pleased to present Lisa Williams as this issue’s featured poet. Williams is the author of two award-winning poetry collec- tions – Woman Reading to the Sea (2008 Barnard Women Poets Prize) and The Hammered Dulcimer (1998 May Swenson Po- etry Award). Her poems also have been published in many journals and in the anthologies, Best American Poetry 2009, Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds (selected by Billy Collins), and American Poetry: Next Generation. Williams is the recipient of a 2011 Brown Foundation Fellowship (Brown Foundation and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), a 2010 Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship (Kentucky Arts Council), and a 2004 Rome Prize in Literature (American Academy of Arts and Letters). A special thanks to Dan Manheim for bringing Williams to my attention.

“Stopless—”: Meandering with Emily Dickinson

By Lisa Williams

“The Soul should always stand ajar” cism, heavy on sound and slightly fantas- tical, enchanted me. eceptivity to a poet’s voice is about Rbeing open to it, but there’s something So I came to Dickinson late and on my about a poem that must open up to a reader own, though I was in graduate school as well. I visualize this as two people (the for poetry writing at the time. I can reader, the poet), in adjoining rooms, with still remember my first real hearing of the door ajar. One can’t see the other, but her. The poem was “These are the days she/he knows the other is there, knows when Birds come back – ” (Fr122). Its she/he might open the door farther. proximity to beloved poems by William Carlos Williams (“These”), Shakespeare Students crave that sense of a person be- (“That time of year thou may’est in me hind the poem. This craving can make behold”), and the homely, clarion ballads them fascinated with strange, grotesque, of John Clare readied me to listen. or simply personal biographical details. Countless times I have seen students After moving through the poem’s aus- adopt a knowingness about a poet’s work tere, surprisingly modern lines, I came to due to some belief that they intuit about the phrase “. . . softly thro’ the altered how the poet’s life relates to a poem. It’s air.” It was clear to me that Dickinson a way into – or rather, a way around – meant for the word “altered” to convey a text they don’t understand. We tend to the word “altared” as well. Not only had fight our way back to the human from the Photo Credit: Philip White the poet captured two meanings in one literary. As a teacher of undergraduates, I word (one seasonal, one religious), but want to help students connect with the human voice of a poem, she had verbed a noun. not through “relatable” biographical details, but through the words, and the lines, as written. As I noticed this, the poet seemed to tilt her head in my direc- tion and say “I acknowledge you.” Actually, it was I who had “To take a backward look.” managed to turn toward her. There had been much in the way of that, but my attention had arrived. This was hard for me to do with Dickinson. Coming of age as a poet in the late 80s and early 90s, I had no interest in her; she “I say it just begins to live” was the dowdy religious poet whose poems I might have read in my classrooms in Tennessee. In college, I was fortunate to I understood how one word (“altered”) pulsed with Dickin- discover Wallace Stevens and Baudelaire – their aesthetic lyri- son’s thinking. As I’m writing this, I envision the word with a

May/June 2012 | 11 Poet to Poet

sort of cartoonish elasticity, jutting out to accommodate other Now “Anatomy of a Skylark” feels artificial to me – it’s a sort meanings, then returning to its normal state. People talk about of mechanical bird put together with too much self-conscious devices such as homonyms, puns, and wordplay as if they are toolery. But I still like it for the discoveries, and the ambition, always playful, winking. To me they are ways of acknowledg- however ingenuous, it stands for. ing a word as the “skin” of a moving voice. The voice keeps words from being tombstones (to borrow from Susan Howe “Secured him by a string who borrowed from Dickinson); the poem begins to live as To something neighboring we notice what makes these particular words inflected by this And went along—” particular poet. Of course it’s our mind on his or her language that reawakens, breathes life into, and makes it not just letters The second thing I learned from Dickinson reaches back to on the page, but a communion. my discovery, a year or so later, of her poem, “In Winter in my Room” (Fr1742). Most construe the baffling poem as sex- I felt as if I had just woken up. There were more dimensions ual; in fact, it is featured in a recently published anthology to language than I had dreamed of.

By that time, I certainly loved the look and sounds of lan- Anatomy of a Skylark guage, but I hadn’t held words up to the light, considered them practically, looked at them individually from all angles, and Inside a bird there are seen each one as more than one wagon or caboose in a string chambers and chambers of others. There’s an exacting, imperial quality to what Dick- tunnels through scapular inson demands from the language: it must work for her. Words bones, tarsus flues. are not just objects to be set down in rows; they are to be ex- amined and used. Handled. Tongue under mandible thin, flat, and tapered. So this was the first thing I learned from Dickinson. Feathers in mantle top down-folded wing. “But Microscopes are prudent” Oxygen circulates Years later, I imitated this dualistic use of language in my pale pair of lungs, poem “Anatomy of a Skylark” (first published in 2003). The paths to esophagus, poem ends with the line, “ – genus of throat – /found a pains- gizzard and heart taking form.” I worked for weeks on that ending, and when I finally stopped it, I was very pleased with myself. First, for (thumbnail-sized). Breast, of course, hitting on the word “genus.” You see, I wanted to supplant the puffed up with plumage, idea of artistic “genius” with the scientific “genus,” which I quills the original saw as evolutionary (that is, not created by human hands): pinpointed art. not the trilling of a poet, but the intricacies of a bird’s throat. I meant to counter Shelley’s rhapsodic, self-centered fallacy. Words follow from this. It seemed magically fortunate that the very concepts I was Do they say anything hoping to emphasize in the poem were so similar in sound mythic as music and meaning! (Interestingly, I found that when I was working while lizard feet cling? with a translator on that poem so that I could read it in Ital- ian at a festival near Rome, we hit a wall with that word: we Instruments grew in couldn’t capture both senses in one word the way “genus” did the hollow where noises in English.) – genus of throat – found a painstaking form. Second, I liked how “painstaking” meant putting immense effort into, but also “taking pains away.” Again, the natural, practical, purposeful evolution of a bird throat trumped any Reprinted from Woman Reading to the Sea by Lisa Williams, human creation, but both were captured in the words I had so ©2008 by Lisa Williams. With the permission of the publish- carefully chosen. er, W.W. Norton & Company.

12 | EDIS Bulletin Poet to Poet of erotic poems. There’s certainly no reason not to read it as ing the orange roadblock at the end a little further out, so that sexual on some level. Yet the poem’s threaded slant rhyme, less and less of the poem has to do with hitting that roadblock theme of metamorphosis, and travel past the familiar led me to or even meeting it, and the roadblock becomes incidental, think it might also be about poetic agency. Maybe it could also simply a feature of the landscape outside of the poem. be about letting your own imagination take you wherever it might, out of the poem’s room, out of its imagery: “That time Just as Dickinson dispenses with the “available fictions” I flew. . . Towns on from mine/ I set me down.” (to borrow from feminist language) of how to work her way through a poem, she also, at times, does the same with how to An early reviewer of Dickinson’s poems noted that they end one. She understood that one of the things poems could seemed as if they were written by someone of genius who had do is to bring a reader close to another thinking being, in all of a brain lesion – brilliant parts interrupted by grotesque odd- his or her peculiar, lonely humanity. And then to let go. ness in a spasmodic way. These interruptions happened with the form as well as with the ideas. Reading early reviews of “Verdict for Boot!” Dickinson pointed out to me how oddness and idiosyncrasy can be misunderstood, but not necessarily wrong. My recogni- Recently, Cristanne Miller came to speak at the college where tion that she had followed her own weird threads of thought I teach and recommended to me Jed Deppman’s book Try- was a great comfort to me and essential to strengthening my ing to Think with Emily Dickinson. In his title chapter, he own confidence as a writer. I was in a graduate poetry work- discusses what he calls the “try-to-think” poems, saying that shop at the time, attempting to figure out what I envisioned they offer no “dialectical click” or comforting sentiment. while facing the skepticism of my peers. She was herself, Deppman cites one revealing letter of Dickinson’s: “while my which meant the world to me. thought is undressed – I can make the distinction, but when I put them in the Gown – they look alike, and numb” (L261). “And Finished knowing – then – ” Like the “available fictions of becoming” that feminist writ- ers have noted for women writers during Dickinson’s time and My intense interest in Dickinson led me to take a graduate after, there have been, and are, available fictions of poetic seminar on her with an esteemed English professor, and a dis- development, and poetic closure (what one could see as the cussion that took place around one of her poems still comes abovementioned “Gown”). Deppman goes on to say: “The ba- back to me. I don’t remember which poem it was, but I do sic communicability of the poem’s try hinges on the reader’s remember the entire class puzzling over the confounding last willingness to identify with and follow a process of despairing third of the poem until the professor said that the poem just thought well beyond where thinking would ever wish to go. didn’t seem finished – the closure wasn’t well-worked out, While many readers may refuse, not recognizing or believing or something to that effect. Maybe we couldn’t figure it out . . . those who have come to trust Dickinson may go deeply because she hadn’t either. into the experiment” (69).

I still have a complex reaction to this opinion, but I can’t deny The word “despairing” doesn’t seem as key to me as it does to that it also provided another instance of comfort. Whether or Deppman – no matter. What matters is Dickinson’s pursuit of not Dickinson’s poem met “our” standards in its development her own thought through the poem; the not knowing, and not toward an end, it was done, and it was hers. We just had to knowing where it will go, I would argue, can only have hap- take it as she left it. And maybe it was good for us, and for pened in the course of writing it. The going where it did go poetry, if we did so. could only happen in the course of her writing it.

Sometimes messily, sometimes grotesquely, but almost always “Or even a Report of Land – ” rhythmically, she shows that she values her own mind, and all of its weird swerves, “spasmodic” (L265) digressions from Dickinson trusted her mind, trusted the words to help her step, convention, and fallings off. Jorie Graham is one contempo- or jump, or clamber, or handhold her way into and through. rary poet who has pursued a similar track. I admire Graham’s With such poems she must have felt she was leaving every- commitment to continuing to resist the lyric procedures and thing she knew of knowing behind. How incredibly brave. closures evident in her first, very beautiful, highly praised two volumes. She has been engaging in “thought experiments” This adamant pursuit of her own thinking, “unfinished” and unpol- (“tries”) that keep edging further and further past the sorts ished, in whatever way that has meaning in a given century, has of closures she began her career with – as if she were laying come to be the thing of most sustenance to me as I work harder on down a road, and, as more of it is laid down, she keeps push- resisting my own compulsion to head toward a finish and tie up a

May/June 2012 | 13 Poet to Poet poem – or alternatively, to leap elsewhere, associatively or disas- I am still learning. But this is where I am now. I offer a very re- sociatively, in some of the typical, tired ways of much postmodern cent unpublished poem, “Mayhem,” as an example. (And, yes, if poetry. you are wondering, Dickinson may have a few things in common with the creature in question, but that certainly wasn’t on my For closures, perhaps more than for any other part of a poem, there mind when I was writing the poem.) are strong, limiting models – which of course are also models for thinking – that must be shaken off. Yet I want to do that “shaking Originally from Nashville, Lisa Williams is NEH Associate off” in ways that are my own, not borrowed. Of course, even the Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Cen- injunction to avoid closure is a kind of convention. Where to go? tre College, where she has taught since 2001.

