The Emily Dickinson International Society

Volume 26, Number 1 May/June 2014 “The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality.” Emily Dickinson International Society

Officers

President: Martha Nell Smith Vice-President: Barbara Mossberg Secretary: Nancy Pridgen Treasurer: James C. Fraser

Board Members

Antoine Cazé Jonnie Guerra Nancy Pridgen Paul Crumbley Eleanor Heginbotham Eliza Richards Cindy Dickinson (Honorary Board Member) Suzanne Juhasz Martha Nell Smith Páraic Finnerty Barbara Mossberg Alexandra Socarides James C. Fraser Elizabeth Petrino Hiroko Uno Vivian Pollak Jane Wald (Honorary Board Member)

Legal Advisor: [Position Open] Chapter Development Chair: Nancy Pridgen Nominations Chair: Alexandra Socarides Book Review Editor: [Position Open] Membership Chair: Elizabeth Petrino Bulletin Editor: Daniel Manheim Dickinson and the Arts Chair: Barbara Dana Journal Editor: Cristanne Miller

Sustaining Members

Mary Elizabeth K. Bernhard Robert Eberwein Barbara Mossberg Richard Brantley James C. Fraser Martha Nell Smith Jane D. Eberwein Jonnie G. Guerra

Contributing Members

Antoine Cazé Linda Healy Daniel Manheim Carolyn L. Cooley Eleanor Heginbotham Ethan Tarasov LeeAnn Gorthey Suzanne Juhasz Robin Tarasov Niels Kjaer

EDIS gratefully acknowledges the generous financial contributions of these members.

EDIS Bulletin (ISSN 1055-3932) is published twice yearly, May/June and November/December, by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. Standard Mail non- profit postage is paid at Lexington, KY 40511. Membership in the Society is open to all persons with an interest in Emily Dickinson and her work. For further information, contact 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 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. 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, USA or [email protected]. Submission deadlines are March 1 (Spring issue) and September 1 (Fall issue). All articles become the property of the Bulletin. Back issues are available for $5.00 each from the editor. Copyright © 2014 by The Emily Dickinson International Society, Inc. The Bulletin is indexed in EBSCO, Humanities International Complete, and the MLA Bibliography. www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org In This Issue

Features Reviews 4 Writing with Miss Emily 27 New Publications By Burleigh Mutén Eliza Richards, ed., Emily Dickinson in Context 9 Dickinson, Death, and Doctrine in a High- Reviewed by Renée Bergland School Classroom By Michael Wall Jed Deppman, et. al., eds., Emily Dickinson and Philosophy 13 Collecting Emily Dickinson Reviewed by Seth Perlow By Joel Myerson Faith Barrett, To Fight Aloud is Very Brave 18 Was it Epilepsy? Reviewed by Jennifer Putzi By Norbert Hirschhorn and Polly Longsworth James Sulzer, The Voice at the Door; Despina 19 Inspired by Emily Lala Crist, Emily Dickinson: Goddess of the By Mary Jarvis Volcano Reviewed by David Garnes Series Burleigh Mutén, Miss Emily Reviewed by Marty Rhodes Figley 6 Teaching Dickinson Emily Dickinson Through Children’s Eyes Lea Bertani Vozar Newman, “Virgin Recluse” By James Sulzer and Rebel Series Editor, Marianne Noble Staff

15 Poet to Poet Dickinson and Presley, the Sacred and Pro- Members’ News fane, and I By Hans Ostrom 33 Obituary Series Editor, Jonnie Guerra David Porter, 1928 to 2013 By Christopher Benfey 21 Dickinson Scholars George Frisbie Whicher Memorial to David Porter By Paul Crumbley By Hiroko Uno Series Editor, Cindy MacKenzie 35 Annual Meeting in Amherst 24 What’s Your Story? Twenty Years as a Reviewer and Editor 39 Residue of Adz By Barbara Kelly Emily Dickinson and the Eclipse of 1860 Series Editor, Georgiana Strickland By Stephanie Wampler

Front Cover: an illustration of “A Bird, came down the Walk” (Fr359), by an 8th-grader in Nantucket. Three articles in this issue explore the pleasures and challenges of teaching Dickinson’s poetry to, respectively, elementary school, middle school, and high school students. Vi- sually and verbally, the students come up with many startling insights, reminding us that Dickinson can be accessible to readers of all ages.

The Editorial Assistant for this issue was Laura K. Zolman

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. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Copyright © 1929, 1935 by 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 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. Writing with Miss Emily By Burleigh Mutén

magine being a ten-year-old living in IAmherst, Massachusetts, 2013. Of course you know that Emily Dickinson is the most famous world citizen from your hometown. You’ve passed the big yellow brick house all your life. When your mom signs you up for a summer writing workshop about the life, times, and work of Dickinson, you wonder what it will be like.

I wondered what it would be like, myself – designing a workshop for ten- to twelve- year-olds to explore their own creative voices as they learn about Dickinson and hear her unique rhythm. What fun!

Leading a children’s writing workshop in Amherst about Emily Dickinson gave me Dickinson’s envelope poems prompted students to experiment with creative forms. a unique opportunity to incorporate several special venues including the Jones Library’s Special Collections Room, which houses, “Might I be able to take the children into the Here is an excerpt from eleven-year-old Bel- among other treasures, an original copy of ‘Northwest Passage’ at the Emily Dickinson la Greenbacher’s piece, penned in Lavinia’s the atlas Emily used when she was a student Museum where museumgoers are not usually voice: at Amherst Academy, as well as translations allowed?” I inquired. of her work in fourteen languages. My sister is the babbling brook, my sister “Yes,” affirmed Cindy Dickinson, the muse- is the calling wind. My sister is a sly fox. um’s program director. “Might the children be My sister is a timid deer. My sister is a dic- allowed to write right there, where Emily may tionary, my sister is my mother. My sister is have stopped midstream while baking, to jot Emily. Emily I love. down a few lines on a scrap of paper? Could we visit the place where Emily met with Sue (If you have ever had the privilege as an edu- and some of her cousins to recite her work, cator of witnessing a young writer’s astound- the very room where The Fortnightly Bumble ing talent, you know this is the moment when Bee was entitled with young Mattie?” the top of my head is taken off.)

“Yes” – after our tour of the Homestead, we A few days later, as we gathered outside the were generously granted permission on the Evergreens, Cindy provided the young au- second day of the workshop to sit upon the thors with blank calling cards to design and steep, back stairway off the pantry and on the place in the wide copper bowl in the Ever- pantry floor to write! The prompt was to de- greens’ elegant front hall. This was a special scribe what happened in that tiny, important thrill for the workshop writers, since they’d room, and some of the people who gathered excitedly discovered Miss Emily Elizabeth there to have private conversations. A pal- Dickinson’s calling card in the Special Col- pable exhilaration circulated behind the red lections at the Jones Library the day before. velvet curtain as the children wrote – pencils rapidly scratching across the recycled enve- And again we were allowed to write on the Bella Greenbacher rears her continents of light. lope scraps the children were given. premises – this time about the role Austin

4 | EDIS Bulletin Dickinson’s family played in Emily’s life. local cultural council grant and sponsored by The hands of some fly upward the moment I One girl wrote from the cook’s perspective. the museum, allowed me to share my passion announce the end of a writing session. They Another from the point of view of a friend for supporting young writers and my fascina- are not intimidated by the famous poet. She is asking for a lock of hair. tion with Dickinson. Whenever I teach Dick- their friendly, encouraging muse. inson to youngsters, I like to open with the Some of the children knew very little about fact that Dickinson loved children as much as Burleigh Mutén teaches Kindergarten at The Dickinson when we began our week together. she loved nature. Common School in Amherst. She will offer Some knew surprising details about her cor- her workshop again this coming summer. Her respondence with Higginson and Lavinia’s When ten-year-old Sasha Campbell read her book Miss Emily, illustrated by Matt Phelan, amazing discovery after Emily’s death. “She “I’m somebody” to the group, we cheered. was recently issued by Candlewick Press. didn’t title her poems,” said one girl. “She went to Mount Holyoke College in South I’m somebody Hadley, where I live,” added another. A num- you are too. ber of the girls in our group of twelve readily I’ll be somebody identified as poets themselves. with you. Since there’s a pair of us Ken, the one brave boy in our group, said Do tell! “I like to write, but I’m not a poet.” Later in We’re powerful the week, as soon as he finished writing the you know. following piece, he strode over to me and It’s horrid slipped it into my hand. to be nobody so quiet Poems don’t have Rules like a snake I caN do anything I WANT to sit long gone forever more anything can BE A poem and leave yourself to bake. (ExcEpt SToRies) Anyone Can wRite a pOe It’s humbling to write alongside young au- m thors. Their creativity is an easily accessible eVen mE and you wellspring. Most of our writing segments last Punctuation, doesn’T. matter: for twenty minutes. Reading aloud is an op- Morgan Brennan takes inspiration from writing Isn’t tHis SO Fun?#@// tion. Some private writers never read aloud. in the Homestead. I Can Even WRiTe LikE This ------

WhO CarEs AbOUt RuLes I dOn’T anD NeithHEr ShOUld You POEMS ArE aBout Expressing YOURself. I’mGoINg to WriTE a pOem Now!?/@:;,.

Ke N Wan g

Young writers vary in their skill like the rest of us. This workshop, which was funded by a Arianna Williams-Suarez left this invitation with her calling card.

EDIS Bulletin | 5 Teaching Dickinson

Series Editor, Marianne Noble

Teaching Dickinson is a periodical feature of the Bulletin. Anyone with stories about teaching experiences or narrative explorations of Dickinson pedagogy should submit proposals and drafts to the series editor: [email protected]. Emily Dickinson Through Children’s Eyes By James Sulzer

James Sulzer teaches English/Language Arts in grades 5-8 at the Nantucket New School. Most recently, he is the author of The Voice at the Door: A Novel of Emily Dickinson (reviewed in this issue of the Bulletin.)

here is a certain quality in some of known piece seemed to offer the right mix graders, more naïve in their reading, found TEmily Dickinson’s poems, a breath of of familiarity and uncertainty. meaning in the simple story that Dickinson childlike innocence, which seems to speak tells with such economy and drama. The directly to younger readers. We can’t know, It was December 10, an auspicious day. In eighth graders, more adult-like in their un- of course, if that was her intent. When Dick- both classes I began with the announce- derstanding, helped each other negotiate inson’s voice assumes a childlike tone, it ment that it was Emily’s birthday. The fifth Dickinson’s finely woven web of imagery may be a strategy intended for adult readers graders were excited by this news; they and consulted her quirky punctuation, at – a way to invite them into a common space, squirmed in their seats and smiled, and a times, for guidance. The result is two con- a shared image of childhood. few jaws dropped at the news that she had trasting views of a poetic landscape from been born 183 years earlier. By contrast, two different points of ascent on a mountain. Still, children do discover and read Emily the eighth graders were only mildly inter- Dickinson, and teachers such as myself do ested by the birthday news, but they looked Fifth Graders teach selected Dickinson poems to students up in interest when I told them that Em- in the early grades. Perhaps easing the way ily Dickinson was my favorite poet in the The fifth graders were sitting forward in for young readers of Dickinson, some of world. I informed both groups that Dick- their seats and waving their hands in the her images seem to lift off the page with inson had lived in the small Massachusetts air. They had all sorts of questions. I called the transparent buoyancy of soap bubbles. town of Amherst, about the size of our own on Ella first. “Was the person in the poem “There is no Frigate like a Book” offers, at town of Nantucket, but I offered few other Emily?” she asked, smiling as her friend least on the surface, such a lightness and biographical details. across the table crossed her arms and play- clarity. But Dickinson’s language can be dif- fully pretended to pout at not being called ficult and her imagery complex. What can a In both classes – there were fifteen fifth on first. I answered that I wasn’t sure; Emily young reader take away from a first encoun- graders and eight eighth graders – I gave Dickinson said that she often wrote poems ter with Dickinson? How might a child’s each student a printed copy of the poem. I from the point of view of a “supposed per- understanding differ from that of an adult? read it aloud twice and asked for volunteers, son” – someone other than herself. I turned And what can those differences reveal about who then read the poem aloud three or four the question around and asked the kids who the unique qualities of her poetry? more times. they thought the speaker was – an adult or a child? Isobel said she was pretty sure it Hoping to shed some light on these ques- From the outset in both classes, the students was a child, and everyone agreed. When I tions, I asked two different groups of my were entranced; they listened carefully, asked why, Katie explained, “Because kids students – a class of fifth graders and a class their brows compressed with concentration. love nature, and the person in the poem re- of eighth graders – to read an Emily Dickin- They seemed to enjoy hearing about the ally loves birds. Most adults aren’t like that son poem and respond to it with words and bird; some laughed out loud at the phrase, with nature.” artwork, all within the confines of a 45-min- “And ate the fellow, raw.” They frowned at ute period. The verse I chose was “A Bird, the conclusion and asked to hear the poem It was apparent that the fifth graders were came down the Walk – ” (Fr359) – a poem again. understanding the poem holistically, seeing that charms us at first with a welcoming do- the broad picture and placing it within the mestic scene, turns on an ambiguous phrase, But the reactions of the fifth and eighth context of their experience, rather than ana- and then flutters off into mystery. This well- graders were markedly different. The fifth lyzing such specifics as the poetic voice or

6 | EDIS Bulletin Teaching Dickinson

the structure of the metaphors. Emily Dick- speaker means by the sentence, “And he Finna, Grade 5: inson has created such a clear scenario in unrolled his feathers and rowed him softer this poem – the bird, the worm, the person home.” There were some puzzled faces, a – that it can be understandable at this level long pause. Then Anah raised her hand, a to a ten year old. shy smile on her face. She explained, “It’s saying the bird lifts its wings, like oars go- But I wanted to learn more about their re- ing up and down.” actions. “So, what did the poem make you feel?” I asked. “OMG, that’s right!” someone exclaimed, and as heads nodded around her, Anah’s Elena was the first to respond. “It made smile grew broader. I then asked a second me feel differently with each stanza. question: “Here, in the last stanza, what do Some of it was funny, some of it was a you think this means: ‘Butterflies off Banks little puzzling, and the rest makes me feel of Noon?’” Again, there was momentary si- calm.” Other students gave similar an- lence. Then Orion raised his hand, stroked swers, about feeling happy and, at times, his chin like a wise man, and proclaimed, a little worried. “It’s where the sun is, when it’s noon.” He In her picture Finna visualized the opening nodded sagely. Trying to hide my smile, I scene of the poem – the encounter between What was their understanding of the emo- doubted that I could have come up with a the bird and the worm. While the humor in tions of the two main characters in the better description myself. For almost fifty the rhyme of “saw” and “raw” seems, in a poem – the bird and the human? I asked the years I’ve have been puzzling over this way, to discount the suffering of the worm, fifth graders about the ambiguous phrase at phrase. Finna gave the worm strong emotions: the start of fourth stanza: “Like one in dan- shock and fear. As she explained succinctly ger, Cautious.” Who did that phrase refer I then asked the students to respond in writ- in her summary of the first stanza, “A bird to – the person or the bird? Almost unani- ing to a few questions, and finally (most bit a worm in half and ate it without cook- mously, the fifth graders responded that it important of all, from my point of view) to ing it.” Her drawing reveals a reader who was the bird who was in danger and cau- draw a picture of the poem or of a scene is alive to the fearsome side of nature – a tious. from the poem. view that Dickinson articulates more fully in some other poems, such as “The Whole of it This reading made sense to them, given Though poems exist in the medium of came not at once”: “The Cat reprieves the their knowledge of the world and their un- words, a reader’s experience of a poem in- mouse/She eases from her teeth/Just long derstanding of the perils of being small; habits some realm that is beyond words. I enough for Hope to tease – /Then mashes it and the poem does leave itself open to this suspect that we understand poems as much to death – ” (Fr485). interpretation, though Dickinson’s punc- in mental images as in verbal constructs, tuation (ambiguous as always) seems to and artwork may offer the most direct route Finna’s piece of artwork also raises the is- suggest otherwise. In a way, the fifth grad- to some of those images. sue of perspective. Though the poem de- ers’ understanding of the phrase reveals tails a meeting between a person and a bird, something basic about Dickinson’s multi- The pictures by the fifth graders revealed an Finna’s generous response to the poem level artistry. She presents a situation – a understanding that relied largely on their in- allowed her to give voice to the inner life bird on a walk, a person offering it food tuitive grasp of the world, and less on textual of even the smallest creature, the worm. It – that is accessible at one level to a ten details such as specific imagery. But the pic- seems that a child’s mind can inhabit every year old, but she also offers textual clues tures also revealed that they read the poem corner of this poem. The dramatic scenario (as we will see in the eighth graders’ reac- carefully, came to their own understanding that Emily Dickinson has created is compel- tions) that complicate, deepen, and enrich of the characters in the poem, and interpret- ling enough to bring a ten year old fully into the poem. In other words, the Dickinson ed the larger meanings (including a sense of the world of the poem. landscape is so textured and nuanced that the poet) within their own experience and it will look different from different points worldview. Elena, Grade 5 (next page): on the mountain. Here are two representative pictures from Elena’s artwork shows a bird that is full of I also asked the fifth graders about two fifth graders, coupled with the student’s own personality and inquisitiveness. From the specific phrases. First, I asked what the words and some comments from me: alertness of Elena’s bird, we can see that she

EDIS Bulletin | 7 Teaching Dickinson

And they gave a fuller explanation of the rowing metaphor. John said that it was about “flying away, almost like a rowing action,” and Caroline traced the image farther into the final stanza, “She is implying that the air is like water – birds rowing – butterflies swimming.”

