The Emily Dickinson International Society

Volume 28, Number 1 May/June 2017 “The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality.” In This Issue

Officers Features Reviews

President: Martha Nell Smith 13 An Interview with Cristanne Miller on Emily 16 Morgan Library Exhibition: “I’m Nobody! Vice-President: Barbara Mossberg Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them Who are You? The Life and Poetry of Emily Secretary: Nancy Pridgen Dickinson Treasurer: James C. Fraser 19 Emily Dickinson and the Art of Tattoos Reviewed by Ivy Schweizer By Maryanne Garbowsky 21 New Publications Board Members 22 Thinking Dickinson, By George Monteiro Vivian R. Pollak, Our Emily Dickinsons: American Faith Barrett James C. Fraser Martha Nell Smith 27 Recovering Emily Dickinson, By Cynthia Hallen Women Poets and the Intimacies of Difference Renée Bergland Michelle Kohler Alexandra Socarides Reviewed by Jennifer Leader George Boziwick Barbara Mossberg Brooke Steinhauser 30 Emily Dickinson, Astronaut! By Sharon Hamilton Antoine Cazé Elizabeth Petrino (Honorary Member) Mary Loeffelholz, The Value of Emily Dickinson Paul Crumbley Vivian Pollak Marta Werner and Páraic Finnerty Eliza Richards Jane Wald (Honorary Member) Series Jane Donahue Eberwein, Stephanie Farrar, and Cristanne Miller, eds., Dickinson in her Own Time 4 What’s Your Story? Reviewed by Páraic Finnerty Legal Advisor: Louis N. Levine Chapter Development Chair: Eleanor Heginbotham A Conversation with Ferris Jabr Nominations Chair: Páraic Finnerty Dickinson and the Arts Chair: Jonnie Guerra Series Editor, Diana Wagner Membership Chair: Elizabeth Petrino Emily Dickinson Journal Editor: James Guthrie 35 Dickinson in Film: A Quiet Passion 6 Poet to Poet Reviewed by Stephane Tingley Editor, EDIS Bulletin: Daniel Manheim Emily Dickinson, Death, and the Irish Series Editor, Jonnie Guerra Members’ News 9 Visualizing Dickinson Sustaining Members A Certain Slant of Light 30 Edenic Possibilities: 2017 Annual Meeting Mary Elizabeth K Bernhard Robert Eberwein Trisha Kannan Series Editor, Maryanne Garbowsky Richard Brantley David H. Forsyth Barbara Mossberg 31 Report from Paris, African American Inflexions, Jane D. Eberwein James C. Fraser Martha Nell Smith 10 Teaching Dickinson By Vivian Pollak Creative Appropriation Series Editor, Marianne Noble 35 The Sweets of Pillage Contributing Members

Carolyn L. Cooley Eleanor Heginbotham Frank D. Rashid Marie Esteve Suzanne Juhasz Ethan Tarasov Front Cover: Images of some of the fauna and flora found in Dickinson’s works, from the catalog of Ferris Jabr. Clockwise LeeAnn Gorthey Rita Brady Kiefer Robin Tarasov from top left, Anemones, Asters, Bartsia, Daisy, Hawkbit, Trailing Arbutus, Hyacinth, with birds and animals interpolated. Linda Healy Marianne Noble Lingling Xiang Back Cover: Letter from the Morgan Library Exhibition, “‘I’m Nobody! Who are You?’ The Life and Poetry of Emily Dick- EDIS gratefully acknowledges the generous financial contributions of these members. inson. “I suppose the time will / come,” Poem written in 1876 on the verso of invitation from George Gould, dated 1850, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Emily Dickinson Collection, AC 240. EDIS Bulletin (ISSN 1055-3932) is published twice yearly, May/June and November/December, by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. Standard Mail non-prof- it postage is paid at Lexington, KY 40511. Membership in the Society is open to all persons with an interest in Emily Dickinson and her work. For further information, contact Martha Nell Smith, President, EDIS, Department of English, 2119 Tawes Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, or [email protected]. Annual dues are $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 The Assistant Editor for this issue is Allyson Weglar whom receive the Bulletin and the Emily Dickinson Journal), or $20.00 for associate members (Bulletin only). Membership inquiries should be directed to James C. Fraser, 159 Prospect St., Apt 7, Acton, MA, 01720-3654, USA. Membership applications and changes of address should be sent to The Emily Dickinson International Society, c/o Johns Hopkins University Press, P.O. Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211-0966, USA. Direct changes of address to [email protected], 800-548-1784 (U.S. Dickinson poems are reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from the following volumes: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. and Canada), or 410-516-6987; fax to 410-516-3866. Address submissions for the Bulletin to Daniel Manheim, Centre College, 600 West Walnut St., Danville, KY 40422, Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The 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 Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President issues are available for $5.00 each from the editor. Copyright © 2017 by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. The Bulletin is indexed in EBSCO, Humanities and Fellows of Harvard College; The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, International Complete, and the MLA Bibliography. Copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Copyright © 1929, 1935 by Mar- tha Dickinson Bianchi, Copyright © renewed 1957, 1963 by Mary L. Hampson: Little Brown and Co., Boston. Dickinson letters are reprinted by permission of the publishers www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org from The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1958, 1986 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; 1914, 1924, 1932, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; 1952 by Alfred Leete Hampson; 1960 by Mary L. Hampson. What’s Your Story? What’s Your Story?

Diana Wagner, Series Editor fully labeled plant specimens collected in for a secret revolutionary poet. What better full range of her linguistic prowess. If Jane and around Amherst. On occasion, she even antidote than a little comedy? Austen is mistakenly perceived by some as names plants by genus or species in her po- the bored spinster turning her marital fanta- A Conversation with Ferris Jabr ems. One poem in particular, “Whose are Do you have a favorite poem, letter, or frag- sies into sappy romance novels, then Dick- the little beds – I asked,” showcases Dick- ment of Dickinson? inson is the odd aunt in the attic, scribbling inson’s scientific knowledge. She seeds the nursery rhymes and cryptic quatrains. I urge erris Jabr is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. He is known in Dickinson circles for his 2014 New York Times article “The Lost stanzas with copious botanical nomenclature I am particularly fond of “Further in Summer anyone curious about Dickinson to abandon Gardens of Emily Dickinson,” which examined the archeological explorations of the orchard and conservatory. His work is found F in the original Latin: Epigaea repens (a.k.a. than the Birds.” This poem utterly baffled all preconceptions and sit down for a proper regularly in Scientific American, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker.com, Outside, Slate, Foreign Policy, New Scientist, a flowering shrub known as trailing arbutus), me the first few times I read it. Consider that first meeting – just you and Emily. If a poem Medium, Aeon, Nautilus, Hakai, The Awl, and McSweeney’s. Mr. Jabr holds an MA in journalism from New York University and a Leontodon (hawkbit, a dandelion relative), opening line: “Further in Summer…than the seems childish and trivial at first, or too ar- Bachelor of Science degree from Tufts University. This interview took place just as the crocuses were bracing against winter’s last fury Bartsia (a genus in broomrape family), and Birds”? And later: “Antiquest felt at Noon”? cane to comprehend, don’t give up; Dickin- and as the Conservatory Restoration Project at the Emily Dickinson Museum was nearing completion. Anemone and Aster (both large genuses of What is Dickinson on about? But the more son demands and rewards persistence. There flowering plants). In her poetry, Dickinson you read it, the more you decipher, and the is always something hidden, something de- How did you first meet Emily Dickinson? of apples and pears on the property (similar to cultivated, its frequent joys and unexpected also borrows the language of geology, astron- more beautiful, profound, and compelling the lightful, beautiful, or electrifying waiting to the original family orchard Emily called the losses – coupled with observations of nature omy, and physics. poem becomes. I won't spill this esoteric po- be discovered. I first met Emily Dickinson in ninth grade “Dome” of her personal church), and trying during frequent walks through the woods, em's core secret – the source of the English class. Like an exchange student, her to find remnants of the once vast vegetable was a near limitless source of inspiration Some people think Dickinson wants science “spectral Canticle” arising from the Jabr has also written about Dickinson in Slate, presence was brief but magnetic; her lan- and flower gardens. In Emily Dickinson's for Dickinson. In her 1,789 known poems, to get out of the way of her wonderment. grass. I will only say that I think it “How Emily Dickinson Grew her Genius in Her guage odd yet compelling: a mix of singsong case, understanding her ardent interest in bot- she refers to animals about 700 times and to What do you think of that? is one of Dickinson's most mysteri- Family’s Backyard,” May 17 2016. There he de- meter, idiosyncratic punctuation, and as- any and gardening, as well as the natural his- plants around 600 times. The vast majority ous, evocative, and innovative po- scribes the scope of his fascination with the poet’s toundingly original word pairings – phrases tory of Amherst – in particular the plants and of species she names are not exotic creatures Dickinson is sometimes perceived as anti- ems, one that resists a complete de- gradening and attachment to nature generally. that sent a jolt to the brain. I remember puz- animals Emily studied in school and encoun- from far-flung locales but rather common- science. Her poem “‘Arcturus’ is his other coding, urging you to return again zling over the imagery in “Because I could tered on a daily basis (she called them “Na- place residents of the garden, forest, and name” is the classic example. In it, Dickinson and again. I decided to record every single reference to a living not stop for Death” with my classmates, ture's people”) – is essential to understanding household: the squirrel, robin, bumblebee, bemoans “Science” for interfering with creature of any kind in Dickinson’s poetry. . . . What finding new meaning with each reading. I who she was as a person and poet. worm, spider, and bobolink; the rose, daisy, unadulterated adoration of nature. She wants I also love the “Liquid Feet” and I learned is that Dickinson’s single biggest source enjoyed “A Bird came down the Walk” so clover, and buttercup. These organisms be- to simply admire the flower and butterfly, but “imperial Veins” of the hot air bal- of inspiration was not “Nature,” that grand abstract- much, and read it so many times, that I could Does your lens as both a science writer and came her metaphors, her epithets, her way of science would dissect, label, and preserve loons in “You've seen Balloons set ed entity supposedly external to human society, but recite it from memory. It was not until a few poetry explorer make her gardening especial- understanding life and other people, and the them beneath glass. She wants to gaze in – Hav'nt You?”; the brilliant meta- quite simply – and quite literally – her backyard. years ago, however, that I returned to Dickin- ly interesting to you? subjects of some of her most beloved poems; wonder at the starry sky, but science needs phor in “A Clock stopped – Not the From childhood until death Dickinson cultivated an son's work in earnest, and not until last year think of the robin in “A Bird came down the to chart it all and name every pinprick of Mantel’s”; the morbidly hilarious intense passion for gardening and observing local that I decided to read her collected poems in This is precisely the aspect of her life and Walk” or the snake (probably a garter snake) light. She is so “old-fashioned” (i.e. against image of “A Gnat's minutest fan / wildlife. . . . She grew up among gardeners in . . . chronological order, as well as several biog- work that most fascinated me when I read in “A narrow Fellow in the Grass.” After the progress of science) that she worries she Sufficient to obliterate / a Tract of a patchwork of forest, pastureland, and residential raphies. I met Emily as a teenager, but I did her collected poems last year. The experi- early adulthood, Dickinson did not venture might not make it into Heaven! Unless God Citizen” in “More Life – went out areas where it was common for families to own or- not get know her until adulthood. ence of gardening – its toil and responsibil- far from her family’s property. Instead, she forgives her “naughtiness” the way a father – when He went”; and the idea of chards and small working farms. Her mother was ities, its struggle to reconcile the wild and was a self-described “Balboa of house and can’t stay mad at his beloved but spoiled lightning as a giant yellow fork renowned in town for her “delicious ripe figs”; her In your New York Times story, “The garden.” We need to understand the daughter. dropped from some table in the sky. brother and father added fruit trees and handsome Lost Gardens of Emily Dickinson,” natural history of Emily Dickinson conifers to the family property; and both Emily and you wrote about how science and because so much of her genius was Do you ever find Dickinson to be funny? If there is one thing you want peo- her sister tended large vegetable and flower beds history have combined to bring ED’s nurtured in nature – in her personal ple to know about Emily Dickinson, packed with beets, corn, scarlet runner beans, aspar- orchard “back to life.” Why do you Eden at the Homestead. This poem and others Dickinson wrote on what is it? agus, peonies, hyacinths, lilies, and marigolds. . . . think it is important that we recreate similar topics are suffused with hyperbole She filled the conservatory with buttercups, ferns, the natural history of our authors? What was Emily Dickinson's rela- and self-aware humor. We know Dickinson She's probably not who you think wood sorrel, heliotropes, and jasmine, which she tionship with science? does not take this anti-science stance too se- she is. When many people hear the quenched with a “tiny watering-pot with a long, Yes, the Emily Dickinson Museum riously. After all, she devoted a great deal of name Emily Dickinson, they think slender spout like the antennae of insects.” and its archaeological collaborators Dickinson definitely had the instincts time to learning plant taxonomy and preserv- of “‘Hope’ is the thing with feath- are doing some wonderful work at of a naturalist, especially with re- ing specimens. And elsewhere, she recom- ers” – a lovely poem, but one that is Citations from “Emily Dickinson and Gardening” the Homestead, rebuilding the Dick- gard to botany. She studied botany mends “microscopes” – that is, careful exam- a little more maudlin than is typical on the Emily Dickinson Museum website, and “Emi- insons’ greenhouse (where Emily in school and made an extensive ination – over blind faith. Still, one imagines for Dickinson, and does not prop- ly Dickinson’s Garden,” Bulletin 2.2, 1990. spent many hours tending plants herbarium with more than 420 dried, the world of 19th-century scholars could get erly convey the rebellious char- a bit stuffy and tiresome at times, especially acter of Dickinson's poetry or the year-round), resurrecting an orchard Photo Credit: Salim Jabr pressed, artfully arranged, and care-

4 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 5 Poet to Poet Poet to Poet