Mayhem to a fibrous web she’ll gentle suction over (Seattle Aquarium, January 2012) hourly, with such care, Take from me myself and starve to tend, then, all I know as mine just before dying, lightly bound into a center, blow them past explode it out her arms. delicately, to the tendrilled end of each arm,

fleshed radiants! Seeing courses

to other veins, sight horizontaled, and I

am actual, more than actual.

The story of my body looses freight.

Borne out, I witness. The giant octopus,

rippled gray for sleep, scarlet for action,

her form a needle then a splay, Mayhem, a female giant octopus at the Seattle Aquarium, was preparing for her mate, Rocky, when this photo was taken. Already anticipating his arrival, she soon knits would soon turn bright orange. Her arms stretch almost twelve feet wide. her plume of eggs Photo Credit: Lisa Williams

14 | EDIS Bulletin What’s Your Story? Georgiana Strickland, Series Editor

Reading Emily Dickinson – Aloud By Harold Bond

It isn’t just discovering Emily Dickinson that matters. It’s how you respond to that discovery, as Harold Bond tells us here.

To tell us how you responded to that discovery, write me at [email protected].

t the beginning of my junior year in Dickinson, but only in elementary school guess – the murder scene, most likely. I Ahigh school, my English teacher, a where I had gotten the distinct impression just couldn’t hold it in. I suddenly and wonderful person who bubbled over with that her poetry was, as one of her neigh- loudly burst out with Macbeth and con- an infectious love of literature, asked the bors had referred to it eighty years before, tinued when my parents came home. class whether any of us could name the “too Mother Goose-y.” They came running upstairs. I assured three greatest American poets of the nine- them that I was not the madman in the teenth century. I immediately raised my When I was eleven or twelve and my sis- attic, and they didn’t seem to mind. hand. ter a year younger, our parents decided that the two of us should have separate After that, I read everything aloud. I began “Yes, Harold?” bedrooms; and so our family moved from to select literature on the basis of how it our three-room apartment to the five- would sound – the louder the better. That “Walt Whitman.” room apartment upstairs. This move was, is how I found Vachel Lindsay. Of all the as I look back on it now, a life-changing literary genres that I read, poetry seemed “Very good,” she said. “Do you know the experience for me. My sister and I had to gain the most by being read aloud. I other two?” separate rooms on the second floor of the understood it better that way. I began to apartment. I had the larger of the two, realize that the sound of poetry is part of “Edgar Allan Poe?” which was also used for storage and had its meaning and that the poet wanted me a lot of great old junk in it, especially a to hear it and thereby feel the rhythm and “Correct again.” There was no denying wind-up phonograph and a few old 78s the texture of it. that she was impressed. “And the third of Caruso and Ponselle one?” that I loved and memo- rized and sang along I hesitated. with.

“Class?” she asked. “Anyone?” I was a constant read- er, but in time I found In my head I was going through the list that, although read- of poets that I knew – Whittier? Holmes? ing novels and stories Ah, Longfellow! Yes, that was the one! Of was pleasurable, read- course! But before I could raise my hand, ing poetry and plays she announced: “A clue – it’s a woman.” was, for some reason, unsatisfying, boring, A woman, I thought. Really? A woman? stifling. But one day, Then suddenly it came to me. My hand when I was about four- shot up. “Harold?” teen and home alone, I began, without think- “Vachel Lindsay,” I said. ing about it before- hand, to read aloud. I had, of course, failed on two counts: It was Shakespeare gender and talent. I had heard of Emily – Macbeth, I would

May/June 2012 | 15 What’s Your Story?

Getting to Emily Dickinson took a long forcing us to do likewise. This is real talk, So there was Emily Dickinson in her bed- time, however. It is easy to read aloud the the way a speaker hesitates and changes room, an unknown poet seeking the right “far-swooping, elbowed” lines of Whit- the tone of her voice. The speaker is go- word, the right sound, the right place for man or the highly rhythmic, lugubrious ing on, but taking her time – almost stop- silence, the right way to speak to others lines of Poe. But Dickinson is different, ping before managing to pluck a word to be understood. And there I was, many much more self-contained, with shorter or phrase out of the air and say what she years later in my bedroom, an unknown lines, less swooping, and less dependence wants to say the way she wants us to un- anything, no longer just howling but talk- on rhyme. After my teacher, for whom I derstand it. We share in the feelings that ing, engaging in a conversation, listening had great respect, had told me that Dickin- the dash indicates, but only if we obey the to the poet. After she had written a poem, son was one of the three greatest poets of dash. Some people don’t – even those who she must have read it. And I’ll bet she read nineteenth-century America, I had to read point out all the dashes. it aloud! That’s the only way she could her; but she wasn’t easy to read aloud. have known that it was right. I experimented. Wordsworth and Dick- Higginson had told her that her poetry inson are similar, especially in Word- I have heard people read Dickinson’s was “spasmodic.” It was. It had twists and sworth’s “Lucy” poems, as in these poetry badly and have wondered how turns and bumps in the road. And I was lines: they could like such sing-songy, Mother at that time reading the Todd-Higginson Goose-y poetry. I have also heard Robert “corrections” and “improvements” that She lived unknown, and few could know Frost’s drone and T.S. Eliot’s imitation of were much smoother than Thomas John- When Lucy ceased to be; Winston Churchill. Is that the way they son’s 1955 edition of her poetry. John- But she is in her grave, and, oh, want us to read their poetry? son restored the dashes, thereby making The difference to me! the bumpy road even bumpier and, once Reading poetry aloud allows me to be again, spasmodic. Before Johnson, I was I have always admired the placement of a collaborator with the poet, but I must trying to make Dickinson into Whitman that “oh” at the end of the penultimate not only listen to the words and the or- or Shakespeare. It didn’t work then and, line. It keeps things restrained, and it is der and sound of those words, I must also post-Johnson, it didn’t have a fighting the restraint that hurts. But Dickinson obey the punctuation so that I will hear chance. might have written that line with a dash the poem as the poet intended. This is not easy, but it is certainly Reading her poetry did worth the effort. not produce the smooth, This is real talk, the way a speaker hesitates and changes the tone rhapsodic experience of her voice. The speaker is going on, but taking her time – almost In that first letter to Hig- that came with reading ginson, Dickinson asked Shakespeare, Whitman, stopping before managing to pluck a word or phrase out of the air him to “say if my Verse and Keats. However, and say what she wants to say the way she wants us to understand it. is alive” and to let her Wordsworth, another of know “Should you think my favorites, brought it breathed” (L260). We me to the turning point of my struggle at the end. And that works also because know the answer now, even though Hig- to read aloud and therefore understand something is happening in the moment. ginson seemed somewhat mystified. He Dickinson’s poetry. In my Literary Criti- The dash is talking to us. didn’t allow it to breathe. Now – I hope cism course in college, I discovered that – whenever I read it – aloud – it breathes. in his Preface to The Lyrical Ballads, I experimented with her own poetry by Wordsworth defines the poet as a “Man reading aloud the Todd-Higginson ver- Harold Bond lives in Reading, Massachu- speaking to other men.” Wow! Poetry is sion of “There’s a certain slant of light” setts, where he taught courses in American dialogue! Conversation! Like a speech in and then reading aloud the Franklin print- literature, semantics, and Shakespeare at a play! ing (Fr320). Two different poems. Which the local high school for thirty-eight years. one expresses despair more accurately? He earned his B.A. in English at North- Suddenly I understood what Dickinson Does the landscape listen in the Todd- eastern University and his M.A. in English was doing – talking to someone, hesitat- Higginson version? Do the shadows hold Language and Literature at Boston Uni- ing, looking for the right word, or holding their breath? No – but they do when the versity. He and his wife, Theresa, buy and the other person’s attention – and there- reader obeys the punctuation in the origi- sell used books for fun and profit. Harold fore the dash. She is taking her time and nal. enjoys reading, writing, and acting.

16 | EDIS Bulletin Teaching Dickinson

Series Editor, Marianne Noble

If you teach Dickinson in classes at any level and you have anecdotes, observations, recommendations, or illuminating experiences that you would like to recount in an article, please contact the series editor, Marianne Noble, [email protected]. Discovering the Artist’s Physiognomy By Eliza Richards

any of the college stu- in Dickinson’s constant “Compan- Mdents I work with grew ion,” Noah Webster’s Dictionary, up in competitive educational available at the Emily Dickinson environments where standard- Lexicon Website, and in the class- ized tests supposedly measure room, via the students’ various knowledge objectively. They electronic devices. A Gnome is “an often feel more comfortable imaginary being, supposed by the with certainty than ambigu- cabalists to inhabit the inner part of ity; quite understandably, they the earth, and to be the guardian of would like to be able to quan- mines, quarries, etc.” It is also “a tify their knowledge and their brief reflection or maxim.” Well, accomplishments. Keenly mo- the first definition goes along with tivated to learn not only the the secretive, covert quality of the subject matter of a class but Spider’s nighttime task of sewing also how to “make As,” – be- “at Night/ Without a Light.” And cause law school, or medical the second definition fits the apho- school, or something crucial ristic quality of the poem. depends on those grades – Photo Credit: Steve Fratoni most students, even English We also learn that “Physiognomy” majors, want answers, produced efficient- communication, language, the natural is the “art or science of discerning the ly, not more questions. world, matter to all of us. These ques- character of the mind from the features of tions and this sense of companionship the face.” The practice was widely popu- Dickinson’s poems disallow all that. In- sustain us as we go about our daily opera- lar in the first half of the nineteenth cen- stead, they invite us to probe difficult, tions and help to make our chosen tasks tury; Poe, Hawthorne, and other US writ- haunting, and unanswerable questions in meaningful. ers Dickinson was familiar with alluded to rigorous ways that are often alien to our physiognomy in their writing. How might own thought processes and mental habits. My goal in the classroom, then, is to share this definition help us to understand in How do we absorb an external event like my sense of productive uncertainty in re- what way the Spider’s strategy of immor- a slant of light on a winter afternoon, a spectful, rigorous, and delightful encoun- tality is physiognomy? hummingbird’s blur of colors in motion, ters with both the students and Dickinson’s a death in the house across the street? poems. I seek to forge a collective spirit Perhaps it will help for us to draw on What comes after death, after we cannot of inquiry in which perplexity is at home our collective spider knowledge. Spiders “see to see – ” (Fr591)? What happens in and right answers aren’t the point. This weave webs from stuff that comes from a marriage, or some other long-term com- term, confessing my cluelessness, I wrote inside themselves; this makes them ap- mitment, if, over years, “the Gold, in us- a poem on the board with this final stan- pealing figures of artistry. They encircle ing, / wear away” (Fr857)? How do we za: “Of Immortality / His Strategy / Was themselves with the webs they weave, so define and evaluate mental and emotional Physiognomy – ” (Fr1163). How are we that insides become outsides, and outsides pain? When you feel a “Cleaving” in the to proceed when confronted with such a become insides: “himself himself inform,” “Mind,” why doesn’t the “Brain” “split?” gnomic statement? Gnomic comes to mind in other words. Forming and informing, (Fr867) because there’s a “Shroud of Gnome” in the secretive logic of the poem’s language the poem, and “gnom” is embedded in the begins to take shape, much to the surprise For questions like these, we need help, word “physiognomy.” Is that by accident, of us all. Perhaps, a student suggests, the but not in order to find definite answers. or design? Is Dickinson drawing atten- spider “discerns the features” of his web Instead we look for fellow travelers to tion to her own encrypted utterances, her in order to divine his own mortal or im- show us that we are not alone, and that fascination with the anatomy of language? mortal future: “Of Immortality / His Strat- questions about spirit, ethics, feeling, Perhaps it would help to look the words up egy / Was Physiognomy.” He creates his