“Why would she be implying that?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Beats me.” I shrugged too. The extension of this water image to butterflies and the banks of noon has always puzzled me. But before I could say anything else, Ramon reduced us all has internalized Dickinson’s portrait of a to laughter. “So would the fish be walk- John also had his own, very specific inter- living, purposeful being who glances about, ing?” he asked, raising one eyebrow ever pretations of the details that Dickinson of- feels fear, refuses an offered crumb, and flut- so slightly. fers the reader. He wrote, “I think the bird’s ters off to his “home.” Elena wrote: “This eyes symbolize an inner insecurity and fear. bird is special to her. Also, this meeting was The eighth graders quickly came up with The bird flying away shows fear, restless- a special one. Emily is trying to tell us that more questions and offered more opinions. ness and carefulness. She [Dickinson] also she takes the time to notice little things – and Angela asked, “Is this a poem about a girl or shows a love for ornithology and nature she is fascinated by nature.” a boy?” (I said I didn’t know.) They theorized through the stanza with the oars along with that the bird was either a catbird, because of the butterflies. This poem shows insecurity, Elena also speculated on Emily Dickinson’s its “velvet head,” or a robin, because robins love, fear, kindness and gratitude.” personality, based on what she saw in the eat worms. And they asked about the histori- poem and from her own ten years of expe- cal context. Ramon inquired, “Did Emily Caroline, Grade 8: rience: “I think she doesn’t have any best Dickinson write this during a war?” friends, but she probably has a few friends . . . she’d rather study nature or write poetry I replied, “Yes, as a matter of fact – dur- than do any ‘normal’ stuff.” Her holistic re- ing the Civil War. Why do you ask?” action to the poem is representative of the fifth graders’ response in general; moreover, “The bird could be an innocent person it suggests that Emily Dickinson’s verbal . . . seeing someone could be like see- magic sprinkles enough clues about her- ing a soldier, and then running away.” self for even her youngest readers to form a Other eighth graders nodded at this in- sense of her uniqueness. terpretation.

Eighth Graders When compared to the fifth graders’ drawings, the eighth graders’ artwork By contrast, the eighth graders looked more revealed more attention to the specif- closely at the details of syntax, punctuation, ics of metaphor as well as the drama of the Caroline’s picture represents the poem as and imagery in constructing their sense of meeting between bird and person. an interaction. The speaker holds out the the poem. For instance, all but one eighth crumb; the bird looks on cautiously, with grader thought that “Like one in danger, John, Grade 8: eyes very much like the frightened beads Cautious,” referred to the adult. Maggie described by the poet. Caroline wrote: “I pointed out that “cautious” was followed by John visualized one of the final images of think she is trying to portray a meeting be- a comma, which meant that it “went with I.” the poem, giving a graphic interpretation of tween a person and a bird that is maybe They also – all but one – thought that the the phrase, “And rowed him softer Home – ” meant to represent how different she is speaker was an adult. “Kids can’t come up His artwork cleverly replicates Dickinson’s with metaphors like these,” Jack explained. lovely metaphor. Continued on Page 18

8 | EDIS Bulletin To complete the portfolio of essays about teaching, here is an account of teaching a well-known work by the poet to a group of excellent college-bound students at Etowah High School in Cherokee County, near Woodstock, Georgia. Many of the students reflect seriously over the poet’s struggles with religious orthodoxy, even as they are alert to inventions in form and diction. Michael Wall, an Atlanta na- tive, is enjoying his twenty-first year teaching English. A former Navy Supply Corps officer, he lives in Woodstock with his wife, Rachel, and children, Parker and Elaine. Dickinson, Death, and Doctrine in a High School Classroom

By Michael Wall

n my AP Lit class, students beneficial for students to en- Iare determined to achieve the gage the most challenging and elusive 5 on the AP exam. Their to try to devise a responsive and motivation to claim such a dif- clear interpretation that honors ficult prize is so intense that it the ambiguity of the poem. sometimes transforms my high We call it “developing UMA”, school classroom into a prov- (ultimate mental awareness, a ing ground. They are looking phrase our Laurence Perrine for the “truth” in literature, and text employs). My students like they will analyze, debate, re- the sound of the acronym; it search, question, and speculate works for us. into the smallest details in their effort to defend their findings. One day last spring, my stu- My role as instructor includes dents and I pursued UMA in moderator, mediator, and guide a discussion of “Safe in their as the kids wrestle with the Alabaster Chambers” (Fr124) English poetry, prose, and dra- that took us beyond the class- ma I spread before them. Em- room to that place that certain ily Dickinson is a favorite. The texts unlock. Without intro- students respond with curios- duction, we read the poem ity to her wide range in subject aloud, and then began by fo- matter and complexity, which cusing on the imagery-rich Michael Wall at home, as photographed by his wife, who sends strikes them as foreign, yet also first stanza. assurance that he is better in person. familiar. For competitive and tenacious students like mine, her metaphysi- biguity, that makes her poems from the grave Safe in their Alabaster Chambers – cal poetry can make for a lively and delight- exhilarating for both me and my seniors. It Untouched by Morning – fully volatile class. might have something to do with my particu- And untouched by noon – lar audience, too. Although ours is a public Sleep the meek members of the Our AP classes meet daily, and we spend school, many of my students are devoutly re- Resurrection, much of our time reading and discussing po- ligious – more than a few carry their Bibles Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone – etry. The Dickinson poems that elicit our best with them. I always try to treat spiritual mat- (Fr124) discussion concern death, perhaps because ters head-on; religious or not, my students ex- they are some of her most striking, thought- pect candor as we deal with meaning-of-life Joey, bound for Emory and my most vo- provoking, and elusive. It is certainly un- issues in literature. cal student, got the conversation started. usual for a person to speak from the grave, of “The first sentence is blunt, describing the course, but it is that, combined with Dickin- Even though Dickinson’s poems usually defy dead as ‘Safe’ in their graves. I think she son’s blend of imagination, religion, and am- precise interpretation, I have found that it is means they are unaffected by the things of

EDIS Bulletin | 9 this world. Details that matter to the living, ies of non-believers will be cast in the lake “I don’t think she is,” he said, looking straight such as times of day, are meaningless to the of fire.” at me. dead.” I listened to the debate as to whether or not “Then why does she call them ‘meek’? What I asked, “Why does she refer to them as Dickinson was implying that the fate of the does that mean?” ‘members of the Resurrection’ rather than non-believers was an eternity apart from God simply the dead?” – unsafe. Since the argument was likely going Finally, he murmured, “Well, they don’t do to be un-resolvable, after a while, I decided to anything. They just lie there. They aren’t ac- Joey answered right away. “To me she is ac- push them in another direction, asking about tive anymore.” knowledging that there will be a ‘resurrection the sound elements of the poem. I called on of the body’ that will take place at Christ’s Cameron, who was currently number one in I smiled. “That’s certainly true,” I said. “In second-coming.” the class. He hesitated only a moment. fact, you could say they have withdrawn from all interaction with the outside world.” Then Megan asked, “By singling out ‘mem- “This stanza is highly euphonious with the There is some chuckling. bers of the Resurrection’, could the speaker assonance in line one, the repetition of ‘un- be making a positive statement about those touched’ in lines two and three, both asso- Then Joey said, “I think she chose meek as specific ‘believers’ versus the non-believ- nance and alliteration in line four, and the much for sound as for meaning. ‘Meek mem- ers?” alliteration in lines four and five.” bers’ sounds better. But no matter what they were in life, all the dead become meek as they Kaylea responded, “Are you implying that I quickly followed with, “How does the withdraw from life.” the ‘non-members’ are not safe?” sound affect tone and meaning?” Jacob is busy leafing through his Bible. He Joey answered, “All the dead, believers Danielle, who had recently professed her points out that Dickinson’s choice of “meek” or not, are in their graves “untouched” love for poetry, said, “Well, I don’t think could allude to Psalms 37:11 and Matthew by the living world. But that will change she is mocking the dead by making it sound 5:5. “The meek shall inherit the earth,” he with Christ’s second-coming. Read “Rev- like that. It is simply matter-of-fact, and the says. “When?” I ask. He looks serious and elation.” Then, the resurrected bodies of sounds make it more comforting… even ap- responds, “It will be after Christ’s return… Christ’s followers will be perfected and pealing.” after the Resurrection.” “What about the last will dwell with Him forever, while the bod- line – the ‘Rafter’ and the ‘Roof,’” I asked. Several nodded their heads in agreement, Megan responds quickly. “The satin lines the and Ansley added, coffin. The stone is the headstone. It is their “It’s not an un- resting place.” pleasant image of the grave.” So, our discussion in general viewed this stanza as expressing a scripturally-informed “Why does she call faith in conventional Christian promises of the dead ‘meek mem- the afterlife, and comforting, reassuring feel- bers of the Resurrec- ings about death, which seemed safe and tion,’” I asked. There relaxing. “Meek” is doctrine, not satire. We was silence for a then turned our attention to the second stanza few moments, and that provides contrast – what takes place on no hands went up. the earth “above” the dead. I decided to call on Robert, who rarely Grand go the Years, volunteers. “Is she In the Crescent above them – being sarcastic to- Worlds scoop their Arcs – ward the dead, Rob- And Firmaments – row – The above image is a scan of a charcoal drawing done by one ert?” I waited while Diadems – drop – of Michael Wall’s students, Ashley Schieffelbein. he pondered. And Doges – surrender –

10 | EDIS Bulletin Soundless as Dots, which they had read in American lit. We fo- I directed the discussion to John Donne’s “At On a Disc of Snow. cused on the last four lines: the round earth’s imagined corners,” in which the speaker is enthusiastic about the Second- My students read this stanza as straightfor- Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet Coming in theory, but anxious about his own ward as well. Life above ground goes on and Feels shorter than the Day status with respect to that happy future. After on, the poem says, but to the dead, none of I first surmised the Horses’ Heads we read the poem twice, I asked if anyone that matters. They are out of the action, liter- Were toward Eternity – (Fr479) saw a connection to “Alabaster Chambers.” ally safe. Momentous earthly events, such as kingdoms won and lost, have no more impact I asked, “Can someone explain how the two Rebecca, perhaps my strongest writer, specu- on those “waiting” below than does the snow poems are similar?” lated that Dickinson may have recently read falling on their graves. The actual graves may Donne’s poem before composing hers: “Don- be “scooped,” becoming gradually shallower, Chris answered. “In this poem, the speaker ne’s speaker calls for the Second-Coming, but existence below ground is serene com- narrates her own death, which I think came as but then he asks God to help him repent be- pared to life above. Aurally, we noted, this a surprise, and then her journey to the grave. fore he becomes one of the buried dead. It’s stanza suggests four couplets, and again the As she says, centuries have passed since she completely personal and sincere. Dickinson’s alliteration in the last four lines is quite pleas- arrived, but time passes quickly in the grave. third-person speaker is just making an obser- ing to the ear. In the other poem, the speaker is alive and vation. I think it’s the speaker’s distance that commenting how life keeps moving regard- gives it a cold feeling compared to Donne’s Walter raised his hand. “In reality, why would less of the dead. Big, important events take passion.” the dead care what happens on the Earth any- place, but they don’t matter to the dead. I way? I think her main point is the passing think both poems are really about time pass- I looked at Rebecca. “Be more specific. What of time. Millennia can pass, and all kinds of ing.” do you mean by distance and cold?” changes can take place above ground, but none of it matters to the dead.” “What does ‘Eternity’ mean?” I asked. Molly She thought a moment, then said, “Compared volunteered to search the Dickinson Lexicon, to Donne’s impassioned speaker who is con- “However,” I said, “by making no further and she reported several definitions: “The cerned with his own salvation, Dickinson’s comment about the dead, is she denying first is ‘life after death,’ then ‘heaven,’ then speaker is detached, more objective, just a there will be a Second-Coming – that the ‘everlasting life,’” she said. “They all seem to passive observer.” dead will just remain in their ‘safe cham- be spiritual in nature, even specifically God.” bers’ forever?” I had to smile. “Rebecca,” I say, “I believe Joey had been gazing at the ceiling, but he cold is exactly how Susan Dickinson said that Joey had his Bible open now, and he said, looked at me and said, “It’s like she is all poem made her feel when Emily first sent it “This is from Psalm 90, verses 3 and 4: ‘You caught up with the concept of time and how to her.” Rebecca was pleased and so was I. return man to dust and say, “Return, O chil- it is irrelevant, but her focus is the body, not dren of man!” For a thousand years in your the soul.” I paced the room a bit; the kids were actually sight are but as yesterday when it is past or as silent. a watch in the night.’” The class was silent as Linda, who had once said we should not dis- Joey continued. “This passage means that in cuss religion in school, asked, “How do we Danielle raised her hand. “I think Dickinson eternity, time passes much like when we are know she is not simply denying the existence knows that time is irrelevant, that God will asleep, that a thousand years are literally like of the soul?” return in His own time. Her speaker does not a few hours.” So maybe Dickinson is focus- need to explain further. Actually, I suppose he ing on how the sleep of the dead may seem Joey glared at her. “One, she never mentions can’t. He doesn’t know God’s mind.” That long from the point of view of the living, but the soul, so it’s not part of the discussion. thought led to more quiet reflection. it is only a moment from the point of view of Two, she knew the Bible, and she certainly eternity. The room was quiet for a few mo- knew about the difference between body and Then, just before the bell rang, Theresa said, ments while that thought sank in. soul at death.” Linda did not respond, but I “Remember in Our Town how the dead are could tell she was unconvinced. portrayed as being more focused on ‘some- It was a good point to transition. We turned to thing eternal’? When Emily returns to the liv- “Because I could not stop for Death.” They To provide another vantage point on Dickin- ing, she can’t stand that life moves so fast. were all familiar with this famous poem, son’s treatment of the immortality of the soul, Well, remember that the Stage Manager com-

EDIS Bulletin | 11 ments that ‘only poets and saints’ appreci- publication if it had been intended as blasphe- the private poet ceased church-going and ate life while they live it. Isn’t that kind of mous. Recalling that this was one of the four admitted to religious skepticism, more pre- ironic?” Indeed. poems that Dickinson sent Higginson with cisely she ceased going anywhere beyond her her initial letter to him in April 1862, I asked, own yard. We know, too, that she continued We may not have achieved UMA, but we “Would she have been so bold as to send a to read her Bible and wrote some poems and had definitely tried, and we felt pretty good blasphemous poem to a stranger, a man she letters that clearly express belief and faith. about our discoveries. The next day I showed sought out for honest criticism of her work?” the students Helen Vendler’s essay on “Safe “I don’t think we can pin her down, and I in their Alabaster Chambers.” and they were None of my students had read the poem as doubt she would want us to define her,” I say. shocked at the discrepancy between inter- mocking religion, but when I challenged “Perhaps ‘Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers’ pretations. Vendler calls the poem “blasphe- them with Vendler’s reading, they conceded reveals truths and also the doubts she em- mous” and adamantly asserts that Dickinson, that there is ambiguity enough for a range of braced.” who “doubted that the dead would be raised,” interpretation. wrote this poem to satirize believers who go That year, 12 out of my 48 students scored the to the grave deluded. She finds it ironic that Molly concluded, “To me it depends on coveted 5 on the AP exam, and many scored the “safe” dead are untouched by the sun’s whether you believe what the Bible says or 4 and 3. That was a very good year. But all light and warmth. She also prefers Dickin- not. Her words are in-line with Scripture – of them, I assert, aspired towards and strug- son’s second version which uses “lie” rather unless someone infers a mocking tone.” gled to develop ultimate mental awareness. than “sleep” because it implies that there will Discovering UMA is a personal and unique be no awakening. Learning that she changed “sleep” to “lie” journey. In my classes, it must begin with in the revision added to the puzzle, and that the students’ experiences and convictions. It What were we to make of the dramatic differ- margin of imprecision frustrated some of my requires audacious candor regarding beliefs ence between our discussion and Vendler’s? students. They wanted to know the woman by and values. It also requires the vantage point We looked more closely at Vendler. In her es- her poetry. I pointed out to them how far apart of outsiders who help us ask the questions our say, Vendler observes that Dickinson’s long- Dickinson and Donne may seem as people own experience may not have encouraged us time correspondent Thomas Wentworth Hig- and poets, yet noted that some scholars find to ask. Still, after listening to the experts, it ginson had published the poem in Christian common ground. Donne boldly expresses his always comes back to what it has always Union in 1898. Vendler argues that he did faith in longer explicit verse. Dickinson be- been: an interaction between an inquiring, so in an attempt to portray her as a Christian gins with a bold statement, but her compact educated, receptive mind and a provocative, poet. My students doubted that Higginson verse also leaves room for questions about brilliantly idiosyncratic poet. A supportive would have printed this poem in a Christian what is not said. I reminded them that while teacher doesn’t hurt.

Photo Credit: Laura Zolman Young readers pay their respects outside of the classroom as well. Items seen on Emily Dickinson’s headstone in the Amherst Cemetery on an April afternoon include a troll, a pair of sunglasses, some floral soap , and an eraser wider than the sky.