Jonnie Guerra, Series Editor felt a Funeral in my Brain” (Fr340); Tu- er, a snub at proper Amherst society, the The Emily Dickinson I cherish and am van throat-singers whipping up the surf of equivalent of a contemporary Westchester startled by lodges somewhere in between “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!” (Fr269); a county socialite arranging for a member of the beguiling quaintness of the character Emily Dickinson, Death, and the Irish: taunting, Yiddish-accented mugging of her Laotian floor-sanding crew to be the in The Belle of Amherst and the cruelty- “What Soft – Cherubic Creatures – / These lead man carrying her coffin to Woodlawn obsessed presence conjured by Camille Musings by Tom Daley Gentlewomen are – ” (Fr675); a blues harp Cemetery. Paglia in her chapter, “Amherst’s Madame brazening the howls of “There came a De Sade” in Sexual Personae. I grit my Wind Like a Bugle” (Fr1618); and an Afri- When she received the news of the grave teeth at the nineteenth-century “lady” who I met Tom Daley in 2010 at EDIS’s Oxford conference when he participated in a roundtable discussion that focused on Dickinson-inspired plays. I and can ululation rendering those essential oils illness of Judge Otis Lord, presumed by seems manifest in the lines “Lest I sh'd others were mesmerized by the excerpt Daley performed as Tom Kelley from his play Every Broom and Bridget – Emily Dickinson and Her Irish in “Essential Oils – are wrung” (Fr772) some scholars to be her paramour, Dickin- be old-fashioned / I’ll put a trinket on,” Servants. Since then I have come to appreciate Tom’s talents as a poet, photographer, calligrapher, and teacher in addition to his gifts as a playwright into a “Gift of Screws.” (How disappoint- son collapsed in Kelley’s arms. In a letter which end “The morns are meeker than and performer. He leads writing workshops in the Boston area and online for poets and writers working in creative prose. Daley’s poetry has appeared in ed I was, as a working machinist, to learn to Lord she writes, “Meanwhile, Tom had they were” (Fr32), but then imagine that numerous journals including the Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Witness, and Poetry Ireland Review and has earned him that someone else had already published a come, and I ran to his Blue Jacket, and let Dickinson is making a little dig at social the Dana Award in Poetry and the Charles and Fanny Fay Wood Prize from the Academy of American Poets. In addition to his play about Dickinson, book of poems with that marvelous phrase my Heart break there – that was the warm- convention. The atheist in me bristles at Tom is the author of In His Ecstasy – The Passion of Gerard Manley Hopkins, which he also performs as a one-man show. In 2015, FutureCycle Press as the title – I had want- the notion of a “Sequel” in “This published his first full-length collection of poetry, House You Cannot Reach – Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems. I am pleased to ed it for my own col- World is not Conclusion” (Fr373), feature Tom Daley, one of the nicest men I know, in the Poet to Poet series. lection of poems about The Emily Dickinson I cherish and am startled by lodges but smiles at the wit of the finish unrequited homoerot- of that poem: “Narcotics cannot somewhere in between the beguiling quaintness of the hen I was a morbid young man I am leading workshops on poetry writing. ic lust in the machine still the Tooth / That nibbles at Wdrawn to the death-obsessed poet- I once devised an exercise in which work- shop!) In the course character in The Belle of Amherst and the cruelty-obsessed the Soul.” Having studied a little ry of Plath, Sexton, and Berryman, it was shop participants were instructed to use of doing research for presence conjured by Camille Paglia in her chapter, Buddhism, I am intrigued by the Emily Dickinson’s own conjuring with fifteen words I had chosen from “As im- some blue-collar angle “Amherst’s Madame De Sade” in Sexual Personae. way in which Dickinson’s poems death that won my ferocious allegiance. I perceptibly as Grief” (Fr935) in a poem. I for the project, I stum- often align with what might seem still shudder when I imagine the winds as explained the etymology of each word and bled upon Jay Leyda’s a very Buddhist notion of the they draw “quivering and chill” around the then asked them to use the words with the and Aífe Murray’s studies of the Dickin- est place. ‘He will be better. Don’t cry Miss ephemerality of experience (“ephemera” neck and shoulders of the tulle-clad speak- original or earlier meanings in mind. son family servants and Miss Emily’s re- Emily. I could not see you cry.’” (L752) derives from Medieval Latin ephemera er of “Because I could not stop for Death” lationship with them. Fascinated, I turned In the lyrical center of my play, Kel- [febris] “[fever lasting a day]”), as in that (Fr479). My eye stretches to unimaginably Dickinson ends the poem, “Our Summer my energies towards writing a play on the ley wanders away from a gathering after muscular finish to “Dare you see a Soul at far fields under the impetus of that curious made Her light Escape / Into the Beautiful subject, which became Every Broom and Dickinson’s funeral and stands outside her the ‘White Heat’?” (Fr401): formula, “Gazing Grain.” And those hors- – .” I like to think that she knew the origins Bridget – Emily Dickinson and Her Irish house looking up at her bedroom windows, es’ heads still rear in my mind, snorting and of “escape,” explained by the Online Ety- Servants. rhapsodizing over their attachments. In Refining these impatient Ores chafing, simultaneously eager and patient, mology Dictionary: “Vulgar Latin *excap- places, Kelley is articulating my own rapt With Hammer, and with Blaze champing in the direction of forever. pare, literally ‘get out of one's cape, leave The play’s central character is Tom attention to and affection for Dickinson Until the Designated Light a pursuer with just one's cape.’” One witty Kelley, the Irish immigrant who was a and her strange genius: Repudiate the Forge – When I set out to explore a group of poems participant cooked up a poem replete with groundskeeper (and probably property of Dickinson I haven’t read, I can hardly stock images of dastardly villains from a manager) for the Dickinsons. He and Dick- “Just around the corner is your garden All of these colliding reactions manifested take in three or four without falling into Western. The etymology of “escape” in- inson must have had as close to a platon- where we committed our first confidences themselves while I was granted the privi- the baffling and encompassing maw of one spired the poet to have the hapless maiden ic relationship as was possible between a . . . There you told me of your squelched lege of writing in Dickinson’s bedroom for of them. As I fall, my mind wanders over who is tied to the railroad track manage, Yankee mistress and her servant. Kelley yearnings, and I told you of my terrible an hour while it was undergoing renova- Dickinson’s lines with a charmed bewilder- Houdini-like, to wriggle out of her dress, and the Irish cohort who worked for the feeling that I am nothing more than a tions several years ago. Here is the poem, Photo Credit: Devin Altobello ment, inspired to understand, but often trip- and the dress was all that remained bound family would have been considered at best tenant in the garret of my own heart.” composed in her room, that grew out of ping in the effort. I stall, slow, find myself point that incites a mysterious thrill (“The with rope for the oncoming train to flatten. second-class citizens by the “enlightened” those collisions. It is reprinted with the kind annoyed at the poem’s resistance to felici- Smitten Rock that gushes! / The trampled Yankees of the day, including Samuel “. . . I think of you now as some well- permission of Michael Medeiros, editor of tous comprehension, but also enchanted by Steel that springs!” [Fr181]), a distillation As an amateur producer of poetry perfor- Bowles, who published (in the Springfield oiled, prehistoric bird – a cormorant the anthology, This is a Mighty Room: Po- its cheek, startled by its bravado, rendered of observation into some apt aphorism, an mance extravaganzas (including something Republican) hideous caricatures of the – staggering through water tension and etry Written in Emily Dickinson's Bedroom. temporarily mute by its musicality. image that bridges and muffles the chaos of called “The Poetry Vaudeville Show”), I Irish and mocking accounts of hapless slinging yourself into air darker than longing in my meager heart. decided a number of years ago that I want- “Paddys” in factories, who, as Kelley time’s bone. You were a votive bat, blink- Tom Daley’s poem “Writing in Emily Dickin- Even when I am impatient and want to step ed to showcase a panoply of interpretations did in a fall while working on a roof, lost ing out of small caves. A torch fusing son’s Bedroom as It Is Being Restored on the away, there is something that keeps tugging Dickinson’s poetry is often at the back of of Dickinson. I imagined flamenco-inflect- limbs in horrifying accidents. Dickinson pollen and horsehair. A marsh drowned 128th Anniversary of Her Death” appears on me back – a coy little wink, an exclamation my mind (and often in the forefront) when ed trampings of a Spanish translation of “I appointed Kelley to be her chief pallbear- in the thaws of April.” the following pages.

6 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 7 Poet to Poet Visualizing Dickinson

Maryanne Garbowsky, Series Editor Writing in Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom as It Is Being Restored on the 128th Anniversary of Her Death A Certain Slant of Light By Tom Daley Certain Slant of Light,” an exhibition ly and emotionally, attempting to create in Published by permission of Michael Medeiros, editor, This is a Mighty Room: Poetry Written in Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom Acurated by artists Bill Conger and Sho- imagery the mood that Dickinson’s poem na Macdonald, appeared from January 15th conveys. The mood is one of foreboding to February 25th at the Riverside Arts Cen- with an “under-current of affliction” as i. or lamp or sword. Now you ter in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. Macdonald describes in the gallery notes. are captured only in the glass panes where your The notes also address the poem’s con- Is that your scent, eye sought its own impermanence. When artist Shona Macdonald read the struction which, despite its appearance of a smoke that coaxed creation Here in my remaining half hour, I seek poem “There’s a certain Slant of light” “fragility,” is complex with a toughness from the exhumation of a fire too riffling only the buzz saw that unnerves (Fr320), she felt an immediate kinship with about it. to flee or leaf out? At the fringe your memory, the leaf blower tending the grass the words. They took her back to her own of the renovation, tattered, the Irish once raked, your heart—a crackling childhood growing up in Aberdeen in the Macdonald’s silverpoint drawing entitled tottering paper reliquaries finish, like raku—and your mouth—that museum northeast corner of Scotland. She remem- “Ghost #4” has a cloak of mystery which ©Melissa Randall still grip their wallpaper paste in a muddy, of extravagant blasphemies. bered Sundays being taken to church by her surrounds the shapes depicted. There is a Melissa Randall, Untitles (Jentel Series)Walnut Ink barely discernible pattern that flags down parents and seeing the same slanting light feeling of terror and the unknown lurking on Paper, 7.5 x 5.5” all your Rhenish vats and your Franklin stoves. iv. and feeling the emotional undercurrents within. Macdonald’s drawing is in actu- Floorboards widen further than the dew present in the poem. There was a sense of ality blueberry bushes covered in gauze to mark, the artist presents a reality with which wed itself to a mild, wild The latter day beams that shore up your ceiling darkness, of melancholy, of doom. protect them from the winter cold. They no name, only the feeling of an “internal tracery, to a ceramic shine the doorknob are snaked through and through correspond with the poet’s words “the Seal difference / Where the Meanings Are.” still nourishes and gives back, with corrugated steel tunnels to wire the light The poem became the impetus for an invita- Despair” and “The Look of Death.” How- reflecting your skin you abjured and once were injured by. Here you slept tional art show that Ms. Macdonald and Bill ever, they appear to the viewer as ghostly Artist Buzz Spector crafts a collage made of or a rush of hushed sponge baths narrow and plain, whistled your slipper whisper Conger co-curated. Both reviewed slides presences, unrecognizable shapes that loom “dust jacket elements” and titles it “Ghost in your long neuralgia. that padded the halls like sturdy ether submitted by other artists and chose six ad- up to mystify the viewer. writers # 2.” Here we see what appear to organized around a skeleton. ditional artists to complete their show. be cutouts of photos of people’s heads and ii. Shall I memorize the molding, the layers Macdonald chose silverpoint since it has a shoulders but no faces. They are dark like counting out their iambs, the bevels finding The exhibit included work in various media: “silvery diaphanous quality” which over negatives and have no recognizable features Leggy ghost, speak to me of spectral their discrete disjunctions? What token painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, and time will change in color from a cold gray to or detail. Like Dickinson’s poem, the col- lariats that cinch their riots, their storied shall I leave of myself photography. The artists are not illustrating a warm sepia. The medium is transient like lage makes palpable a feeling of unease and rot. Against decay, you as I am pinioned here under rafters the poem, but rather responding to it visual- the subject of the poem, subtle and fleeting, uncertainty. were yes and thread and dearth that kept you dry, between things difficult to hold and and drifted, like so much plaster dust, between set off with blue tape and a black marker preserve. Dustin Young’s graphite on paper entitled the patching cement and the chapters. that speculates but cannot confirm? “Fragment” shows a series of side by side Here you made your turns, your nut-brown vi. A work that has a wooden slats that line up horizonally across wobbles, your cadences that deckled their electric v. similar effect is an the picture plane. They form a continuum of trim and tricked all the gentlewomen. What if we have erased your grace notes untitled ink drawing slanting angles that are light in color against I breathe you in—cinnamon, slippery as lard Panes—six to a window half. in the midst of all this restoration? Mildew sets itself by Melissa Randall. a darker background and suggest the poet’s from hybrid hogs in your mixing bowls, Death has perfumed away your moons against the false hope of scouring, Like “Ghost #4,” it words “the Landscape listens.” In the draw- from your pantry which entranced pricked with spinsterhood, your private estivations. but can I breathe the same genus of mold presents a series of ing, the viewer is aware of stillness: there is the neighbor urchins. Here a potpourri—sandalwood? that laminated your genius? And how could amorphous shapes neither sound nor movement as the forms Eleven minutes left and I will not have I miss it—the lamp with its dry wick bending that overlap and echo move into “the Distance / On the look of iii. you again, shaved so close to when you were. in the empty air? A lamp buttresses its tributes each other, creating a Death.” And in my head slosh the vague frequencies to you, your birthright of whale rib and whale oil. feeling of mystery and Out this window, in a hamper, they’ve bundled of the mutton chop gentlemen who measured you, Even unlit, it gleams along the stays and the tethers emptiness. Like the The show will travel to other sites, carrying all the myths that thin you to necessary lost in the snarls of their metronomes, where your caretaker heart bridled the world words in Dickinson’s with it the spirit of Dickinson’s words, prov- sugar, to Miss Maxim, their gradations, their now disused mantelpieces under a starred ceiling revamped by digit and ink. poem,“We can find ing once again their power to provoke, to to reached-for lozenge where they set their sherry glasses down. no scar,” no visible inspire, and to live again in creative minds.

