Fellow Emily Dickinson devotees, you must get yourself a copy of “The Letters of Emily Dickinson”.
Dickinson is America's greatest poet. (That is if, like me, you're an Apollonian. If your taste runs to the Dionysian, then it's Walt Whitman.) But Dickinson was more than a virtuoso of language, which is what every poet aspires to. She lived poetry. A sentence that is meaningless and pretentious, but I can't think of a better.
You've probably read a few letters written by great poets. Keats' letters are famous. Before the Dickinson, “The Letters of Seamus Heaney” was the last big “Letters of” to come rolling over the middlebrow horizon.
Poets communicating with other individuals express themselves in prose, whether they are talking, writing a letter or text messaging.
Yes, certainly, the letter-writing poet’s interior world, where his or her poetry is gestating, does break out, but always in prose.
Exuberant over an idea, for example...
I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read — I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School — and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? (Keats, letter)
...or enraged about trivialities:
In the last two days I have written thirty-two letters … all of them a weight that was lying on my mind even as the accursed envelopes lay week by week on my desk. The trouble is, I have about thirty-two more to write: I could ignore them but if I do the sense of worthlessness and hauntedness grows in me … fuck it, I’m going to get rid of them before I board the plane on Thursday. (Heaney, letter)
An extended metaphor from Keats, a plaintive howl from Heaney, but the passages are nevertheless in prose. No rearranging of them on the page can make them into poetry.
Nothing wrong in that; it’s absolutely right, as a matter of fact. We live in a reality in which prose is the most straightforward and unambiguous form in which one person can communicate with another. We may take welcome excursions into the world of poetry, where even syntax can turn out to be expressionistic, but fortunately (or unfortunately) we live in the reality of prose.
Emily Dickinson did not. Her reality was not what we call “real.” She only made reluctant excursions into the world of prose.
Dickinson's “Letters”: Let’s go to a random page. Today is October 25th, the 299th day of the year. What will I find on page 299?
It is yet another letter to her most frequent correspondent, her sister-in-law, Kate Anthon.
Katie--
Last year at this time I did not miss you, but positions shifted, until I hold your black in strong hallowed remembrance, and trust my colors are to you tints slightly beloved. You cease indeed to talk, which is a custom prevalent among things parted and torn, but shall I class this, dear, among elect exceptions, and bear you just as usual unto the kind Lord?
We dignify our Faith, when we can cross the ocean with it, though most prefer ships--
How do you do this year? I remember you as fires begin, and evenings open at Austin's, without the Maid in black, Katie, without the Maid in black.
Those were unnatural evenings,
Bliss is unnatural--
How many years, I wonder, will sow the moss upon them, before we bind again, a little altered it may be, elder a little it will be, and yet the same as suns, which shine, between our lives and loss, and violets, not last years, but having the Mother's eyes.-- Do you find plenty of food at home? Famine is unpleasant—It is too late for "Frogs," or which pleases me better, dear -- not quite early enough! The pools were full of you for a brief period, but that brief period blew away, leaving me with many stems, and but a few foliage! Gentlemen here have a way of plucking the tops of trees, and putting the fields in their cellars annually, which in point of taste is excerable, and would they please omit I should have fine vegetation & foliage all the year round, and never a winter month. Insanity to the sane seems so unnecessary -- but I am only one, and they are "four and forty," which little affair of numbers leaves me impotent. Aside from this dear Katie, inducements to visit Amherst are as they were. -- I am pleasantly located in the deep sea, but love will row you out if her hands are strong, and don't wait till I land, for I'm going ashore on the other side -- Emilie.
That is poetry—almost all of it, from beginning to end. Occasionally, Dickinson drops into the prosaic--
Aside from this dear Katie, inducements to visit Amherst are as they were.
a cordiality that could have been penned by one of Trollope’s ingenues, but then--
I am pleasantly located in the deep sea,
but love will row you out if her hands are strong,
and don't wait till I land,
for I'm going ashore on the other side
Dickinson wrote her letters, as well as her poetry, standing tiptoe on the cusp between irrational and rational—a rare and marvelous place to be.