12 | EDIS Bulletin This is the third in a series of, currently, four articles by collectors of books, letters, and other objects related to the poet. Any other col- lectors who would like to discuss their experiences are encouraged to contact the editor of the Bulletin. Collecting Emily Dickinson By Joel Myerson

began accumulating works by and and fun. I travelled to Boston a couple times son, but more Emerson and starting on Walt I about Emily Dickinson while in gradu- a year to do research, and booking in the Whitman, I did not worry about condition ate school in the late 1960s. As a budding seventies was wonderful: in Boston, Good- but bought as many copies in as reason- scholar of textual editing, descriptive bibli- speed’s had two stores, Ernie Starr and Sam able condition as possible (but not rebound ography, and book history, I saw in Dickin- Morrill were on Kingston Street, George ones because that destroyed bibliographical son real potential for a future project. I was Gloss’ Brattle had settled into its location on evidence). I also pretty much avoided fine familiar with the controversies over the ed- West Street, Anne and David Bromer were press editions or artists’ books, which were iting of her poems and the dispersion of her opposite the Public Library and Avenue Vic- often more expensive than first editions. manuscripts, but no one had actually dealt tor Hugo was nearby on Newbury Street, with the business of publishing (as opposed and David and Mary O’Neal, Priscilla Juve- I looked forward to the Dickinson bibliog- to editing) her books: even Jacob Blanck’s lis, and Buddenbrooks were just setting up raphy while I was completing the one on magisterial Bibliography of American Lit- shop; in Cambridge, there was another Starr, Emerson because it promised to be short. erature dealt with first edition publications Pangloss, and Ahab books. And, whenever After all, Emerson was a prolific author in a mere seven pages. I went to libraries for research or to con- over his forty-year career, and many of ferences, there were local shops to hunt his works went out of copyright in the late My first descriptive bibliography, though, through. And none of them had comfortable nineteenth-century, resulting in hundreds of was of Margaret Fuller, and encouraged by leather reading chairs, baristas, or lattes. reprintings of individual titles and essays. my colleague Matt Bruccoli, who edited the The latter books were especially challeng- Pittsburgh Series in Bibliography, I took on I was also fortunate to work at libraries ing because the plates from one publisher Ralph Waldo Emerson next. This was quite when it was still possible to do so without were loaned or rented to another, and track- a project, resulting in an 802 page book. restrictions. I had a stack access pass to the ing down the genealogy of these reprintings I read through old publishers’ advertise- Library of Congress and when I paged lit- was frustrating. Also, many of the reprint ments, the complete run of Books in Print, erally every Dickinson and Emerson book firms had various “series” in which their and manuscript copyright records; sent let- at the old British Library on Great Russell books appeared, and I had to try and find ters to hundreds of American and British Street, they brought them to me in a series them all. In Dickinson, though, I had an au- libraries asking about their holdings; and of carts. And I snagged a stack access pass thor who died before her first book-length visited some thirty libraries in the U.S., to the new section of the Bodleian Library in work was published, and who stayed in Canada, and Britain. As I prepared to carry Oxford, only to discover that the call num- copyright through the mid-twentieth cen- my three-inch-thick “bible” (the work-in- bers were arranged in the order in which the tury. There was no evidence of her publica- progress) to various libraries, I realized that, books were accessioned, not in any system tion history among her own private papers, if I was going to do a descriptive bibliogra- normally recognized by librarians, resulting and the papers of most of her editors were phy of Dickinson next, then I should aim for in much exercise as I shuffled from floor to available. Because she published so few a “twofer” and work up her books as well. floor, and much needed respite in the King’s books compared to Emerson, I was able to Arms pub across the street. describe each work in much greater detail. By this time I had put together a fairly de- cent collection of post-1900 Dickinson But why collect Dickinson? Don’t libraries Also, I was able to track down the records works, so I set about, as I have with all the have copies of her books? As I discovered of her first publisher, Roberts Brothers, authors I collect, to assemble one copy of in doing my other bibliographies, there is which had been purchased by Little, Brown every edition, printing, issue, and state of no substitute for having multiple copies on in 1898. In working on Emerson, I discov- every title wholly by her, as well as foreign- hand to examine for variations in their texts, ered that Houghton Mifflin had the original language editions that printed English texts bindings, and other physical attributes. Be- contracts between Emerson and the firm along with translations. This was, of course, cause I was collecting on a newly-promoted and its predecessors, dating back to the impossible, which made it a lifelong project associate professor’s salary not just Dickin- 1850s, in its office in Boston, because one

EDIS Bulletin | 13 of its Emerson titles was still in print, thus money then, to be sure, but a purchase that ems inscribed by Dickinson, then please let making him a “current” author. Therefore, ultimately saved me both time and money me know. A few of them actually figured I approached Little, Brown about the Rob- in assembling my collection). But I lacked a out the impossibility of such a search. I do erts Brothers costbooks, and when they copy of the first printing ofPoems . That hole have, however, the closest thing: three cop- graciously allowed me into their vault, I was filled in 1987 by Malcolm Ferguson, a ies, one of each series of Poems, inscribed discovered the costbooks, which I was told, book scout in Concord, Massachusetts. Mal- by Lavinia Dickinson. were kept there because they looked “old.” colm used to park his car in front of the First With these, I was able to precisely state the Parish church during the annual Thoreau My Emily Dickinson collection not only number of copies printed of all of her works Society meeting and deal books from his served as the basis for my descriptive bibli- through 1898. trunk to favored customers. One year when ography, but was a lot of fun in assembling. he needed to fix his roof, he sold me his copy I’m up to nearly five hundred volumes now I purchased the core of my collection in of Poems, discounted at $412.50 because it (and can brag that I’ve “read” every one of 1980 from Ernie Starr. I loved his store: be- lacked the front endpaper, which did not them), and have of late started to buy fine sides normal bookshelves, he had towers of discourage me in the least, especially since I press and artists’ books with the same en- orange crates filled with books and a flash- knew what I’d have to pay if that single leaf thusiasm as a gambler drawing to an inside light with which to see them in the murk of of paper was present (in 1998 I paid $1500 straight – I must fill that gap in the collec- the back room. I walked into Ernie’s one for a copy in very good condition). tion. I mourn the passing of bricks and mor- day and saw a bunch of Dickinson volumes, tar bookshops, where I actually got to meet nearly all published before 1915. The possi- When I started collecting in the late 1970s, dealers and handle books, itself an educa- bility of buying all those books at once was the prices were low, which is how I could tional experience (I learned more from book- too good to pass up, and we negotiated a afford to collect on an academic’s salary. To dealers than I ever have from librarians). At price of $1250 for some three dozen (a lot of give examples of how prices have changed the same time, I embrace the internet, which in the last couple decades, here’s what I has emptied America’s attic onto eBay, al- paid and when, and then the highest cur- lows dealers all over the world to make their rent price for the book listed on the in- wares accessible, and generally places on ternet: A Masque of Poets (1980, $150; sale items usually thought too inexpensive now, $650), Poems (1987, $412.50; to put in printed catalogues. I do, though, 1998, $1500; now, $8500-$30,000), Let- abhor print on demand titles that clutter up ters (1980-1992, $50-$150; now $400), sites like eBay and distract from real books. Poems: Third Series (1980, $100; 1998, All in all, this is an exciting period in which $15; now, $4000), and Hitchcock’s A to collect Dickinson, even though prices are Handbook of Amherst (1987, $27.50; up and stocks of available titles are down. now, $400). And, often, the price did not Still, I yearn for the days when, after buy- reflect the importance of the book. I paid ing books in Boston, I would return home $375 in 1982 for a first London edition to find a number of large boxes full of books of Poems (now, $1500), but the next year ready to open and view again; now, I spend spent $150 for a copy in what may be a the same amount of money but put the one unique trial binding. book in my pocket.

Finally, the titles I consider the real gems of my collection. In 2002 Jack Hanrahan Joel Myerson, Carolina Distinguished sold me copies of the first two series Professor of American Literature, Emeri- of Poems in the white leather binding, tus, University of South Carolina, has pre- by far the rarest format. I have Nathan pared descriptive primary bibliographies Haskell Dole’s copy of A Masque of Po- of Dickinson, Emerson, Fuller, Theodore ets, with his identification of contribu- Parker, and Walt Whitman. The Joel My- tors. But the real treasure is related to erson Collection of Nineteenth-Century a joke I used to tell my classes. If any American Literature, some 12,000 volumes Lavinia’s inscription to a copy of the 1890 of them found, I said, the “black tulip” and over 200 manuscripts, is at the Univer- edition of Poems. of Dickinson collecting, a copy of Po- sity of South Carolina library.

14 | EDIS Bulletin Poet to Poet

Series Editor, Jonnie Guerra Dickinson and Presley, the Sacred and Profane, and I By Hans Ostrom This issue’s featured poet is Hans Ostrom, professor of African American studies and English at the University of Puget Sound in Ta- coma, Washington. Ostrom is the author of two books on Langston Hughes and the coeditor of the 5-volume Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Studies and an essay collection titled Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy. He also has published three novels, Three to Get Ready, Honoring Juanita, and Without One, as well as two poetry collections, The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006 and, most recently, Clear a Place for Good. Ostrom’s poetry and short fiction have appeared in a variety of anthologies and literary journals. Participants in the Society’s 2013 annual meeting in Cleveland, Emily Rocks, may remember that I read Ostrom’s entertaining poem, “Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley,” during our evening of cabaret performances. I am pleased to present his equally entertaining reflections on his connection to and appreciation for Emily Dickinson as part of the Poet to Poet series.

bout twenty-five years ago, I was watching a documentary Aabout Elvis Presley. In a scene from it, a member of Elvis’s Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven entourage – the so-called Memphis Mafia – calls Elvis “E.” For reasons I have yet to identify, I connected the “E” to Emily Dickin- They call each other ‘E.’ Elvis picks son and imagined someone calling her “E.” The idea amused me, wildflowers near the river and brings as does the notion of a parallel Dickinson entourage, an Amherst them to Emily. She explains half-rhymes to him. Mafia. In heaven Emily wears her hair long, sports Not long thereafter, at any rate, I began to write a poem in which Levis and western blouses with rhinestones. Elvis and Emily meet. A logical poet, I asked myself, “Where could Elvis is lean again, wears baggy trousers they meet?” Answer: “In a poem.” Second answer: “In Heaven.” and T-shirts, a letterman’s jacket from Tupelo High. The poem as it eventually turned out appears at right. They take long walks and often hold hands. She prefers they remain just friends. Forever. My sense of Dickinson’s mind and spirit, to the extent one may infer those by reading her work, is that she was immensely broad- Emily’s poems now contain naugahyde, Cadillacs, minded, witty, and ready to be surprised. Therefore, I assumed she Electricity, jets, TV, Little Richard and Richard would be delighted to meet Elvis and learn about such things as Nixon. The rock-a-billy rhythm makes her smile. Levi jeans and rhinestones and such people as Little Richard and Richard Nixon. Elvis likes himself with style. This afternoon he will play guitar and sing “I Taste A Liquor Second, I imagined she would welcome Elvis’s friendship but set Never Brewed” to the tune of “Love Me Tender.” firm boundaries. As to Elvis, I figured he couldn’t help but hit on her at least once, even in Heaven, but would respect her wishes. Emily will clap and harmonize. Alone I also thought he’d be interested in her sense of craft, hence the in their cabins later, they’ll listen to the river part about half-rhymes. It’s important to recall that Elvis was not and nap. They will not think of Amherst merely a performer but a student of music and a fine producer of recordings. or Las Vegas. They know why God made them roommates. It’s because America Overall, I probably was concerned chiefly with pleasing myself – was their hometown. It’s because poets are selfish – and getting these two American icons together did please me, no end. God is a thing without feathers. It’s because There is often much whimsy in Dickinson’s poetry and in Elvis’s God wears blue suede shoes. performances, so I hoped the poem would reflect a bit of that, too,

EDIS Bulletin | 15 although I had no delusions about trying to to the short lyric continues to amaze. The way compete with either of them. Of course, there she constructs a tough-minded but vulnerable, are other possible parallels between Dickin- learned but plain-spoken, reserved persona is, son and Presley. Both are American originals to my mind, as absolutely crucial to American even as both draw on longstanding American literature as Whitman’s creation of his voluble, cultural traditions: Dickinson improvises upon self-centered, and grandiose poetic persona. the form of the hymn, and Elvis is hugely More than that, she is as playful as a jazz mu- influenced by African American spirituals, sician and as consistently astute as any clever blues, and rhythm & blues. Modern poet, including Auden. And her catholic interests: trains, snakes, death, flies Few if any poets can foresee what the “career” buzzing in a death-room, publication (which, of a poem will be, to use Karl Shapiro’s term. in Fr788, she calls “the Auction/of the Mind”), The Elvis and Emily poem first appeared in a passion, depression, despair, and states of small literary magazine called the Sucharno- mind not easily categorized. Her imagery is as chee Review. From there it was re-published sharp as that of any Imagist, but it is a part of a in books of mine, in anthologies, and even in larger whole. She does parade her reading-life a text that is used in high school advanced- the way Eliot and Pound did, but she comes placement courses in the United States. When off as quicker, smarter, and more emotionally the Internet came along, it found more audi- Photo Credit: Nathan Aune wise than they. ences and continues to find them. sacred: he grew up around gospel music, and I think I sensed most of this richness, at some It seems many readers can relate to the oddball he recorded it. level, when I first began reading her work in pairing, to Dickinson’s reticence and Elvis’s high school. However, I had to overcome not renewal, and to the aforementioned whimsy. I don’t think we catch Dickinson being liter- so much my own resistance to her work as ally profane, but her poems about death and others’ resistance to it. Others made way too Sacred and Profane? Eternity certainly aren’t conventionally pious, much of the capitalization and dashes. Others either. turned her into an eccentric recluse, a feminist But it wasn’t until Rita Dove republished the icon, a pretty poet, and/or “difficult.” poem and commented on it that I saw how From my point of view, the eccentric Ameri- some people might derive deeper meaning, so canness of Emily and Elvis complicates the Even more sophisticated, academic views of to speak, from the poem. Dove suggested the issue of the sacred versus the profane. her sometimes muddy the waters unnecessar- poem is in part about the sacred and (or ver- ily. To poets and to those who would under- sus) the profane, with Dickinson representing Dickinson and I stand the craft of writing poetry, then, I would the former and Elvis the latter. suggest simply that you read the poems indis- But this is a publication about Dickinson, not criminately, be ready to learn from the least I do see what she was getting at. Dickinson is about Dickinson and Presley, so let me say a famous poems, and soak it all in. What is “it”? certainly dignified, especially in comparison to few words about my attitude toward Dickson’s With her work, it could be anything. Fitting a the public Presley, who could often be vulgar, work. polysyllabic word (which happens to be just crass, and way over the top. They certainly the right word) into a comparatively clipped spring from different corners of American “Who is your favorite poet?” Because the meter. Bending the notes of rhyme. Adding the culture. (For a shrewd, subtle interpretation of question is so difficult to answer and so plainly nitty gritty to meditative poems, and adding the Presley, however, I would recommend Bobbie non-academic, I like to answer it. I often an- meditative to observational ones – in the most Ann Mason’s biography.) swer, “Dickinson.” My main reason for doing economic way possible. Amusing yourself and so is that I think American poets, especially, your reader at the same time. Being interested Also, for all her dignity, Dickinson liked to get have not caught up to some of the “moves” in anything that comes along. Not thinking or her hands dirty, writing about morbid subjects, Dickinson makes in her poetry. Her capacity writing conventionally – but also not experi- looking hard at snakes and birds, and explor- to blend the abstract and concrete, consistently menting or rebelling out of mere insecurity or ing the unforgiving landscape of the psyche. and deftly, continues to amaze me and ought to the wish to be different. Putting no limits on Presley, for his part, intuitively understood as amaze poets of any age. what a lyric poem may take on. Knowing much about language and American English precisely when to start and stop a poem. And as Dickinson did (hence the heavenly discus- What else? The ease with which she applies on and on. As a source of instruction to poets, sion of half-rhymes), and literally he could be a broad lexicon and a zest for improvisation Dickinson’s poetry is inexhaustible.