8 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 9 Teaching Dickinson Teaching Dickinson

Marianne Noble, Series Editor softly on the ground. dents are earning through sheer hard work. Grades matter tre- His legs thinn’d and reedy, twigs gripping the ground, holding mendously to them, and they feel great anxiety about them. The an orb, stumbling, lunging, loving the dirt, students at Sogang are justly renowned for working very hard. Creative Appropriation He walks away from me, not seeing me though my eyes stroke and embrace him. Though well-trained in literary interpretation, my Korean stu- He pecks at the dirt, digging his beak into the plush of the earth, dents found reading complex literature in English difficult. I By Marianne Noble and the earth yields to him as the grass yields itself to the was surprised how difficult they found Uncle Tom’s Cabin. curvatures of my arms and stomach and legs. Likewise, given that I’m accustomed to students reveling in ast semester, I taught American Literature at Sogang • One student photographed sites in Rock Creek Forest, the set- Taking a worm into his beak, he bites it into halves; the freedom and enthusiasm of Whitman, I was surprised when LUniversity, in Seoul, Korea, on a Fulbright Fellowship. I ting for “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” and then The worm multiplies, becomes two, doubles itself before quite a few of my Korean students were troubled by the overt loved teaching Korean students, whom I found smart, ambitious, developed them using 1850’s photographic technology. dividing, receding into the bird and the earth. sexuality of Whitman, replicating perhaps the sensibilities of and dedicated. Overall, their serious mindset paid off when The robin, son of two planes, lungs of earth and bosom of sky, Whitman’s first readers. I had also expected that the koan-like we were studying Emerson, Hawthorne, and literature about In this Spring 2016 class, one student, Brittany Jones, invented washes down the worm and the world with dew softly poetry of Dickinson would resonate with their own literary slavery, but I discovered that it was not the perfect attitude for a creative project that I later came to realize was perfect for my sipp’d from the grass sensibilities, but if it did, they did not report this to me. In- appreciating Whitman and Dickinson. To improve this part of the Korean students. Brittany chose poems by Whitman and Dickin- Before hopping, buoying himself over a blind beetle, reaching stead, they found Dickinson very difficult; she confirmed all of course, therefore, I revised the syllabus mid-semester, replacing son and rewrote them as the other might have written them. First, his thinn’d legs over the beetle’s thinn’d legs, letting the their fears about poetry. Overall, I would say, both poets made a midterm exam with a creative assignment. This essay is about she rewrote “The Sleepers,” by Dickinson. Then, she wrote “A beetle pass. them anxious. our experience with that assignment Bird, came down the Walk,” by Whitman. Here is Brittany de- scribing that component of her project: The robin, caresser of air, inhales the world from the safety of I wanted my Korean students to experience literature – and Analytical essays represent the majority of the writing I assign dirt, education – with less anxiety. I also wanted them to discover in all of my courses, but they do not tap everything a student As this self-analysis indicates, Brittany came to a keener under- His bright eyes darken, beaded and keel’d, the poets on their own, rather than permitting me to deliver brings to the experience of poetry, and they do not bring out the standing of Dickison’s artistry by trying to capture it in another His brown head ruffling, trembling, quivering, wavering, turn- up crucial knowledge nuggets. With Brittany’s work from the best in every student. In the United States, my upper-level course voice. Here are two of the poems Brittany produced: ing to my own head, previous semester in the forefront of my memory, I chucked on Whitman and Dickinson therefore culminates in a creative I gaze into his eyes, he knows I am looking at him, knowing my plan for a midterm and instead asked them to write a project of the students’ own choosing. Almost without exception, The Sleepers by Emily Dickinson him, fondling him. Dickinson poem as Whitman might have written it or vice students’ creative imagination surprises and delights everyone He knows he has been let out for me and by me, as I am let out versa. involved. They revel in the freedom to think and invent in their I watch them - Sleepers - in the dark for him and by him. own ways, and to respond to the poetry on their own terms. My While solemnly they play I offer him bread from my lunch, I toss it to him like an offering, Here are some of their poems: Spring 2016 class brought out their creativity: Like Children in their cradles born a promise that his world is bountiful and perfect as he is And in their cradles dream bountiful and perfect. Dickinson’s poem “Why do I love you sir?” as Whitman might • One student had herself photographed in yoga poses that to have written it, by Eun Shim. her mind suggested the spirit of particular Dickinson and Whit- [. . . ] And the robin, purveyor of breezes, unrollls himself, billowing man poems, in settings carefully chosen to enhance the overall his feathers, letting go the earth, I mind how once my dear friend my lover turned to me, effect. The homeward bound and outward bound, He sails over the dirt and the grass and the beetle and my body And how you settled your head on my bare-stript chest • One re-wrote “She rose to his requirement – dropt” in graphic The swimmer and the ship loafing, And how you asked why I loved you novel format. Each Beautiful in dreams and sleep, He dives into the arms of an atmosphere that is there only to Swiftly arose and spread around me the wisdom that passes all • A group of students wrote a script for a play about sexual Each find here Heaven’s peace know him and hold him, arguments domination, and then filmed a performance of it. He rows his wings through waves of light and floats on the surface The wind does not ask the grass why he shudders Hand in hand we pass and wake of the sun, And the lightning does not ask the eye why he blinks Each night a different World He lists to the edges of my morning, shimmering, silver, stitch’d And the sunrise does not ask me why I watch And though we pass back into Day already seamlessly into some other’s afternoon. And my voice goes after what my reasons cannot reach Let not this World unfurl And with the twirl of my tongue I plunged your heart I stay with him though I cannot see him, And answered, as the waves eternally kiss the shores, there- A Bird, came down the Walk by Walt Whitman Though he swims out of my eyes and steers his body softly fore, then, I love you home. [. . . ] Another student, Jackie Simeit, tried to write Dickinson’s “If Brittany’s creative fusion of the two poets is not only sensitively I can stop one heart from breaking” like Whitman. She did a Behold a robin! attuned to both poets, but beautiful in its own right. good job, but we realized together that Whitman would never Elle Smiley in yoga poses suggesting “‘Hope’ is the Stretch’d on the ground, loafing on the grass, have written the sentiments in that poem. The closest he would thing with feathers” (Fr314) I watch as a robin – lonely, arrest’d, needing the earth – lights Fast forward four months. Now, I’m teaching Korean students. come to easing someone else’s pain might involve becoming it, I’m giving more A’s than I usually do, which my ambitious stu- I thought:

10 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 11 Teaching Dickinson

I myself have the power All that I reflect on and all that you have in your dictionary, With every atom of my being, Shall knock to you like a breeze in spring. An Interview with Dr. Cristanne Miller on Emily Dickinson’s To keep your heart from breaking; And shall become narrow in you like water seeps into Let the warmth of my hand ease your aches, gauze. Poems: As She Preserved Them Let the whisper of my breath cool your pains; I shall pick you up like a fainting robin,, The meaning of nature is “the spine of an old bear.” In my ex- A review of Cristanne Miller’s new edition of Dickinson’s poems ran in the Fall 2016 issue of the Bulletin. However, those who have And keep you in the nest of my heart perience, no amount of analytical writing would have driven a not been following Professor Miller’s progress with her project, not anticipating the appearance of a new reading edition of the A place of tenderness, padded with grass, student so directly to the heart of Whitman’s sensibility. The poems, might wonder what her volume offers that is different from what has come before. Bulletin assistant editor Allyson Weglar Where you will stay, a place to heal; students’ artistry and personal investment leaps off the page. To feel this love, no act would be in vain. recently spoke to Miller to ask her to explain what she feels the book has to offer. Playing with poetry helped my Korean students understand I suggested that the simile in the sixth line did not sound much how the poets work, from the inside. They improved their like Whitman. (Though the original has never sounded much understanding of the forms, lines, sounds, and themes. They Cristanne Miller their pages and those that included alter- served and handled her work, one needs to like Dickinson to me, either.) This poem was not a perfect realized that some themes were incompatible for one or the Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She natives, or were more fluid or draft-like. begin with the fascicles. end-product, but the process of writing this poem revealed as other, which – being an intuitive realization – came home to Preserved Them. Cambridge: much in its false movements as in its right ones. At the same time, I agree with most them with greater force than any lecture could ever hope to Harvard, 2016. 864 pp. replicate. manuscript scholars that Dickinson One student selected the “marriage of the trapper” section is very interested in an ongoing from Section 10 of “Song of Myself.” Her revision captured In retrospect, I can see that some aspects of the assignment hat provoked the creation of this edi- process of composition or revi- how Dickinson might have approached this theme: were stereotypically American. It refuses the hierarchical na- Wtion? sion, and it seemed to me important ture of Korea’s Confucian culture by privileging the student’s There was a combination of reasons. The to represent that emphasis on her I’m “wife” – after I pass the bank interpretation over mine. It values creativity over correctness. first was a kind of frustration with the work in process. And join the man in skins It is out of the box, while Korean education is in the box. It Johnson and Franklin one-volume reading Burdensome beard - luxuriant curls individualizes the student’s learning, putting induction before editions: all of the information I needed The more I thought about it, the And now I’m to be his deduction. There’s even something democratic, or egalitarian, was in the variorum, but getting a precise more it seemed to me that, given about taking creative liberties with iconic poems. All of that answer to any question required reading the directions of current scholar- Master he’s called he lounges soft seemed fitting for a course in American literature, and it was through a large amount of detail. I thought ship, it would be useful and inter- While Father sits on a bank part of the de-stressing and self-reliant experience I wanted it would be good to have a reading edi- esting to have a volume in which And dumbly smokes with friends around for my Korean students. For three hours a week, they had a tion that provides key information in a you could see Dickinson at work, Thick moccasins to their feet. cross-cultural experience too. relatively simple, clear way. In addition, on individual manuscripts and I was unhappy with not having access to throughout her lifetime – how did Through lashes long I see my steps I encourage readers to try this assignment. Students learn a fascicle poems in the order that Dickinson she keep her poems? order them? My coarse straight locks down hang great deal about the formal methods of both poets, and the copied them. It has longed seemed to me how can we understand her poems I’m wavering upon my limbs project develops a fun class spirit. Readers are welcome to use that we should have an edition of the po- in relation to periods of time in her I’m “wife” – once I hold his hand. (by Wonji Woo) my assignment sheet, which you can acquire by contacting me ems in fascicle order. life? My edition attempts to get us at [email protected] closer to what Dickinson was like Junhee Park did a great job rendering how Whitman might It also seems to me that the typical Dickin- as a composer of poems and what have handled the poem “Tell all the truth but tell it slant”: son poem is not the poem that is now most she hoped or thought about the fu- widely represented in popular imagination ture of those poems. I tell the truth for every atom, like a grass, for every folk of and some scholarship. The widespread human. assumption seems to be that Dickinson Why did you structure the edition And I tell the sea with rivers or streams. Marianne Noble teaches US Literature at American Universi- wrote primarily on scraps of paper and the way you did? And the path I shall take to the truth, shall be a circuit track ty in Washington DC. The editor of the Bulletin series Teach- in very draft-y form, but in fact most of The fascicles are the single most of road, ing Dickinson, she is the co-editor of Emily Dickinson and her poems remaining to us are written on important work that Dickinson left us. She The second group of poems (what I call a bundle of strings which are crossing together, or a ringlet Philosophy (2013), and author of The Masochistic Pleasures clean paper and preserved in a way that left us actual booklets of poetry that she the poems on folded “Sheets” and Frank- of a child. of Sentimental Literature (2000) as well as many articles on suggests she took the process of copying took a lot of time to inscribe onto clean lin calls “Sets”), following that same log- What is love and what is faith, where is god and what is the 19th-century US authors. Anyone wishing to see the unique and preservation quite seriously. I wanted stationary and then to bind into booklets. ic, are carefully preserved but not bound. meaning of every nature for you? grading rubric she uses to assess the student work on this as- to create an edition that would make clear That project of copying, binding, and pre- These and the fascicles are the two units The spring of water or vibration of your heart, and the root signment may write to her at [email protected] or to the at a glance the poems Dickinson was writ- serving is quite extraordinary to me. In I wanted to start with in my edition. The of every wood or grass, or the spine of an old bear, Bulletin editor at [email protected]. ing that had no alternatives written onto order to get at how Dickinson herself pre- section following those contains poems

12 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 13 Dickinson retained in some form for her- I wanted to show Dickinson at work, by having written them out so carefully visual artist, this is very important. Werner Then, once I had a contract to go for- in variorums. Also I think and hope the self, but not systematically copied onto copying, preserving, and to some extent and systematically. and Jen Bervin’s The Gorgeous Nothings ward with my edition, I continued to do annotations will be useful to the general folded sheets of stationery – which I call (as close as we can get) to composing the similarly focuses on a particular subset of research, especially on the annotations. reader. There are a lot of things scholars “Loose Poems.” Some of these are writ- poems through a representation of the fas- The other main difference is that my edi- Dickinson’s manuscripts – the poems she Some of that research came out of the know that general readers don’t know. ten cleanly, in fair hand, on stationery, and cicle orderings, sheets not bound, poems tion contains information that is usually wrote or copied onto envelopes. These are kinds of exploration I had been doing on Some things in my edition may also be of others are written on scraps of wrapping left in loose form, and then the poems that only available in a variorum, intended examples of editions that have different what Dickinson was reading during her use to newer scholars. paper, or envelopes, or any other type of she circulated to people that she did not primarily for scholarship, and presents intentions than mine in relation to the lifetime – her cultural context in the 19th paper that was at hand. Because I want- apparently herself keep a copy of. it in an accessible way. You could call it poems. century – but I also started taking a differ- Do you think a common reader should ed the edition to be a “reading” edition ent kind of notes on Dickinson criticism own only your edition? “complete” (that is, because it does not Finally, while other editions contain var- and other nineteenth-century poems. I wouldn’t say they should only own my to contain what I Nobody else has grouped poems as “loose” or “poems not contain extensive ious annotations, mine attempts to give edition, but I think someone with my and other scholars retained” or “transcribed” – and as I said before, there is no detail, but it’s sort brief notes on Dickinson’s reading and edition only would find it adequate. My have interpreted to of a cross between possible biographical or historical con- edition gives all of the poems and lots of be Dickinson’s com- reading edition of the fascicles. All other editions of Dickin- the two kinds of edi- texts for the poems. It provides no notes information about them. If one regards plete extant poems), son’s work proceed chronologically, regardless of how Dick- tions, and I hope it is on where manuscripts are located, and various presentations of a poem as be- there also needed to inson herself kept the poems – or didn’t keep them. useful to casual and very few about possible relationships ing essentially one poem rather than lots be an acknowledge- to scholarly readers. among poems or between poems and let- of different poems, then my edition rep- ment of poems we It is, for example, the ters, but it is the only “complete” reading resents each poem in at least one form. have only in transcription and of poems My edition provides a new categorization only reading edition that gives alternative edition that provides annotation. My notes Dickinson circulated to friends but to our of at least some of Dickinson’s poems. No- words that Dickinson wrote on the man- let you see, for example, how much of What are the deficiencies of your edition? knowledge did not retain a copy of for body else has grouped poems as “loose” uscripts she kept for herself (visible at a Dickinson’s verse alludes to biblical pas- They are not deficiencies but rather where herself. or “poems not retained” or “transcribed” glance in the margins of the page rather sages or stories. I placed my focus. I didn’t want some- – and as I said before, there is no reading than in footnote format) and it is the only thing overwhelmingly scholarly but in- The poems in my edition are in rough edition of the fascicles. All other editions reading edition that gives information How does this edition come out of your stead something that would be useful to chronological order. 1858-1864 are fasci- of Dickinson’s work proceed chronologi- about whether a poem was circulated, and own work on Dickinson? general readers. If you want chronology, cle poems; in 1864-1865 and in the early cally, regardless of how Dickinson herself to whom. This is the only reading edition Over the last decade, I have spent a lot of my edition is less useful than Franklin’s, 1870s, Dickinson was copying onto fold- kept the poems – or didn’t keep them. that really shows Dickinson at work on the time thinking about the extent to which for example. ed sheets of stationery. Starting in around poems. other poets in the 19th century, and espe- 1866, Dickinson also started keeping How is your edition different from other cially poets whose work Dickinson would What is left out of your edition, and is loose copies of poems (she kept only a editions? My edition is more comparable to the have known, use the same kind of metri- there anything you would add in an ex- few loose copies before this date). Most Johnson and Franklin constructed Johnson and Franklin editions than to any- cal deviation that Dickinson does. It be- panded edition? of the poems she circulated and didn’t three-volume variorums in which they one else’s. Johnson’s, Franklin’s and mine came clear as I did research for Reading One regret that I have is that I wish I had keep a copy of were sent in her later tried to give all the information available are the only editions that attempt to repro- in Time that the 1840s-1850s was a peri- included a bibliography of the scholarship “Behind this mortal Bone / There knits a years. to them about manuscripts: how many are duce all of Dickinson’s poems; others are od of extraordinary experimentation with bolder One – “ (Fr649). Cristanne Miller, that was useful to me in annotating the extant, how to locate them, how they dif- more specialized. poetic forms and rhythms. In some ways, in a familiar pose, draws together the poems. There are also two tiny errors to I very much hope that my edition fills a fer from each other, etc. This is far more Dickinson’s experiments with poetic form various strands at a recent conference. correct. gap in existing editions of Dickinson’s information than my edition contains. For example, Open Me Carefully and meter were a part of what interested poems – not to replace other editions but Their reading editions, however, simply reproduces Dickinson’s correspondence many poets of her time – she and Whitman Who is your target audience? Why would It seems extremely unlikely to me that I to add to them. I have found the work of present one version of each poem with no with her sister-in-law and perhaps lover, weren’t alone in pushing the boundaries somebody buy your edition? would ever do another edition of Dick- editors and scholars like T. H. Johnson, R. commentary about whether it is an early Susan Dickinson. That’s a very particular of poetic form. They just pushed them I wrote my edition targeting everyone. inson’s poems. This one does basically W. Franklin, Martha Nell Smith and El- or late version, whether Dickinson mailed focus on a subset of Dickinson’s writing farther, and more consistently, than other What this specifically means is that I what I wanted it to do. Of course, it is len Louise Hart, and Marta Werner to be it, whether it is part of a fascicle, etc., and that makes a particular kind of argument poets. wanted this edition to be completely ac- altogether possible that new information extremely stimulating and provocative in the organization is chronological. about ways that poems coincide with or cessible and usable by the general reader. might be found that would change my the best sense, and I’m grateful for every overlap with the function of letters. That I wanted to make clear to readers what’s This is the kind of thing any person can opinion. edition of poems that’s been published be- My edition instead prioritizes the version volume has a completely different kind of characteristic of Dickinson and what isn’t. pick up and really enjoy browsing and cause they all offer something to Dickin- of a poem that Dickinson wrote out for focus than mine. Another example is Marta This led me to other kinds of questions, reading through – I hope! However, it’s Do you think this edition will alter schol- son’s readers. herself in clean copy, most often to in- Werner’s. Her focus in Radical Scatters such as “how many poems does Dickin- also intended for scholarly readers or stu- arship? clude in a fascicle. This is the priority be- is on the visual manuscript, on what the son circulate?” and “do most of her poem dents who would like both access to her I hope very much that it will provoke peo- What was the intention behind creating cause it seems to me that she herself was actual manuscript looks like. For someone manuscripts in fact contain alternatives poems and easier access to a kind of in- ple to ask new questions and pursue new this new edition? giving a kind of priority to those versions interested in Dickinson as a creative written on the page?” formation that is typically only provided directions of scholarship.

