Emily Dickinson
"Nature is a haunted house - but Art - a house that tries to be haunted"
-Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson, the Belle of Amherst, published only 11 of her 1,775 poems during her lifetime. I have read every single one of the 1,775 poems.
Here are two poems that are NOT about death:
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you--Nobody--too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise--you know!
How dreary--to be--Somebody!
How public--like a Frog--
To tell one's name--the livelong June--
To an admiring Bog!
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We met as Sparks-Diverging Flints
Sent various-scattered ways-
We parted as the Central Flint
Were cloven with an Adze-
Subsisting on the Light We bore
Before We felt the Dark-
A Flint unto this Day-perhaps-
But for that single Spark.
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More about Dickinson:
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. She attended
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley but severe homesickness led her to return home after one year. In the years that followed, she seldom left her house and visitors were scarce. The people with whom she did come
in contact, however, had an intense impact on her thoughts and poetry. She was particularly stirred by the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she met on a trip to Philadelphia. He left for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her home in 1860, and his departure gave rise to a heartsick flow of verse from Dickinson, who deeply admired him. By the 1860s, she lived
in almost total physical isolation from the outside world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely.
Her poetry reflects her loneliness and the speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want; but her poems are also marked by the intimate recollection of inspirational moments which are decidedly life-giving and suggest the possibility of future happiness. Her work was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as
well as by her Puritan upbringing and the Book of Revelation. She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and John Keats. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman by rumor of its disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice. Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, but she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886.
Suggested Link:
http://www.emilydickinson.org/
posted by Deborah @ 6:27 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
beautiful stuff. My favorite Emily poem is:
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
to the ecstacy.
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears.
I'm more of a fan of the first stanza, but love it all anyway.
Out of curiosity, where did you get the bio information that called Mount Holyoke a "Female Seminary"? As a graduate of Smith College, sister school and neighbor to Mt. Holyoke, I find it extraordinarily amusing that it would be referred to it in that way.
Although the dictionary backs up the usage, the word makes me think of it being more somber and virginal that it is. It is actually far from either. The text must have been very old or they might have referred to it as a college instead. Very amusing though. Thanks for the laugh, and keep up the good work.
Mike,
Thanks for sharing that exquisite poem by Dickinson.
Anne,
Thank you for your interest. Holyoke is referred to as a "seminary" in Sewall's The Life of Emily Dickinson (1974), poets.org and almost any reference to Holyoke in the beginning of the nineteenth century when Dickinson attended.
From http://www.mtholyoke.edu/marylyon/founding.html:
Why did Mary Lyon call Mount Holyoke a "Seminary?"
In the 19th century, the words "seminary" and "college" were used to describe schools at a variety of levels. A "college" might give instruction either to university students, or to those of high school age and even younger. A "seminary" could be a preparatory school, or offer a college education or graduate and professional training. Some historians believe Mary Lyon felt she would attract greater financial support using the name "seminary" rather than "college" for Mount Holyoke. The idea of a "college" for women was horrifying to many people in the 1830s.
My favorite -
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,—
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!
Wild Nights! is often cited as evidence that Dickinson was a lesbian. While it is undeniably a sexual metaphor, I fail to understand why it would be a homoerotic metaphor. To the contrary, the last line suggests a male "I" mooring in a female "thee".
I agree w/ you, Deb. The beauty of poetry is that you never really know the true intention of the writer. I stumbled across the following quote the other day:
"When that passage was written only God and Robert Browning understood it. Now only God understands it." -Rudolf Besier
I still think we are right, though ;).
Does the intent of the author ever matter? Does it stop mattering at some point in time? Does the author accurately recall their intent 10, 20, 30 years later?
Harold Bloom in "Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate" will argue for an interpretation of a particular poem contrary to what Stevens has stated as his intent.
Stevens in a letter wrote: “The final authority is the poem itself” (Letters 390). Stevens claimed “…not the faintest recollection of what theory prompted that particular poem (Sea Surface Full of Clouds - Collected Poems). What I intended is nothing”
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