16 | EDIS Bulletin Moreover, where others, as noted, present loving terms – and comparing her poems to Works Cited her work as complicated and unapproach- postcards. Not to mention the abject folly of Dove, Rita. “Poet’s Choice.” Washington Post able, I believe she welcomes readers from imitating her verse while knowing it can’t be May 20, 2001. all kinds of backgrounds and many stages of imitated. And then the jab at Dickinson schol- Mason, Bobbie Ann. Elvis Presley: A Life. New York: Penguin, 2007. life. Thus, in my case, her work appeals to ars! For that, I apologize. Dickinson schol- Ostrom, Hans. “Emily Dickinson and Elvis Pres- one from a small-town, rural background. I ars have done noble work. Where would we ley in Heaven.” Sucarnochee Review. Fall 1989. grew up in a town of 200 in California’s Si- and Dickinson’s poetry be without them? A Reprinted in Kiss Off: Poems to Set You Free, ed. erra Nevada, and the work of a woman from scholar myself, however, I couldn’t resist the Mary D. Esselman and Elizabeth Ash Velez. New Amherst appeals to me because of the way worm-comparison, and I had to have the bird York: Warner Books, 2003 and in Hans Ostrom, she looks at nature – carefully but not very take action. Anyway, I think the poem con- The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006. sentimentally – and because the rhetoric of denses much of the complicated appeal Dick- Indianapolis, Dog Ear Publishing, 2006, p. 26. her poetry is often that of gossip, even as the inson’s poetry holds for me. Ostrom, Hans. “Homage to Emily Dickinson,” The secret revealed is profound. Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006, p16. Ostrom, Hans. “Emily Dickinson on Twitter,” Po- And, apparently, I routinely look at contempo- et’s Musing, http://poetsmusings-muser.blogspot. And so I come to the second Dickinson poem rary culture and wonder what Dickinson would com/ (March 28, 2012). I wrote, in 2001, at least a decade after I ar- think. What, for example, would she think of Shapiro, Karl. “The Career of the Poem.” The ranged the meeting with Elvis. Twitter, the very name of which poaches on Poetry Wreck: Selected Essays 1950-1970. New her beloved birds’ turf. Twitter’s celebrated York: Random House, 1975. 300-323. verbal economy (140 characters) may not be Homage to Emily Dickinson Dicksonian, per se, but is certainly not Whit- manesque. And so we will conclude with Ms. By an odd coincidence, another poet offers his A bird came up Dickinson on Twitter in a poem I scribbled a own meditation on Dickinson’s tweets. – Ed. My mental walk. year ago to please myself and the imaginary It pinched a Dickinson Emily reading over my shoulder: Scholar in half. Emily Dickinson Tries Skyping

In my scrappy hometown, On any – Social – Media – I knew weirdoes like you, Emily Dickinson on Twitter I am a – Nervous Guest – Liked them. They I dwell in – Wikipedia – Lived their lives, I'll leave it to Its Googles – suit me – Best – the forest Friends And just their lives. to tweet – And – Facebook proves a Torment – How rare that is mellifluent – Still – I began to know and brief – I am afraid to Post – Even at age six. and sometimes Sweet. To – My Three Friends – Lest I sound – Shrill Your poems are prim Their message My Profile is – a Ghost – Graffiti scratched stays the same – On the back of Piety’s pew. "We are! We are!" That’s why, Upon your – Silver Screen – Good old you. They travel here – You can no – Image – raise – each Spring – I hide behind the Mirror’s Sheen – Your poems know more from very far. Eluding – every – Gaze – Than ever they let on, Were postcards sent Of PC – of Mac – So – choosing Limitations – Sweet – From privacy, anon. of Twitter Account – That suit my – Scarcity – they have no need. I think – now on – I’ll tweet the World – Just throat – That never – Tweeted – Me – and beak – and tiny Well, there I go again with the sacred and pro- tongue for Reed. Barton Levi St. Armand fane, calling her a weirdo – but in the most

EDIS Bulletin | 17 Continued from page 8 ness with a stranger; to my current (and still incomplete) reading of the poem as a to this beautiful bird, and how humans yearning for release and bliss. My internal have detached themselves from the rest image of the poem continues to evolve. of nature.” Caroline’s picture and words reveal a young reader who is sophisticated One of the delights of reading Emily enough to be alive to the complexities, Dickinson is that our readings of even longings, and doubts in Dickinson’s de- well-known poems alter over time. As scription of a meeting between strangers. we become more familiar with Dick- inson’s dense imagery and the indeter- Mac, Grade 8 (right): minacy of her language, new shades of meaning, ambiguity, and reinterpreta- The drawing by Mac radiates a gentle sense tion offer themselves. of grace and resolution. His choice of a sub- ject – the bird joyously ascending into the The Dickinson images are so striking sky – seems to capture a tone of mystery and and elemental that they seem follow us peace, giving expression to a sentiment that through our lives, like the moon gliding I also feel with the poem’s last stanza. sixteen, who thought this was simply a just above the horizon beside a moving poem about feeding a bird; to a sense vehicle, and take on new forms as our My own understanding of this poem has some twenty years later that the poem ongoing life experiences afford us new grown from that of a naïve reader, at age was exploring issues of trust and kind- perspective.

Was it Epilepsy? By Norbert Hirschhorn and Polly Longsworth

The authors have published a full-length version of this notice as “Was it Epilepsy?: Misdiagnosing Emily Dickinson (1830- 1886), in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol. 56/3, 371-386.

yndall Gordon’s recent biography, Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family Feuds (2010), tells with high Lverve the story of generational infighting over Emily Dickinson’s posthumous presentation to the world. Unfortunately, what got more attention from reviewers and public media was Gordon’s hypothesis that Dickinson suffered from epilepsy – an aspect Gordon herself has said was not the principal subject of the book. Our paper seeks only to take issue with what we believe was a mistaken diagnosis, to correct the biographical record.

Gordon's diagnosis was based on a misreading of 19th century pharmacology in which the medication glycerine was used as a nutritive anti-tuberculosis remedy (in the early 1850s, as in Dickinson’s case), and decades later as a sweetener for astringent drugs like chloral hydrate – a soporific first used against epilepsy in the 1870s, but not a medicine Dickinson was ever known to take. Glycerine per se was never advocated or used against epilepsy.

Gordon’s other line of evidence was a supposed family strain of epilepsy. We show that the poet’s cousin-once-removed, whom Gordon cited, did not have epilepsy, based on a close reading of his remarkably abundant clinical history. While Dickinson’s nephew Ned did have the classical disease, no other person in the extended Dickinson or Gilbert families is known to have experienced it. Therefore Ned’s illness may be considered one of the spontaneous, non-familial epileptic conditions that occur within 1% of the general population.

We went further to examine all of Dickinson’s illnesses noted on record. None of them indicates epilepsy, including unconscious- ness and seizures at the end of her life, which were marks of severe hypertension, not epilepsy. We hope our paper will be a useful contribution to Dickinson studies and will help lay to rest Gordon’s speculation.

18 | EDIS Bulletin Inspired by Emily: Jewels By Mary Jarvis

have a passion for the visual arts. I have does a bird perch in the soul? The expres- me the sunset in a cup – ” (Fr140). I read it I loved making art, visiting art museums, sion “window of the soul” came to mind, over and over. It was more challenging to and learning how and why people make so I found images of a hand-carved wood- understand. I had to research words more art since childhood. For many “creatives,” en Chinese window to create the “soul.” common in her day: flagons, Debauchee, such as myself, making art is the method I searched for stones the color of the sea, withes, piers and pomposity. This is a poem we use to express ourselves: our thoughts, and moonstones that illustrated ice or “the on the grand scale: a poem that celebrates opinions, joys, sorrows, and yearnings. A chill.” Just as Emily stitched most of her the many gifts of our world as if served on few years ago I began to turn to our be- poems together in small booklets, I wanted a platter by God. I knew this piece needed loved Emily Dickinson for inspiration to the large pendant to open like a small book, to be large scale. I did not want to be inhib- create a series of jewelry pieces. As I read with the entire poem etched inside, visible ited by any of the restraints of jewelry, the her work, some of the poems produced when closed. requirement of making it small and wear- “tiny paintings” in my mind. I soon had a able. The large wall collage was created us- small collection of her poems to which I Sometimes it is the stone that inspires the ing many enameling techniques, chasing & felt a strong connection. I imagined walk- design. With “A Drop fell on the Apple repousse hammering technique (the coffee ing alongside Emily as she discovered Tree – ” (Fr846) in mind, a gorgeous aqua cup), and found objects. The entire poem is small miracles in the woods behind her blue druzy stone caught my eye. It had legible in several different areas. Included home. Miss Dickinson found ageless won- been cut into the shape of a cloud. The is a facsimile of an Emily Dickinson poem ders and wisdom in the smallest objects, in stone became the main element of the de- handwritten by Emily on an envelope, the tiny beings in her yard, and outside her sign. I created a sterling silver bezel, leav- (many of which can now be seen online), window. ing a large scalloped edge. I etched part of a vintage woman’s leather glove stuffed, to the poem onto the back and sides of the make the piece a little eerie, as if it were I was frustrated that many people did not setting. I attached the “drops” or rain, with the gloved hand and arm of Emily, an in- appreciate the depth of her work. About the small seed pearls “kissing the eaves” of the herited lace napkin, a real turtle shell, an same time I began researching the poems stone/cloud. The whimsical design evokes enameled chrysalis representing the “ little of Emily, I visited the Georgia O’Keefe a bit of laughter, a delightful element Em- Alban House” giving birth to the butterfly: Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There ily included in her poem. I was happy to “Who’ll let me out some gala day / With I learned that Georgia began drawing and think of Emily imagining, while writing implements to fly away, / Passing Pom- painting flowers in Central Park, in New her poem, what a necklace made of rain- posity?” There is also a small enameled, York City. She became frustrated that so drops might look like! winged portrait of Emily Dickinson. many people visiting the park would pass by the beautiful flowers without stopping My love for Emily Dickinson’s poems be- I look forward to my next “Emily inspired” to appreciate their wonders. Her frustration gan in high school English class. My per- project. Perhaps it will be “Wild Nights.” I brought her the idea to paint the flowers so sonal favorite was “I held a Jewel in my fin- dream of the day I can visit Emily’s home, large that people would be forced to notice gers – ” (Fr261). I had had a similar dream, and walk the surrounding grounds, connect- the details and beauty that she discovered waking up with the sensation of holding ing with her spirit as never before. in them. Similarly, it was my hope that by the object of my dream after I woke, but illuminating Emily’s poems in sterling sil- finding it was gone. I wanted to bring this Mary Jarvis, artist, jewelry designer, and ver, gold and stones, people would be curi- poem to life, making it a large locket with a maker, lives in Dallas, Texas. ous to seek the wisdom expressed in her hinge. I had a beautiful amethyst stone, and poems. created the setting at the end of a hand. As The works on the following page illustrate, in the previous pendant, the words to the clockwise from middle left, “A Drop fell I selected her popular favorite, “‘Hope’ poem are etched inside the locket. on the Apple Tree – ” (Fr846) (inside and is the thing with feathers – ” (Fr314), and outside); “I held a Jewel in my fingers – ” made several drawings of the images in the While inviting Emily to become my muse, (Fr261); and “‘Hope’ is the thing with feath- poem including feathers, and a bird. How I discovered a new favorite poem, “Bring ers – ” (Fr314), inside and outside.

EDIS Bulletin | 19 20 | EDIS Bulletin Dickinson Scholars

Series Editor, Cindy MacKenzie George Frisbie Whicher By Paul Crumbley

This is the third in a series of articles about early Dickinson biographers. See the Fall 2012 issue of the Bulletin for Aífe Murray’s article about Josephine Pollitt Pohl, and the Spring 2013 issue for Jane Eberwein’s article about Genevieve Taggard.

nyone interested in the history of Revisited (1945), Selected Poems of Hor- ADickinson scholarship will find ace (1947), Thoreau’s Walden and Selected George Frisbie Whicher especially note- Prose (1947), The Goliard Poets (1949), worthy as an early biographer whose 1938 Mornings at 8:50 (1950), and Poetry of This Was a Poet: A Critical Biography of the New England Renaissance 1790-1890 Emily Dickinson set the standard for all (1950), but it was his 1938 Dickinson bi- biographies to follow. Previous articles ography that brought him to prominence in this series have sketched the signifi- as a Dickinson authority. The only book- cant contributions to Dickinson biography length biographies to precede his were made by Josephine McIlvain Pollitt Pohl Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s 1924 The Life and Genevieve Taggard, both of whom and Letters of Emily Dickinson, her 1932 published biographical studies in 1930 Emily Dickinson Face to Face, and the two that investigated unresolved questions re- 1930 biographies by Taggard and Pollitt garding Dickinson’s private life, including Pohl. This made Whicher the first male and much speculation as to the identity of “the the first academic to publish an extended poet’s elusive lover” (Murray 16). Which- study of Dickinson’s life. er also presents the poet’s life as signifi- cantly influenced by what he describes as The table of contents for This Was a Poet a “death-blow to her heart” (272), but he makes plain Whicher’s aspiration to aca- is far less interested in the players cen- demic precision and clarity. Most notable tral to this signal trauma than he is with is the symmetrical organization reflected Dickinson’s ability to translate personal George Frisbie Whicher in 1940. in an initial division into two parts that disaster into enduring art. For Whicher, Photo Credit: Amherst College Archives and are further divided into two subdivisions Dickinson is first and foremost a New Special Collections composed of four sections each, result- Englander, and as such blessed with philo- ing in a total of sixteen chapters averag- sophical resources sufficient to translate New Jersey, in 1889, the year before Ma- ing twenty pages. The two largest sections personal adversity into spiritual and artis- bel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth neatly divide the book in halves; the first tic achievement. “Stand a New Englander Higginson brought out the first volume of deals directly with facts surrounding the on his head,” he writes, “and he will soon Dickinson’s poetry. His maternal grand- poet’s life and the second concentrates on arrive at an antipodean philosophy” (283). father, Alvah L. Frisbie, graduated from cultural context and the poems themselves. It is this antipodean turn that most interests Amherst College in 1857, and Whicher The overall impression is one of order, Whicher and that most directly informs his followed in his grandfather’s footsteps, and, above all, balance. Whicher’s aspira- reading of Dickinson as a poet who places completing his Amherst degree in 1910. tion to objectivity governs all dimensions her passions in the service of visionary art. Five years later, in 1915, he returned as of the book, from its formal structure to its an associate professor, earned promotion assembly of evidence. Whicher grew up during Dickinson’s ini- to full professor in 1922, and remained on tial emergence as a public figure, devel- the Amherst College English faculty until The scholarly orientation is clear from the oping his understanding of her and her his death in 1954. Over the course of his first sentence of the preface, where Which- poetry in the decades marking her initial academic career, Whicher published The er confidently declares that Dickinson’s reception by the reading public and literary Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood poems rank as “the final and artistically the scholars. He was born in Lawrenceville, (1915), Alas All’s Vanity (1942), Walden most perfect product of the New England

EDIS Bulletin | 21 Dickinson Scholars

Renaissance” (i). Such an opening makes briefly mentions Susan Huntington Gilbert ary art. It is all very neat, perhaps too neat plain Whicher’s belief that biography is Dickinson as a friend with whom Dickin- in light of Whicher’s presence in Amherst most valuable as a tool essential to posi- son shared her poems. He even acknowl- as a student at Amherst College in the first tioning Dickinson at the pinnacle of Amer- edge that “Sue suggested improvements” decade of the twentieth century, when ru- ica’s first great wave of literary art. He (34), but in his account the friendship fal- mors of Austin’s affair with Mabel would does acknowledge the need to address the tered in the final years. almost certainly have been in the air. It nagging question of who the lover might is also strange that he makes no mention have been, but he does so with the aim of The brevity of Whicher’s comments on of the fact that Sue wrote the obituary for putting the question to rest so that he can Sue may at first glance seem strange to the family that appeared in the Spring- concentrate more fully on the cultural re- those of us familiar with more contempo- field Republican. She would have hardly sources that fueled Dickinson’s rise to lit- rary accounts of the poet’s life, but cer- been considered the best person for that erary mastery. Alluding to “a considerable tainly no more peculiar than the fact that task had the friendship cooled in the later body of fresh” evidence brought to light Whicher does not mention Austin’s affair years, nor would she have written such a since 1930, Whicher incisively notes, “I with Mabel Loomis Todd or Dickinson’s knowledgeable and affectionate account hope I may have used it with effect to ter- late-life correspondence with Judge Otis if the two had grown distant. It may well minate the persistent search for Emily’s un- Philips Lord. Gaps such as these can for be that Whicher viewed the previous bi- known lover” ographies as (ii). He failed, altogether too of course, but “She had passed through the valley of the shadow and reached the hill of vision.” engaged with believing that family matters he had solved and speculation the mystery lib- about other love erated him to train his gaze elsewhere. As the most part be explained by the fact that interests and wanted for that reason to limit he observes of Dickinson in his final chap- Whicher’s biographical resources were his own discussion to only those influences ter, “she had passed through the valley of limited and that he used those that were at that he considered to have a direct bear- the shadow and reached the hill of vision” his disposal to explain how the poet’s life ing on Dickinson’s life as a writer. For that (287). It is his understanding of that vision achieves fruition in the poetry. It is easy reason, he acknowledges that Sue advised that most interested him and that makes to forget, for instance, that the Lord cor- Dickinson on poems but goes no further. Whicher appealing to readers today. respondence did not come to light until To admit the possibility of collaboration Millicent Todd Bingham announced it in would have detracted from his concern The first half of the book, the most con- her 1954 Emily Dickinson: A Revelation. with the solitary origins of Dickinson’s art. sistently biographical part, opens with In his “Biographical Transcript,” Whicher a section titled “The Little Tippler” that describes having examined “more than What is perhaps most intriguing for readers covers Dickinson’s life from birth to the two hundred” letter manuscripts, “about today is Whicher’s conviction that Dick- conclusion of her year at Mount Holy- half of which have not yet been printed” inson channeled the seemingly boundless oke Female Seminary; the second section, (311). Compare that number to the 1047 energies generated by that “most intense “Tutors and Shepherds and Later Years,” letters now available in the standard John- event of her life” into an “inward drama” covers the remainder of her life, including son and Ward edition of the letters and the that yielded poetry of extraordinary rich- her harrowing affair of the heart. Whicher gaps seem far less surprising. ness and range (290). This is the primary speaks with great conviction on this topic, subject Whicher explores in the second narrowing the time frame to the period of Even so, Whicher’s main concern may half of the book under the headings “The eight years between 1854, when Dickinson have been to keep Dickinson’s love life Sources of a Style” and “Poetry as Play- travelled to Washington DC, and 1862, as simple as possible, and limiting it to a mate,” where he concentrates most intently when she first wrote Thomas Wentworth single major crisis certainly served that on cultural influences and criticism. His Higginson and indicated that her crisis was end, especially if doing so was consistent central argument is that Dickinson’s “mind behind her. “If we ask what friendship she with the evidence at his disposal. The time was formed in what would now be called most cherished during these eight years,” frame Whicher identified also matched up the New England hinterland” and thus he writes, “and indeed for the remainder of well with Dickinson’s most prolific years, “protected, as though under glass, from all her life, there is only one possible answer” lending support to Whicher’s contention shaping influences” (153). For Whicher, and for Whicher that answer is “the Rev- that Dickinson productively transformed the cultural influences that most mattered erend Charles Wadsworth” (99). Whicher her romantic disappointment into vision- were those Dickinson absorbed during the