14 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 15 ing from different versions of this poem, ly printed Morgan Library Exhibition: “I’m Nobody! Who are driving her to affirm “the huge importance newspaper in of examining the work in manuscript.” It which even You? The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson” is also possible that Todd and Higginson a six stanza included the manuscript to illustrate the poem like generally unorthodox and “crude” state “A Narrow Reviewed by Ivy Schweitzer of Dickinson’s canon, thus justifying their fellow in the meddling with the texts. Included in the Grass” is al- Exhibition: “I’m Nobody! Who are You? career as writer. In doing so, they challenge es bear many marks of their journey,” which exhibition is a letter Higginson wrote to most entirely The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson.” the persistent beliefs that Dickinson was disclose valuable details in the unfolding Todd on June 11, 1890, mentioning a letter obscured, The Morgan Library and Museum, New morbidly isolated by situating her firmly in story of Dickinson’s lived networks. passed on to him by the publisher Thom- next to the York, NY: January 20 through May 28, her historical moment, and that she did not as Niles from Mr. Baxter, who opined: poem’s man- 2017. evolve as a writer by showing drafts along- Kelly reinforces the revisionary approach “There is hardly one of these poems uscript ver- side more finished work. The exhibition of the exhibit and catalogue by calling at- which does not bear marks of unusual and sion of large Catalogue: Mike Kelly, Carolyn Vega, manages to be an excellent introduction to tention to the four-page facsimile of a poem remarkable talent; there is hardly one of looping let- Marta Werner, Susan Howe, Richard Dickinson’s life and work while also offer- titled “Renunciation” (“There came a day – them which is not marked by an extraor- ters and fertile ing insights for scholars and aficionados. at Summer’s full – ”) included as the frontis- Wilbur. The Networked Recluse: The dinary crudity of workmanship.” In light open spaces Orra White Hitchcock (1796–1863), Amherst College in 1821 Connected World of Emily Dickinson. Am- piece to Poems: Second Series, published in of this criticism, Higginson asks Todd to emphasizes Ink and watercolor on paper, ca. 1845 herst, MA: Amherst College Press, 2017. The exhibition catalogue, sold in a paper the fall of 1891 by Mabel Loomis Todd and further “revise” some of the poems. the enormous Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Edward and Orra version but also available as a free down- Thomas Wentworth Higginson. These first differences in White Hitchcock Papers, MA.00027 load, is aptly named The Networked Re- well-meaning editors explain in their pref- Higginson’s letter appears in the extensive scale between othing confirms the visual nature of cluse: The Connected World of Emily Dick- ace that this poem illustrates Dickinson’s “Checklist of the Exhibition” that follows 19th century print publication and Dickinson’s san Howe, and finally a “Textual Preface” Nmanuscripts – or poems as aesthetic inson. This title alludes to and builds on the handwriting at a transitional period, but Vega’s essay. It is divided into five categories self-publication in letters and fascicles. The in which Werner explains her theory and objects – like viewing them framed on a scholarship presented in the Special Issue they could not have been unaware of how organized chronologically, and includes help- curators include several different versions practice of transcription, followed by a note wall with accompanying commentary in a of The Emily Dickinson Journal, v23, Fall this poem’s theme, emphasized by their in- ful transcriptions of letters and commentary. of the poem as well as the letter Dickinson on the transcriptions and the transcription of show at a prestigious museum. This is one 2014, which connects the poet, long consid- vented title, highlighted Dickinson’s mythic While all the sections are well done, and in- wrote complaining to Higginson about how manuscripts in the exhibit. of the major goals of the exhibition, “I’m ered detached from the world, “to an array of repudiation of the world. We now know that clude a wide variety of contextual materials, the poem was revised without her consent. Nobody! Who are You? The Life and Po- nineteenth-century information networks” as the physical borders of Dickinson’s world carefully placed, with well-chosen accompa- Likewise, the section on Posthumous Publi- Werner’s lead essay, “Emily Dickinson: etry of Emily Dickinson,” on display at the as well as reflects on the implications of contracted in the 1860’s, she became even nying poems, I found section five, “Lifetime cations and Legacy has important examples Manuscripts, Maps, and a Poetics of Car- Morgan Library and Museum from January emerging digital networking methodologies more heavily connected to an extensive, vi- Publications,” the most visually dazzling and of Todd’s initial typescripts on an early type- tography,” represents a new generation of 20 through May 28, 2017. Carefully cho- for studying Dickinson (Eliza Richards and tal and prestigious web of correspondents, insightful. Viewing a huge page of close- writer that had neither lower case letters nor Dickinson scholarship, one based solely on sen and beautifully curated, this set of “ob- Alexandra Socarides, “Editorial Note”,). visitors, and cultural, national, global, even punctuation. the manuscripts rather than printed texts, jects” not only reinforces the importance of Mike Kelly, head of Archives and Special cosmic events. The paradox of a “networked and focusing on scale and spatialization consulting Dickinson’s manuscripts for a Collections at Amherst College, one of the recluse” asks us to rethink renunciation as Following the Check- through mapping. We come to understand fuller and more accurate experience of her architects of the exhibition and author of the strategic withdrawal and necessary protec- list is the lead essay that the turn to manuscripts and materiali- achievements, but immerses us in the com- catalogue’s “Introduction,” notes the revolu- tion. by co-curator/editor ty, ironically facilitated by the virtuality of plex layers of connections. tionizing effect of the accessibility of digital Marta Werner, which digital surrogates, is part of a spatial turn. surrogates on Dickinson scholarship. It has But there was more at stake in the pub- represents a signif- The carefully conceived exhibit embodies Created around a small group of Dickin- engendered a fruitful new set of approach- lication of this manuscript, according to icant expansion of this insight by including as its last “ob- son’s manuscripts in the Morgan’s holdings, es to Dickinson’s work that emphasizes the Carolyn Vega, Morgan Library’s Assistant her ground-breaking ject”, an 1873 map of the town of Amherst, but drawing on the major collections at Am- materiality and performativity of her texts, Curator of Literary and Historical Manu- approach to Dickin- enlarged to fill the entire right wall of the herst College, Houghton Library at Harvard, as well as the salience of manuscripts in scripts. In the next essay in the catalogue, son’s later works and entrance to the show. Thus, we literally be- Mount Holyoke College, the Boston Public the ongoing process of “unediting” Dickin- Vega points out that Millicent Todd Bing- envelope poems, an gin and complete the exhibit by entering a Library, New York Public Library and the son’s work. This process unsettles the very ham, Mabel Todd’s daughter, explained in appreciation by poet map of Dickinson’s town. (Several visitors Emily Dickinson Museum, the exhibition borders between poem, letter, fragment, 1945 that the facsimile served to illustrate Richard Wilbur from complained to me that they wanted a little challenges several myths that continue to envelope poem, draft and finished work (if “mistakes” in a version of the poem pub- a volume that ap- arrow on the map pointing out the Home- distort Dickinson’s biography and history. such a thing exists in Dickinson’s canon). lished in Scribner’s Magazine in 1890 in Abby Wood Bliss (1830–1915), letter to Abiah Root, signed and peared in 1960, Wer- stead; having just visited there with my As Colin Bailey, Director of the Morgan Li- But Kelly also cautions against “the limits order to bolster the “correctness” of her dated Amherst [Massachusetts], March 29, 1850. Amherst College ner’s interview with class, I could find it, but think now that the brary and Museum, notes in his “Foreword,” of the digital” and offers the exhibition as mother’s version printed in Poems. The Archives and Special Collections, 2009.002. her teacher and noted searching and not knowing are part of the both show and publication “contextualize” a reminder that “scale” is often distorted in story is even more complex, Vega contin- All information about images comes from the catalog of the exhibit. scholar and poet Su- experience.) and “trace the development” of Dickinson’s digital representations, and “that these piec- ues, because different editors were work-