May/June 2012 | 17 Teaching Dickinson web, and perhaps Dickinson creates her While I introduced Dickinson with the The poem’s image of the “soft Eclipse” weblike poem, in order to discern their ap- mysterious spider this semester, diving is both romantic and sinister; vision and proach to the question of what lies beyond into disorientation, modeling the ways we light are occluded, covered, in fact, some this life. So maybe she’s suggesting that can proceed “Without a Light,” on other students notice. in order to understand what we think, we days, I reversed the process, starting with need to externalize our thought processes the familiar and moving towards the dis- If some poems are about marriage as a le- in language. Or, more radically, we can orienting. On a day devoted to poems at gal contract, in others marriage becomes build bridges to immortality with the right least ostensibly about marriage, I showed a metaphor exploring an unnamed experi- combination of words, craftsmanship, and the students pictures of brides in snow- ence, one we can only speculate about. “A inspiration. white flouncy dresses from Godey’s La- solemn thing – it was – I said – / A Woman dies’ Book; we read William Blackstone’s – white – to be –” causes the students to ask We seem to have gotten somewhere, but commentary on coverture law; he explains right off the bat if Dickinson ever wanted we’re not sure. Now we dip into a packet that “the very being or legal existence of to be a nun, what her experience with Ca- with a range of potentially helpful mate- the woman is suspended during the mar- tholicism was, and what it means to “drop rials that the students read in advance of riage, or at least is consolidated into the a life / Into the purple well” (Fr307). We class, along with the poem. Did Dickinson husband’s”1; we read poems by other are back on cryptic territory, and I urge the write any other poems about spiders? Sev- mid-nineteenth-century American wom- students to marshal their forces of inquiry eral; spiders appear in her letters as well. en on marriage, which often criticize the to work through the poem’s increasingly Does she make a connection between the idea that the wedding day is the apex of a elusive line of logic: is the speaker com- spider and the artist elsewhere? Certainly woman’s life, and put the spotlight instead mitting herself to God? To another person? the “Continents of Light” swept away by on the long years that follow. Julia Ward To poetry? Whatever it is, the process of the “Housewife’s Broom” qualifies; that Howe, whose poems Dickinson would imagining expands the speaker infinitely, spider is a fortuneteller who holds a “sil- have read in the Atlantic Monthly, con- “like Horizons,” and I hope the same hap- ver Ball” and “danc[es] softly to Himself” cisely charts the wife’s long period of me- pens to the students in pondering the only (Fr513). Are there other poems that asso- chanical, unrelenting labor from the altar apparently “small life” of the poem. ciate spiders with artists in the American to the grave: “Measured is the path, and poetic tradition? Yes: Dickinson’s spi- made,/ All the work is planned and paid.”2 When I teach Dickinson’s poetry, then, der poems nestle alongside Whitman’s Dickinson’s “How many times these low I offer a range of approaches. We spend “noiseless, patient spider” who “launch’d feet staggered” develops the portrait of the a day with only a single poem and Web- forth filament, filament, filament, out of wife as a ceaseless laborer, who can only ster’s Dictionary; then, bringing historical itself.” “Ceaselessly musing, venturing, rest in death; even then, she must endure contexts to bear, we think about the ways throwing,” hoping for the lines of silk to criticism: “Indolent Housewife - in Dai- poetic language is inflected with historical “catch somewhere,” Whitman’s spider sies - lain! (Fr238) In “The Bride,” Lyd- events, politics, law. We look at facsimiles seeks connection with others and with the ia Sigourney warns that girding on that of the manuscripts and then make a trip outside world as intently as Dickinson’s bridal “harness” will not only determine to special collections at UNC’s Wilson Li- spider seeks both to know himself and to the wife’s existence on this earth, but also brary to peruse the first book publications hide himself. “may stamp the sentence of eternity”; the of her poems, comparing prefaces, noting class agrees that serving out a sentence is the ways the poems were titled and rewrit- Comparing those two poems offers a not usually an enjoyable activity.3 ten, thinking about early reception. I hope productive entry point for a compari- the varied approaches provide students son between the two poets’ very differ- These contextual materials help frame with ways to embrace uncertainty as an ent writing projects. We might also think the students’ reading of a poem like “I’m opportunity to think about important, un- about the way the poem circulated, in wife! – / I’ve finished that – / That other answerable questions, and to turn to poets manuscript form, to the Norcross sisters state,” in which the woman speaks just af- like Dickinson as their companion, rather and to Susan Dickinson: “A copy in pen- ter the vows and before she knows what than turning away from her work in confu- cil, addressed ‘Sue’ and signed ‘Emily’ will happen next (Fr225). Celebration sion and dismay. was sent” to her sister-in-law across the of her elevated status – “I’m Czar – I’m lawn, according to Franklin (Variorum II ‘Woman’ now” – inadvertently conveys to Here’s what the students said this semes- 1008). Could the poem be alluding to a the students a sense that her “very being or ter. One liked the single-minded intensity particular topic or event, known to these existence” now depends on her husband. of Dickinson’s poems and our focused women, unknown to us, that prevents That helps explain why she can’t be a time with them, because today “everyone us from being able to fully interpret the woman if she doesn’t marry, and why she is broadcasting themselves, and even when poem? What does the private circula- has put the word in quotations marks, as if people are in the presence of others they tion of Emily Dickinson’s poems keep us she is not entirely sure what it means; it’s from understanding? someone else’s definition of her identity. Continued on page 21

18 | EDIS Bulletin Emily Dickinson has been a fore-mother for innumerable later poets, and many of them have written poems back to her, trying in terms sometimes comical, sometimes irreverent, sometimes enchanted, to fathom the poet who inspires them. There are two full collections of these poems: Sheila Coghill and Thom Tammaro, eds., Visiting Emily. Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000), and Marguerite Harris, ed. Emily Dickinson: Letters from the World (New York: Cymric Press, 1970), as well as many other tributes published elsewhere. “How Many Emilies” Maryanne Garbowsky

“How many Emilies in a piece of apple pie using her words: “her tippet made of tulle” :how many apples on each tree is the first to come off. Then her bonnet. The :how many Emilies . . .” “long white dress” follows with its “tiny and “Emily Dickinson and Apple Pie,” numerous” “mother of pearl buttons down Wesley Day the back.” This is a “complicated process,” Collins complains, and “it takes forever” ere is where we begin with not one, not (Sailing Alone Around the Room 119). Htwo, but a myriad of Emilies – more than the eye can see, but less than the brain can cre- He pictures Dickinson standing by the win- ate. Her life and her words have provided “the dow of her upstairs bedroom, her “white stuff of imagination,” tantalizing artists, musi- dress puddled at her feet” and imagines cians, poets and writers. In his poem “Dickin- himself as the “polar explorer” “sailing son’s Homestead,” Kenneth Rosen combines toward the iceberg of her nakedness.” It is many different stories – whether apocryphal with good taste that he proceeds, describ- or not – that have accrued to the mystery that ing Dickinson’s letting go of inhibitions, the was Emily Dickinson. Thus he writes of the freedom she feels as “her hair tumbled free walleye, the “dingy wedding gown” which of its pins.” The imagery of her poems ac- she wears in her upstairs bedroom, her lesbian companies this encounter – the carriage, the inclination, her desire for her Master (pre- fly buzzing “in the windowpane.” sumptively Rev. Chas. Wadsworth), an abor- tion – all enumerated in six stanzas. In the last When the moment of ecstasy finally -ar sentence of the poem, he repeats part of his rives, Collins cleverly leaves his audience opening line: “In Amherst the H is silent,” but with Dickinson’s “loaded gun” which adds “the O everywhere gaping.” Could the stares “right at you with a yellow eye.” The O be the unknown, the absence of knowledge reader’s own shudder of recognition at what at the heart of the enigma? It may be so. But her cryptic words reveal is paralleled with let’s look at the “many Emilies” that poets and the poet’s climactic sigh when she is finally writers have created to fill in the unknowns of “unloosed.” her life. But Collins isn’t the only one to portray the It is not uncommon for readers of Dickinson poet’s libidinous side. Other poets make to create their own image of this mysterious Dickinson flesh and blood as well. Lee Mc- woman. Eventually this imagined Emily be- Carthy in her poem “In the Flesh” complains comes for them the real Dickinson and ulti- that “I am tired of males swearing undying mately “My Dickinson.” According to Gary love for Emily Dickinson.” Yet they do, cre- Smith, “We like to own” her even though we ating of her a sensual, sexual woman. Mari- cannot (Coghill 90). Perhaps one of the best lyn Nelson confides that Dickinson “had known and often anthologized visions of hair . . . in certain places, and . . . smelled Dickinson is as the subject of sexual fantasy. human on a hot summer day” (Coghill 68) Billy Collins, in his poem “Taking Off Emily Another poet confesses that he’d “torn the The above portrait of Emily Dickinson is a Dickinson’s Clothes,” proceeds to undress her white, grass-length dress of your spinster- wood engraving by Barry Moser.