Dickinson is America's greatest poet. (That is if, like me, you're an Apollonian. If your taste runs to the Dionysian, then it's Walt Whitman.) But Dickinson was more than a virtuoso of language, which is what every poet aspires to. She lived poetry. A sentence that is meaningless and pretentious, but I can't think of a better.
You've probably read a few letters written by great poets. Keats' letters are famous. Before the Dickinson, “The Letters of Seamus Heaney” was the last big “Letters of” to come rolling over the middlebrow horizon.
Poets communicating with other individuals express themselves in prose, whether they are talking, writing a letter or text messaging.
Yes, certainly, the letter-writing poet’s interior world, where his or her poetry is gestating, does break out, but always in prose.
Exuberant over an idea, for example...
I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read — I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School — and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? (Keats, letter)
...or enraged about trivialities:
In the last two days I have written thirty-two letters … all of them a weight that was lying on my mind even as the accursed envelopes lay week by week on my desk. The trouble is, I have about thirty-two more to write: I could ignore them but if I do the sense of worthlessness and hauntedness grows in me … fuck it, I’m going to get rid of them before I board the plane on Thursday. (Heaney, letter)
An extended metaphor from Keats, a plaintive howl from Heaney, but the passages are nevertheless in prose. No rearranging of them on the page can make them into poetry.
Nothing wrong in that; it’s absolutely right, as a matter of fact. We live in a reality in which prose is the most straightforward and unambiguous form in which one person can communicate with another. We may take welcome excursions into the world of poetry, where even syntax can turn out to be expressionistic, but fortunately (or unfortunately) we live in the reality of prose.
Emily Dickinson did not. Her reality was not what we call “real.” She only made reluctant excursions into the world of prose.
Dickinson's “Letters”: Let’s go to a random page. Today is October 25th, the 299th day of the year. What will I find on page 299?
It is yet another letter to her most frequent correspondent, her sister-in-law, Kate Anthon.
Katie--
Last year at this time I did not miss you, but positions shifted, until I hold your black in strong hallowed remembrance, and trust my colors are to you tints slightly beloved. You cease indeed to talk, which is a custom prevalent among things parted and torn, but shall I class this, dear, among elect exceptions, and bear you just as usual unto the kind Lord?
We dignify our Faith, when we can cross the ocean with it, though most prefer ships--
How do you do this year? I remember you as fires begin, and evenings open at Austin's, without the Maid in black, Katie, without the Maid in black.
Those were unnatural evenings,
Bliss is unnatural--
How many years, I wonder, will sow the moss upon them, before we bind again, a little altered it may be, elder a little it will be, and yet the same as suns, which shine, between our lives and loss, and violets, not last years, but having the Mother's eyes.-- Do you find plenty of food at home? Famine is unpleasant—It is too late for "Frogs," or which pleases me better, dear -- not quite early enough! The pools were full of you for a brief period, but that brief period blew away, leaving me with many stems, and but a few foliage! Gentlemen here have a way of plucking the tops of trees, and putting the fields in their cellars annually, which in point of taste is excerable, and would they please omit I should have fine vegetation & foliage all the year round, and never a winter month. Insanity to the sane seems so unnecessary -- but I am only one, and they are "four and forty," which little affair of numbers leaves me impotent. Aside from this dear Katie, inducements to visit Amherst are as they were. -- I am pleasantly located in the deep sea, but love will row you out if her hands are strong, and don't wait till I land, for I'm going ashore on the other side -- Emilie.
That is poetry—almost all of it, from beginning to end. Occasionally, Dickinson drops into the prosaic--
Aside from this dear Katie, inducements to visit Amherst are as they were.
a cordiality that could have been penned by one of Trollope’s ingenues, but then--
I am pleasantly located in the deep sea,
but love will row you out if her hands are strong,
and don't wait till I land,
for I'm going ashore on the other side
Dickinson wrote her letters, as well as her poetry, standing tiptoe on the cusp between irrational and rational—a rare and marvelous place to be.
RSS Feed