16 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 17 And indeed, not knowing where we are is the digital or materialist turns in Dickinson of Franklin’s publication of the manuscripts a key part of Werner’s new “poetics of car- scholarship. But in reading this marvelous- and Johnson’s retention of dashes and cap- Emily Dickinson and the Art of Tattoos tography.” In this ambitious project, she ly written essay in the context of the entire ital letters, she claims Dickinson as a poet reimagines Dickinson’s writings in spatial catalogue, one realizes that it is foreshadow- of terrifying “excess” and “that’s what her By Maryanne Garbowsky terms as a “new atlas” in which “the legend ing meditation on scale and space as well as two authorized male editors have failed to is missing, and in its place we find a series of a revisionary account of renunciation, the account for or represent. Dickinson is a poet questions.” Drawing from recent theories of two themes that shape this project. Offer- of excess, a boundary-crosser. Often the e are accustomed to thinking of Emi- tooing is an ancient art; archaeologists have of lifestyle or pattern of behavior. Tattoos are mapping as dynamic and orienting, Werner ing a “rough sketch of the imaginative log- scholarly apparatus of these editions func- Wly Dickinson as a subject of academic turned up evidence of tattooing from prehis- also used to commemorate loved ones – living also includes the cartography of Dickinson’s ic” through which Dickinson comprehends tions like a net to trap her in. But of course research and inquiry: there are seminars, con- toric times, including a mummy found in the or dead – a religious belief, or a group affili- own day, illustrated by a gorgeous reproduc- “the paradox that privation is more plentiful she who refused title and number ultimately ferences, annual meetings in which scholars Otzaler Alps that was approximately 5300 ation. tion of the hand-colored frontispiece to Ed- than plenty; that to renounce is to possess the escapes all nets.” debate and discuss the poems and their mean- years old. ward Hitchcock’s The Religion of Geology, more,” Wilbur concludes, “That is how one ings. It might therefore be surprising to learn For my students, tattooing is a way of express- which fittingly shows a volcanic eruption. comprehends a nectar.” Nor is this a static The burden of this interview, titled “Tran- that the poet is a popular subject for tattoos, The practice of tattooing came to England in ing who they are. Males and females alike condition: “And not only are the objects of scription and Transgression,” is not only to both for her iconic image as well as for her the late 1760s and early 1770s with the arrival wear them as body art and see tattoos as a In order to conceptualize and visualize a her desire distant; they are also very often promulgate the ideas of the teacher who set words. of Captain James Cook, who learned about it way to remind themselves of what’s important Dickinson manuscript or “pagescape,” Wer- moving away, their sweetness increasing in Werner on her scholarly path, but to tackle in Tahiti and New Zealand. By the 19th cen- in their lives. For instance, one young man’s ner proposes that we think of it as a “new the perennial problem of transcription in Perhaps one of the standouts is Philip Jenks’ tury, tattooing traveled to the United States, tattoo reads “Idle time kills great men” and re- deep map,” which is always in process, is Dickinson studies from the most experi- tattooed portrait of the poet, which covers his brought by the sailors who popularized it even calls what he formerly was and never wants multi-layered and three dimensional, en- mental of readers. Both Werner and Howe entire back. Jenks, a lecturer at the University among the upper classes. to be again, emphasizing his commitment to tailing “the inscription of a subjectivity agree that though it is doomed to failure – of Illinois at Chicago and a poet himself, ex- his new goals in life. Another young man got while also registering the many forces— “there’s always something blind about the plains his “ink ode” to the poet by saying he By the 20th century, however, aristocratic so- his first tattoo at 18 when his “father had no historical, cultural, geographical, environ- transcript” – and something like the exile is defending her against those who see her as ciety frowned on body decoration, seeing it as control over [his] decisions anymore” to sym- mental—that shape the subjectivity and from Eden – “But the transcript is fallen. a “timid woman in a white dress.” Instead he an act of rebellion instead of simply aesthet- bolize that he was now his own man. A young circulate beyond it.” With an exquisite It is always fallen” – it must be done. Wer- sees her as a powerhouse, whose popular im- ic. It was identified with gangs, convicts, and woman chose her favorite color – purple – and attention to shifting borders, scope, scale ner spies a solution in the Cornell editions age needs readjustment – thus his proclama- bikers, not something practiced by “polite” coupled it with a heart, symbolizing the impor- and time, she argues for abandoning the of Yeats and the Garland Shelley where it tion and affirmation of the poet on his back. society. However, in the mid-20th century, tance of love in her life. Program for an Organ Concert by Howard In addition to Jenks’ dramatic tattoo statement, all this changed when it was embraced by the conventional terms we use to label man- Parkhurst, June 1873, with notes by Emily Dick- “wasn’t one male editor constructing the there are countless others who have chosen her younger “hippie” generation. As a result, in Though unconventional, tattooing is a form of uscripts, such as “rough draft” and “fair inson. Amherst College Archives and Special final version of a poet but groups of edi- copy,” because they “do not fully reflect Collections, Emily Dickinson Collection, AC868. tors collaborating, perhaps even differing poems to wear on their skin. the 1970s, tattooing went “mainstream,” and art, not only to those who create the designs the varied textual conditions of Dickin- in their ideas of what should be repre- By inking Dickinson’s image and her words today it is practiced by well-known celebrities and to those who apply them to the skin but son’s manuscripts.” In order to more ac- proportion to their remoteness.” Thus, he re- sented and how” (131). She labels the tran- onto their skin, these people are partaking in – such as Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts, Jude also to those who wear them. As one student curately map the shifting borders between inforces the themes of exhibit and catalogue scripts she includes in the catalogue “thin an art with a long and interesting history. Tat- Law, and Ben Affleck – as well as the general wrote, “this is art come to life.” Many tattoo- letters and poems, Werner divides Dickin- by finding that Dickinson conceived renunci- maps” because they “can only ever partial- public. ists are from artistic backgrounds and may son’s writing into six provisional stages and, ation as both destitute and sumptuous, and it ly capture something of the poem’s exis- have planned a career in art. According to one given her career-long work with the later was “in a spatial metaphor that she gave her tence-in-suspension,” and approaches them Although people of would-be fine artist, “I can get skin to do more writing, shifts the emphasis from the Civil personal definition of Heaven. ‘Heaven,’ she as a form of translation, trying “to harness today no longer use than paper.” War years of “white heat” to the last years said, ‘is what I cannot reach.’” print technology ‘against itself.’” body art to identify of elegiac poems and monumental letters. their “tribal status,” In addition, some art institutions recognize Again, she cautions: “Parts of the map are Despite its thematic relevance, I wondered And so we arrive at a new plateau, created it is still used for a tattoos as a “legitimate art form.” The Amer- missing. To traverse this negative space, the if the inclusion of Wilbur’s essay was driven in part by feminist, materialist and queer variety of reasons. ican Museum of History highlighted tattoos reader must become cartographer, de-terri- by the desire to have more sympatico male approaches to Dickinson and by digital Some choose to in an exhibition entitled “Body Art: Marks of torializing – perhaps even exiling herself in voices in the mix. The influential male ed- technology, which is always collaborative, do so for beauti- Identity” (1999). Even art journals have taken order to draw new routes and byways.” It is itors of Dickinson’s work, Thomas John- processional, performative and incomplete. fication and sex- notice. Art in America, for one, included an ar- a necessary critical relinquishment of com- son and Ralph Franklin, though acknowl- It is not coincidental that Howe concludes ual attractiveness, ticle about tattoo artist Tony Fitzpatrick in one pletion or certainty, but one that will enable edged and thanked, come in for a bit of a her encomium of Dickinson by calling masking scars or of its issues (July 1997). More recently, a TV the final goal, “interpretation without end.” (deserved) bashing in Werner’s interview her the ultimate “nasty woman.” We are birthmarks; oth- reality show called “Ink Masters: Rivals” has with Susan Howe, whose unusual “acous- finally getting a Dickinson worthy of that ers use tattoos to tattoo artists compete with each other’s work. After this breath-taking re-vision, it seemed tic” approach to Dickinson paved the way compliment. Philip Jenks teaches English at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His most identify “a rite of strange to come upon Richard Wilbur’s essay, to re-envision the manuscript “pagescapes” recent book of poems is Colony Collapse Metaphor (2014), and his tattoo has passage that defines Emily Dickinson is one of the poets whose “Sumptuous Destitution,” now almost six- as visual objects and objects of art. While Special thanks to Book Review editor Renée been repeatedly featured on a variety of internet sites. The tattoo artist is Ser- who they are,” to work is frequently chosen for tattoos. A popu- ty years old, which benefited not a jot from Howe acknowledges the crucial importance Bergland for help in arranging this review. ena Lander; the photograph is reprinted with the permission of Max Herman. demarcate a change lar poem used is “I’m Nobody” (Fr260). One

18 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 19 Reviews of Publications

young wearer has the entire text of the poem Renée Bergland, Book Review Editor printed on the right side of her back, while an- other has the first stanza on the inside of her right arm. Neighbors and Warriors: more akin to the avian assassin/artist John mourn the Great Auk and curse the Can- New Thinking About Birds and Bees James Audubon, whose art was predicated ada Goose. Other poems are tattooed too. One young on collection and dissection. woman has the two stanzas of “Tell All the Jeff Karnicky Scarlet Experiment is not merely a work Truth” (Fr1263) on her upper thigh. Another Scarlet Experiment: Birds and Humans Jeff Karnicky’s Scarlet Experiment: Birds of ornithology or environmental studies has “I Dwell in Possibility” (Fr466) tattooed on in America. and Humans in America takes its title with a Dickinsonian title. It is also a book her lower back, a rainbow and bird accompa- University of Nebraska Press 2016, from “Split the Lark,” the most explicitly about Emily Dickinson. The book offers nying the letters. A third uses the lines “Unable 221pp. surgical of Dickinson’s bird poems. Kar- focused readings of Dickinson’s poetry as are the loved to die / For Love is Immortality” nicky’s book is a direct response to Chris- it engages with a broad range of literature (Fr951) on her left upper back, memorializing Ursula K. Heise topher Cokinos’s Hope is the Thing with and critical theory. The first chapter begins Corey, whose name appears beside the poem Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Feathers, published in 2000. Karnicky with Karnicky’s “strong feeling of histor- and is joined by flowers and a bird holding a Meaning of Endangered Species. begins by remarking, “I am not convinced ical continuity” with Dickinson when he rosary in its beak. University of Chicago Press 2016, 280pp. that hope is the thing with feathers, or that glimpses a blue jay on the grounds of the the things with feathers have much hope Dickinson Museum in Amherst. The blue Although many Dickinson poems are used, Branka Arsić if they need to depend on human benev- jay chapter that follows discusses Dickin- by far the most popular choice is “’Hope’ is Bird Relics: Grief and Vitalism in Tho- olence. Rather, I take my inspiration for son, Thoreau, Audubon, Formato, and De- the thing with feathers” (Fr314). The words reau. this book about birds and humans from Lillo, alongside philosophers from Fried- are printed or written in script with various de- Harvard University Press 2016, 455pp. another Dickinson poem, not about hope rich Nietzsche to Donald Griffin and many signs, such as small birds, an owl on a branch, and souls, but about doubt and blood.” ornithologists, including the 29 scientists a feather, or a quill. Some wearers choose the James Lenfestey, ed. The book that follows is a remarkable syn- who co-authored a 2004 paper on “The entire text of the poem, while others only use If Bees are Few: A Hive of Bee Poems. thesis of environmental studies, ornitholo- Avian Brain.” the first two lines. This particular poem’s pop- University of Minnesota Press 2016, gy, and literary criticism, composed in the ularity stems from the fact that it is for many a 225pp. key of profound and bracing skepticism. The central question of Scarlet Experiment source of strength and courage, a reminder that comes from Donald Griffin, a cognitive no matter how difficult life can be, it will get Above, from thegloss.com, June 6, 2014; below, from Carolyn Merchant Like Cokinos, Karnicky organizes his ethologist who focuses on questions better. Whether there has been a major trauma emilyjeanthesmilingmachine Tumblr page, February 12, 2013. Spare the Birds: George Bird Grinnell book into chapters that focus on bird spe- about nonhuman conscious awareness. in one’s life, an illness, or a lifestyle change, and the First Audubon Society. cies. Cokinos poignantly mourned the ex- Karnicky’s goal is to map out how human the poem seems to help and heal. One young Yale University Press, 328 pp. tinct Carolina Parakeet, Heath Hen, Pas- perceptions of birds “have altered in the woman overcame breast cancer, making this senger Pigeon, Labrador Duck and Great past two hundred years in ways that lead to poem especially “speak volumes” to her. Oth- Auk. In contrast, Karnicky gives us the a rethinking of human-animal relations.” ers have dealt with the loss of loved ones, re- Reviewed by Renée Bergland species we live with today: Blue Jay, Eu- Although human-animal relations may jection, or loneliness. ropean Starling, Red Knot, Canada Goose, seem impossibly vast, the book succeeds Readers averse to the lady-like Dickinson and Titmouse. This is an interesting move by focusing on a few bird species. It As you can see, Dickinson is many things to sometimes wince at the bird poems. But if – Karnicky points out that the vanished is lucid, intelligent, provocative, and different people, and this meaning extends Dickinson is lady-like, then her bird po- birds tend to inspire sentimental nostalgia elegantly succinct (clocking in at 176 even to art forms such as tattoos. ems shows that ladies can be sharp, clear, for most of us though we have never seen pages). And it also opens up many avenues and ruthless – surgically precise. The them, but the live ones, who commonly of inquiry. Despite the fact that we envision the poet from ornithological Dickinson is not roman- flock our feeders, soil our windshields and so many different perspectives, we can all tic. She is less akin to John Keats, with walkways, and crash our jetliners, tend Some readers will turn to Karnicky for a agree that she is a significant resource for all his waking dream of the nightingale, and to inspire less sentimental feelings. We Dickinson-inflected response to the hu- of us. Whether we read her poems in a printed text or on someone’s skin, Emily Dickinson continues to inspire, to provoke, to challenge, and to heal. The Bulletin welcomes notices of all Dickinson-related books, including those published outside the U.S. Maryanne Garbowsky edits the “Visualizing Send information to Renée Bergland, 3 Barrett Road, Hanover, NH 03755, U.S.A. Dickinson” series for the Bulletin, and con- Email: [email protected] tributes articles on a wide range of topics.

20 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 21 Reviews of Publications Reviews of Publications