May/June 2012 | 19 hood” (Harris 24). Another turns Dickinson’s ter among buttercups” who “sinned for an ex- that are humorous. Take, for example, Allen words on her, recalling the pink snake she kept quisite pain,” who was “naked to the lashing Katzman in “The Death of Emily Dickinson” on a string in poem Fr1742. Here those phallic wind and ravished under rain” (Harris 8). Yet in which he claims “Emily weighed 300 lbs. snakes she “never kept or had for long” trans- he concludes her words “echo still witching when she died” – grown fat on poetry. A more form into critics who “fathomed” her with New England air.” Jack Anderson states sim- serious tone concludes that “it still takes 30 their endless analyses and inquiries almost as ply, “Your curse is upon us” (Harris 33). men to carry all that Truth to the grave” (Har- if they were making love to her, and now she ris 47). lies “decades underground” . . . “leveled by To other writers, Dickinson is a vatic presence, their dark love” (Harris 15). speaking in a prophetic voice. To Siv Ceder- Peter Wild imagines the poet as she “flew ing, Dickinson is “the light,” “the fire of their over my house / on a fried chicken liver, . . . At the opposite extreme from the carnal Em- sun” (Coghill 10), while in “Miss Dickin- her apron / Tucked up under her white knees” ily is the New England nun who Madeline son” poet Constance Hunting notes her idio- (Harris 20). DeFrees says “prepared to risk it” with Gerard syncrasies. “New England makes its women Manley Hopkins but didn’t (Coghill 19). Or strange,” she confides, but Dickinson was “an A more time conscious Dickinson keeps a dai- in Donald Hall’s “The Impossible Marriage,” oracle of Amherst” scratching out “the gist of ly schedule of events. In “Emily Dickinson’s Dickinson is a “bride at last” running away the matter” (Harris 11). To Hart Crane, she was To-Do List,” the poet ponders her wardrobe: from “the groom” – Walt Whitman – “in his one who “fed her hunger like an endless task,” On Monday “what to wear – white dress? slouch hat, open shirt, and untended beard.” with the lasting result that “no flower yet with- / Tuesday / White dress? Off-white dress? / He leaves her in hiding “the pale passionate / ers in your hand” (Crane 170). Wednesday / White dress or what? / Thursday anchoret of Amherst” (Coghill 43). / Try on new white dress / Friday / Embroider Some write of Dickinson’s documented do- sash for white dress” (Coghill 9). In her infinite variety, Dickinson is able to mestic chores, her sewing, her baking. In combine flesh with spirit. While she is at once “Blue Ribbon,” Louise Mally admires the Dickinson also plays with words each day. On “most sensual of recluses” to Ron Padgett, she “strong hands” that “shape a loaf” (Harris Monday she writes a poem, then hides it. On is “patron saint” to William Carlos Williams 18), a skill that is easily extended to the poet’s Wednesday and Thursday, she writes poems (Harris, intro.). To others she is someone at ability to craft words, to “catch . . . the right and hides them too. On Friday, more poetry whose feet men literally come to worship: word” (Harris 2). In Sandra Gilbert’s “Emily’s and hides everything. Bread,” Dickinson became the “the bride of I throw myself at Emily’s feet yeast,” “the alchemist of flour.” She “scribbles, One of the cleverest poems is Jayne Brown’s at an ankle . . . smiles. She knows it is the white aroma of her “Emily Dickinson Attends a Writing Work- where I kiss her round moment baking skin that makes the bread taste good” shop” (Coghill 8). Could anyone imagine cri- of bone, its poetry. (Coghill 37). tiquing the poem “My Life had stood a loaded Gun”? That is precisely what Brown does with To Marvin Bell, in “The Mystery of Emily Her love of home, of Nature, her love of the some humorous remarks. “Why all the caps?” Dickinson,” she is “divine” (Coghill 2). garden are all delineated in many portraits. In she writes in the margin. “Watch the repeti- several she is the bee making honey – an “un- tion,” she cautions. The last stanza – “Though In this ethereal form, Dickinson’s voice has earthly honey” (Harris 5). She is, after all, “the I than He may longer live,” she writes “Omit, been perceived as both angelic and demonic. fiercest bee of New England” with “Suns of too confusing!” In a final note to Emily, the Robert Francis cleverly writes of an overheard heresies” “honeyed up in cells” (Harris 4). teacher asks, “You seem to be alluding to conversation in Amherst between Robert Frost some anger, yet the cause is never revealed. and Dickinson. Frost senses a presence and In a lighter vein, David Burns pictures the poet/ Is there another poem behind this one?” Then asks if it’s “Angelic? Or demonic?” Her ques- bee out on a forest jaunt with her father. Here she adds, “I’d like to see you bring this poem tion “How would you divine me?” is answered she is “skinny Emily” dashing home to her through workshop again.” with “you who were ghost while living and “dark bed . . . of unfathered forest thoughts” to haunting us ever since” (Coghill 31). write a bee poem. Maxine Kumin in “After the Poetry Reading” brings Dickinson into the 1990’s and envisions So, too, Richard Eberhart speaking to the poet “To make a prairie-ie . . . her with “sex appeal” and “hair wild and elec- says that she “held him in a trance” (Coghill It takes a clover and one bee. . . .” tric / down to her buttocks. She’d wear magen- 24). J. Unland is more direct in his poem “O She paused for a moment in revery. . . . ta tights, black ankle socks and tiny pointed Angel” and beckons her “Yon, dark angel “I think / I’ll call that 1755,” and rose from paddock boots.” She’s mastered “Microsoft come” (Harris 37). John Wheatcroft recogniz- her infinite pillow to jot it down (Harris 27). and faxed” her poems to Higginson. She is es the light of innocence as well as the violence an “Emily flamboyant” but Kumin ends on a of the dark – the ambiguity at the heart of her But by far some of the most memorable ex- more serious note: “Her words” were “for the personality – and pictures her first as a “daugh- amples of Dickinson’s personae are those century to come” (Coghill 54).

20 | EDIS Bulletin Many writers bring Dickinson into our mod- Kinnell winces at the professor’s obtuseness friend of Emily’s nephew Gilbert” whom Em- ern age, making her a contemporary woman. in “The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson.” ily loved deeply. When he died at the age of To Adrienne Rich, she is a “woman masculine Kinnell wants to reprimand him but does so eight in October, 1883, she was broken. Mr. in singlemindedness” (Coghill 85). To Lynn only in his head. He would ask if he could, Emerson recalled that the poet “wrote him Emanuel, she is “my own woman. Finally. “Why not first try listening to her?” (Coghill short poems” and one Christmas sent the po- And forever” (Coghill 26). 51) ems along with flowers. He told Eberhart three details about Dickinson: 1) that she was good Toi Derricotte writes “because she could not Rachel Hadas has more success in “Teaching looking, not the plain woman “with no good say / rape, I say rape / because she could not Emily Dickinson.” The poet’s words hit their features” that Higginson immortalized; 2) that say / penis, I say penis.” Would Dickinson mark as Hadas writes, “One small bird / opens she always wore white; and 3) that she made write this way today, we might ask. Derricote its wings. They spread. They cover us: / myr- “very good doughnuts.” Eberhart concludes wonders, too. “We are her daughters / But iad lives foreshortened into Word (Coghill 42). “She touched him. He touched me” (Harris would she accept us?” (Coghill 23) 52). But John Berryman has the last word. Cele- Stephen Stepanchev recognizes the constraints brating Dickinson’s 140th birthday in Wiscon- This may be the closest we ever come to meet- in Dickinson’s own time and pictures her in sin, he assures her in answer to her 1862 query ing the real Emily Dickinson. Nonetheless, she her “white dress” in her garden with “the iron to Mr. Higginson, “say if my verse is alive,” will always be in our imagination, beckoning father standing at the top of the stairs” and “the that yes the poems are alive – still. That in con- us on to catch her, to pin her down. Whether sister like a stone angel / At the east gate of trast to his own poems “more so than (bless “angel, witch, seer, soldier, bee, child, sex Eden.” There were “vivid contraries” – “an in- her) Mrs. F. who teaches farmers’ red daugh- symbol, householder, prodigy,” she will al- compatibility, clearly / Between her clock and ters and their beaus my ditties and yours and ways be the myth of Amherst. the clock of Amherst” (Harris 6). yours and yours!” (Coghill 3) In the words of Stephen Stepanchev, “I take But lest we are discouraged by this anach- As you can see, the poet Emily Dickinson my bourbon and drink to you” (Harris 7); in ronism that was Dickinson, she becomes a has “teased” many writers “out of thought.” the words of Diane Williams, “You may be the new woman at the brink of a new world in We will never know for sure who or what best person who has ever lived” (Coghill 99); Ed Hirsch’s “The Unnaming” (Coghill 46). she actually was. We must comfort ourselves and finally John Berryman in his inimitable She “deletes” “the names Adam had given the with knowing – according to Theodore Weiss style, beasts” making her own revisions, feeling “a – “you will never give us what we want and dizzying freedom as she cut loose from the af- so we want it more.” We must be content with Emily Dickinson fixed word.” She is a new Eve facing a blank knowing her only “between the lines,” the title “Hot Diggity” page on which a new world was “waiting to of his poem (Coghill 96). be renamed.” Maryanne Garbowsky, a Professor of Eng- I would like to end with someone who actu- lish at the County College of Morris, in Ran- An interesting footnote to these different ally did know Emily. In a note, Richard Eber- dolph, New Jersey, is the author of two books faces of Dickinson is how established poets hart recalls Kendall Emerson’s meeting with on Dickinson. She continues to write about approach the teaching of her poems. Galway Dickinson as a boy of nine: “He was a close the poet as well as about the visual arts.

“Teaching Dickinson” on Dickinson and the law. She says “In the 2Julia Ward Howe, “The Wedding,” in Later Continued from page 18 past I’ve learned Dickinson in a very strict Lyrics, Boston1866, p50. way with the teacher saying that, while our 3Quoted in Barton Levi St. Armand, Emily Dick- are communicating with other people on points may be good, there is really one way inson and Her Culture: The Soul’s Society, New their cellphones or iPads. At least Emily to read her poetry. I appreciated that you York 1984, p335. Dickinson gave undivided attention to her allowed us to come up with our own inter- various correspondences and her lasting pretations as long as they were founded in relationships.” Another student found it es- Eliza Richards is an Associate Professor in and supported by the poem itself.” And a the Department of English and Compara- pecially helpful that some days were orga- fourth student simply said “I thought it was nized around “different topics because I’m tive Literature at the University of North so awesome when we discovered that there Carolina at Chapel Hill. She teaches and not sure if I would have known what she was a gnome in Physiognomy.” was referring to if I didn’t know the general writes about nineteenth-century American subject she was talking about beforehand.” Notes literature and culture, especially poetry. She is currently editing a collection of essays on As a result of the class, a third student de- 1 cided to write an honor’s thesis next year William Blackstone. Commentaries on the contexts for the study of Dickinson, forth- Laws of England. Vol, 1 (1765), page 442. coming from Cambridge University Press.

May/June 2012 | 21 THE COOK-OFF By Marty Rhodes Figley

mily Dickinson spent lots of time in the kitchen. Her specialty Ewas baking. She was good at it and knew it. After all, she won second place and money (50 cents) for her Rye and Indian Bread at the 1856 Amherst, Massachusetts, Cattle Show.

The poet was generous with gifts from her oven. When she and her newfoundland dog, Carlo, made their social rounds, she pre- sented her home-baked delicacies to local friends. A playful Em- ily was known to lower gingerbread in a basket from her window down to the delighted neighborhood children.

Is the present-day Emily Dickinson becoming a food celebrity? Maybe. In Fall 2010, something of Emily’s was published in the Boston Globe newspaper. No, it wasn’t a poem. It was “Emily Dickinson’s Gingerbread Cake” recipe:

3 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon ground ginger ½ cup heavy cream Dickinson’s Gingerbread Cake tantalizes just as it did 150 1 stick butter, at room temperature years ago. The recipe is adapted from Emily Dickinson, Pro- 1 cup molasses file of the Poet as Cook, by Jean Mudge, et. al., Amherst 1976.

Set the oven at 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch square cake pan. In a mixture. Add the molasses. Scrape down the sides of the bowl bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, salt, and ginger. In an electric once or twice, until blended. Transfer the batter to the pan. Bake mixer, beat the cream until thick but not stiff; transfer it to a bowl. the cake for 35 minutes or until the top is firm and springs back In the mixer, cream the butter until light. Beat in the cream just when pressed lightly with a fingertip. Serve warm with whipped until blended. With the mixer set on its lowest speed, add the flour cream.

The Emily Dickinson Homestead in Amherst recently hosted an Emily Dickinson Baking Contest. Move over Food Network, Em- ily D has come to town.