22 | EDIS Bulletin Dickinson Scholars first three decades of her life; these would that “she was naïve as a blueberry” and be- as “nimble believing” when Whicher serve as a lens through which she concen- trayed none of the “experiment with novel writes, “A mood of faith that possessed trated her vision to such an extent that she and intricate verse forms” evident in Helen her in the morning might become matter of remained largely untouched by the Civil Hunt Jackson’s poems (165). Similarly, delicate mockery in the afternoon” (305). War or the Gilded Age. Whicher’s announcement that Dickinson’s Even Shira Wolosky’s recent argument that “only external subject was nature seen Dickinson’s “identity crisis may be said to Whicher presents three primary influences from her garden” is at odds with current reflect the nation’s” (16) appears traceable that shaped Dickinson’s early development: research that presents Dickinson as vitally to Whicher’s assertion that Dickinson’s “the Puritan tradition,” a newly emergent engaged with her historical moment (290). “individual struggle was a replica in min- Yankee or American sense of humor, and iature of the greater conflict breaking out “spiritual unrest” as “typified by Emerson” Despite what may seem to us today as an around her; the acute accidents of her ex- (Whicher 153). Of these, it is Whicher’s excessively narrow framework for assess- perience paralleled and intensified for her treatment of humor that is perhaps most sur- ing Dickinson’s achievement, Whicher is the spiritual predicament of the age” (307). prising and delightful. In his eyes, Dickin- quite impressive and even prescient when son combines a command of informal banter describing the content and scope of her That Whicher was able to tap into so many with a “Puritan genius for introspection” to poems. With characteristic wry humor, he aspects of Dickinson’s writing that contin- produce a brand of “frontier” poems (181). comments on the startling diversity of her ue to engage scholars today testifies to his He characterizes these as approaching seri- thought: “The variety of her attitudes is so skill as a reader. This skill is all the more ous themes with a light-hearted ease that notable that it has induced many readers, impressive in light of the fact that, judged avoids descending into sentiment by ending Higginson among the first, to characterize by contemporary standards, he had so little with sudden twists that seem to disregard her as elusive and unpredictable, a doubt- to work with. In addition to the incomplete the preceding serious train of thought (181). ful compliment, since really elusive minds record of Dickinson’s correspondence men- Whicher cites “God is a distant – stately are generally shut up in institutions” (291). tioned earlier, Whicher was also hampered Lover –” (Fr615) as one of many examples But, as he quickly points out, “Dickinson’s by editions of the poems that we now con- and is quite convincing, but his real strength poems are not the vague mumblings of a sider poorly edited and far from complete. lies in his account of Emerson’s influence pythoness.” Quite the opposite: “Her con- The most up-to-date volume that he iden- on Dickinson. He is careful to state that stant effort was to be clear and exact in ev- tifies in his “Bibliographic Postscript” is Dickinson was not a disciple of Emerson ery phrase” (291). It was Whicher, after all, the 1937 The Poems of Emily Dickinson, but rather that she imbibed the same spirit who, as James Woodress has noted, “was edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi and of the age that achieved its “consummate the first scholar to warn biographers that Alfred Leete Hampson (Whicher 312). fruition and received it widest applications the I in Emily Dickinson’s poetry . . . ‘does Working from what we today would con- through his work” (199). Most important, not mean – me – but a supposed person’” sider severely limited resources, Whicher Dickinson joined Emerson in giving “voice (193-94). It is here, in his demonstration produced a remarkably familiar portrait of to the single master thought” of the age: of the diversity of guises assumed by her the poet and her work. Even seventy-six “the conviction of self-sufficiency” (199). “supposed person,” that Whicher is most years after it was first published, his biog- Dickinson, like Emerson, “required no able to reach across time and achieve a raphy still breathes. proof, and could accept no disproof, of the kind of currency. When Whicher comments soul’s sovereignty” (199). For her, Whicher that two of Dickinson’s poems “amount to Works Cited avers, “’To be alive is power’” (qtd in 199). little more than field notes,” it is hard not to Murray, Aífe. “Josephine McIlvain Pollitt think of Robin Peel’s recent study of Dick- Pohl.” EDIS Bulletin v24 #2, Fall 2012, 16-17, As might reasonably be expected, some inson’s engagement with science (293). Jed 27. of what Whicher asserts jars against mod- Deppman’s work with Dickinson’s thought Whicher, George Frisbie. This Was a Poet: A ern sensibilities. Such is the case when he experiments comes to mind when Whicher Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson. Ann Ar- more or less dismisses Dickinson’s “most argues that Dickinson “is concerned pri- bor: U of Michigan, 1938. Wolosky, Shira. Poetry and Public Discourse in outrageously mocking . . . poems on Bib- marily with the inner life of the mind” Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Pal- lical [sic] subjects” by casting them as (292) and that she “insisted on testing what grave Macmillan, 2010. “written in a spirit of frolic and banter for a her mind had wrought” (297). “Few poets,” Woodress, James. “Emily Dickinson.” Fifteen special audience, her nephew Ned” (155). Whicher declares, “have cared so much for American authors before 1900: Bibliography His assessment of “the technical details of mental honesty” (297). We might also de- Essays on Research and Criticism. Rev. Ed., her poetry” might also give today’s read- tect a precursor to the interplay of faith and Earl N. Harbert and Robert A. Rees, eds. Madi- ers pause, particularly when he concludes doubt that James McIntosh has described son: U of Wisconsin, 1984. 185-229.

EDIS Bulletin | 23 What’s Your Story?

Series Editor, Georgiana Strickland Twenty Years as a Reviewer and Editor

In 1992, at EDIS’s first international conference, in Washington, D.C., I had the pleasure of meeting Barbara Kelly and her husband, George, for the first time. She had previously been book reviewer and bibliographer for Fred Morey’s odd little newsletter, Dickinson Studies, for five years. I was fairly new as theEDIS Bulletin editor and was struggling to handle all aspects of the job. Fortunately I had the good sense to recognize talent and invite Barbara to be book review editor for the Bulletin—the smartest move I ever made in that position. She also served as EDIS secretary from 2000 to 2008. Now, after twenty years of superb work, Barbara is retiring from her reviewing duties, and I invited her to share what she called “random musings” on reviewing all those years and on her own life. It’s an amazing story, and all I can add is, “Barbara, we hardly knew you!” Read on.

n 1988, for a graduate course at San Jose review has been the source of both frustra- IState University, I compiled an annotated tion and satisfaction, teaching me to choose bibliography on Emily Dickinson, and Dr. and use words carefully and deliberately, to Jack Haeger urged me to submit it to Dickin- make every word count and earn its place on son Studies, where the editor, Dr. Fred Morey, the page. published it, then asked me to serve as his bib- liographer and to write an occasional book re- I suppose my natural affinity for book review- view. I did that for five years and also indexed ing may have some connection to my lifetime Dickinson Studies (1987-91) until the publica- of other experiences. I was born in Philadel- tion’s demise when Dr. Morey died in 1993. phia, Pennsylvania, the same unquiet year that Japan declared war on China, Germany In 1992, at the first EDIS International Con- marched into Czechoslovakia, and here in ference, I met Georgiana Strickland, who the United States world news was broadcast invited me to become book review editor for instantaneously for the first time via trans- the EDIS Bulletin. My first reaction was sur- Atlantic radio. This was the year that Orson prise, disbelief, and reluctance. But thank you, Welles panicked listeners about a scary inva- thank you, Georgie, for opening the door to sion from Mars in his “War of the Worlds” twenty years of intellectual stimulation, new radio broadcast. friends, interesting travel, and a lot of fun! Photo Credit: James Kelly My father, who was from Pennsylvania, be- From a very early age, I loved to read. Un- came an officer in the U.S. Navy and had met dergraduate work at Penn State (majoring in Barbara Kelly at home in Palo Alto, California my mother while his ship was stationed in San English, working for The Daily Collegian for Francisco. My mother was born and raised in three years, and student teaching at Kane [PA] Green Library and cannot check books out, Northern California. The Navy relocated our High School), plus graduate school helped I have learned to be efficient with my time. family every two years, and in my early child- me to develop discipline and organizational Amazon and Google Scholar are also helpful hood we traveled back and forth from coast to skills and to read fast when necessary. With resources, as are tips I get from authors, pub- coast, crossing the country on trains that had encouragement from Georgie, I learned the lishers, and EDIS members. cozy Pullman sleeper cars and formal dining job simply by working at it one book review cars. at a time. For someone who loves books, the hunt for and discovery of new books is fun in and of In 1946, soon after World War II, we sailed People have asked how I find all those books. itself. I’m an avid collector of information, from San Francisco to Saipan, a tiny island Since I live in Palo Alto, I spend many hours enjoy learning new things, and sharing what in the Pacific Ocean, midway between Japan at Stanford University’s Green Library cruis- I learn with others. I especially enjoy reading and Australia. Japanese soldiers were still hid- ing through the book shelves and journals different perspectives on Dickinson’s life and ing in the island caves, and though my father and monitoring the MLA International Bib- work. Reading just-published books is always had to carry a pistol, he never had to use it. We liography among other electronic databases. a great adventure for me. The challenge of lived on Saipan for two years, near a Japanese Because I am limited to seven days a year at condensing scholarly books into a 250-word lighthouse on top of Navy Hill, in a Quonset

24 | EDIS Bulletin What’s Your Story?

hut tied to the ground by steel cables anchored Society. Our family lived on a high bluff where (50), John (47), and James (40), all college in cement blocks so that typhoons would not we could see the ocean from one side of our graduates. We have eight grandchildren: one carry us away. For entertainment on week- house and from the other side what remained grandson and seven granddaughters, ages 26 ends we explored the jungle, gathering wild- of Yokohama city and harbor. The wartime to 3 years old. growing bananas, avocados, mangoes, and bombing had left the city a flattened, ashy gray breadfruit, our only fresh produce besides plain below us, but in the distance we could While our children were growing up, I was what we grew in our garden. Occasionally see beautiful Mount Fuji. Many other parts of active in the community, teaching art history we found caches of military C-rations or un- Japan remained untouched by the destruction and art techniques for three years in the Palo labeled cans of food that the military had left of war, and our travels revealed a lush, green, Alto public schools and taking library books behind in abandoned Quonset huts. The water beautiful country. to home-bound seniors. At our church I was we used came from a rain barrel outside our a parish council member and taught classes in Quonset hut home. Periodically a freezer ship Our next home was in Wheeling, West Vir- Bible literature. delivered meat and dry goods. Having found ginia, where I worked on the school newspa- abandoned parachutes, my mother cut and per my senior year and graduated from Tri- The one project I am most proud of was the sewed them into a white First Communion adelphia High School. From 1955 to 1959 I establishment of Hoover School, a Palo Alto dress for my sister and curtains for our home. attended The Pennsylvania State University. public elementary school that focuses on Our school, grades one through twelve, con- Three days before I graduated a sorority sis- maintaining a more-structured environment sisted of several Quonset huts located on ter, knowing that I was going to California, for its students, including teacher-directed the beach. My third-grade class shared one introduced me to a young man she was dat- learning, lesson plans, orderly classrooms, teacher and a Quonset hut with fourth and ing who was also California-bound to take a homework, and grades, probably the kind of fifth grades (about ten children in each grade). job in San Francisco at Haskins & Sells (now school most of us have experienced. A friend Science class included collecting seashells on Deloitte). After traveling to Europe for the and I were unhappy about the controversial the beach, then labeling and mounting them summer, I arrived at my parents’ home in Palo avant-garde Stanford experimental methods in a format something like Emily Dickinson’s Alto and soon had a call from George Kelly. being used in our neighborhood school during herbarium. Having much still on my mind about Europe the sixties and seventies. It took us four years and the need to find a job in California, I was of researching, organizing instructional meet- In 1948 our family lived in San Diego, then a bit embarrassed not to know who was call- ings, gathering signatures and support, and moved to Long Island, New York, the follow- ing, but when he mentioned that we had met attending still more meetings with school dis- ing year. We traveled across country in our first at Penn State – well, that was the beginning of trict officials, but in addition to neighborhood automobile, often on gravel roads because this our friendship, and in December of 1960 we schools, Palo Alto now offers two “choice” was before President Eisenhower’s interstate were married in Palo Alto. schools, one liberal with open classrooms and highway system. We saw Lake Tahoe and learning centers rather than desks, and the oth- Yosemite National Park in their near-pristine While George was getting his MBA at the er a more-structured school that ranks academ- beauty. Driving the many miles through Mid- University of California at Berkeley, the San ically among the top six elementary schools in west corn fields gave my sister and me in the Mateo School District hired me to teach sev- California and has had a waiting list from the back seat a good sense of the size of the United enth and eighth grade English and Social Stud- day it opened. States and the time it takes to drive across it. ies. Three days before school started, at a fac- In 1951 we returned to San Diego, where I at- ulty coffee, my principal introduced himself In 1999 George and I established the Em- tended my first year of high school. and asked me if I was ready to teach Math and ily Dickinson Lecture in American Poetry at Science! I thought he was joking, but he was The Pennsylvania State University, an annual General MacArthur had signed a peace treaty serious, and I did, indeed, teach Math and Sci- event featuring a notable poet who delivers with Japan in 1945 and left Japan in 1951. In ence that first year. the lecture and spends a day visiting English 1952, our family sailed from San Francisco classes and talking with students about poetry. to Yokohama. Knowing about World War II, We bought a home in Palo Alto in 1964 and Lecturers have included eminent Dickinson I was wary of moving to Japan, but my fears have lived here for fifty years. George became scholars, several U.S. Poets Laureate, win- were quickly calmed by the warm welcome a partner at Deloitte, retired after thirty years, ners of a number of prestigious poetry awards, we were given by the Japanese. As a sopho- worked on corporate and non-profit boards, and both of President Obama’s inaugural po- more and junior at Yokohama American High and taught accounting at the University of ets. We have attended all but the 2009 lecture, School, I was a cheerleader for the Yo-Hi Red California/Berkeley and Santa Clara Univer- choosing instead to attend our 50th Penn State Devils and a member of the National Honor sity. Our four children are Anne (52), Laura class reunion. In 2014 poet Marilyn Nelson

EDIS Bulletin | 25 What’s Your Story?

will deliver the sixteenth annual Emily Dick- and thence to a DVD format, so that I can give bers, especially Jonnie Guerra who helped me inson Lecture. copies to my sister and adult children. Another hone my secretarial skills and Paul Crumbley project is to clear a no longer spare bedroom who in my absence recorded minutes in Am- As I look to the future, I realize that I’ll miss and attic filled with my parents’ things, from herst and Kyoto; Ellen Louise Hart who, be- many things about reviewing for the Bulletin: fine china to unique collections from their sides writing many book reviews, organized an the intellectual stimulation, the challenges, and many hobbies and travels. Amid the boxes are impressive Dickinson gathering at Santa Clara the required discipline that is part of the job. I’ll family documents that I want to organize, en- University in 2003, and invited Aife Mur- certainly miss the communication and engage- tering the information I find into Ancestry.com ray and me to participate; Martha Nell Smith ment I’ve had with the many EDIS members software as a start to a genealogy project. who delivered the inaugural Emily Dickinson who have graciously and generously written Lecture at Penn State in 1999; and Margaret book reviews for the Bulletin. Their contribu- I also want to revisit my formerly dilettante Freeman, Maryanne Garbowsky, David Gar- tions have enlightened readers and enhanced ways of reading books, with no thoughts about nes, Dan Lombardo, Domhnall Mitchell, and the book review pages. reviewing them, and to amuse myself with Emily Seelbinder, among many other wonder- the pleasures of sewing, knitting, crocheting, ful book reviewers and correspondents. From What I probably won’t miss is facing a blank acrylic and oil pastel painting, calligraphy, re- the hard-working members in Amherst to the computer screen every spring and fall, the finishing furniture, gardening, writing – the list ever-loyal travelers from Japan, and to editors hardest step toward creating those biannual is long. Finally, I want to read all of Dickin- Michael Kearns, Kathy Welton, and Dan Man- bouquets of book reviews. Nor will I miss the son’s poems and letters methodically in a way heim – a big thank you! deadlines, though I must admit that deadlines that I’ve not had time to do while reading and helped keep the work flowing for twenty years. reviewing her literary critics. Although I’m redirecting my attention to some long-neglected projects and new adventures, And what’s ahead for me? When my parents Starting with Georgie Strickland, the best I’m not abandoning my interest in Dickinson died and I cleared the house they had lived in mentor I could have hoped for, thank you to or EDIS. I hope to see you in Amherst and for forty-five years, they left me with hundreds, everyone who has made the past twenty years am certainly looking forward to seeing many maybe thousands, of photographic slides that with EDIS a productive and memorable expe- of you at beautiful Asilomar in Pacific Grove, I’m planning to scan, transfer to my computer, rience: my former fellow EDIS Board mem- California, for the 2015 EDIS annual meeting.