man/non-human turn in critical theory, on Branka Arsić’s Bird Relics: Grief and Scarlet Experiment and Arsić’s Bird Rel- Vivian R. Pollak notion that poets are influenced not only and Thomas Wentworth Higginson and while others will be startled by his skep- Vitalism in Thoreau. The book is an ex- ics have altered my thinking about Dick- Our Emily Dickinsons: American Women by the traditions they inherit, but also by illumines the two women’s conflicting tical attitude toward environmentalist hilarating labyrinth, as expansive as Kar- inson and her bird poems. Some of Dick- Poets and the Intimacies of Difference. way their own biographical circumstances values concerning the nature of artistic nostalgia around extinction. Ursula K. nicky’s is succinct. Like Karnicky, Arsić inson’s bird verses are ecstatic, drunk on Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva- and proclivities highlight for them some success. One sympathizes with the frus- Heise’s Imagining Extinction: The Cultur- divides her book into parts that focus on avian beauty, while others are anguished, nia Press, 2017. 355pp. aspects of their literary precursors’ lives trated Jackson in Pollak’s telling – she al Meaning of Endangered Species might bird species: fish hawk, loon, crow, and outraged by human brutality. These books and poetry while blinding them to other seems to have been singularly prescient in be a useful companion volume for readers turtle dove. Where Karnicky turns toward show that when Dickinson describes the Reviewed by Jennifer Leader aspects. Taking the relationship between her insight that she was reading not just who are interested in the push to “move the present, Arsić faces toward the past, “electric rest” of birdsong, she offers Dickinson and Helen Hunt Jackson as her Emily Dickinson, but Emily Dickinson. beyond the story templates of elegy and studying ancient Greek in order to enter us vital insight into neighboring nine- t this point, no one needs to be re- starting point, Pollak carefully arranges Chapter two lays out the timeline of the tragedy, and yet to express continuing into Thoreau’s investigations of Greek teenth-century consciousness, living and Aminded that many of our institutions and examines poems, letters, journals, War Between the Houses, showing how concern that nonhuman species not be philosophy. Although there is a brief com- dead, human and otherwise. of higher learning have abandoned hu- and other documents connected to Dick- “Dickinson’s death created imperfect harmed.” Heise, like Karnicky, makes a parison of the formal manuscript qualities manistic understandings of education in inson, Jackson, Mabel Loomis Todd, Mar- reader-allies” (72). Pollak’s sympathetic very compelling case for new narratives – of Thoreau’s notebooks and Dickinson’s favor of a business-minded embrace of ianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Mable Loomis Todd is “a literary wom- and Karnicky offers convincing accounts poems, Bird Relics is a Thoreau book with data-driven analysis and scientific positiv- and Elizabeth Bishop so as to revivify an in crisis” whose own frustrations with of bird consciousness that may prove little to say about Emily Dickinson. None- ism. While the study of Arts and Letters their intimate reflections and conversa- the conundrums of what it meant to be a more effective than the elegiac extinction theless, Arsić’s discussion of vitalism and has suffered by unconscious assimilation tions. She depicts these poets as dynamic, nineteenth-century woman writer caused narratives of yore. the Harvard vitalists who resisted Louis of these values, feminist philosophers moving targets who, in their ongoing ap- her to miss Dickinson’s “existential lone- Agassiz’s approach to nature is essential such as Sandra Harding, Jane Flax and praisals of Dickinson, created “fractured liness, with its residual Puritanism” (92); But extinction is real. Our shared concerns reading for Dickinson scholars who are Donna Haraway gave us permission some self-portraits” that “affirmed particular nonetheless, through Todd’s editing Dick- about it should not be dismissed, partic- interested in Dickinson’s thoughts about Thinking Dickinson time ago to resist this trend by way of their versions of themselves.” In particular, inson emerges as a highly self-conscious ularly if such concern can help motivate life, death, and birds. concept of knowledge as context-embed- Pollak contends, there are two powerful and crafted poet. collective action. In this vein, If Bees are By George Monteiro ded and “situated.” More recently, in her factors that especially fostered the poets’ Few: A Hive of Bee Poems, edited by Carolyn Merchant, the environmental his- book Loving to Know: Covenant Episte- impulses to create Dickinson in their own Chapter three maps Marianne Moore’s James Lenfestey with a foreword by Bill torian whose feminist approach to vitalism It’s time to say things. mology (2011), philosopher Esther Light- images: first, the ambiguity that is inher- growing embrace of Dickinson from her McKibben, was published with the pur- shaped contemporary ecocriticism, also Dickinson often built cap Meek advocates for a new epistemol- ent to Dickinson’s artistry (and especially first reading of the poet while a student pose of raising money for the Bee Lab at published a book about birds last year. better than she knew or, ogy in which knowledge involves not insofar as her ambivalence about intimate at Bryn Mawr to her review of the 1931 the University of Minnesota. The anthol- Spare the Birds: George Bird Grinnell and at the least, other than she only dispassionate facts (as if such a thing relationships is concerned), and second, Letters. Pollak suggests Moore reads ogy includes poems by poets from Virgil the First Audubon Society is a documenta- knew if we are to believe were possible; as if scientists themselves the slow and incremental release of Dick- Dickinson in relation to her own powerful to Sherman Alexie and Carol Ann Duffy, ry history of late nineteenth-century con- the academics, the poets, weren’t subject to emotions and weren’t inson’s poetry and letters, which Pollak mother figure, and that she works to and, most prominently, Emily Dickinson. servation of birds. The book begins with the feminists, the code- dependent upon their own interpretive traces from Higginson and Todd’s 1890 normalize Dickinson as a fellow “resilient” The title references Dickinson, the book Merchant’s careful introduction to con- breakers, etc. and so on. communities), but also an acknowledge- edition of Poems, through Todd’s 1931 single artist for whom separateness from features a generous selection of her poems servation in nineteenth-century New York Often her difficulty—or ment of the process of coming-to-know- edition of the Letters, and finally to John- hetero-normativity is not a problem. In about bees, and both the Foreword by Bill (and the central role of Lucy Audubon in her difficulty in poems— in-relation-to-the-other. This epistemolo- son’s 1955 edition. Along the way, Pollak chapters four and five Pollak reconstructs McKibben and the Afterword by the bee the 1850s and 1860s), and then presents lies less in achievement gy pushes us to view the world in terms finds certain recurring and thematic ten- the inter-relations of Moore, Sylvia Plath, scientist Marla Spivak use Dickinson’s George Bird Grinnell’s nineteenth-century than in flat-out distraction of broad and deep relational truths – truths sions in the poets’ own lives that further and Ted Hughes via the trajectories poetry to structure their thoughts. It is writings about Audubon and conservation, of the poet’s attention that incorporate knowledges derived from complicate their reception of Dickinson; of Plath’s pique at Moore and Hughes striking that Dickinson works so well for with extensive notes. Although Dickinson or the whim of just our affections, affiliations, lived experi- these include the poets’ varying resistanc- retrospective re-constructions of the Lenfestey’s volume as a poet of extinction died in 1886, just as the first Audubon So- swiping away at a last ence, bodily sensations, spirituality, and es to or affirmations of the relations be- incident causing Plath’s ire and of Plath when she also grounds Karnicky’s prom- ciety was being formed, Merchant’s dis- line or a slapdash verse. intuitions. tween a woman poet’s life and her art and herself. We also learn in these chapters that ising alternative to extinction narratives, cussion of gender and the conservation Often her inner life was the poets’ relations to their own mothers, Dickinson was both an early poetic model but in truth this does not seem paradoxical of avifauna at midcentury could provide that of Amherst gossip, Vivian Pollak’s new book, Our Emily be they biological or literary. for Plath and her own mother’s favorite to me. From both angles, Dickinson has useful context for readers who are curious nothing more or less. Dickinsons: American Women Poets and poet, thus involving Plath in a complex much to offer to twenty-first century envi- about Dickinson’s thinking about birds. At her best, though, she the Intimacies of Difference, offers one Arranged chronologically, Pollak’s first and somewhat antagonistic relation with ronmentalist thinking. fired up her lexicon to approach towards studying poetry in a two chapters depict the way Dickinson’s Dickinson and her work. All in all, 2016 was a remarkable year for make those lines that take way that acknowledges these collective contemporaries responded to and passed Dickinson scholars whose interests fo- books about birds and bees in Dickinson’s the top of your head off. and relational ways of knowing. At the on her legacy. Chapter one delineates the Finally, in chapter six Pollak looks closely cus more on the nineteenth century than poetry and in her time. Although they are heart of her “experimental, collective fascinating triangulation of relationship at Elizabeth Bishop’s negative responses the twenty-first should get their hands very different works, both Karnicky’s March 29, 1999 psychobiography,” as she calls it, is the between Dickinson, Helen Hunt Jackson to two books published in 1951, Emily

22 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 23 Reviews of Publications Reviews of Publications

Dickinson’s Letters to Doctor and Mrs. Josiah Gilbert Holland and Rebecca Patterson’s Mary Loeffelholz most in the poet, while also paying re- study, teach, and read Dickinson new actively encouraged Dickinson to pub- The Riddle of Emily Dickinson. According to Pollak, Bishop disliked Dickinson’s vul- The Value of Emily Dickinson. Cam- spectful attention to different features of insight into this great American poet and lish. Some of the material here indicates nerable expressions of intimacy in the letters and resented Patterson’s exposé style that bridge: Cambridge University Press, Dickinson’s work that are highly regard- provides a wonderful model for engaging that when, in her writings, she present- trained attention on the poet rather than her work. Pollak makes a sensitive argument 2016. 236 pp. ed by other scholars and readers. Partic- with the complexities and difficulties that ed scenarios associated with future fame here for “Bishop’s aversion to gender criticism and sex stereotyping,” “her deeply con- ularly illuminating is the way in which accompany any investigation of her life and renown, she was probably tapping flicted response to the emergence of a public discourse of queerness in her time,” and Jane Donahue Eberwein, Stephanie Far- Loeffelholz engages with the poems and and writings. into her position as a literary prodigy her “internalized homophobia” (212, 235). Yet she finds that “for both poets, writing rar and Cristanne Miller, eds. their manuscript forms to underscore and notable figure in Amherst, whose becomes “a partial “solution to the problem of love’s migration” (256). Dickinson in Her Own Time: A Biograph- Dickinson’s “changing conception of her contemporaries celebrated the power of ical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from poetic project over time,” her “evolving, her language and her wit, humor, playful- Amidst what must have been an enormous challenge to connect the dots between the Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs ever-revised aesthetic commitments,” or those unlucky enough not to pos- ness, and even social defiance. nuanced, push-pull moments of these poets’ intimate responses to Dickinson and each by Family, Friends, and Associates. Iowa: and her shifting attitudes towards her Fsess a copy of Jay Leyda’s The Years other, Pollak freely admits that Dickinson’s “multifaceted achievement exceeds any University of Iowa Press, 2015. 203 pp. vocation and to questions of recognition and Hours of Emily Dickinson (1960), Although there is much here to demon- critic’s ability to define it . . . . Thus, my Emily Dickinson is both singular and represen- (33, 35). Throughout the book, Loeffel- hope is offered by the publication of new strate Dickinson’s sociability, particular- tative, a person and a symbol” (265). Even if a reader may quibble over an interpretation Reviewed by Páraic Finnerty holz draws “on historical, cultural, and affordable scholarship that supplements ly as a correspondent, it is also evident of a particular poem or letter, one gets the sense that Pollak is inviting us to a timely biographical contexts where they seem and becomes in various ways a substitute that her retirement from society into a new stance towards scholarship in which we are more willing to think out loud about ary Loeffelholz has written one interpretively useful” for an understand- for or alternative to his important vol- restricted and protective familial circle our own partialities and personal inclinations towards our subject, both out of humility Mof the best introductions to Emily ing of Dickinson’s life and work as a poet ume. Dickinson in Her Own Time makes generated much curiosity and speculation and as a way to foreground the role our relationship to a poem always affects our inter- Dickinson currently available. She offers (10). a significant and invaluable contribution among those who knew her. Yet we also pretations. readers a clear, concise, and eloquent ex- to the documentation of Dickinson’s life see her contemporaries emphasizing her ploration of why Dickinson is so highly In each chapter, we see evidence of and afterlife by providing new and diffi- seclusion as “the normal blossoming of In his book Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life, internation- valued as a writer, while at the same time Dickinson’s relationship to a range cult-to-locate material of immense rele- a nature introspective to a high degree, ally acclaimed artist Makoto Fujimura asserts that if we can find ways of linking artistic making accessible important contextual of aspects of her nineteenth-century vance for any understanding of Dickin- whose best thought could not exist in pre- creativity to a hospitable generosity that brings others into relation with that art, we will issues that are essential for understanding American culture and how these shape son and her work. tence” (xxi). A major contribution of this promote an environment of human flourishing in place of culture wars. Since we are this poet. Importantly, readers are also in- her representations of love, gender, collection is that it helps readers under- presently threatened with the loss of federal funding for the N.E.A. and other non-profit troduced to many recent controversies in sexuality, nationality, transnationality, This carefully edited, organized, and stand the trajectory of Dickinson’s post- cultural organizations, now might be a good moment to enjoy Pollak’s text and then to Dickinson scholarship, including ongo- war, faith, and doubt. For example, introduced chronicle locates Dickinson humous reception. We see the ways in begin to imagine how we might continue to invite others into our literary conversations, ing debates about how and if her manu- Loeffelholz foregrounds the idea that historically through extant recollections, which criticism that emphasizes her fail- advancing relational ways of knowing beyond the merely data-driven. script poems can be translated into print. “Dickinson’s liberties with poetic form interviews, memoirs, and reviews of her ure to adhere to poetic standards of meter The central power of Loeffelholz’s book and style assert in a different aesthetic contemporaries that reference, discuss, and rhyme, and to follow grammatical Jennifer Leader is Professor of English at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, CA. Her book is her argument for and demonstration of and political register her inalienable and comment on the poet or her writings. rules, becomes slowly eclipsed by praise Knowing, Seeing, Being: Jonathan Edwards, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, and the Amer- the benefits and importance of viewing individual right to craft discordance, What emerges very plainly from the ma- for her as an original, innovative, and ex- ican Typological Tradition, was published last year by the University of Massachusetts Press. the poems as “sounded verbal” objects, difficulty, and rarity out of common terial gathered here is that Dickinson en- perimental writer associated with power- deserving of a form of “close and careful” American materials” (85). Although sured through her correspondence with ful examinations of the natural world and reading that is attentive to the inextrica- making provocative connections between leading literary figures such as Samuel provocative explorations of metaphysical ble connections between their rhythm, Dickinson’s attentiveness to literary Bowles, Helen Hunt Jackson, Josiah Hol- issues. This excellent volume challenges Noted with Pleasure rhyme, assonance, and alliteration, and myth-making and self-fashioning, and land, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson an earlier tendency to position Dickinson their language, imagery, and ideas (10). her concern about the life and afterlife of that she “developed a reputation [in her as a proto-modernist poet by underlining From Elisa New’s New England Beyond Criticism: In Defense of America’s First Liter- her writing, Loeffelholz is also alert to, lifetime] as a remarkable writer even her position as a nineteenth-century writ- ature (Blackwell 2014): While appreciating why many scholars and takes delight in, the indeterminacy while maintaining extreme levels of pri- er whose life, works, and reception were and readers place such value in Dickin- of Dickinson’s poetry; she admits “how vacy” (xvi). shaped by the changing literary and aes- So much wind blows through Dickinson’s work, it is as though the whole oeuvre is son’s manuscripts, and acknowledging difficult it is to tolerate the uncertainty thetic values of the nineteenth and twen- unsettled by it. Ever turning, ever troping, this wind stands in Dickinson’s work for the the importance of what they reveal about in which [so many of Dickinson’s While such contacts lay the foundations tieth centuries. force poems can discharge, the force true Spirit fills with breath. These skies liberate her practice as a poet, Loeffelholz argues texts] leave us about their biographical for her posthumous fame, what the doc- the objects they carry from their more static relations. They loosen the “here” to the that these visual artefacts should not be referents,” yet acknowledges that it is uments in this book imply is that it was refreshment of “there,” today to yesterday or way back when. They free the known, the prioritized over and above the rhymed the complexity of these texts that makes most likely Dickinson’s choice not to Páraic Finnerty is Reader in English and inert, to find correction and redemption in the unknown. . . . and metered poems. What is to Loeffel- them interpretively rich, “potentially publish in her lifetime, when her status American Literature at the University of holz’s great credit is that she deals with boundless space[s]” for readers (38). easily afforded her such an opportuni- Portsmouth. He is the author of Emily To pay more mind to weather is to see the line between earth and sky made fluid, the these and other debates within Dickinson ty. The extracts show, for example, that Dickinson’s Shakespeare and of the forth- stacked planes of the terrestrial and aerial confuted every minute by the vertical risings criticism in such an even-handed way, The value of The Value of Emily some of her contemporaries were wary coming “Dickinson and her British Con- of heat and the falling moisture, by evaporation and condensation. making very obvious what she values Dickinson is that it offers all those who about publishing her poems, while others temporaries”

24 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 25 Reviews of Publications Reviews of Publications