Let’s imagine a “Dessert Competition for Literary Doyennes.” Emily, Charlotte Bronte (who wrote one of the poet’s favorite books, Jane Eyre), and Emily’s contemporary from Concord, Massachusetts, Louisa May Alcott of Little Women fame, will compete.

I made some inquiries about what baking had gone on at Louisa’s and Charlotte’s houses. The staff at Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard house told me about her.

Miss Alcott was quite a housekeeper – mostly out of necessity instead of for personal gratification, however. As a result, many of her cooking tasks often had unpredictable or even downright disastrous outcomes. One that she worked to her advantage to be- Alcott’s Apple Slump does not at all taste like floorboards. come one of her favorite recipes is called “Apple Slump,” which is

22 | EDIS Bulletin coincidentally (or not!) the nickname she bestowed upon Orchard egg, milk, and melted butter. Stir gently. Spread this mixture over House because of the uneven floorboards all over the home! the apples and continue baking until the top is brown and crusty (about 25 minutes). Serve with whipped cream. Serves six. Here is “Louisa May Alcottʼs Apple Slump” recipe as best as we can update it to modern standards: Sarah Laycock, Library & Collections Officer at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in West Yorkshire, England, filled me in on 4 to 6 tart apples (3 cups sliced) Charlotteʼs culinary status. Sadly, none of Charlotteʼs own recipes ½ cup firmly packed brown sugar have survived, but we do know from reading her sister Emilyʼs di- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg ary paper that Charlotte cooked apple puddings. She ate porridge ¼ teaspoon cinnamon in the morning (a common breakfast given there were plentiful oats ¼ teaspoon salt in the area), roast or boiled meat and potatoes/vegetables for lunch 1½ cups flour followed by sweets such as bread and rice puddings, custards and 2 teaspoons baking powder “other preparations of eggs and milk, slightly sweetened.” Emily ½ teaspoon salt often baked bread to accompany the main meal. ½ cup sugar 1 egg (well beaten) Too bad we donʼt have a copy of “Charlotte Bronteʼs Apple Pud- ½ cup milk ding” recipe. She might have given Ms. Alcott a run for the money. ½ cup melted butter Charlotte will have to step down from the competition, but she wins on another front. In March 2011, yet another movie adaptation of Pare, core, and slice the apples. Preheat oven to 350˚. Grease with her literary masterpiece Jane Eyre graced your local movie theatres. butter the inside of a 1½-quart baking dish. Put into the dish the sliced apples, brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ¼ teaspoon of Marty Rhodes Figley received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke Col- salt. Bake apples uncovered until they are soft, about 20 minutes. lege and is the author of sixteen children’s books. Her newest picture While the apples are baking, sift together into a bowl the flour, book, Emily and Carlo (Charlesbridge, 2012) is about Emily Dickin- baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt, and sugar. Mix into this the beaten son and her beloved dog. Emily and Carlo is reviewed in this issue.

Did You Know? Gregory Mattingly

We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground – The Roof was scarcely visible - The Cornice – in the Ground -

efore the advent of motorized machines to break Bthrough the frozen sod, bodies were stored in un- heated vaults within the cemetery. The vault was used to store bodies during the winter cold until the ground was soft enough to dig the grave.

At right is a concrete room, covered with soil and grass, in the West Cemetery in Amherst, MA. Emily Dickinson's bedroom window on West (now Pleasant) Street overlooked this cemetery.

Not visible in this photo, “Town Tomb, 1851” is carved into the lintel of the vault.

Do you have images of objects that seem as if they may ap- pear in Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters? Send them to the Bulletin! E-mail [email protected]

May/June 2012 | 23 New Publications

By Barbara Kelly, Book Review Editor

Decker, Everett. contribution: his poems may offer some ing frogs that lived by the pond" and even haiku Emily! Haiku-Inspired Po- readers an entry into Dickinson's difficult imaginative “mermaids in the basement.” etry Based on the Work of Emily work, stimulating discussion and possibly The muddy-pawed puppy Carlo grows old- new student-written poems. Included are a er but remains a good listener: when Emily Dickinson. preface, afterword, and indexes of Deck- talks, Carlo's “eyes grow meaning, and his Amherst, MA: Small Batch Books, 2011. er's and Dickinson's first lines. shaggy feet keep a slower pace”; eventu- 136 pp. Paper, ISBN 1-937650-05-6, $17.89. ally "his muzzle turned gray." Italicized words drawn from the letters and poems Having studied Japanese philosophy and Figley, Marty Rhodes. bring Dickinson's authentic voice into the haiku, Decker undertook and completed Illustrated by Catherine Stock. story and provide a lovely introduction to an ambitious project, distilling each of Dickinson's world. Dickinson's 1,789 poems into his own Emily and Carlo. haiku-inspired verse with the goal of mak- Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, 2012. 32 pp. 8.25" x 10.25" x .375". Cloth, ISBN ing Dickinson's poetry more accessible. Freedman, Linda. In haiku Emily! he presents 125 of his po- 1-58089-274-2, $15.95. ems, describing them as "neither haiku nor Emily Dickinson and the Religious Emily Dickinson but influenced by both." Written in lyrical prose and illustrated with Imagination. His selection draws from both Dickinson's bright, beautifully rendered watercolor New York: Cambridge University Press, well known and less familiar poems. Oc- drawings reflecting the seasonal changes 2011. 210 pp. Cloth, ISBN 1-10700-617-1, cupying a single page, each earnest, clev- in nineteenth-century Amherst, this simple $90.00. er, often witty Decker poem is footnoted but moving story of Emily Dickinson's re- with the first line of Dickinson's poem and lationship with her beloved dog Carlo is In a scholarly study of Dickinson's reli- its Johnson and Franklin numbers. Be- intended for children five to eight years gious imagination, Freedman aims "to sides the Franklin edition of Dickinson's old but will also charm readers of any age show how Dickinson's Puritan heritage, as poems, Decker consulted Noah Webster's who appreciate Dickinson or have special it mixed with the liberal Christianity grow- 1844 American Dictionary of the Eng- bonds with their dogs. Figley's personal ing up in Boston, and fused with classical lish Language and Cynthia Hallen's Em- experience with a huge, shaggy, slobbering mythology, was a source of poetic enrich- ily Dickinson Lexicon website. For those Newfoundland dog shedding long hair on ment and not a barrier to creativity that she who hold Dickinson's words inviolable, her own white dress gives her an apprecia- simply reacted against." The author asserts, he says that he approached her work with tion for Dickinson's sixteen-year relation- "From the paradox of the incarnate God "respect and admiration" and "may have ship with Carlo. This simple, moving story and from religious stories of naming, light, had to make her less reverent to make begins, "In a small New England town quest, sacrifice and resurrection emerge her more relevant." Although his poems lived a shy, smart girl named Emily." Into four major themes of Dickinson's poetry: can be read independently of Dickinson's her lonely winter world, her father brings a body, mediation, journey and gesture." In work, it is satisfying and often delightful "large, lively puppy," who on first encoun- six chapters, she discusses the tension be- to read a Dickinson poem first, followed ter "covered Emily's face with dog kisses." tween religious revelations and their aes- by Decker's distillation, observing how Carlo becomes her constant companion thetic representation; how religious narra- he keeps the kernel of a poem's thought, and “shaggy ally” as together they listen to tives inform Dickinson's fictions of naming then re-imagines, re-invigorates, and re- "the bobolinks' and robins' songs," walk to and her concern for the nameless; Dickin- constitutes it into a much shorter poem. the Evergreens on a path “just wide enough son's understanding of "the continuity be- He suggests classroom applications of for two who love,” explore the town and tween the sun-god, the transfigured Christ his work, and herein lies Decker's unique surrounding woods discovering "croak- and sublime illumination"; the author takes

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

24 | EDIS Bulletin readers from this light of transcendence to and the Unknown God" (62-87), Hughes cidents are so niggardly rare." Dickinson poems that express awareness "of place uses Voegelin's philosophy as a touchstone associated chance with danger and risk but and time, of journey, progress and failure, and references thirty Dickinson poems also with opportunity: "she still believes in of human solace and lonely suffering"; she from the Franklin edition to examine "the the primary force of surprising moments of addresses "the relationship between theo- way Dickinson's artistic corpus constitutes grace." One of the tonic effects of Dickin- logical and poetic interpretations of Christ's an unusually faithful, extended testimony son's poetry is that "it enacts experiences death"; and in chapter six she explains how to the in-between, or metaxic, condition of of surprise," augmented by variant choices. "Christian and pagan understandings of human existence." He regards Dickinson He references many poems, giving par- resurrection” affected Dickinson's poetic as "a brilliant poetic explicator of what it ticular attention to Fr450 and Dickinson's responses to "loss, return and rebirth," not- means to live in . . . the unrestful, inescap- "closest approach to surprise," Fr477. Tem- ing that resurrection "struck Dickinson as a able, and irresolvable tension of existence pered by occasional humor, Lee's densely symbol of both the limitations and exspan- in-between world and transcendence, time informative study is for sophisticated read- sive possibilities of her verse." Readings and and eternity, ignorance and knowledge, ers familiar with academic language. In- of more than sixty poems, printed from despair and faith, hope and fulfillment." cluded are an introduction, coda, notes, and the Franklin edition with Johnson numbers This cogent, well researched book includes an index. provided, support her work, accompanied notes, a bibliography, and an index. by an introduction, conclusion, notes, a bibliography, and an index. Moores, D. J., ed. Lee, Maurice S. Wild Poets of Ecstasy: An Anthol- Uncertain Chances: Science, Skep- ogy of Ecstatic Verse. Hughes, Glenn. ticism, and Belief in Nineteeenth- Nevada City, CA: Pelican Pond, an imprint A More Beautiful Question: The Century American Literature. of Dolphin Publishing, 2011. 401 pp. Pa- Spiritual in Poetry and Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. per, ISBN 1-57733-295-0, $22.95. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri 239 pp. Cloth, ISBN 0-19-979757-8. $65.00. Press, 201l. 168 pp. Cloth, ISBN 0-8262- In a joyful celebration of ecstatic poetry, 1917-6, $60.00. Lee's erudite study of nineteenth-century Moores provides an engaging and infor- intellectual thinking considers how at- mative 54-page introduction examining Hughes's paean to the spiritual found in titudes about faith, belief in Providence, the multifaceted history of ecstatic poetry great art and poetry focuses on the works and the argument for intelligent design and gathers more than 100 secular and re- of G. M. Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, and T. were disrupted by romantic subjectivity, ligious poets, chronologically presenting a S. Eliot, with special attention to the foun- science, empirical skeptism, and the Civil wide range of ecstatic poetry from Bible dational work of two twentieth-century War. Informed by past and present intellec- psalms, Homeric hymns, and Sappho to philosophers, Eric Voegelin and Catho- tual thinkers, with particular focus on the D. H. Lawrence and Ezra Pound. Includ- lic theologian Bernard Lonergan, both of doctrines of chance, probablility, and prag- ed are Sophocles, Li Po, Omar Khayyam, whom studied the historical development matism, Lee references these doctines as he Rumi, Hafiz, Mirabai, Donne, Herrick, of human consciousness, the discovery of examines selected works of Poe, Melville, Bradstreet, Goethe, Blake, Wordsworth, transcendent reality, and its relationship to Douglass, Thoreau, and Dickinson. In Coleridge, Shelley, Emerson, Native a desacralized world marked by material- "Dickinson's Precarious Steps, Surprising American songs, Whitman, Dickinson, ism, secularism, and spiritual disorienta- Leaps, and Bounds" (154-184), Lee sug- G. M. Hopkins, Negro spirituals, Rilke, tion. Hughes's accessible scholarly study gests that Dickinson's "interest in romantic and many lesser known poets. For copy- traces childhood's primary consciousness subjectivity gave way to a more empirical right reasons, twentieth-century works of the physical unverse to something be- outlook," where chance and surprise play are "conspicuously absent." Moores lists yond that reality, a consciousness of a di- a role. Finding that the word chance oc- twenty-two characteristics of ecstatic po- vine presence; he differentiates between curs more than 20 times in her verse, he etry and says that poets in the ecstatic immanence and trancendence and locates says, Dickinson was probably familiar with tradition "celebrate human beings in their an ideal adult existential integration in a "probabilistic science in general," "com- best moments – 'the soul at the white heat' "balance of conciousness." He argues that mentaries on aesthetics and chance," and – to use Emily Dickinson's line. Ecstatic great art and poetry can both defend and "the creative power of accidents." In Dick- poets affirm the value of happiness,- hu promote "the balance of consciousness inson's poetry he finds "disappointment man connections, festivities, sexuality, which honors properly both worldly and with an inconstant heaven, chagrin at God's and relatedness to the divine; they praise transcendent reality." In "Emily Dickinson fallibility, bitterness that life's pleasant ac- the goodness of life, the abundance of na-