The End of an Era: The Start of Another?

arbara Kelly’s retirement marks the end she confesses, is “generally referred to as the eyes. Dickinson is the poet who best captures Bof an era at the Bulletin. Her section was ‘Dickinson Seminar,’” despite her efforts to my own experience of the vertiginous possi- always the first to arrive, on the day of the ear- keep Dickinson from “swallowing it all.” bilities of compound vision.” liest deadline, and it had always been scrupu- lously proofread, requiring little if any further Renée did Great Books at St. John’s in An- work. She scoured lists of new publications in napolis, then got her graduate degrees at Co- order to give notice of works even tangentially lumbia. Addicted to Dickinson, she is working related to Dickinson and as a result she kept on a general audience book about American many of us abreast of interesting work beyond genius. She is just back from Paris, where she books of formal criticism, for which she al- spent the Spring exploring the world of Ger- ways found excellent, appropriate reviewers. trude Stein.

At the same time, it is a pleasure to introduce Why Dickinson? “One reason is that I think a new Book Review editor. Renée Bergland her amblyopic vision was physiologically teaches at Simmons College, a women's col- similar to mine. After a lifelong visual impair- lege nested between Harvard Medical School, ment, I recently had my eye fixed, and now I the Museum of Fine Arts, and Fenway Park am making the complicated neuro-mechanical in Boston. Her courses include the graduate adjustment to binocular vision. It's thrilling seminar on American Women Poets, which, and very disorienting to look through two Renée Bergland reading with both eyes

26 | EDIS Bulletin New Publications

Dan Manheim, Interim Book Review Editor

Richards, Eliza, ed. democracy in essays by Joan Kirkby and half the length) and because there are so Emily Dickinson in Context. New York: Paul Crumbley), traditional literary history many of them – thirty three distinct topics, Cambridge University Press, 2013. 410 pp. (with an essay on “British Romantic and each explained with authority and insight Cloth, ISBN 1-107-02274-4, $89.10 Victorian Influences” by Elizabeth Petrino (and useful, up-to-date, suggestions for fur- or another on “Transatlantic Women Writ- ther reading for each topic). Reviewed by Renée Bergland ers” by Páraic Finnerty), local environ- ments (from Domnhall Mitchell’s essay But there is more to distinguish this volume he culture wars of the late twentieth- on “Amherst” to Margaret H. Freeman’s than its pragmatic and skillful presentation. Tcentury are officially over. And the on Nature), and a groundbreaking collec- One distinctive feature of the new book is that winner is: …Emily Dickinson. tion of varied approaches to questions of it brings many new voices into the conversa- reception and influence. There are notable tion. Martha Nell Smith (“Editorial History Looking back through the grey-blue mists essays on popular culture (Sandra Runzo), I”) contributed to Farr’s volume in 1996, and and scarlet flashes, the battle lines seem painters (Alexander Nemerov), scientists a few other contributors also started publish- to have been drawn between form and (Sabine Sielke), and philosophers (Jed ing on Dickinson in the 1980s or 1990s, but context, while “theory” shifted alliances Deppman). With such a wide range of per- the majority are twenty-first century schol- at unpredictable moments. At one time, spectives it is particularly notable that all ars, whose work on Dickinson commenced Dickinson was invoked by the formalists, of the essays in the volume, without excep- after 2000, after the culture wars subsided. and her generally accepted “genius” made tion, are textually grounded in Dickinson’s This new generation of Dickinson scholars her a mascot for the canonically inclined. own irresistible language. Today’s Dickin- is fantastic, and reading their work is truly But Dickinson was always an oddball – a sonians seem to agree that context is mean- exciting. Their approaches are more catholic woman who had been unknown and uncel- ingless without text. than canonical – they are willing to consider ebrated in her lifetime. Even at the height everything. They come across as historically of the culture wars, Dickinsonians knew I will shelve Emily Dickinson in Context well-trained and theoretically sophisticated, that form and context murmured to each with other essay collections that are partic- yet they generally have a light touch with other from close-adjoining rooms. Now, ularly useful for me when I teach Dickin- historical and theoretical discourses. Páraic with Eliza Richards’ remarkably useful son, such as Emily Dickinson: A Collection Finnerty contributed two essays to the vol- Emily Dickinson in Context, it is clear that of Critical Essays edited by Judith Farr, ume – one on Shakespeare and another on (like truth and beauty) context and form are The Emily Dickinson Handbook edited by transatlantic women writers. A generation inseparable. Gudrun Grabher, Roland Hagenbüchle, ago, the Shakespeareans and the Elizabeth and Cristanne Miller, A Historical Guide to Barrett Browning scholars would have had a There are thirty-three essays in the volume, Emily Dickinson edited by Vivian R. Pol- hard time speaking to each other, and neither plus a thoughtful introduction by the edi- lak, and A Companion to Emily Dickinson would have known what to do with Dickin- tor. The standard is uniformly high, but the edited by Martha Nell Smith and Mary son. Those conflicts are in the past. approaches, methodologies, and scholarly Loeffelholz. Like these, Richards’ collec- voices are diverse and wide-ranging. Even tion includes essays from top scholars that Other notable essays by newer scholars “Context” means wildly different things at are very accessible for students. In fact, I include Melanie Hubbard’s brilliant dis- different points in the volume – Richards imagine that students will find Emily Dick- cussion of Nineteenth-Century Language stretches it broadly enough to encompass inson in Context particularly helpful both Theory, Gabrielle Dean’s essay “On Mate- the eternal verities that the new critics because the essays are quite a bit shorter riality (and Virtuality),” and Theo Davis’s cherished (for example: immortality and than those in the other collections (about careful close reading of the New Critics’

The Bulletin welcomes notices of all Dickinson-related books, including those published outside the U.S. Send information to Renée Bergland, 3 Barrett Road, Hanover, NH 03755, U.S.A. Email: [email protected]

EDIS Bulletin | 27 often paradoxically contextualizing read- Deppman, Jed, Marianne Noble, and Gary cal inquiry, for instance, or schools of thought. ings of Dickinson. These three all build Lee Stonum, eds. Nevertheless, this division between philosoph- on Dickinson’s own insistence on “not Emily Dickinson and Philosophy. New York: ical discourses to which Dickinson might have choosing,” though each sets the choice in Cambridge University Press, 2013. 278 pp. been exposed (more or less directly) and those a different context. Hubbard offers a re- Cloth, ISBN 1-107-35281-0, $89.10 she anticipates helps to showcase the various markably useful overview of the “evolv- ways of coordinating the relation between ing philosophical-theoretical debate . . . Reviewed by Seth Perlow Dickinson’s poems and philosophers’ writing. about the relationship between thought and language” (246) that spans from early he copular “and Philosophy” in book titles The book opens with a pair of essays that nineteenth century rhetoric textbooks up to Thas become suspiciously popular; recent bring Dickinson into conversation with the Sharon Cameron’s Choosing Not Choos- offerings include Batman and Philosophy, Scottish Common Sense thinking that strongly ing (1992). Dean starts with Cameron, and Facebook and Philosophy, and Mad Men and informed the philosophical climate of New with the questions of manuscript central Philosophy. One furtively awaits Philosophy England during her life. These chapters come to Ralph Franklin’s work, and she offers and Philosophy. Unlike many such volumes, closer than any to biographical argumentation, a sustained discussion of the materiality of however, the collection Emily Dickinson and since they refer to what Dickinson actually Dickinsons’ fascicles, and the questions of Philosophy fills a substantial need. As editors studied. Happily, both essays also attentively materiality and virtuality that confront us Jed Deppman, Marianne Noble, and Gary Lee read Dickinson’s poems in conversation with as Dickinson’s handwriting moves from Stonum rightly argue in their introduction, “a the philosophy of her day. Michael Kearns’s paper to pixels. Davis’s essay returns us persistent image of Dickinson as a sibylline or “Emily Dickinson: Anatomist of the Mind” to the New Critics, to questions of form mystic poet who intuited rather than thought” opens with a helpful intellectual history of and context, language and meaning that has often prevented scholars from seriously how Common Sense ideas influenced Ameri- are central to Dickinson Studies, argu- considering the philosophical significance of can philosophers of the mind whom Dickinson ing that although the New Critics’ “press her work. read; Kearns’s efforts “to consider Dickinson to embody Dickinson in manuscript form as an anatomist of the mind” demonstrate paralleled the New Critical prizing of lyri- To correct the omission, this volume collects how her poems respond and contribute to cal and ideological embodiment” (318), twelve incisive essays that take a range of ap- discussions of mental faculties and the mind- Dickinson generally got away, leaving proaches to Dickinson’s philosophy. These brain duality. Meanwhile, Melanie Hubbard’s readers (then, as now), with a “breakage of essays face the challenge of eschewing two “Dickinson, Hume, and the Common Sense thought and sensation that is central to her dominant tendencies in Dickinson criticism – Legacy” tracks Dickinson’s affinities with work” (318). Even the most dogmatic of first, the historicist-materialist emphasis upon Common Sense thinking, while also noting New Critics found it hard to be doctrinaire the reality of Dickinson’s world and her poetic her attachments to the Humean skepticism that in the face of Dickinson. materials and, second, the aesthetic-performa- preceded it. Hubbard engagingly describes tive approaches that emphasize her formal and how the tension between skepticism and com- Eliza Richard’s Emily Dickinson in Con- figural achievements. Bringing Dickinson’s mon sense shaped Dickinson’s ideas about text makes it clear that the current genera- work into conversation with an array of phi- perception and signification. tion of Dickinson scholars is, as promised, losophers, the essays of Dickinson and Philos- “thoughtful, innovative, and deeply knowl- ophy ably flesh out this underdeveloped sector Chapters three and four address the tensions edgable” (7). Reading these essays puts us of her reception. between scientific secularism and religious right at the center of new conversations faith in Dickinson’s milieu. Jane Donahue about ideas that have been central to Dick- The volume is divided into two sections of six Eberwein’s “Outgrowing Genesis?” argues inson studies for a hundred years. It’s head essays, the first section “placing Dickinson that Dickinson’s poems and letters bespeak spinning, and intoxicating, and it makes me within the intellectual culture of her time” and “awareness of the Darwinian struggle for excited to be a Dickinson scholar. I suspect the second “asserting that her poems anticipate survival while also responding to alternative many readers will react the same way. later philosophers.” Insomuch as historicism ways of interpreting nature, some of which re- itself has helped to discourage the philosophi- inforced belief.” Whereas Darwin sought the Renée Bergland is Hazel Dick Leonard cal readings these essays pursue, one wonders origins of species, the poet concerned herself Research Professor at Simmons College. why the collection “roughly follows the chro- with the individual body and soul, and her She has written on sex in the nineteenth nology of the history of philosophy,” reassert- focus on redemption rather than creation en- century, and she is working on Emily Dick- ing an historical logic instead of organizing the abled an interface between her faith and her inson in a global context. chapters according to branches of philosophi- reflections on natural life cycles. Next, Linda

28 | EDIS Bulletin Freedman’s chapter deftly explores the inter- Chapters 10 and 11 place Dickinson in dia- as to make one wonder how Dickinson could sections between poetry and theology in Dick- logue with French phenomenology, though to also have affinities with the other philosophi- inson’s reflections on the humanity of Christ, different effects. In “Dickinson on Perception cal schools covered in the same volume. If arguing that the incarnation guides the poet’s and Consciousness,” Marianne Noble compel- one finishes in astonishment at Dickinson’s ideas about representation and, ultimately, her lingly argues that Dickinson anticipates Mau- relevance to such an array of philosophies, this aesthetics. rice Merleau-Ponty’s attention perception as response underscores the enduring poetic and informing the reality of objects around us; she indeed philosophical rewards to be found in The final two chapters of Part I bring Dickin- then reads Dickinson alongside Longfellow to her work. son into conversation with the German idealist illuminate how Dickinson’s phenomenologi- philosophers and their respondents – think- cal attentions shape her aesthetic. Next, Megan Seth Perlow teaches twentieth-century po- ers Dickinson seems less likely to have read, Craig’s chapter finds in Dickinson’s “concern etry and poetics at Oklahoma State. He is though the critics convincingly argue that their with the displaced subject and the intrigue of working on a book about poetry in a tech- ideas shaped her intellectual world. Daniel the intimate” an affinity with the ethicist Em- nological age. Fineman’s chapter traces an “alternative aes- manuel Levinas. Craig pays admirably close thetic” the poet develops at the intersection of attention to Levinas’s own stylistics, sustain- Hegel’s totalizing viewpoint and Schlegel’s ing a lively interplay between him and Dick- Barrett, Faith ironizing emphasis upon particularity. Jim inson; to Craig’s credit and to Dickinson’s, the To Fight Aloud is Very Brave: American von der Heydt’s essay reads Dickinson along- poet ultimately develops a more convincing Poetry and the Civil War. Amherst and side Kierkegaard, focusing on the four poems ethics than the philosopher. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, Dickinson chose to include in her famous first 2012. 328 pp. Cloth, ISBN 1-558-49962-1, letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Von The volume concludes with one of the most $80.00. der Heydt compellingly argues that these po- impressive chapters, Jed Deppman’s “Aston- ems sent to a potential mentor focus upon the ished Thinking: Dickinson and Heidegger.” Reviewed by Jennifer Putzi theme of learning, which together they con- Deppman casts Dickinson as an ontologist by struct as an instantaneous event reminiscent of framing her poetics of astonishment as a re- ollowing the publication of “Words Kierkegaard’s skeptical theory of learning. sponse to the question of Being, and he finds Ffor the Hour”: A New Anthology of the same astonished response to Being opera- American Civil War Poetry (co-edited with The chapters of Part II, which bring Dickinson tive in Heidegger’s work. This case presents Christanne Miller) in 2005, To Fight Aloud into conversation with modern philosophers, special challenges because Heidegger himself is Very Brave demonstrates the extraordi- are not as tidily paired as the earlier essays, famously accorded poetry a privileged relation nary breadth and depth of Barrett’s work in but they prove at least as interesting because to Being, and Deppman admirably coordinates this field. Focusing on the range of stances they address more commonly discussed phi- Dickinson with Heidegger’s own poetics. of address taken in poems that explore the losophers. In “Truth and Lie in Emily Dick- relationship between self and nation, Bar- inson and Friedrich Nietzsche” Shira Wolosky The editors and contributors to Emily Dickin- rett argues that, despite the critical neglect argues that both thinkers respond to a crisis of son and Philosophy enrich our image of Dick- of poetry in studies of Civil War literature, metaphysical belief with a redoubled dedica- inson by attending to an underdeveloped area poetry was central to the way in which na- tion to the actual. By contrast, Renée Tursi’s of her reception. These essays demonstrate tional identities were constructed both dur- chapter links Dickinson with the pragmatism the philosophical significance of Dickinson’s ing and after the war. Over the course of of William James and his respondents, claim- poems by unpacking their contributions to a the book, she also successfully contends ing that “we can find pragmatic truths” in her variety of philosophical discourses. Contribu- that reading Civil War poetry for these poems because they emphasize “linguistic tors at times prefer straightforward, proposi- varied stances of address allows us to see contingency” and other forms of uncertainty. tional reading styles, but this is precisely the not only the proliferation of audiences for Farhang Erfani, meanwhile, makes an intel- idea, since the collection claims Dickinson as a American poetry but also the origins of the ligent case that Dickinson anticipates the Sar- poet with properly philosophical things to say. shift from romanticism and sentimental- trean valorization of individual self-creation. From the first chapter to the last, the essays ism to the more graphic realism and for- With surprising grace and economy, he also display an admirable philosophical rigor, as mal experimentation of modernist poetry. contextualizes Sartre within European intel- well as awareness of the intellectual contexts While other critics have examined the Civil lectual history and seeks to avoid the merely in which Dickinson and her philosophical in- War poetry of individual writers, Barrett’s thematic readings of poetry that philosophical terlocutors thought. It is a credit to this collec- beautifully written book not only exam- interpretation often prefers. tion that certain chapters seem so convincing ines Civil War poetry as a coherent and

