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Dream

Last night I dreamed I was doing some research on Emily Dickinson and I found some artwork she had done, specifically a "needlepoint" that she had made for D. H. Lawrence. The subject matter was the nude female human form. That Emily, who knew?

Emily Dickinson Dysfunction, Part 6

Strange day. The weather was odd for November. Fast changing, like Spring. Chilly in the morning. Then the sun came out for maybe ten minutes in the afternoon. It felt warm. Then clouds closed over the sun. It got windy and cold. Then in the evening came lightening. Thunder rattled the windows in the house. Finally a drenching rain.

A day of contradictions. Chilly and warm. Sun. Warmth. Wind. Cold. Lightening and Thunder. Blue sky and rain. Serenity with an underlying sense of power, violence even.

Emily was like this.

Emily Dickinson Dysfunction, Part 5

Portrayals of Emily

1. Agoraphobic
2. Afraid of her surroundings
3. Eccentric
4. Spinster
5. Innovative pre-modernist poet
6. Rebellious and courageous woman

Emily Dickinson Dysfunction, Part 4

Emily Dickinson's struggles:

1. Faith
2. Domineering father
3. Mortality
4. Challenges of being a woman
5. Challenges of being a woman and a poet

Emily Dickinson Dysfunction, Part 3

I came up with an idea tonight that I am hoping will contribute to a cure to my Emily Dickinson Dysfunction (EDD). I have started a secret blog dedicated to nothing but Emily. I will continue to thrash out my thoughts and discoveries on Emily here (along with my other ramblings). And then once I have digested the material enough, I will turn to the secret blog and record my journey there in a more "finished," "polished," or "poetic" form. I would like to try this experiment for at least a year. At the end of the year, I would like to have a personal notebook (case study) representing my journey to know Emily. This seems like a fun project. Most of all, a worthy project. I hope I will not quit on it. I hope my curiosity about Emily will sustain me for 12 months. I think this project will make me a better teacher and writer.

Emily Dickinson Dysfunction, Part 2

I might not have ever come back to Emily Dickinson, except that I felt I had to cover her to some extent in the Modern Poetry course. Almost all the textbooks credit Whitman and Dickinson as being important forerunners to Modern Poetry. While discussing Dickinson, however, I had to admit to my students that I felt as though I was being "busted," my lack of appreciation for her work made real in front of my captive audience. Some of the students spoke of their appreciation for her work; others fell in my camp, not totally turned off to her but rather perplexed regarding her work.

Subsequently, I have made it my goal to get to know Emily as best I can.

I used to be disappointed in myself for not being a fast learner, for being someone who had to struggle toward enlightenment. But now I recognize that for me the struggle is part of the blessing. Getting to know Emily and to admire her work (as I feel I am capable of doing) is going to be a significant journey for me.

As it has turned out, I share more with Emily than I ever could have imagined.

Although in the past I have been put off by her stark style, her ambiguous punctuation and capitalization, the contradictory interpretations of her work that perplex, I am just now coming to know the brilliant possibilities of her poetry.

More to come.

Emily Dickinson Dysfunction, Part I

A confession: I have trouble reading Emily Dickinson's poems.

My first encounter with her was probably high school, probably, "I'm nobody, who are you?"

In college, her Complete Poems in my hand, I convinced myself I was indifferent to her work. More likely I didn't like the feeling of being trapped in the corridors of her mind.

Whitman was a different story: "I depart as air," he wrote.

I longed for a transcendent experience like Whitman's; I still do. Whitman gave me hope of shedding this mortal coil. Dickinson did not. Her isolation, her "madness," her constant tracings of mind-shifts, the volatile underpinnings of her seemingly quiet existance were all things I did not want for myself.

More to come.

What I Did Today

1. Slept very late.
2. Made coffee and scones.
3. Enjoyed petting my black cat.
4. Watched 3 episodes of The Sopranos.
5. Thought about Emily Dickinson.

I Can Be Quite Dense

I can be quite dense when it comes to understanding some authors.

Emily Dickinson is an author I have not been able to get close to. However, I am ever creeping toward some discovery. I am slowly developing a relationship with her.



I have been doing some reading lately about how her mind shifted from Puritanism to Transcendentalism.



According to Transcendentalism, we each have an "Over-soul," which is the means by which we are made one with every other thing. I am beginning to understand how Emily, perhaps, longed for spiritual nourishment but was unwilling to seek this within the confines of Puritanism. Rather, though her poetry, she sought to discover her "self."



In other words, the Punitan God is no longer the center of her world but rather something "unknown," something outside of what her mind could grasp:



I dwell in Possibility--

A fairer House than Prose--

More numerous of Windows--

Superior--for doors--



Of Chambers as the Cedars--

Impregnable of Eye--

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky--



Of Visitors--the fairest--

For Occupation--This--

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise--



Here she goes beyond doctrine, beyond certainties: she moves toward essences. Possibility is poetry. Through the imagination, and alone, she can find Paradise (knowledge of self).



My reading and thinking have lately brought me closer to Emily Dickinson. I will continue to work at this.

PS. Over-soul is an idea discussed by Emerson:

"The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart."

and ...

"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul."

Skeletons

For the 5,000 year old lovers unearthed in VALDARO, Italy:

Resurrection
by Emily Dickinson

'T was a long parting, but the time
For interview had come;
Before the judgment-seat of God,
The last and second time


These fleshless lovers met,
A heaven in a gaze,
A heaven of heavens, the privilege
Of one another's eyes.


No lifetime set on them,
Apparelled as the new
Unborn, except they had beheld,
Born everlasting now.

Was bridal e'er like this?
A paradise, the host,
And cherubim and seraphim
The most familiar guest.