May/June 2012 | 25 ture, and the intimate interrelation of the counter with Britain's Poet Laureate." Em- Dickinson played (13). He writes, “Nina whole cosmos; and they configure in their ily Dickinson Journal 20.1 (2011): 56-77. Baym, Rebecca Patterson, Fred D. White, verse peak states of being and positive, and Hiroko Uno are four critics who have life-affirming emotions, such as serenity, Giles, Paul. written essays in which they move the sci- awe, hope, wonder, rapture, gratitude, and "'The Earth reversed her Hemispheres': entific searchlight onto Dickinson’s work, love." He says, ecstasy "heals and serves Dickinson's Global Antipodality." Emily but without arriving at a conclusion that as a catalyst for human flourishing." This Dickinson Journal 20.1 (2011): 1-21. science was very important to it” (76). anthology includes eight Dickinson po- However, Uno, at least, has not only “cata- ems as they were first published, but they Kang, Yanbin. loged” “the direct references to science” are assigned Johnson numbers (76, 157, "Dickinson's Hummingbirds, Circumfer- “very thoroughly” (17) but has acknowl- 172, 214, 249, 365, 632, and 1118). In- ence, and Chinese Poetics." Emily Dickin- edged its significance, demonstrating Dick- cluded are notes, a bibliography, and an son Journal 20.2 (2011): 57-82. inson’s use of her knowledge of develop- index of first lines. ments in science and technology to solve Loeffelholz, Mary. her metaphysical and religious problems, "Master Shakespeare, Mrs. Browning, while observing God-fearing scientists try- Book Notes Miss Dickinson, and the Servants." Emily ing to reconcile their discoveries with what Dickinson Journal 20.1 (2011): 34-55. is written in the Bible. Now available in paperback edition: Manheim, Daniel. Peel continues, “I go much further, argu- Christensen, Lena. "'And row my blossoms o'er!' Gift-Giving ing that Dickinson sedulously appropriated Editing Emily Dickinson: The Production and Emily Dickinson's Poetic Vocation." methodology and imagery from a range of of an Author. Routledge, $42.95 Emily Dickinson Journal 20.2 (2011): 1-32. scientific disciplines as part of a lifelong epistemological campaign most vigorously Mitchell, Domhnall. Stonum, Gary Lee. pursued between the years 1855 and 1865” The International Reception of Emily Dick- "Emily's Heathcliff: Metaphysical Love (76). He does indeed go “much further” with inson. Continuum, $49.95. in Dickinson and Brontë. Emily Dickinson immense and diversified information. For Journal 20.1 (2011): 22-33. example, in chapter 2, “Climbing the Hill of Pritchard, William H. Science,” he suggests that the succinct pre- Talking Back to Emily Dickinson and Other Wichelns, Kathryn. sentation of information “in short paragraphs, Essays. University of Massachusetts Press, "Emily Dickinson's Henry James." Emily often as axioms,” in science textbooks might $32.95. Dickinson Journal 20.1 (2011): 78-99. have led Dickinson to the “favor of brevity and interest in definition” (140); in chapter 3, “Women, Books, Schooling, and Science,” Journal Articles Book Review he argues that the unexplained opening “it” in her poems “reflects the strategy of the sci- Articles published in the Emily Dickinson Robin Peel. ence textbook in which a definition is sought Journal are available online at Project Muse. Emily Dickinson and the Hill of and then provided”: Science. Blackstock, Alan. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Univer- “What is the earth?”: “It is. . . .” In Dickin- "Dickinson, Blake, and the Hymnbooks sity Press, 2010. 435 pp. Cloth, ISBN 978- son’s case, a poem can begin “It rises – pass- of Hell." Emily Dickinson Journal 20.2 0-8386-4221-4, $92.50. es – on our South” (Fr1034) or “It was given (2011): 33-56. to me by the Gods –” (Fr455), leaving us to Reviewed by Hiroko Uno puzzle out the meaning of “it” and to what Evans, Meagan. “it” refers. We are left suspended, but there "'Itself is all the like': Selfsameness in the In Emily Dickinson and the Hill of Sci- is plenty of evidence provided in the poem, Poetry of Emily Dickinson." Emily Dickin- ence Robin Peel considers the influence allowing us to move toward an empirical son Journal 20.2 (2011): 83-105. of the sciences on Dickinson’s poetry. In conclusion but frequently stopping short of the first chapter, “Poetry, Paleontology, providing one. Dickinson offers us the mid- Finnerty, Páraic. and Geology,” he states that the purpose of dle part of knowledge, arising from experi- "'Dreamed of your meeting Tennyson in the book is to demonstrate the importance ence on earth. This middle part assumes a Ticknor and Fields --': A Transatlantic En- of the “scientific investigator” role that statement explained before we are born (be-

26 | EDIS Bulletin fore the poem begins) and a statement given and Darwin,” Peel states that she “may nev- I admire Peel for his ability to handle so after we die (after the poem ends). This is er have consciously responded to Darwin’s much material from different fields, rang- the scientific structure of the poem. It signals theory, but . . . there are lines in her poems ing from Peter Parley’s Magazine for that prior and following knowledge is pos- that suggest an acknowledgement of some children, science textbooks, and periodi- sible, but the poem concerns itself with what kind of change, development, or evolution cals such as Hampshire and Franklin Ex- is observable now (184). within nature” (327); in chapter 7, “Psychol- press to the writings of Kant and Thomas ogy and Pseudoscience,” he says that she Moore. There are several careless mis- In chapter 4, “Emily Dickinson and Geogra- “lived at a time when scientific practice was takes: Dickinson was not “eighteen” in phy,” Peel claims that Dickinson “drew on being enthusiastically applied to the study 1859 (174); and she did not write to Hig- her reading of geography textbooks, journal of the mind and to the claim that there was ginson in 1852 (301). Nevertheless, this articles, and reverie fiction to absorb- im a perceptible human spirit that survived the book is both interesting and useful for a ages of the unfamiliar and unvisited, which body in death” (330) and that Spiritualism better understanding of Dickinson’s work. through the power of language became less was “a discourse in her intellectual environ- Robin Peel has made a great contribution unfamiliar and verifiable in the imagination” ment” (355); and in chapter 8, “Disruptive to the scholarship on Emily Dickinson’s (235); in chapter 5, “Seeing Differently: As- Science and Disruptive Poetry,” he contends poetry. tronomy, Optics, and the Slanted Lens,” he that “Dickinson’s writing applies the outer asserts that although new technology made it disruptive effects of the new knowledge to Hiroko Uno is professor of American Lit- possible to see something invisible to the na- an exploration of the inner processes of dis- erature at Kobe College in Japan and au- ked eye, “she agreed with Kant [that], as hu- rupted psychology” (381). These examples thor of Emily Dickinson's Marble Disc: A man beings, we are restricted in what we see give only a glimpse of the many fascinating Poetics of Renunciation and Science and and know” (247); in chapter 6, “Dickinson arguments Peel makes. Emily Dickinson Visits Boston.

New CD: Sofie Livebrant interprets Emily Dickinson Reviewed by Niels Kjaer Emily and I. Sofie Livebrant was 30 years old, so it is the young Playground Music Scandinavia AB, Emily whom the very talented Sofie 2012. Book and CD. PGMCD 68. EAN: Livebrant interprets on this album, 7332181044843. ISBN: 978-91-978779-6-1. which also contains one original Live- brant song, entitled “Something.” he Swedish composer and singer-song- Twriter Sofie Livebrant has recently- re Livebrant’s music can best be de- leased a new album with her own musical scribed as modern Scandinavian folk interpretations of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. tunes. Together with the producer Previously Livebrant has composed music and musician Johan Lindström, Sofie for Charles Baudelaire, Sylvia Plath and Livebrant has created a completely other poets. unique and euphonious musical framework for Dickinson’s poems. In an interview Sofie Livebrant tells that the You have never heard Emily sing in poetry of Emily Dickinson has had a pro- this way before, I can promise you! found impact on her. Over the last couple of years she has been living with Dickinson, and The CD is accompanied by a beau- her poems have become an inseparable part tiful and informative booklet with of her life. the twelve poems in both English and Swedish. Furthermore the book The eleven Dickinson poems Livebrant has contains texts about Emily Dickin- put into music are Franklin #2, 33, 36, 40, 61, son and Sofie Livebrant, illustrated CD / Book Cover: Emily and I 62, 64, 214, 253, 320 and 640. Seven of these with photos by Johan Månsson and Photo Credit: Johan Månsson eleven poems were written before Dickinson aquarel paintings by Lars Lerin.