Dickinson in Fiction Even though the book begins with a ti- with the dead birds playing tunes on her power to read minds, and to communicate ard Humphrey’s beautiful eyes and exper- and agency to her unresolved lust for tle drawn from Dickinson’s poetry and bones” (16). to protagonist Violet Waverly through a iments with galvanism, the tender-hearted less brilliant men. I wouldn’t go so far From Sublime to Ridiculous an epigraph from Dickinson, the specter magical edition of Dickinson that falls Dickinson builds a machine so that she as to recommend this novel, but I love haunting this book is undeniably closer Despite the centrality of Hughes and the open to particular poems that help Violet can resurrect innocent little woodland the fact that Yarbrough has plotted Dick- Max Porter to Ted Hughes than to Dickinson. Faber British poetic tradition, it is clear why find solutions to her life’s mysteries. creatures. inson into such a ridiculously wild spec- Grief is the Thing with Feathers. Minne- and Faber, the publishers of Grief is the Porter chose a title that invokes Dickin- With her prescient edition of Dickinson, ulation. apolis: Graywolf Press. 120 pp. Thing with Feathers, also published Ted son. The book is split into three sections and her adeptness in poetic interpretation Unfortunately, Dickinson reveals her Hughes’ edition of Dickinson in 1968, that occur over several years, and divided (honed throughout her years in grad experiments to two of the men she has Annelise Brinck-Johnsen is an undergradu- Amanda Flower followed by Hughes’ own Crow: From between three speaker-narrators – Boys, school), Violet finds herself helping the adopted as mentors – the aforementioned ate at Dartmouth. She presented a paper at Crime and Poetry. Penguin. 364 pp. the Life and Songs of the Crow in 1970. Dad, and Crow. The beautifully dizzying handsome Chief of Police solve crimes scientifically-minded Leonard Humphrey, the EDIS International Conference in Paris Hughes’ Crow was written in the three shifts in space, time, and scale repeatedly and protect the Springs, while also and the religious but inquisitive Charles in 2016, sponsored by Dartmouth as a James Shannon Yarbrough years after Sylvia Plath’s death. Here, evoke Dickinson’s formal poetics, while stumbling into a professorship at the local Wadsworth. Like Victor Frankenstein, O. Freedman Presidential Scholar. Emily Dickinson: Mad Scientist. Amazon Porter brings to the forefront the sense of the amalgamation of beauty and horror – community college. Though this novel these men are driven to use Dickinson’s Digital Services. loss that infuses Hughes’ work from that the fusion of nature, art, the eternal, and could never be accused of seriousness or invention to interfere in the human Reviewed by Annelise Brinck-Johnsen period. But since Hughes himself was im- death – calls Dickinson to mind on every literary pretension, a love of American realm, defying Dickinson’s mersed in Dickinson, her work also struc- page. Porter’s hauntingly beautiful grief literature and history ground its utterly scruples. In a somewhat murky Recovering Emily Dickinson ax Porter’s lyrically raw debut nov- tures this post-modern novel. is underwritten by Dickinson’s own bleak good-natured escapism. plotline, one of these men (it is el Grief is the Thing with Feathers hope. This is the best Dickinson-inspired never specified which) becomes M When Zeus was boasting Leda’s rape – locates itself firmly within the Dickinson Grief is the Thing with Feathers is a very novel I know of; I cannot recommend it Dickinson-inspired mysteries are surpris- the man referred to in the Master His mind was dull – His eyes were dim – tradition with its title, but quickly moves British book. The boys miss their “mum,” highly enough. ingly common, but speculative fiction and letters, and when Newton dies, He could not see her clean escape – beyond allusion to literary predecessors they vacation in the Chilterns, and are science fiction about Dickinson are rarer. Dickinson and her Master decide Her Modesty – in spite of him. to become a sublime interrogation of the given “lasagne” by well-meaning friends. On another plane entirely, Amanda Yet the gaps in our knowledge – the mys- to steal his corpse and revive it. intertwined nature of art and grief. Al- Beyond these small details, the book em- Flower’s cozy mystery Crime and teries of the master letters; the eroticism In the grand tradition of gothic He thought he held her by the hair – though this brilliant novel takes its title braces a particularly English version of Poetry, is the rare Dickinson-inspired of Dickinson’s verse; and the unusual ten- fiction, Dickinson realizes that her He felt he had her in his hand – from Dickinson, Porter changes “hope” to a European, post-modern aesthetic. In a piece of genre fiction that focuses on the sion between the sequestered end of her erotic desires have overwhelmed But she still wore a garment fair – “grief.” He opens with a similarly altered touching description of grief immediately poems rather than an Emily Dickinson life and her globally expansive letters – her traditional piety and good A gown he could not understand. epigraph from Dickinson: after the funeral, Dad says: character. In this case, Dickinson’s provide ample gaps for speculation, while sense, and no sooner is Newton poems serve as clues that help solve a Dickinson’s interest in science beckons revived than Dickinson realizes While he was lying of her bed – That Love is all there is, I felt it would be years before the knot- grisly murder. Despite the grim premise, us toward science fiction. Shannon Yar- she must kill him. Dickinson The Bird was gliding in the sky Is all we know of Love; ted-string dream of other people’s per- Flower’s charmingly slight novel cozily brough’s gothic take on Dickinson’s life accomplishes this, burning And humming songs of Hope instead – It is enough, the freight should be formances of woe for my dead wife combines American history with poetry in the 1850’s, Emily Dickinson: Mad down the Amherst train station To which he could not make reply. Proportioned to the groove. would thin enough for me to see any and magic. When Violet Waverly returns Scientist (2016) is an implausible, but re- and setting free a chimpanzee black space again, and of course – need- to her hometown of Cascade Springs, markably inventive attempt at Dickinson in the process. Repentant, she Her head was crowned with gauzy lace – The verse is laid out on the page, with the less to say – thoughts of this kind made New York, after an extensive self- science fiction. terminates her relationship with Her gloves were lamb – Her shoes were fawn – words “Love,” “Freight,” and “groove,” me feel guilty. But, I thought, in sup- imposed exile, she expects to spend her Master and decides never to A spotless veil set off her face – scratched out and replaced by the word port of myself, everything has changed, her time nursing her ill grandmother, The novel was originally released in 2013 dabble with science again. After She had her Eden apron on. “crow” in a childish scrawl. This epigraph and she is gone and I can think what I not delving into the mysterious death as Dickinstein, an awkward mashup/ Dickinson’s death, her sister serves to introduce the central conceit of like. She would approve, because we of her grandmother’s paramour or the portmanteau title that gestures toward its Lavinia burns all record of her Her wedding dress immaculate – the novel: A scholar of Ted Hughes strug- were always over-analytical, cynical, mysterious happenings associated with plot, which hinges on what would have ventures into corpse-reanimation. Her word a verse – her crown a poem – gles to complete his book “Ted Hughes’ probably disloyal, puzzled. Dinner par- the bottling of Cascade Springs’ famous happened if Benjamin Franklin Newton Her dignity inviolate – Crow on the Couch: A Wild Analysis” ty post-mortem bitches with kind inten- water. Luckily, Violet soon learns that her had given Mary Shelley’s novel Franken- Imaginatively conceived, if hap- And every stitch was made at home. after his wife dies, leaving him to raise tions. Hypocrites. Friends. (5) grandmother is not only perfectly well, stein (1818) to Dickinson. Yarbrough, a hazardly executed and at times his two boys alone. A spectral Crow en- but is also a “Caretaker” of the magical self-proclaimed “friend of Emily,” writes jarringly confusing, Yarbrough’s Invested in Eternity – ters the book as a father-monster hybrid, This emotional embrace of gently iron- Cascade Springs – as well as the family Dickinson as a gothic heroine torn be- novel highlights the interplay of She wore her love in fresh bouquet – a clannish trickster who is by turns wise ic urbanity follows in the tradition of bookstore – and a talking crow named tween the erotic energy she feels when Dickinson’s scientific and reli- And when her Gentleman could see – and feral. Crow is the alter ego of a griev- Auden and Larkin. In sharp contrast, the Faulkner. The slightly zany plot hinges speaking to men (truly, any man seems to gious thoughts, but falls short of She slipped with Him into the Day. ing husband and embattled father, the kind more savage sections of Dad’s reminis- on the history of the underground railroad inspire it), and her love for the seclusion its speculative potential by dis- of coping mechanism that could only be cences seem more akin to Plath, or to and the role of settler-colonialism in the of nature. Spurred by Frankenstein, skep- carding its uncanny imaginings Cynthia Hallen imagined by someone who has internal- Hughes’ Crow: “I’ve drawn her unpicked, commercialization of water. An enchanted ticism towards religious dogma and the in favor of a strict morality and ized a poetic tradition. ribs splayed stretched like a xylophone spring endows a bookstore with the Christian afterlife, and her friend Leon- ascribing Dickinson’s creativity

26 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 27 Film Review Film Review

of period lighting (natural light – sometimes our first look at Dickinson’s adult visage, as cation, and fame are explored through Dick- Dickinson in Film: A Quiet Passion warm, sometimes harsh, as well as lamplight portrayed by Cynthia Nixon. Well done! inson’s interactions with these men. Although and candlelight). Both on-set reconstructed the poet’s late love relationship with Judge Otis By Stephanie Tingley interiors and exterior sequences filmed at the I was glad to see much attention paid to Dickin- Lord (who does get mentioned in the context Dickinson Homestead and environs in Am- son’s relationships with key women in her life: of a pending court case earlier in the film) and he long-anticipated Terence Davies-di- already-evident poetic talent, her wicked sense so viewers can “read” her emotions. In addi- herst, Massachusetts add authenticity and vi- her mother (a shadowy figure at best in most the devastating death of her 8-year-old neph- Trected Emily Dickinson biopic, A Quiet of humor, her strong ties to family and home, tion, Davies weaves a generous selection of sual interest. scholarship and biography) is fleshed out as a ew Gilbert are omitted, viewers do see how the Passion (2016), is currently making the tran- her sometimes-fragile health, her sensitivity, Dickinson’s poems into the screenplay. Some character and an important influence, despite accumulation of deaths and the intensity of her sition from North American film festivals and and her independence and self-reliance, lyrics are inserted as voice-over interior mono- The performances in the film are well-cast, her emotional and physical fragility; her Aunt grieving impact the poet and fuel her art. special screenings to wider distribution. The especially where her core values and beliefs logues and some Dickinson speaks aloud. Ter- strong and nuanced. The female characters Elizabeth, who is appalled at the Dickinson film has much to recommend it. Dickinson are concerned. ence Davies’ filmography includes directing a are particularly well-developed. Some of the siblings’ irreverence when she appears early in The film takes time to show us the immediacy scholars and readers will find things to quibble well-regarded adaptation of Edith Wharton’s most powerful and affecting moments in Cyn- the film, but whose outspokenness and acer- and often harsh reality of death and dying in about, certainly, but overall the film provides It is difficult to make engaging films about novel The House of Mirth (2000), starring thia Nixon’s performance contain no dialogue; bic wit mirror, on many levels, Emily Dick- Victorian America. There are many scenes of a long-overdue rich, nuanced, and psycholog- writers, as so much of their work is interior and Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart. Davies is suc- her facial expressions (whether expressing joy, inson’s own; her younger sister Vinnie, stal- illness, death and grieving, which are powerful ically-astute three-dimensional portrait of the there is often not much physical action, at least cessful at situating Lily Bart in her time, place, humor, pain, or anger) and her body language wart companion, supporter, and defender; her and not easy to watch. Although father Ed- poet. for movie-goers saturated in the quick-cutting and social milieu in Gilded Age New York, but speak volumes. Supporting performances by sister-in–law Susan Gilbert Dickinson, who ward dies off camera with no explanation (we and often-frenetic action sequences in many also gives us access to the conflicted and tragic Jennifer Ehle (Vinnie) and Duncan Duff (Aus- is portrayed sympathetically and as someone just see him in his coffin and the family’s reac- We enter the adolescent Emily Dickinson’s blockbuster films. Dickinson led an especial- inner life of his heroine. A Quiet Passion uses tin) highlight the strong and complex bonds who possesses a keen understanding of both tions), there are several powerful scenes fea- world (after a hushed credit sequence) at a key ly circumscribed exterior life and possessed some of these same strategies to good effect, among the three siblings. the poet and the person. Long-term, intimate turing her mother’s emotional fragility, illness, moment in her young life. Mary Lyon, Head- an especially rich and complex interior life, and the film certainly benefits from his astute, friend Elizabeth Holland does not make an and death. We see Emily and Vinnie tenderly mistress at Mt Holyoke Female Seminary, ad- which intensifies the challenge, but Davies sensitive, subtle direction and nuanced dia- A Quiet Passion’s expert and expressive cine- appearance, although her husband, the editor nursing their mother after her stroke, and, lat- dresses a group of young women, Dickinson has developed several effective strategies to logue, which is crafted to incorporate familiar matography by Florian Hoffmeister deserves Josiah Holland, does enter in briefly. A com- er, as the siblings gathered at her death bed. among them. She asks those students who compensate – a fluid camera that moves about phrases and images drawn from Dickinson’s especially high praise. The pace is leisurely posite fictional character named Vryling Buf- Dickinson’s own declining health is shown have professed their Christian faith and joined the Homestead and often focuses for quite a poems and letters. and there are many long takes – the slow pan- fam (memorably played by Catherine Bailey) through episodes of fainting, weakness, chest the church to move to one side, and those who length of time on close-ups of the poet’s face ning as the camera explores a scene, often lin- stands in for the group of bright and energetic pains, seizures, and doctor visits. We also see have hope of becoming Christians to move The screenplay takes some risks to explore gering on Dickinson’s face, is very effective. female friends who matched wits with Dick- the poet’s death scene, and the moment when to the other side. Only one student stands Dickinson’s inner life. In one powerful Viewers’ patience is required but rewarded, inson and often served as foils as they drift- her labored breathing stops, which Austin still and alone – Emily Dickinson. She sequence near the middle of the film, for as we have the time to really look and ab- ed away or made different, often more con- wrote about so succinctly and powerfully after stands firm as a “no-hoper,” strong-willed, example, framed by the slow opening and sorb the details of time, place, and character. ventional, life choices. This decision may be his sister’s death. A brief montage of historical resolute, and able to match wits and words closing of the door to her bedroom, Dick- The slow pans, long takes, and sparse cutting problematic for some viewers, but justifiable images documenting the slaughter and devas- with the headmistress, despite persistent inson is framed in the doorway deep in also capture the slower pace and mood of given the time constraints of a feature film, tating losses of the Civil War puts the family’s questioning and scare tactics from Lyon. reverie at her small writing desk. The film mid-19th-century American life in the house- for it provides an efficient way of representing personal struggles into historical and cultural She refuses to do what she does not feel shifts from realism to a poetic and impres- hold. For example, in one scene the camera this part of Dickinson’s experience: her female context. or believe, despite being pressured to do sionistic set piece as we see a montage (as explores an ordinary evening in the Dickinson friendships, high standards for friendship, and what she “ought.” Alone in the frame in a plaintive and haunting ballad sung by a parlor, lit by lamplight and candlelight, and fo- great distress when friends and love interests In all, A Quiet Passion succeeds in providing the soon-abandoned classroom, we hear, in solo soprano plays on the usually-spare cuses, in turn, through a slow pan from right moved away, married, or died. What is most us a powerful picture of Emily Dickinson as voice-over, the first of what will be a series soundtrack) that reflects the aging poet’s to left, on each family member. All sit silent – important is to see how deeply these friend- an American poetic genius and a human be- of Dickinson poems woven into the story. desires and fears, including a shadowy sil- reading, sewing – as the parlor clock ticks and ships and their losses affected the sensitive and ing who feels deeply and struggles mightily, houette of a faceless male figure framed by chimes, until Mrs. Dickinson asks her elder passionate Emily Dickinson. as the contrasting title words suggest. One is To Emily’s delight, her father, brother, the doorway – Lover? Muse? Gentleman daughter Emily to play some hymns on the pi- reminded of Dickinson’s famous metaphor of and sister soon arrive to take her home, Caller Death? Real? Imaginary? We are ano. Another early sequence that benefits from And, of course, connections and conflicts with the creative and passionate self as a volcano and when questioned about her ill health, left to draw our own conclusions. innovative camera work is set in the daguerre- key men in her life find a prominent place in in the poem which begins “On my volcano she wittily attributes it to a “severe case otypist’s studio, where we see the Dickinson the storytelling as well: her severe and sup- grows the grass / A meditative spot” (Fr1232) . of Evangelism.” Choosing to begin the The film’s production is richly detailed, nuclear family posing for their portraits. Last portive father Edward (Keith Carradine), her It may be calm on the surface, but the speaker story here is a brilliant choice by Davies, down to the pictures on the walls and the in line is the adolescent Emily. In a subtle and elder brother Austin, the Reverend Charles warns, who both directed the film and wrote the delicate stitching and sheen of the cos- effective use of transitions and dissolves, with- Wadsworth, and editors Bowles and Higgin- screenplay, for it efficiently introduces tume fabrics. The film darkens both visu- out dialogue, we watch as the young actress son. Gender roles and restrictions, tensions How red the Fire rocks below – important characters and sets up key ally and emotionally in the second half, as playing Dickinson (Emma Bell) recreates the between faith and doubt, the importance of How insecure the sod themes and tensions that will play out later Dickinson’s losses and frustrations mount. famous daguerreotype image of Dickinson at personal ethics, and the opportunities and ob- Did I disclose – Dickinson’s verbal precociousness and The cinematographer makes skillful use seventeen. We then see this image morph into stacles surrounding female authorship, publi- Would populate with awe my solitude.

