American Romanticism

Prof. Harvey

DICKINSON LETTERS & POETRY HANDOUT

PERSONALITY/TECHNIQUES REVEALED IN LETTERS

--incredible compression & elision

--fascination with paradox

--visual metaphor for mental process

--notions of God not orthodox

SOME GENERAL POINTS ABOUT HER POETRY

--based upon simple hymns/ballads (3/4 beats per line)

--formal simplicity/appearance belies compressed complexity of image sequence

--Dickinson: minimalist (opposite of Whitman)

--but manuscripts reveal small poem expands out onto page, as if page were mind/world/text united in some vast, intense conception

--God/truth so intense must be approached obliquely

--full epiphany often withheld; fascination with threshold moments (particularly death moment)

--Dickinson has different voices/ personalities (persona):  little girl, sentimental poet of nature, lover, Christic martyr, feminist, etc.

--often key types of process/images get repeated in different contexts: e.g., sound filling up/not filling up space, the notion of solidity/vacuum--i.e. she is the poet of lack (and its potential opposite)

FOUR TIPS FOR READING DICKINSON'S POETRY

1) Don't become obsessed with getting every detail to fit an overall interpretation.  The more complex poems invariably contain lines/ideas that are difficult to make sense of.

2) Because of the absence of standard punctuation, you have to play around to get a feeling for what words combine with other words to form what otherwise would be a "logical" sentence unit.

3) Keep in mind that she switches metaphors/similes very abruptly, and that she may simultaneously be talking, say, about God and love.

Nature, longing, and epiphany poems

130 These are the days when Birds come back - A very few - a Bird or two - To take a backward look. These are the days when skies resume The old - old sophistries of June - A blue and gold mistake. Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee - Almost thy plausibility Induces my belief. Till ranks of seeds their witness bear - And softly thro' the altered air Hurries a timid leaf. Oh Sacrament of summer days, Oh Last Communion in the Haze - Permit a child to join. Thy sacred emblems to partake - Thy consecrated bread to take And thine immortal wine!

315 He fumbles at your Soul As Players at the Keys Before they drop full Music on - He stuns you by degrees - Prepares your brittle Nature For the Etherial Blow By fainter Hammers - further heard - Then nearer - Then so slow Your Breath has time to straighten - Your Brain - to bubble Cool - Deals - One - imperial - Thunderbolt - That scalps your naked Soul - When Winds take Forests in the Paws - The Universe - is still -

Feminist critique poems

187 How many times these low feet staggered - Only the soldered mouth can tell - Try - can you stir the awful rivet - Try - can you lift the hasps of steel! Stroke the cool forehead - hot so often - Lift - if you care - the listless hair - Handle the adamantine fingers Never a thimble - more - shall wear - Buzz the dull flies - on the chamber window - Brave - shines the sun through the freckled pane - Fearless - the cobweb swings from the ceiling - Indolent Housewife - in Daisies - lain!

303 The Soul selects her own Society - Then - shuts the Door - To her divine Majority - Present no more - Unmoved - she notes the Chariots - pausing - At her low Gate - Unmoved - an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat - I've known her - from an ample nation - Choose One - Then - close the Valves of her attention - Like Stone -

732 She rose to His Requirement - dropt The Playthings of Her Life To take the honorable Work Of Woman, and of Wife - If ought She missed in Her new Day, Of Amplitude, or Awe - Or first Prospective - Or the Gold In using, wear away, It lay unmentioned - as the Sea Develop Pearl, and Weed, But only to Himself - be known The Fathoms they abide -

Depression poems

258 There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons - That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes - Heavenly Hurt, it gives us - We can find no scar, But internal difference, Where the Meanings, are - None may teach it - Any - 'Tis the Seal Despair - An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air - When it comes, the Landscape listens - Shadows - hold their breath - When it goes, 'tis like the Distance On the look of Death -

341 After great pain, a formal feeling comes - The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs - The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before? The Feet, mechanical, go round - A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought - Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone - This is the Hour of Lead - Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow - First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -

280 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading - treading - till it seemed That Sense was breaking through - And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum - Kept beating - beating - till I thought My Mind was going numb - And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space - began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race Wrecked, solitary, here - And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down - And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing - then -

Death or threshhold of truth/grace poems

241 I like a look of Agony, Because I know it's true - Men do not sham Convulsion, Nor simulate, a Throe - The Eyes glaze once - and that is Death - Impossible to feign The Beads upon the Forehead By homely Anguish strung.

465 I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air - Between the Heaves of Storm - The Eyes around - had wrung them dry - And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset - when the King Be witnessed - in the Room - I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away What portion of me be Assignable - and then it was There interposed a Fly - With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz - Between the light - and me - And then the Windows failed - and then I could not see to see -

Unorthodox/poetic power poems

593    I think I was enchanted When first a sombre Girl - I read that Foreign Lady - The Dark - felt beautiful - And whether it was noon at night - Or only Heaven - at noon - For very Lunacy of Light I had not power to tell - The Bees - became as Butterflies - The Butterflies - as Swans - Approached - and spurned the narrow Grass - And just the meanest Tunes That Nature murmured to herself To keep herself in Cheer - I took for Giants - practising Titanic Opera - The Days - to Mighty Metres stept - The Homeliest - adorned As if unto a Jubilee 'Twere suddenly confirmed -

593 continued I could not have defined the change - Conversion of the Mind Like Sanctifying in the Soul - Is witnessed - not explained - 'Twas a Divine Insanity - The Danger to be sane Should I again experience - 'Tis Antidote to turn - To Tomes of solid Witchcraft - Magicians be asleep - But Magic - hath an Element Like Deity - to keep -

1545    The Bible is an antique Volume - Written by faded men At the suggestion of Holy Spectres - Subjects - Bethlehem - Eden - the ancient Homestead - Satan - the Brigadier - Judas - the Great Defaulter - David - the Troubador - Sin - a distinguished Precipice Others must resist - Boys that "believe" are very lonesome - Other Boys are "lost" - Had but the Tale a warbling Teller - All the Boys would come - Orpheus' Sermon captivated - It did not condemn -