EDIS Bulletin | 29 flexible body of work, but also makes an Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and the asked is clearly one of the strengths of the enormously successful, carefully nuanced Place of the Lyric I,” both because readers book; Barrett has not only broken ground, argument for its importance in any study of will be interested in Barrett’s treatment of she has cleared the way for other scholars American poetry. Dickinson’s Civil War poetry and because to follow. this chapter demonstrates the strength of In six chapters, Barrett moves from popular her overall framework in that it allows for Jennifer Putzi teaches English and Wom- songs and soldier poetry to the work of writ- productive readings of poems that have en’s Studies at The College of William ers like Julia Ward Howe, Frances Harper, been addressed previously in the seminal and Mary. She is the author of Identify- Emily Dickinson, Sarah Piatt, George work of Shira Wolosky, David Cody, and ing Marks: Race, Gender, and the Marked Horton, and Herman Melville. While she Benjamin Friedlander. Along with these Body in Nineteenth-Century America. examines a wide range of work in each of critics, Barrett argues against the notion of these chapters, she remains tightly focused Dickinson being ambivalent about or indif- on the issue of stances of address, demon- ferent to the Civil War. Unlike the soldier- Sulzer, James strating the varied ways in which each of poets, however, Dickinson avoids the per- The Voice at the Door: A Novel of Emily these poets negotiated their relationship to sonal “I,” addressing the nation obliquely, Dickinson. Ashland, OR: Fuze Publish- the nation, often speaking from a range of at least in part, Barrett suggests, because of ing, 2013. 203 pp. Paper, ISBN 978-0- positions on the experience and larger poli- her identity as a woman poet. Barrett looks 9897306-2-4, $13.95. tics of war. For example, in Chapter Two, at two groups of Dickinson’s Civil War po- “‘We Are Here at Our Country’s Call’: etry – her “landscapes of war” and her sol- Lala Crist, Despina Nationalist Commitments and Personal dier elegies – and demonstrates Dickinson’s Emily Dickinson: Goddess of the Volcano, Stances in Union and Confederate Soldiers’ engagement with and transformation of the a Biographical Novel. Translated by Rob- Poems,” Barrett argues that white soldier- popular print culture of the war. Contrary ert L. Crist. Illustrated by Ave George Ioan- poets’ direct involvement in battle allows to many critics’ reading of Dickinson’s war nides. Charleston, SC: Create Space, 2013. them to speak directly about war, but that poetry, however, Barrett successfully ar- 461 pp. Paper, ISBN 978-1470147099, these first-person accounts often function gues that Dickinson does not always write $15.28. to disrupt the “we” used (often in the same against conventional nationalist ideologies poem) to construct a military and often na- regarding the deaths of soldiers and the Reviewed by David Garnes tionalist collective. The stances of address larger significance of the Civil War. Her in- available to female poets like Howe, Harp- sistence on Dickinson’s occasional conven- ictional accounts of Emily Dickinson er, Piatt, and Dickinson herself are further tionality is perhaps the most eye-opening Fhave appeared over the years in all complicated by gender, race, and region, and exciting argument in the chapter, paired genres of popular literature, and with un- and one of the undoubted strengths of the as it is with readings of poems like “The flagging frequency. In works ranging from volume as a whole is Barrett’s careful con- name – of it – is ‘Autumn’” that demon- William Luce's drama The Belle of Amherst sideration of intersectionality; the range of strate Dickinson’s willingness to push the to Jane Yolen's and Nancy Carpenter's chil- options open to each of these poets is dif- boundaries of her culture. dren's book My Uncle Emily to Judith Farr's ferent and each one must negotiate the po- novel I Never Came to You in White, writ- sitions from which he or she is allowed or The neglect of nationalist Confederate po- ers have presented often illuminating and willing to speak. etry by anyone other than Henry Timrod innovative versions of what might have (who is used primarily as a foil for Piatt transpired in the life of “the eccentric re- Other than perhaps the first chapter on and Horton) and one of the soldier-poets cluse,” “the myth of Amherst,” Higginson's popular song (which is crucial to setting up seems a missed opportunity in this study. “half-cracked poetess.” (Jerome Charyn's Barrett’s argument in the rest of the book), Similarly, given Barrett’s brilliant recov- The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson is per- there is not a single chapter in this excel- ery and analysis of the soldier-poets, it is haps the most notable recent example of a lent study that does not make original and impossible not to wonder what other Civil highly speculative, brilliantly realized re- exciting contributions to the field of nine- War poetry is awaiting discovery in the ar- construction.) teenth-century American poetry. Barrett’s chive. Who else was writing and perhaps readings of individual poems are also me- even circulating poetry in manuscript dur- Dickinson herself, glimpsed in white in ticulously detailed, providing new insight ing the Civil War? And how would their her garden beyond the homestead fence, at every twist and turn. For the purposes work fit into the larger paradigm estab- lowering goodies by basket from her bed- of this review, I want to focus on Chap- lished by Barrett in To Fight Aloud is Very room window, fleeing from visitors via her ter Four, “Addresses to a Divided Nation: Brave? The fact that these questions can be “northwest passage,” is partially respon-

30 | EDIS Bulletin sible for the mystery and ensuing fascina- Well, yes, although other biographical and Greek-born Lala Crist, the author of an- tion that seem to spawn a disproportionate fictional explanations of Dickinson's re- other novel, Nostos, frequently references number of conjectural tales. Two new en- clusiveness and malaise in her later years mythological gods and goddesses as she tries in this category of Dickinsoniana are have occasioned the same kind of reader tells the story of her extraordinary subject. The Voice at the Door: A Novel of Emily response. Perhaps even more than the fact These allusions to super-beings seem fit- Dickinson and Emily Dickinson: Goddess of the supposed illness, the scene in the ting in this grand opera of a novel. In one of the Volcano, a Biographical Novel, each book involving Dickinson's seduction of passage, she describes the correspondence of which demonstrates the pleasures and Wadsworth does stretch one's willing sus- between Dickinson and Judge Otis Lord risks of the genre. pension of disbelief. as “florid, continuous, bold.” These words could well describe the entire book. It is James Sulzer's The Voice at the Door, That said, the novel is, as mentioned ear- wildly romantic, particularly the scenes modest in length and written in a straight- lier, well-written. There are poems and describing the intensity and complexity of forward, graceful style, begins with Dick- excerpts from the “Master letters” placed the love relationship between Dickinson inson's trip to Washington D.C. in 1855 carefully throughout the book to help ac- and her sister-in-law. (Susan is not the only and focuses on her relationship with the count for Dickinson’s behavior. Addition- “erotic,” as Lala Crist says, object of Dick- Reverend Charles Wadsworth. Though ally, the book includes a timeline of Dick- inson's feelings, but their love is the heart the novel covers her remaining 31 years, inson's life, list of sources, excerpts and of the novel.) introducing the expected characters and references to the poems (Franklin numera- documented incidents of her life, it is the tion) mentioned in the book; and a reader's Many poems are quoted in their entirety examination of the love for “[her] Phila- guide with questions for discussion. throughout the book, with other excerpts delphia” that provides the meat of the inserted tactically, perhaps conveniently, book as well as its most startling and pro- Despina Lala Crist's Emily Dickinson: God- following a crucial episode or revelation. vocative imaginings. dess of the Volcano is a hugely ambitious Similarly to Sulzer's novel, this device can novel that attempts to cover Dickinson's become somewhat facile as a way of sub- Sulzer, a Yale graduate and middle-school entire life, though focusing in great and stituting for real plot motivation or charac- teacher on Nantucket Island [see his ac- unrestrained detail on her relationship with ter development. However, as a result, we count of teaching Dickinson, on page 6 Susan Gilbert Dickinson. While not offer- do have Dickinson's glorious poetry very of this issue], uses a clever conceit to in- ing the kind of bombshell James Sulzer sets much present in the book. A bibliography troduce and frame the story: His imagined off, Lala Crist's novel is an explosion of a and a list of poems (Johnson numeration) uncle, a doctor specializing in infectious different sort: an overflowing cornucopia in appear at the end of the novel. diseases and an inveterate admirer of all which the author herself is a participant in things Dickinson, has left behind a manu- various scenes depicting dreams and time It is difficult not to get caught up in Des- script that details the poet's love affair with travel and containing comments on her own pina Lala Crist's passionate enthusiasm for the married, enigmatic Charles Wadsworth. life, all the while relating these experiences Dickinson and her spiritual connection to a This “found” narrative describes in dramat- to her near-obsession with Dickinson's life poet whom she discovered while studying ic detail how the relationship affected her and her poetry. in America and who has remained a ma- poetry and significantly altered the course jor influence throughout her life. As with of her life. Roughly chronological, the novel, trans- James Sulzer – and, I would guess, most lated by Lala Crist's husband, Robert writers who focus on Dickinson – Lala Going well beyond the assertion that, in Crist, an American professor emeritus of Crist's love for and appreciation of her as fact, Wadsworth is the “Master” to whom the University of Athens, is replete with poet and person are evident throughout. Dickinson wrote, Sulzer offers the theory chapter headings, sub-headings, and di- that he also suffered from syphilis and versions by way of introducing secondary David Garnes has taught English at the transmitted the disease to the poet (who, personages in Dickinson's life. Copious secondary school and college levels and we are told, is aware at the time of this and evocative full-page sketches by Ave was a longtime librarian at Columbia possibility). As Sulzer writes in the fic- George Ioannides, based on photographs University and the University of Connecti- tional introduction, “[My uncle] must have and paintings, of everyone from Mabel cut. The author of a novel and a collection known that his ideas would astound some Loomis Todd to Joseph Lyman, appear of poems, he serves as a guide at the Emily and dismay others.” throughout the book. Dickinson Museum.

EDIS Bulletin | 31 Mutén, Burleigh Although the wonders of the circus are wit- Dickinson’s letters to “Master” (“most likely” Miss Emily. Illustrated by Matt Phelan. nessed, the night doesn’t end well. But, no Charles Wadsworth, though other candidates Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2014. need to despair. The story, with its twists and are listed, including Susan Gilbert Dickin- 144 pp. Cloth, ISBN 978-0-7636-5734-5, turns, concludes on a high note with a grand son). At the same time, however, Newman $15.99. finale in the form of a homegrown circus per- ends up suggesting that the poem derives its formed by the “gypsies” that will satisfy all. power from her “ability to engage the reader’s Reviewed by Marty Rhodes Figley Mattie Dickinson wrote that her aunt “lent sensibilities in her erotic experience.” Like- a contraband thrill to the slightest pretext.” wise, in her discussion of “A narrow Fellow urleigh Mutén is no stranger to god- After reading Miss Emily young readers will in the grass” (Fr1096), Newman offers bibli- Bdesses. [See her essay about teaching wish that the delightfully splendid Emily cal and psychosexual possibilities, but ends up elementary school students, on page 4 of Dickinson lived in their neighborhood. observing that the poem may be most richly this issue.] She previously authored sev- enjoyed if the reader responds to its sights and eral books about them. Now she takes on Marty Rhodes Figley received her BA from sounds and “experiences the effect with her.” “The Laughing Goddess of Plenty” – Emily Mount Holyoke College and is the author of Thus even while the biographical possibilities Dickinson, as the children in poet’s neigh- sixteen children’s books. Her newest picture are offered for any insight they might contrib- borhood described her. Miss Emily (for ages book, Emily and Carlo, is about Emily Dick- ute, she returns to the immediate encounter 8-12), written in lilting narrative verse and inson and her beloved dog. between readers and words. Newman draws charmingly illustrated by the much-lauded from a range of sources for her biographical Matt Phelan, is plenty of fun. Inspired by information and critical insights, sometimes MacGregor Jenkins’ 1930 memoir Emily Newman, Lea Bertani Vozar turning to anecdotes from Martha Dickinson Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor the book Emily Dickinson: “Virgin Recluse” and Bianchi’s reminiscences and sometimes to re- portrays a droll, mischievous woman who Rebel: 36 Poems, Their Backstories, Her cent works of criticism. The book contains a not only regularly dispenses gingerbread to Life. Manchester Center, VT: Shires Press, selective chronology of events in Dickinson’s the children, but also is their ally, confidante, 2013. 212 pp. 978-0-0746-3898-0 $22.00. life, a list of sources indexed by paragraph and and on occasion, even a daring playmate. chapter, and a bibliography. The book might ea Newman, professor emerita at the Mas- be of most interest to students beginning to Mutén, who is a kindergarten teacher and Lsachusetts College of Liberal Arts, long consider the value and limitations of biograph- appreciates what children value and enjoy, used biographical questions to get students ical readings. tells a story of a fanciful high jinx initiated by in her college classes to engage Emily Dick- the poet with the help of her next-door niece inson’s poetry. In “Virgin Recluse” and Rebel and nephew, Mattie and Ned Dickinson, and she sets poems in their biographical and his- Noted with Pleasure the preacher’s son Mac, who lives across the torical context before offering comments that street. The circus is coming to town and will will, she hopes, help readers who “know a Jed Deppman, on “The Lightning is a yellow arrive on the rails at midnight. Emily con- little about Emily” to learn more about a puz- Fork” (Fr1140), in “Astonished Thinking” spires, “Ah, yes, this year I propose you join zling but intriguing poet. Choosing thirty-six from Emily Dickinson and Philosophy (qv): me! / After the second whistle and the hiss of poems that she feels to be “representative of steam, / we five wily ones will watch/ horses the full scope of her canon as well as reflec- “Through disclosedness,” says Heidegger, we and monkeys, / and if Fortune smiles – /an tive of her life,” Newman attempts “to sepa- enter into “the possibility of being ‘there.’” Dis- elephant shall strut from the cars.” The chil- rate fact from myth” in order to present these closure attunes us to our place(s), to the ways dren, dressed as gypsies, sneak out into night chronologically-arranged poems into a sort of we “‘are’ one way or another” and this “lets us where you can still see the silhouetted rim / “mini-biography.” She concedes that “scholars find ourselves among beings as a whole.” For of the Pelham hills / in the rising moonlight.” differ on how much attention should be paid Dickinson the term “picture” connoted artistic A turbaned Dickinson leads the hardy band. to Dickinson’s life when reading her poetry,” process. The poet discloses pictures not by re- “Call my Prosperiana – Queen of the Night, but believes that in disguising the “I” of her presenting Nature but by creating the linguistic if you please, / for I will charm the diamond poems as a “supposed person,” the poet was stimuli, the awful verbal cutlery, for the reader vipers / till they dance tonight.” Dickinson’s able “to express herself freely without any in- to strip beings of their familiar use-meanings beloved Newfoundland, Carlo, the “straight hibitions.” Accordingly, “Wild nights – Wild and see or create new pictures of familiar man,” lends a furry charm as he lumbers, nights!” (Fr269), a poem that “captures the things. Reading becomes an event of disclo- growls, barks, and slobbers his way through consummation of sexual intercourse with ec- sure that reperspectivizes everydayness and the story. static abandonment,” appears in the light of allows us more fully to be here.”

32 | EDIS Bulletin Obituary

DAVID PORTER, 1928-2013 By Christopher Benfey

avid T. Porter, one of the most distin- Rilke and Paul Celan and Stanley Cavell. He Dguished, revered, and influential scholars liked that I seemed “modern,” in touch with of Emily Dickinson in our time – or, indeed, living poets and thinkers. He did not like that I in any time – died on November 16, 2013. He had brashly, and self-servingly, claimed (in The was 85 though he seemed, right up to the end, New York Times, of all places), that American much younger than that in his obstreperous criticism hadn’t yet caught up with Dickinson, vitality. Over the past half century, Dickinson or some such stupid thing. He let me know, scholars from all over the world have made with his hearty laughter, what he thought of the pilgrimage to Amherst not just to see the my up-to-date views, and he let me know, with Homestead and the Evergreens, but also to his measured laughter, what he thought of my visit David Porter, an inspiring and ever gener- thoughtless (and ignorant) dismissal of our ous figure at the University of Massachusetts colleagues. where he taught from 1962 until his retirement in 1995, receiving the Faculty Award for Dis- And of him, since his own commanding Dick- tinguished Research and Scholarship in 1986. inson: The Modern Idiom (1981), following Among his many grateful students are the his path-breaking The Art of Emily Dickin- Dickinson scholars – and this is a partial list – son’s Early Poetry (1966), had already made, Martha Ackmann, Karen Dandurand, Joanne forcefully and eloquently, many of the points Dobson, Margaret Freeman, Erika Scheurer, that I was so eager to inflict on the supposedly and Hiroko Uno. unwary. When I actually got around to read- ing that marvelous book, certain of David’s You could tell from David’s demeanor that he observations stuck like burrs in my memory: came, like Dickinson, from somewhere local, how brilliant Dickinson’s first lines so often somewhere real – from upstate New York, as are, and how rarely that brilliant energy is sus- it happened – attending Elba Central High David Porter at the University of tained throughout; how she never wrote an ars Rochester in 1962. School in a small town between Buffalo and poetica, never had, as David put it, “a project”; Rochester. He got his BA (and, later, an hon- experienced both kinds of laughter, as a young how much she left unsaid, unwritten, trusting orary doctorate) from Hamilton College and scholar just starting out in 1986, the centennial instead in gaps and absences; how her genius his PhD, writing on Dickinson’s early poems, year of Emily Dickinson’s death. Scholars con- is modern, surprising, astonishing through and from nearby University of Rochester. But then vened in many places, and from many places, through – modern as Williams or Stevens is his horizons abruptly widened, and stayed during that eventful year. David himself orga- modern, and modern as Longfellow or Emer- wide. He served as head of the English De- nized the Centennial Celebration of Dickinson son, at least in his poetry (as David explained partment at Robert College in Istanbul, from at the Folger Library in Washington, and de- in his incisive 1978 book Emerson and Liter- 1953 to 1959, interrupting his time there for livered the keynote. There was at those spir- ary Change), isn’t. stints in the Naval Air Corps and the 101st ited gatherings a particularly energetic contin- Airborne Division of the US Army. He was gent from Japan, composed entirely, as far as David felt you could learn more about Dickin- twice awarded Fulbright Lectureships (which I could tell, of friends of David’s. “Traveling son from Joseph Cornell’s boxes than from a took him to Italy and England), won a Gug- to Japan,” he later told Erika Scheurer, “was mile of Calvinism, as served up by Allen Tate genheim Fellowship and a fellowship from a great adventure – to see their insights into or more recent religiously minded scholars. He the National Endowment for the Humanities, Dickinson. To hear about the challenges of thought that the poetry of his friend and Uni- and held a residency as senior research fellow translating Dickinson was an eye-opener to a versity of Massachusetts colleague James Tate at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, native speaker.” could open more doors in Dickinson’s locked D.C. – again, a partial list. stanzas than a hundred poems by Dickinson’s A demon networker at the center of every conventional contemporaries. David never got What I remember best, though, is David’s clump and clique, David introduced every- tired of the wonder of Dickinson’s offhand laughter, his boisterous pleasure of scholarly one to everyone at those centennial celebra- working methods: the scraps of envelopes, the assent, of joyful camaraderie. There was also tions. He liked that I was a comparativist and chocolate wrappers, the stamps and pencils his more measured laughter of skepticism. I (in those days) a theorist, full to bursting with enclosed with poems. How like Cornell, how

EDIS Bulletin | 33 Obituary modern, how Mallarmé! Dickinson scholars cause it brought Dickinson closer to the “dis- ian in every way, prepared by his beloved wife are still catching up with David’s emphasis, graceful” Whitman – one of the very few nine- of 56 years, Rosalie Pedalino Porter, and best in his classic essay on Dickinson and Cornell teenth-century American poets who David felt of all when one of their sons – Thomas, David, (prepared under blissful circumstances as a had made the grade. His occasional skepticism or Stephen – were also in town, sometimes Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Research regarding feminist readings of Dickinson had with spouse and children. No shrinking violet, Institute at Bellagio), on Dickinson as a visual nothing to do with misogyny – he was hugely Lee is herself a leading scholar, in the field of artist. I was lucky to work with him, in 1997, supportive of women scholars and poets, as second-language acquisition, and as lively and on the exhibition at the Mead Art Museum, others will testify. He just thought these read- passionate in her convictions as David. They at Amherst College, on Dickinson and con- ings were sometimes too mired in the past – brought joy and contagious laughter to every- temporary art. He would have been thrilled untrue, no doubt, at least in a red-hot reading thing they touched. to see a volume like Marta Werner’s and Jen like Adrienne Rich’s, but true to his prejudices Bervin’s The Gorgeous Nothings. regarding Dickinson’s modernity. Christopher Benfey is Mellon Professor of David wasn’t entirely down on history – he David had a zest for travel – one cannot imag- English at Mount Holyoke. His work appears was as thrilled as a proud father when his ine him saying, for example, “I must omit in The New York Review of Books and The graduate student Karen Dandurand discov- Boston” – but he also loved to be at home. New Republic, among other periodicals. ered that Dickinson had published poems in Gregarious by nature, he was fond of quot- Among his four books on the Gilded Age is pro-Union Brooklyn newspapers during the ing Dickinson’s reason for avoiding men and A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Civil War. But he wanted his Dickinson alive, women: “they talk of Hallowed things, aloud Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Em- not dead – not safe in her alabaster chamber. – and embarrass my Dog.” He was at his best ily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher I think he liked the Brooklyn connection be- at his own table, with a sumptuous meal, Ital- Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade.