28 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 29 Diadems – drop – and Doges – detailed celestial observations to that time. to put someone on the moon and that they Emily Dickinson, Astronaut! surrender – This activity resulted in a kind of moon would base their launch station in Florida. Soundless as Dots – on a craze in the 1830s that strongly paralleled By Sharon Hamilton Disc of Snow – (Fr124C) the effect on American popular culture cre- As I discovered by reading early 19th cen- n February 22, 2017, the media ated by the NASA missions of the 1960s. tury newspaper accounts, astronomers also Ounexpectedly lit up all around the While there is little doubt about the prima- The 19th-century mass media picked up on took part in the popular activity of imagin- world with news arising from an article ry role of Dickinson’s imagination in cre- this popular interest so Dickinson would ing what the Earth would look like viewed published in the science journal Nature, ating this extraordinary image of a small, not only have been exposed to science from outer space. In 1833, in a widely which reported that scientists had insignificant Earth (with its even more in- textbooks and teaching that educated her re-published “Treatise on Astronomy,” discovered a dwarf star in a distant solar significant graves) viewed from the distant to the latest developments in astronomy John Herschel himself indulged in specu- system orbited by seven earth-like planets. heavens, the Smithsonian show revealed to but would also have seen things exactly lating what an Earthrise would look like. “If All of a sudden astronomy became the me, as I had not recognized before, that this like the objects in this display case: visual there be inhabitants in the moon the earth talk of the day – discussed around water was something Dickinson could have seen artifacts from imagined voyages from the must present to them the extraordinary ap- coolers, carried in every newspaper, and for herself! earth to the moon and back again. pearance of a moon nearly 2 degrees in di- ubiquitous online. The question everyone The Smithsonian display revealed to me, ameter, exhibiting the same phases as we wished to know was whether these newly- I was born only a few years after the moon- for example, that 19th century pictori- see the moon to do, but immovably fixed in identified planets might contain life. walk, so the Apollo missions occupied a al images of cosmic voyages took many their sky,” he wrote, “while the stars must magical part of my childhood, in- seem to pass slowly beside and be- This situation is not unlike what Emily cluding my early memories of see- hind it” (United States Telegraph, Dickinson knew, because she too lived ing re-broadcasts of that famous Washington D.C. 24 Aug. 1833). during a time of unprecedented scientific televised image of Earthrise: our discovery concerning outer space. Dickin- small green-blue planet in the back- Dickinson joined such virtual space son’s interest in astronomy as it appears in ground with the moon in the fore- travelers by making her way into her poetry fascinates me, so I was delighted ground, as first captured in 1968 by the night sky the same way they to discover on a recent visit to Washington the American astronauts on Apollo did: in her head, from the ground. DC an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum 8. It never occurred to me before “The Brain – is wider than the Sky” of American History on science-fiction in seeing this exhibit that Dickinson (Fr598), as she famously wrote. The the 19th century. While viewing this ex- The Octagon, at Amherst College, was built in 1845 as the Lawrence Observatory to house could have viewed an almost iden- astronomy text she studied at Mount hibit I found myself, quite unexpectedly, Edward Hitchcock’s collection of natural history artifacts as well as the college’s first tele- tical visual image over a hundred Holyoke (Denison Olmsted’s walking with Emily Dickinson – on the scope. Photograph by the author. years before the first successful Compendium of Astronomy, 1839) moon. space missions! But there it was in contained information credited to I learned from Richard Holmes’s terrific Dickinson’s immediate cultural and intellec- the display case – a small, round, both Herschels, father and son, and In the 1770s, brother and sister William and The Age of Wonder that Caroline fed Wil- tual environment. Amherst College’s “Law- painted glass plate bearing the in- one of them – it is not clear which Caroline Herschel began making something liam during this time by putting “the Vitals rence Observatory” opened just down the scription “Imaginary view of earth – even makes a named appearance remarkable in the basement of their shared by bits” directly into his mouth. This pains- hill from her home in 1847, the same year from the moon, ca. 1850.” On it I in Dickinson’s poem “Nature and home in Bath. Working together, they cast taking process allowed William to hand- in which Maria Mitchell discovered a comet saw virtually the same image as God, I neither knew” (Fr803). In and polished six-inch diameter mirrors. No craft reflector telescopes of enough power by looking through a telescope from the roof from Apollo 8. On the glass plate her imagination, and based on her one had ever before managed to produce re- to begin to make celestial observations of of her father’s workplace in Nantucket. our planet appeared in the back- Photo Credit: Hugh Talman knowledge of scientific advances flective mirrors of this size. The process of a type that had never before been possible. ground, with the moon in the fore- Glass magic lantern slide image of the Earth as seen from the of the time, this astronaut of a poet polishing the speculum metal that made up This was how he first began to measure the The most arresting image from this Smith- ground, just as if viewed from deep moon, ca., 1850-1900. National Museum of American History. regularly ventured out beyond the mirrors needed to result in a complete- height of the mountains on the moon and sonian Institution exhibit answered for me space. Only for Dickinson, instead our planet, somewhere out there, ly smooth surface. If the polishing process how he came to discover a previously un- a question I had long pondered concerning of on a television screen, she would through her verse crammed with were interrupted, even for a few seconds, known planet: Uranus. Dickinson’s extremely unusual perspec- have seen this image projected from a lan- forms, including speculative woodcuts in references to stars, comets, constellations especially during the final stages, the metal tive in “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” tern slide – the mass media of her day. newspapers, such as an illustration in the and, of course, the moon. could harden in such a way that the mirror The exhibit I caught, “Fantastic Worlds: of the earth seemingly viewed from outer New York Sun from 1835 that showed men would lose its sheen, becoming useless. Science and Fiction, 1780-1910” at the space: As this Smithsonian exhibit demonstrates, with batwings standing on the moon. And Sharon Hamilton is a writer who divides Caroline recorded in her journal that mak- National Museum of American History, re- observations from the Cape of Good Hope in 1865, Jules Verne’s From the Earth to her time between Ottawa, Ontario, and ing one of these seven-inch mirrors required minded me just how profoundly Herschel’s Grand go the Years – in the using a 20-foot reflector telescope, the larg- the Moon (De la Terre à la lune) included Spring Brook, Prince Edward Island. Her William to work for 16 uninterrupted hours, telescopes came to affect progress and ex- Crescent – above them – est working telescope of the time, made by detailed drawings of lunar exploration. The last contribution to the Bulletin was “Nec- in the course of which the mirror never left citement about astronomy in the late 18th Worlds scoop their Arcs – Sir John F. W. Herschel (William’s son), novel also predicted, with eerie prescience, tar of Infatuation: A Mennonite Coming-of- his hands. and early 19th centuries, including in Emily And Firmaments – row – and announced in 1847, provided the most that Americans would be the first people Age,” in Spring 2016.

30 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 31 Members’ News Members’ News

2017 EDIS Scholarship Awards Emily Dickinson Undergraduate Essay Prize

Graduate Student Scholarship Scholar Award The Emily Dickinson International Society offers a prize for undergraduate research on Emily Dickinson. We seek critical essays by undergraduates from institutions of all kinds, focusing on Dickinson’s poems or letters. Students at all levels are The 2017 EDIS Graduate Student Scholarship of $1000 has been The recipient of the 2017 EDIS Scholar Award of $2000 is eligible to submit. Papers should be 15 pages maximum. The winning essay will be published on the EDIS website, and the awarded to Clare Mullaney, of the University of Pennsylvania. Christa Holm Vogelius, assistant professor of American Liter- author will receive an award of $100. Clare works on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American ature at the University of Copenhagen, where she teadhes and literature, disability studies, and material text and material culture works on nineteenth-century literature and culture. Her articles To submit an essay for the prize, send copies of articles as anonymous word attachments, plus a cover letter with contact infor- studies. Her dissertation, “American Imprints: Disability and the have appeared in such publications as Amerikastudien, ESQ, mation to the following address by June 5, 2017: [email protected]. The essays will be distributed electronically to a panel Material Text, 1858-1932,” addresses how disability emerges as a and the Emily Dickinson Journal (2009). of nationally recognized scholars for judging. All submissions will be acknowledged and receive a response within a month. sociopolitical identity in response to the growth of print culture. Her project, “Dickinson’s Transnational Landscapes,” is a In her project, “‘Not to discover weak-/ness is/The Artifice of chapter in her book manuscript, Fair Copy: Gender, Originality, strength – ’: Emily Dickinson, Constraint, and a Crip Editorial and the Making of American Literature, which positions Theory,” she proposes that Dickinson’s poems, from her early fas- ekphrasis, or the literary description of visual art, and copying African-American Inflexions cicles to her later scraps, work to register the presence of disability practices more generally, as a means for writers to interrogate through the material text. Beginning the project by turning to late literary nationalism. In Dickinson’s canon, she argues, both By Vivian Pollak nineteenth-century literary critics who name Dickinson’s relation- ekphrasis and textual transcription practices serve as ways ship to disability in explicit – if not troubling – ways, she then of engaging with contemporary ideas around originality and The following report on a session from the 2016 International Conference in Paris was mistakenly left out of the Fall 2016 issue of attends to the physical environment in which Dickinson wrote, the developing American canon. What critics have called the Bulletin. The editor regrets the omission of this account of what was plainly a lively and inventive group of presentations. positioning the poet’s bouts of eyestrain and temporary blindness Dickinson’s planetary verse, she suggests, is both provincial in the mid-1860s alongside the temporal restrictions imposed by and transnational, but also haunted by the spectre of the nation he session on “African-American In- attention to poetics with cultural history Graduate Center who teaches at Queens Amherst’s industrialization and the nearby Hills Hat Factory to and literary nationalism that circulated in her exchanges with flexions” was well attended and con- during the slave era and into Jim Crow. College and Cooper Union, both in New suggest that Dickinson was a poet whose poems were premised on contemporaries like Higginson. T tained three papers that took different ap- York City. She describes herself as a com- constraint rather than “Possibility.” proaches to this seldom-discussed topic. In “’Odd secrets of the line’: The Poetics mitted educator. Amanda Licato developed the idea that of Emily Dickinson and African Ameri- race is no longer absent from readings of can Spirituals,” Wendy Tronrud noted that Maria Muresan was born in Romania and Dickinson but that more needs to be done. at least since 1950 a number of scholars lives in Paris, where she works on world In “’Upon a foreign shore / Haunted by such as Russell Ames, John Lovell, and poetries, oralities, and African fiction. Edenic Possibilities: 2017 Annual Meeting native lands’: Emily Dickinson and Ra- William Dargan have heard Dickinson in Her wide-ranging talk on “Unsettling the cial Masquerade,” she argued that public African American spirituals. Building on Map of Lyric: Dickinsonian Moments in The 2017 EDIS Annual Meeting will be The talks will be delivered by Grant Rosson racial conflict is replayed in D’s poetic their insights, Tronrud suggested a num- African-American Poetry of Experience” held August 11-13 in Amherst. It will in- and Clare Mullaney – recipient of the 2017 production, adducing an example from ber of key intersections such as a vocab- offered a reading of Dickinson’s abortion clude the usual popular features, such as EDIS Graduate Student Scholarship. an 1853 letter to her brother (L127) and ulary of movement; a context of physical tropes as defined by William Shurr inThe reading groups facilitated by well-known connecting it to the minstrel mask as de- confinement; the use of animal symbol- Marriage of Emily Dickinson. Muresan scholars, musical performances, tours of Grant Rosson, a graduate student in US Lit- scribed by Houston Baker. She stated that ism; quick, internal shifts in voice and extended his analysis to compare Dick- the museum, and a walk along the Emily erature at UCLA, will deliver a talk entitled Dickinson is very much aligned with a tone; and speaking in code, particularly inson’s imagination of abortion with that Dickinson Trail. “Dickinson’s Interiors: A Theory of Author- major track in African American litera- around the idea and geography of free- of Gwendolyn Brooks in “The Mother.” ship in the Todd Corrrespondence,” about ture that likened identity or subject po- dom. This latter point loops back to Lica- There was also analysis of theories of lyr- A special feature this year will be presenta- the letters exchanged between the poet and sitions to the concept of wearing masks, to’s interest in personae and masks. She ic pathos, experimental intimacy, riddle, tions of new scholarship by past participants Mabel Loomis Todd and Dickinson’s con- before offering a detailed reading of “The offered readings of poems such as “Going charm, and voice. in the Dickinson Critical Institute. The In- ception of authorship that emerges in it. Black Berry – wears a Thorn in his side to Heaven!” (Fr128) and “Just lost, when stitute, which will be in its fourth year, is an – ” (Fr548). Licato is a Ph.D candidate at I was saved!” (Fr132), arguing for Issac All the papers generated lively discus- afternoon-long seminar-style discussion in Clare Mullaney will deliver “‘Not to discov- Stanford University. The talk drew on her Watts’s hymns as a formal ground from sion, with the audience members rigous- which emerging Dickinson scholars work- er weak – / ness is / The Artifice of strength emerging dissertation, “Out from Behind which both Dickinson and the spirituals ly engaged in debates about Dickinson’s shop their research in a group with an estab- – ’: Emily Dickinson, Constraint, and an this Mask: Persona in African American more broadly draw and experiment. Tron- multiple connections and helping to de- lished scholar in the field. Early History of Print Disability.” Poetry, 1830-1930,” which merges formal dud is a Ph.D candidate at the CUNY fine her African-American inflexions.

32 | EDIS Bulletin May/June 2017 | 33 The Sweets of Pillage

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