May/June 2012 | 27 Members’ News

Going Public: The EDIS and the Dickinson Museum in 2012 Cristanne Miller

The article grows out of a panel from the 2011 ALA conference, including the author and Jane Wald, and moderated by Sharon Shaloo.

hen the Emily Dickinson International and visitors, and even visited a property for and Cindy’s exemplary management and pro- WSociety was founded, there was no Em- sale near the Homestead and with historical re- gramming, these no longer need to be the So- ily Dickinson Museum and the Homestead lation to the Dickinsons. We were also in those ciety’s key concerns. From the start we were was open only irregularly for tours. During early years pursuing other ways of “promot- also committed to being a society for both the Society’s early planning years, starting in ing, perpetuating, and enhancing the study and scholars and lay or popular readers of Dickin- 1986, a few Dickinson scholars forming the appreciation of Emily Dickinson throughout son – a commitment we still feel strongly. Society board or talking with board members the world” (another part of our stated mission) (especially Elizabeth Bernhard and Martha – in particular, founding the EDIS Bulletin Given that the ED Museum now secures the Nell Smith) got to know Mary Landis Hamp- then the Emily Dickinson Journal and direct- future of the Dickinson properties and func- son, who was living in the house next door to ing our first international conference in 1992. tions as a Center for Dickinson “apprecia- the Dickinson Homestead called “The Ever- tion,” EDIS has arrived at a point in its histo- greens” – an Italianate villa built for Emily’s At that point, we started a pattern of hosting ry of rethinking what the Society’s own most brother Austin and his wife Sue in 1856. Their an international conference about once ev- significant contribution to the “study and ap- daughter, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, specified ery three years and in the other years hosting preciation of Dickinson” should and can be. in her will that only Alfred Leete Hampson what we called an “annual meeting,” mostly Clearly EDIS provides the scholarly focus of (her companion) or his family could live in the small-scale events with a few invited speakers, world attention to Dickinson (as attested by house, and that thereafter it must be “razed” geared more toward a general public than to- the panels we host every year at the ALA and before sale of the property could be finalized. ward scholars. We determined that we would MLA conferences, as well as our own con- meet at least once every three years in Amherst ferences about every three years). And EDIS The Emily Dickinson International Society (or in order to keep our ties to the houses strong. works closely with the Museum in a host of EDIS) was in part founded out of concern for ways. We participate with the Museum in the state of the two houses and a desire to pre- In 1996, while I was President of EDIS, Am- programming, give it money annually, and serve them. Mary Hampson died in 1988, the herst College hired Cindy Dickinson (n as the we have just established a joint membership same year EDIS was incorporated. first full-time and professionally trained- Cu program that enables EDIS members to elect rator of the Homestead. From this point on, to join the Museum as well at a reduced fee. In 1988, EDIS had two primary material or real Amherst College took its responsibility to the estate concerns. The first was to make sure the Homestead property with new seriousness. In Current and past Society board members also Evergreens was not razed. With the establish- 2001, Jane Wald was hired as Museum Di- serve on the Museum board (in 2011, James ment of the Martha Dickinson Bianchi Trust, it rector; in 2003, the Bianchi Trust deeded the Fraser, Polly Longsworth, and Cristanne Mill- became clear that that would not happen (this Evergreens to Amherst as part of a Dickinson er). EDIS is also, however, having a retreat trust involved members of EDIS but the Soci- Museum. this summer to think about where the Society ety was not consulted about its forming or ac- is going now with its own goals and priorities. tions). The second was either to persuade Am- In comparison with other author societies, Similarly, the ED Museum is in a continuing herst College to use the Dickinson Homestead EDIS is relatively young (we will celebrate process of understanding its own mission more in a way more friendly to scholarship and pub- our 25th anniversary in 2013). Also, in con- clearly and is asking, for example, questions lic interest, or even to attempt to buy the prop- trast to most author societies, our initial goals like whether its primary target audience might erty from the college ourselves. Since we were were focused in part on the preservation of the be classified as people with primary initial in- a fledgling organization made up primarily of material context of the poet’s life and the de- terests in Dickinson’s poetry or primary initial faculty members with little or no experience in veloping of popular programs on the poet that interest in the material cultural of the houses. fundraising and with busy full-time jobs, the the Museum now manages. Among our stated This thinking on both sides will include the second option seemed highly unlikely. original goals were to “Secure the future of the question of how our continued collaboration Dickinson properties in Amherst . . . as cultur- can make the best use of each of our respective Nonetheless, in our first decade, we did think al and historical treasures,” and to “Establish strengths, networks, resources, and energies. about attempting to buy property in Amherst a Center for Dickinson Studies” – which we Cristanne Miller’s latest book, Reading in Time: in order to create a center for Dickinson study, first interpreted as a physical “Center.” With Emily Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century, ap- for local, national, and international scholars the founding of the Museum, and given Jane’s peared in May 2012.

28 | EDIS Bulletin Members’ News

Civil War Discussed at the Frost Library Hoosier Youths Exposed to Lois Kackley the Belle of Amherst

he American Civil War triggered the emotional and intellectual n December 14, 2011, EDIS President Jonnie Guerra was in- Tmaturity that stimulated a majority of Dickinson’s poems, accord- Ovited by her third-grade friend, Hannah Morris, and Hannah’s ing to Polly Longsworth in a recent panel presentation in Amherst. teacher, Mrs. Kathy Wolf, to visit their classroom at Cumberland Longsworth, a long-time supporter of EDIS and Dickinson biographer, Elementary School in West Lafayette, Indiana, to discuss Emily was joined by four others to help launch Amherst College’s “Frazar is Dickinson and to read from her poems. The class enjoyed learning Killed: Emily Dickinson, Amherst, and the Civil War,” a Frost Library facts about Dickinson’s life, seeing the poet’s picture and the base- exhibit running from March 28 to May 20, 2012. ball card and doll made in her image, and listening to the poems read aloud. They responded enthusiastically to Dickinson’s nature Moderator Martha Ackmann, past EDIS president, author, and Holy- poetry and had many insights to share about her use of language, oke College lecturer, was introduced by Frost Librarian Bryn Gifford. especially words that appealed to the senses. After the third-grad- Amherst History Museum’s Marianne Curling invited the 100-plus ers joined Guerra in a rousing recital of “I’m Nobody! Who are audience to participate in the museum’s project to “tell the private sto- you?” (Fr260), they snacked on Dickinson-inspired gingerbread in ries” of Amherst’s 274 Civil War soldiers, who, like Frazar Stearns, had celebration of the poet’s 181st birthday. their own compelling personal details. Mike Kelly, archives and special collections director at the library, discussed the transformation in col- lege life brought about by the war, emphasizing the “intimate group of people” that comprised the town and student body. Bob Romer, a retired Amherst College physics professor who wrote the book Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts, read touching letters by area soldiers during the Civil War.

The event was co-sponsored by the Frost Library and the Emily Dickin- son Museum. The organizer of the panel was the museum’s director of programming, Cindy Dickinson. At the conclusion of the event, Emily Dickinson Museum Director Jane Wald invited the audience to other Civil War Sesquicentennial commemorations by the museum during the spring and summer.

From rear: Kathy Wolf, President Guerra, Hannah Morris, and an unidentified woman in white.

San Francisco Poetry Marathon DIS is joining with the San Francisco Public Library and Litquake, ESan Francisco’s literary festival, to sponsor an Emily Dickinson Po- etry Reading Marathon on December 1, 2012. Modeled after the suc- cessful marathon held annually at the Dickinson Museum, the San Fran- cisco version will be a half marathon with the balance of the poems read at another marathon to be scheduled for 2013. The event is expected to include costume judging because, noted principal marathon organizer Front row: Bob Romer and Polly Longsworth. Back row: and EDIS member Aífe Murray, “this is the sort of town where people Marianne Curling, Mike Kelly, and Martha Ackmann will come dressed as Emily Dickinson or Carlo, her Newfoundland.”

May/June 2012 | 29 Members’ News

Dorothy Huff Oberhaus Delivers Keynote Lecture at Women’s History Month Celebration

Joyce Rasmussen Balint

n March 18, 2012, Dorothy Huff Oberhaus delivered an A half-hour period of questions and answers was followed by Oaddress, “The Many Moods of Emily Dickinson,” to an an afternoon tea that was accompanied by a musical interlude. overflow audience at the Bronxville Women’s Club in Bronx- ville, New York, on the occasion of the Club’s celebration of Dorothy Oberhaus is the author of Emily Dickinson’s Fascicles: Meth- Women’s History Month. The lecture was given in the Club’s od & Meaning (Penn State Press, 1995); and of a book-in-progress, historic Clubhouse, built in 1928, and now on The National also about the fascicles. Registry of Historic Places. Oberhaus began by observing that so much attention is given to Dickinson’s poems about death and sadness that some readers begin to believe that she wrote about nothing else. But although ED wrote many fine poems about death and suffering, she also wrote many about happier subjects. This, Oberhaus observed, is especially apparent in her major work, the forty bound fascicles, most of which include a wide variety of moods and perspectives.

In her lecture, Oberhaus chose three poems to illustrate this variety. “Because I could not stop for Death,” one of the finest poems ever written in English, represented her poems about death. “I taste a liquor never brewed,” which depicts her speak- er as drunk on the beauties of life, is typical of ED’s joyous poems. And “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” is among her many nature poems, and also one of her many riddle poems – those that describe in detail a creature or object without naming it, in Dorothy Oberhaus speaks about Dickinson to the Bronx- this case a snake. ville Women’s Club for Women’s History Month

New Directions in Dickinson Studies

At the Annual Meeting of the Emily Dickinson International Society at participants to look closely at the piece, to do their own thinking or re- Amherst in 2011, a group of scholars, readers, teachers, and artists came search into the topic, and to respond in a substantive way. Ideally, such together to form what is now known as “New Directions in Dickinson discussion will not only be interesting to the community of people writ- Studies.” This group is interested in asking what these “new directions” ing in, but will be valuable to the person who has offered the piece up might be in a field that has had such rich work done in it over the years. for consideration. In this way, works-in-progress, half-ideas, and new To that end, on January 1, 2012 we launched a website that hopes to thoughts are particularly well suited for this site. In January 2012, Theo showcase, question, challenge, and celebrate new projects on Dickin- Davis presented a piece entitled “Dickinson, and Lighting Things” and son and her work. Without any predetermined sense of what makes in March 2012 Antoine Cazé contributed a piece entitled “Emily Dick- something “new” – whether that newness resides in content, style, or inson’s Ethics of Neighborhood.” Although Cazé references Davis’ approach – this website is dedicated to opening the field of Dickinson writing in a footnote, they start in very different places and ultimately Studies to new possibilities. have wildly different investments. In this way, the first two publications prove that “new directions” are indeed multiple. The website, which can be found at http://newdirectionsindickinson- studies.org/home/, is open to the public to read but requires a member If you are interested in contributing a piece or in obtaining the password to have a password in order to comment. The site presents one new that would allow you to become a “user” on this site, please email Alex piece every two months, therefore leaving time for eager readers and Socarides at [email protected].

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

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

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

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

Call for Papers

Emily Dickinson International Society panel at the has long since called the ‘poetry of the portfolio’ – verses writ- 2012 South Atlantic Modern Language Association ten without a thought towards publication.” Dickinson’s “portfo- convention, November 9-11, 2012; Durham, North lio” was thus launched on a series of strange voyages, its leaves Carolina. scattered in various locales for over a century before being re- assembled into what many readers now recognize as a radically Conference theme: “Text as Memoir: Tales of complex poetic project. By examining Dickinson’s commitment to Travel, Immigration, and Exile” manuscript production, this discussion should reveal many telling Panel Title: “Dickinson’s (Inter)Textual Travels” glimpses into the unforeseeable travels one takes as a “supposed person” (L268). The Emily Dickinson International Society seeks participants for a roundtable discussion of Dickinson’s manuscripts as tales of We welcome traditional analyses as well as creative work that can travel, immigration and exile. This discussion might include both be written, digital, or mixed media. the manuscripts themselves and their circuitous history. T. W. Hig- ginson insisted in his preface to the 1890 edition of her work that Please send 200-400 word proposals for participation in this discussion Dickinson’s manuscripts “belong emphatically to what Emerson by June 1, 2012 to Trisha Kannan at [email protected].