Memorial to David Porter By Hiroko Uno shall never forget how kind and gener- of William Carlos Williams’ grandmother, in 1984 when he visited Japan to give lec- I ous Professor David Porter always was to he introduced me to Professor Paul Mari- tures at several universities. I arranged his me. We first met in 1978 when as a special ani, who was writing a biography of that lecture at Aichi Prefectural University, graduate student at Mount Holyoke College poet. As a result, I was invited by the poet’s where I then worked, and set up some I took his course on Emily Dickinson’s Po- son to visit his house, which was where the sight-seeing in Nagoya, but it was nothing etry at the University of Massachusetts. poet also used to practice medicine. compared with all he had done for me.

When I suggested to him that the photo in Professor Porter tried to help me in a differ- Later, as a member of the Emily Dickin- the frontispiece of volume II of Richard ent way when, after one year at Mount Holy- son Society of Japan, I deeply appreci- Sewall’s biography of Dickinson might be oke, I was accepted by the graduate school ated Professor Porter’s efforts to hold an but had financial problems, international conference at University of applying too late for a scholar- Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1986, where ship. He suggested that I be a several Japanese scholars, myself includ- companion to Mrs. Hampson, ed, were able to read papers together with who lived alone in the Ever- distinguished American scholars, such as greens and who had recently Professor Charles Anderson. This opportu- broken her leg and had to walk nity greatly encouraged the study of Emily with crutches. Although this Dickinson’s poetry in Japan. plan did not work out, I had a memorable meeting and talk Hiroko Uno, former President of the Dickin- with Mrs. Hampson. son Society of Japan, teaches at Kobe College. She is the author of Emily Dickinson Visits So I cannot express how Boston and Emily Dickinson’s Marble Disc: David Porter with the author in Amherst in 1986. happy I was to see him again A Poetics of Renunciation and Science.

34 | EDIS Bulletin Members’ News

Annual Meeting in Amherst

he Emily Dickinson International Society will hold its 2014 annual meeting program in Amherst, Massachusetts, from August 8 to August T10. This year’s theme is “Emily Dickinson and New England Writers.” The program, co-sponsored by the Emily Dickinson Museum, will include presentations and activities related to the topic for all participants as well as an institute format for participants who have submitted papers on the theme for discussion in critical workshops. A preliminary schedule follows, and members are advised to check the EDIS website www. emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org, for the most up-to-date information as the weekend approaches. Online registration is accessible from the EDIS website; those who prefer to mail the registration form will find one on page 38 of this Bulletin issue. We hope to see many of you there!

Friday, August 8

9:30-10:45 am Registration (Amherst College Alumni House Foyer) 10:45-11:00 am Welcome and Meeting Overview (Alumni House Large Meeting Room) 11:00 am-12:15 pm “Emily Dickinson’s New English” (Alumni House Large Meeting Room) Presenter: Karen L. Kilcup, Linda Arnold Carlisle Distinguished Excellence Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

12:15-1:30 pm Lunch on Your Own

1:30-4:15 pm Institute Critical Workshops (Locations to be announced) OR 1:30-3:30 pm Discussion Workshops (Alumni House Small Meeting Rooms)

Participants can select to attend either “Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau” led by Nancy and William Pridgen (EDIS San Antonio chapter) or “Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Strout” led by Lois Kackley and Greg Mattingly (EDIS Amherst Chapter). For more informa- tion on the discussion workshops, see page 37.

4:30-5:00 pm Report on the Institute Critical Workshops (Alumni House Large Meeting Room) 6:00-7:45 pm Reception and Banquet, Lewis-Sebring Commons, Valentine Hall, Amherst College 8:00-9:30 pm “Henry & Emily: The Muses of Massachusetts,” Stirn Auditorium, Amherst College This three act, 90-minute play will be performed by its author/actor Jim Stapleton and actress Diana Bigelow. (Find more information at www.jimstapleton.com.)

Saturday, August 9 (All activities will take place in the Alumni House Large Meeting Room)

9:30-10:30 am Annual Members’ Meeting, Presider: Martha Nell Smith, EDIS President

10:45 am-Noon “Emily Dickinson’s Precincts of Freedom,” Presenter: Jane H. Wald, Executive Director, Emily Dickinson Museum

12:15-1:15 pm Box Lunch and Report on Discussion Workshops

1:15-4:00 pm Free Time to Visit the ED Museum, to Take a Self-Guided Walking Tour of Amherst Writers’ Homes, or to explore Exhibits at the Frost and Jones Libraries 4:00-5:00 pm Maxine Silverman will read from Transport of the Aim, a garland of poems on the lives of Emily Dickinson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Celia Thaxter. (Find more information at www.maxinegsilverman.com.) 5:00 pm-?? Join EDIS Board Members for Happy Hour followed by dinner on your own. Continued on next page

EDIS Bulletin | 35 Members’ News

Sunday, August 10 (All activities will take place in the Alumni House Large Meeting Room)

9:00-10:00 am Research Circle, Convener: Ellen Louise Hart 10:15-11:30 am “Back Talk in New England: Dickinson and Revolution,” Presenter: Paul Crumbley, Professor of English and American Studies, Utah State University 11:30 am-Noon Wrap-Up and Looking Ahead to 2015

Workshops at the Annual Meeting

Discussion workshops are one of the most popular features of EDIS annual meetings. Here is a preview of the two planned for sum- mer 2014. Participants need not do the reading in advance.

Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau Take a Look or Two at the Sky Led by Nancy and William Pridgen

Both Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau observed nature closely and described nature in poetic detail. Both Dickinson and Thoreau aspired to be poets. While Dickinson became a successful poet, Thoreau gave up this dream early on and focused on prose. Yet Thoreau’s writing employs poetic devices quite effectively. This workshop will explore the sky as seen by Dickinson and Thoreau. We will briefly compare their poems about sunrise and sunset and rain. In addition we will explore the poetic aspects of Thoreau’s descrip- tions of the sky in several prose fragments from his Journals.

Dickinson poems we will explore as time permits are the following:

Fr204/ J318 “I’ll tell you how the sun rose –” Fr233/ J204 “A slash of blue! A sweep of gray!” Fr572/ J304 “The day came slow – till five o’clock – ” Fr846/ J794 “A drop fell on the apple tree – ” Fr216/ J194 “On this long storm the rainbow rose – ” (With the exception of “A drop fell,” the Dickinson poems as edited by Johnson are available on the Internet.)

Thoreau poems we will consider are the following (Page numbers are from his Collected Essays and Poems Library of America, 1984):

539-540 “I’m guided by the darkest night” 599-600 “On Ponkawtasset, since, we took our way,” 536-537 The Summer Rain (The Summer Rain is available on the Internet: http://www.poemhunter.com/henry-david-thoreau/ )

A New England Perspective in Emily Dickinson’s Poems and Elizabeth Strout’s Novels Led by Lois Kackley and Greg Mattingly

"...I see New Englandly" (Fr256/J285), wrote Emily Dickinson.

Oh! Really?

We suggest Dickinson's non-provincial, redoubtable, “circumferential” poetry disproves the designation and subverts her “status” as a writer with a New England perspective. Continued on the next page

36 | EDIS Bulletin Members’ News

Was to “see New Englandly” another “pose” (similar to that of “wife,” “bride,” or innocent child), this time as a narrow-minded speaker? Or, is the emphasis on “new” an assertion of status as the groundbreaker poet of pioneering New England (and by implication the New World) contrasted with old-world England and its queen?

Regardless, geography cannot be denied. The poet was born and reared in a part of the world with distinctive characteristics. Likewise, Maine na- tive Elizabeth Strout, who received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is conscious of her and her characters’ roots and nurturing in New England’s Puritan asceticism. Strout portrays the thrust of personal independence, wealth, and the lure of sophistication in narratives about New Englanders who move to, or share experiences with, New York City.

In addition to “The Robin’s my Criterion for Tune-”(Fr 256/J 285), the poems and letter listed below may enlarge our discussion of the New Eng- land perspective in Dickinson’s work. For Strout’s rendering of a 21st century version of that perspective in narrative responses to New England origins, we will focus on The Burgess Boys.

Fr143/J76 “Exultation is the going” Fr236/J324 “Some keep the Sabbath going to church-” Fr307/J271 “A solemn thing - it was - I said-” Fr445/J613 “They shut me up in Prose-” Fr800/J1052 “I never saw a Moor.” From L39 to Abiah Root, late 1850: “You are growing wiser than I am, and nipping in the bud fancies which I let blossom - perchance to bear no fruit, or if plucked, I may find bitter. The shore is safer Abiah, but I love to buffett the sea – I can count the bitter wrecks here in these pleas- ant waters, and hear the murmuring winds, but oh I love the danger! You are learning control and firmness. Christ Jesus will love you more. I'm afraid he don't love me any.”

Dickinson Institute Don’t Forget to Vote!

n Friday, August 8, 2014, the “Dickinson Institute” will The Emily Dickinson International Society is electing an at-large Oconvene in Amherst. The Institute will be made up of 27 member of the board. A ballot has been included with this mailing of scholars who have come together to think about the topic “Emily the Bulletin. Please vote, on-line or by mail! Dickinson and Other New England Writers.” The afternoon will begin with a talk by Karen Kilcup, and then presenters will work The candidates are Michelle Kohler and Marta Werner. Michelle on pre-circulated papers in one of 5 different groups: Dickinson Kohler teaches at Tulane University. Her current work engages the dis- & 20th/21st-Century Poets, Dickinson & Her Female Contempo- courses of Transcendentalism, Civil War rhetoric, and post-Darwinian raries, Dickinson & Her Friends, Dickinson & Emerson/Thoreau/ evolutionary debates. Her book, Miles of Stare: Transcendentalism Melville, and Dickinson & Theories of Language & Reception. and the Problem of Literary Vision in Nineteenth-Century America, will appear in the summer of 2014. The afternoon will wrap up with a meeting of all Institute mem- bers to discuss what kind of work has been made possible by Marta Werner teaches at D’Youville College, near Buffalo. Deeply in- thinking about Dickinson in such configurations. The applica- terested in textual scholarship and manuscript studies, she is the co- tions that we received for the Institute were diverse in scope and editor of The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems. method. Some rethink Dickinson’s relationship to other canoni- Her book Emily Dickinson’s Open Folios: Scenes of Reading, Surfaces cal figures (such as Emerson and Thoreau), while others bring of Writing was an early work to draw attention to the works that are less canonical ones (Phelps, Spofford, and Freeman) within now less and less frequently thought of as “late fragments.” Dickinson’s orbit, while still others introduce literary figures with whom we may not be familiar with at all (Hennessy and The polls are open until May 20. To vote by email, please write to so- Hitchcock). Groups will be led by Alex Socarides, Meredith caridesa@missouri.edu, subject line “Member-at-Large,” and put your McGill, Martha Nell Smith, Elizabeth Petrino, and Eliza Rich- name and the name of your candidate of choice (Michelle Kohler or ards. Marta Werner) in the message.

EDIS Bulletin | 37 Members’ News

EDIS Annual Meeting Registration Form Name______Affiliation (if applicable)______Mailing Address______Phone ______Email______

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38 | EDIS Bulletin Residue of Adz

Emily Dickinson and the Eclipse of 1860 By Stephanie Wampler

uly 18, 1860, began as a momentous day and easily accessible viewing apparatus) for a Doubtless, we should deem superfluous Jfor the informed citizenry of the United “one or two coppers.” Newspapers confirmed Many Sciences, States. Newspaper headlines from Califor- that both the Sun and Moon lived up to ex- Not pursued by learned Angels nia to New York had for weeks announced pectations and “behaved well.” In scholastic skies! the coming of the Great Eclipse. According to numerous accounts, the eclipse would be- The eclipse had its place in both solar history Low amid that glad Belles lettres gin a little after 7:30 a.m. and would last for and in the annals of the Dickinson family Grant that we may stand – nearly three minutes, and though viewers in and friends. In her 1894 Total Eclipses of the Stars, amid profound Galaxies – the continental U.S. would only see a partial Sun, Mabel Loomis Todd described the 1860 At that grand “Right Hand”! (Fr179) eclipse, dedicated astronomers could observe eclipse in detail and was especially interested the total eclipse along a line through Hud- in various scientific expeditions that went to It is perhaps more than coincidental that son’s Bay, Northern Spain, and Africa. observe it. She described an American expe- Dickinson mentions the “savans” studying dition to the “inhospitable” Aulezavik Island. the heavens, and then hints that her own lit- The New York Times proclaimed that “To- The Americans had a “thorough eclipse pro- erary endeavors sometimes feel inadequate day occurs the most impressive of all celes- gramme mapped out” but were foiled by an when compared to the magnificent studies of tial phenomena – a total Solar Eclipse! [and] overcast sky. However, observers in Spain the astronomers. the chief planets of our system – Venus, were more fortunate, except for the “luckless Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn, constellated photographer [who] went enthusiastically to Dickinson’s “I taste a liquor never brewed” around the sun [will] ‘assist’ at the fete. work” snapping pictures, only to discover (Fr207) is also suggestive of her interest in Many a century will pass before the num- when it was all over that “he had forgotten to the eclipse of 1860. One possible reading bers which rule the stars shall bring about so put any plate in his camera slide.” of the poem is as a riddle about the eclipse. rare a combination . . . a spectacle so mag- The first three stanzas seem to compare the nificent.” It is quite possible that Emily Dickinson sun’s rotations through the skies to those herself expressed interest in the eclipse. of a drunkard through the taverns in town: As the writer noted, not only was the specta- Although she does not directly refer to the nightfall prompts last calls for all for nec- cle to be magnificent for ordinary people, but eclipse or its corresponding news coverage, tar-imbibing earth-bound creatures, but the “savans” of “leading nationalities” (the Unit- Dickinson’s “If the foolish, call them “flow- intemperate sun moves from one “inn . . . ed States, as well as England, France, Ger- ers” (Fr179) probably composed in the sum- of molten blue” to the next, sipping airy many, and Russia) had trekked to Spain and mer of 1860, nods to the studies of “Savans,” alcohol “from Tankards” made of pearly Africa to observe the eclipse, and the costs then notes that clouds. Then, the fourth stanza likens the of those scientific expeditions were “greater moon’s eclipsing the sun to a “little tippler/ than went to the outfit of COLUMBUS on his Leaning against” his bigger friend. Togeth- voyage of discovery of a New World.” Even er, the two inebriates stagger through town. the “Viceroy of Egypt gave orders that a sci- In The New York Times, the “chief plan- entific expedition be organized.” From their ets” honor the “celestial phenomena” and appointed posts, these intrepid astronomers crowds “halt . . . in the highway” to watch would make many “delicate and complicated the eclipse; likewise, in this last stanza of observations” which would be so useful to Fr207, Dickinson’s heavenly angels take “the entire scheme of human action and en- off their hats to the drunken pair even as deavor!” the people dash over to their windows to witness the spectacle. After the eclipse was over, coverage re- sumed, and one article described the crowds of Americans who had “halted in the high- Stephanie Wampler teaches American lit- ways” to watch the great event. It was a brief erature at Haywood Community College moment of excitement for which the Salem in western North Carolina. She presented Register reported many “ragged urchins” Illustration from Mabel Loomis Todd’s portions of this article at the 2013 EDIS selling bits of smoked glass (the only safe Total Eclipses of the Sun, 1894 Conference in College Park, MD.

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