May/June 2012 | 31 Members’ News

Welcome to the 2012 Annual Meeting of The Emily Dickinson International Society “EMILY ROCKS”

And Welcome to Case Western Reserve University, University Circle, and the North Coast of the USA

Birthplace of Rock and Roll and Deathplace of Samuel Fowler Dickinson, Emily’s Grandfather

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS OTHER ATTRACTIONS

Friday, Aug 3 Within walking distance of the meeting events and in the unpar- alleled concentration of cultural and educational institutions that Feature: Martha Nell Smith, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and is University Circle are the Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance ADVANCE Professor at the University of Maryland will speak on Hall (home of the Cleveland Orchestra), Museum of Contempo- “How Emily Rocks.” rary Art, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland Chil- dren’s Museum, Western Reserve Historical Society, Dittrick Master classes/poem workshops; museum visits; banquet, cabaret- Museum of Medical History, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleve- style poem performances. land Institute of Music, Cleveland Botanical Garden, Cleveland Cultural Gardens and a legendary dive bar where, aside from the Saturday, Aug 4 many later-to-be famous acts who appeared in the 1970s and af- ter, Joan Jett and Michael J. Fox rocked on in Paul Schrader’s Feature: Keynote address by Kevin J. Dettmar, editor of The Cam- Light of Day. bridge Companion to Bob Dylan as well as The Longman Anthology of British Literature will address “Em- ily Dickinson and Zombies.”

Business Meeting; archival details about Samuel Fowler Dickinson’s time as treasurer of Western Reserve Col- lege; excursion to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum; downtown dine-around at celebrity chef (Michael Symon, Jonathan Sawyer, Zachary Bruell, et al.) restaurants plus a few less pricy but nearly as good.

Sunday, Aug 5 Featured Speakers Martha Nell Smith and Kevin J. Dettmar promise to get Further master classes/poem work- the Emily Dickinson Society to rock. shops; wrap-up and eye to next year by Alex Socarides; allied meetings. Photo Credits: Smith, Steve Fratoni; Dettmar, John Lucas

32 | EDIS Bulletin Members’ News

LODGING I-71 or I-77, use the Carnegie Road exit. In either case, consult online or paper maps for more specific routes to your destination. Limited bed and breakfast lodging available at Glidden House (866- 412-4537; EDIS rates available) and Washington Place (216-791- Parking in University Circle will usually require payment. Metered 6500). CWRU offers university housing ranging from dorm rooms, street parking is easily available; the closest garages to EDIS events at less than $20 per night, to private apartments for around $100 per are on Ford Rd, between Euclid Ave. and Bellflower Rd or on East night. The nearest full-service hotel, from which University Circle Blvd, just north of Euclid Ave. shuttle service is available, is the Doubletree Tudor Arms (216-455- 1260). Online booking for some of these is available through the Registration packets will be available in Clark Hall, room 206 EDIS website. (11130 Bellflower Road). from 3 to 6 pm, Thursday, Aug 2and after 9:30 am on Friday and Saturday.

ARRIVAL IN CLEVELAND INFORMATION AND UPDATES

From the airport, take the RTA to the University Circle station. The latest information will be available on the EDIS website, or you can University Circle shuttle buses will then take you closer to your email the meeting director, Gary Stonum, at [email protected]. destination; ask the driver for details or consult the on-line map: www.case.edu/maps/busmap.html. REGISTRATION

Arriving by car: CWRU is on the far east side of Cleveland. From Registration forms are available from the EDIS website, www.emi- I-90 the most useful exit is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr drive. From lydickinsoninternationalsociety.org. Or use the paper form below.

EMILY ROCKS: EMILY DICKINSON INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY ANNUAL MEETING, AUGUST 3-5, 2012 REGISTRATION FORM

Name, title & affliation______Mailing Address______Telephone (home)______(office)______(fax)______(mobile) ______E-mail______

Registration (deadline July 15, 2012) Current EDIS Member or Friend of the Emily Dickinson Museum $110 Non-Member Registration Fee (includes EDIS membership) $150 Student (Proof of college ID required) $60 Guests for Friday lunch, $13 per person ______for Friday banquet, $30 per person ______

Payment: Registration Fee______Total for Guest Tickets______Total Enclosed______

Checks (payable to EDIS) must be made in U.S. dollars and drawn in a U.S. bank. Do not send cash. Please indicate credit card information below. Credit Card: Master Card VISA Account Number______Expiration Month______Expiration Year______Mail to: EDIS, c/o Johns Hopkins University Press, P.O. Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211-0966. Payment must be made by July 15, 2012. No refunds will be made after July 15, 2012.

May/June 2012 | 33 Members’ News: Chapter News

EDIS Chapter Group Update

By Nancy List Pridgen and Lois Kackley

he number and size of Emily Dickinson International Society the third weekend in June, when our topic will be “Poems and Tchapter groups continue to increase. Get on the bandwagon Letters to Dickinson’s Friends and Family.” We will narrow our and start a group in your area. You will be glad you did. All you discussion to poems and letters sent to Col. T.W. Higginson and need is a place to meet, a few participants, and a readers’ edition poems and letters sent to Dickinson’s cousins Louisa and Frances of Emily Dickinson’s poems edited by either Thomas H. John- Norcross. son or Ralph W. Franklin. The resulting discussions are thought- provoking and entertaining, and the rewards are immeasurable. If you have any suggestions or recommendations for meeting top- ics or procedures, they would be welcomed. If you can come for Three EDIS chapter groups meet regularly. Ellen Beinhorn spon- the ED in the Hill Country weekend, let me know. My email is sors an EDIS group that meets in Beaufort County, South Carolina. Nancy List Pridgen, [email protected]. EDIS San Antonio in Texas is sponsored by Nancy List Pridgen. The EDIS Amherst chapter group, organized by Lois Kackley, Report on EDIS Amherst – Lois Kackley meets in Emily Dickinson’s hometown, Amherst, Massachusetts. Emily Dickinson International Society-Amherst will celebrate its Update on EDIS Beaufort County – Ellen Beinhorn fourth anniversary in May. Lively conversations and keen partici- pation from area readers of Dickinson make this a venture I enjoy The Beaufort County EDIS group will meet this month at my more all the time. The Friday group typically sees 12 participants, home to discuss future meeting places. We are writing letters to while the Thursday group is more intimate, usually, with three to Emily and will discuss how her letters and poems relate. Next five attendees. Since its beginning I have kept a sign-in log, both month we will look into Emily's “humor,” dark and light. for some future historian and to track trends that may or may not be tied to other Amherst activities. Report on EDIS San Antonio – Nancy List Pridgen At the start of 2012 the group voted to begin including a Dickinson The EDIS San Antonio group is the newest of the three. It has met letter as part of the “Poetry Conversation.” The Friday group for since September, 2011, in Universal City, outside of San Antonio. February discussed L77 – a huge bite to chew for anyone, but one Attendance is small but growing, with four to eight participants. that provided a stimulating introduction to letters containing the We discuss three or more poems at each meeting. Often we add germs of many later poems. Two short poems we discussed before one or more letters. This year we have pretty much stuck to the the letter – “The flake the wind exasperate,” and, “The Heart is the calendar for seasonal topics when appropriate, beginning with po- Capital of the Mind” – were somewhat randomly selected. How- ems about autumn in September. Since our meeting date conflicted ever, going forward we will choose poems that Dickinson included with both Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends, we combined in the selected letter, or that have some other relevance to the letter both November and December meetings into a “Happy Birthday, at hand. Emily” meeting on December 10, 2011. At this meeting, we dis- cussed letters and poems pertaining to Thanksgiving, Christmas, I would like very much to hear from EDIS members who have and birthdays. Valentine poems at the end of January meeting were ideas and suggestions. especially enjoyable. Email: Lois Kackley, [email protected]. Our meeting for the end of February dealt with poems on the theme of word(s), such as “A word is dead.” Discussion was en- We hope you will give serious consideration to sharing the adven- thusiastic and enlightening. While March will focus on poems ture of sponsoring an Emily Dickinson chapter group. The Em- about March and spring, we will return to a theme in April. Dis- ily Dickinson International Society site, http://www.emilydick- cussion of Dickinson’s views on religion has been suggested by insoninternationalsociety.org/, has a section on Chapter Groups one of the participants, a topic that could fill every day for the with a link to a document listing steps for starting an EDIS chapter entire month of April. group in your area. If you have any questions, feel free to com- municate with either Lois Kackley or Nancy List Pridgen, chairs We are also looking forward to the Fourth Annual Emily Dick- of the EDIS Chapter Group Committee, using the email addresses inson in the Hill Country weekend outside of Kerrville, Texas, above.

34 | EDIS Bulletin The Sweets of Pillage

Because of certain conspicuous visual features, Emily Dickinson’s poetry can seem deceptively easy to parody: too easy, a student once dismissively remarked. But any reader’s pleasure leads to a desire to express that pleasure to the world, and ex- pression may pardonably find its form in witty distortion. If the parodies printed here inspire others to share their own wittily revisionary tributes, then “The Sweets of Pillage” (Fr1504) could reappear as an occasional feature of the Bulletin.

The Waist Is Larger than the Belt She Ate and Drank the Luscious Treats

A She ate and drank the luscious treats – The waist is larger than the belt – Restraint had taken flight – For put them side by side – She knew that she was far from slim The one the other will exceed And that her clothes were tight – With ease – it cannot hide – She bought some caftans, shawls, and The foot is wider than the shoe – capes For try them inch by inch – And now her spirit sings The one the other won’t fit in – Despite her girth – What liberty Without a mighty pinch – A loosened wardrobe brings –

The mouth is greater than the will – For test them both with cake – A Narrow Fellow in the Glass The one the other will subdue – As anodyne quells ache – A narrow fellow in the glass Had I Not Tasted Rum Is what I yearn to see – B But much I must forgo, alas Had I not tasted rum Is this sweeter? To make a slimmer me – I'd be content with juice But alcohol has newly made The mouth is greater than the will – No cookies, brownies, cake, or pie – My former tastes vamoose – For show them something sweet – I may become unstrung. The one the other will defy – The pleasure healthful foods supply And in the end defeat – Is zero at the tongue – Felicia Nimue Ackerman

How the Potatoes Drip With Gravy

How the potatoes drip with gravy, Said the Turkey to the fellows And then a quiet stilled the town How the stuffing burns – Around the table wide – That dark Thanksgiving night. How the Rum Cake is dipped in cider – While others gobbled happily Tables fill with urns – “But know you now that ere too long” With not a care in sight – He added with a scowl, How the Turkey stands in scarlet, “It won’t be paunchy men that feast – The Turkey with a vengeful purr Off his bed of sage – But hungry woodland fowl!” Enjoyed his own fine feast – Steps from the oven to the table, When rage of all Thanksgivings Clears his throat with rage – And with a cry he spread his wings – past Grease blots flung on breasts – Turned entrée into beast! “Truly the fire gusts like bellows And fell upon the unsuspecting Upon my crispy hide!” Table full of guests. Colleen Maggard

May/June 2012 | 35 Follow us on

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