Emily Dickinson is hard to love
Dickinson’s hard to love, although she’s easy to admire immensely.
Don’t get me wrong; I like certain of her poems. But the more inaccessible ones weary me, although I usually tend to have patience with difficult poetry if it really draws me. One reason I think I have special problems with Dickinson is that she is so aloof that it’s hard for me to feel deeper emotions than admiration while reading her poetry. And for me, even extreme admiration doesn’t substitute for love.
With Dickinson, the reader is immediately aware of being in the presence of a poet so unique that her mind feels almost opaque and slightly alien, despite the window into it that’s presented by the poetry.
Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for death” is a good example. The first time I ever read it I found it fascinating; it’s a masterpiece, IMHO. But there is cold (and I use the word cold because it fits the poem’s imagery) comfort in that fact. Dickinson never holds the reader’s hand. The message in this particular “letter to the world” is a brilliant yet austere one.
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –
That poem almost never fails to give me a slowly dawning and increasing chill that is actually physical. Literal goosebumps. Each time I read it, it surprises me, too.
And I’ve probably read it well over thirty times.
Yeah, she’s one of the few poets who have written more than one or two things I’ve liked. I’m not big on poetry, myself. To each their own.
If I may offer, this one is just a ditty, but I’ve read it dozens of times and it still gives me chills. It’s a century old, from a British magazine called “Punch”.
Who is in charge of the Clattering Train?
The axles creak
and the couplings strain
for the pace is hot
and the points are near
For Sleep has deadened the driver’s ear
and the signals flash
through the night in vain
for Death is in charge of the Clattering Train
Interesting and compelling, both Emily Dickens’ and the one from OBloodyHell. It brings to mind that line from Carlos Castaneda’s teacher, “Death is my constant companion”. It is good to be reminded because that clattering train will make it’s stop for all of us. We can get complacent when things are good and life’s routines just roll along without a care. It reminds me that we have to live and accomplish what we came for. We have to love the ones in our lives more mindfully. Don’t wait for the time on the death bed to think of those we never told we loved them and regret those things we did not get around to. These two poems can make you think.
The Great Poets of America (so far) in no particular order:
Dickinson
Whitman
Frost
Eliot
Robinson
Jeffers
and maybe (too soon to know)
Ginsberg
Somber thoughts. Read an article recently about the human brain. Our brains protect us from our own death thoughts. Death is something that happens to other people . The article is titled* Doubting death how our brains shield us from mortal truth* In the uk Guardian their go to Lefty Newspaper.
You can sing it to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song.
You are welcome.
Oblio, thanks for that. I will always laugh when I think of that poem and start humming G’s Island.
That reminds me, the song “Moonlight in Vermont” is a haiku. It was mentioned in a mystery I read several years ago and whenever I read, or hear, “haiku” mentioned, I start singing (in my head, sometimes, sometimes out loud) that song.
Haikus are somewhat important to my family. I entered a haiku contest one year and had my submission printed in the Louisville newspaper. Since then, we have a haiku contest almost every year at Christmas time, with prizes and readings aloud. No one is exempt, even little kids can count to 5, 7, and 5.
Other than that, I have no gene for poetry appreciation.
Gerard vanderleun: No William Carlos Williams? No Wallace Stevens? (What’s with all the W’s?)
Forefend! For shame.
As much as I love dear Allen Ginsberg, there are a few poets ahead of him in line. Plus, other than “Howl” which to be sure was epochal, near-thermonuclear, I find his average output weak sauce.
I like some modern poets, notably Ocean Vuong and Tony Hoagland (author of the book “What Narcissism Means to Me”). Vuong was last year given a MacArthur “Genius” Award, which will probably ruin him, as it did Nam Le. About half of the poems in Ocean Vuong’s book should have been left in the drawer, but the other half are great.
I love the standard Dickinson, of course. But the poem which killed me, which I memorized and carried in my wallet for years a custom copy I printed onto business card stock was this:
I dwell in Possibility
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 –
–Emily Dickinson
Admittedly, you have to sink into that one and live with it … as well as look up “gambrel” in the dictionary.
I taste a liquor never brewed —
From Tankards scooped in Pearl —
Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of Air — am I —
And Debauchee of Dew —
Reeling — thro endless summer days —
From inns of Molten Blue —
When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove’s door —
When Butterflies — renounce their “drams” —
I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats —
And Saints — to windows run —
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the — Sun —
Many dismiss it as doggerel, but for me there is a special place my heart fo Rudyard Kipling.
Jasmine passes to the soul
Direct, without a word.
It opens up the part to whole–
An unasked question, heard.
This year the jasmine is so bold
It is here and over there.
The rain, more rain, and then the cold
Let God’s perfume be shared.
Stopping, letting it come in
My nose, so very nosey–
Unique and to nothing else akin
Is this fragrant, auric poesy.
I can still smell the jasmine dear!
Is it memory or is that jasmine near?
Dickenson’s grim view of death is entirely in keeping with the viewpoint that this life is all that there is… no afterlife… no hope.
You can also sing much of Dickinson’s work to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas”.
Interesting piece — “The Ache for Faith”; some bits:
huxly asks and notes: “Gerard vanderleun: No William Carlos Williams? No Wallace Stevens? (What’s with all the W’s?)
Forefend! For shame.
As much as I love dear Allen Ginsberg, there are a few poets ahead of him in line. Plus, other than “Howl” which to be sure was epochal, near-thermonuclear, I find his average output weak sauce.”
WCW was a good poet, but not a great one. The same goes for Stevens. I have read widely in Williams but not deeply since there is little true depth to be had. And for all his output there are few that lodge in the memory beyond “So much depends…” Pretty much climbed into the Imagist cage and stayed there.
Stevens I very much admire and indeed have a number of his held in memory and find him handy when wanting to reflect on the serene flatness of mid-century intellectual life and thought. Still he’s pretty much of like hearing an afternoon of Chopin, lovely and intelligent and stimulating to the intellect, but no real sounding chords, no de profundis.
As for Ginsberg, I did qualify that and noted that it was still a bit too soon for such a disruptive poet– much more so than his other roll as an amanuensis for Whitman.
Howl, yes of course for many many reasons — poetic and cultural and political. His finest long poem however is not Howl but Kaddish. His other output is, at times sketchy and unworthy, but it is a tremendous body of work for one man.
I knew him slightly and interviewed him once and hung out on a number of other occasions (saw him beat a hippie to the sidwalk with his crutch for cracking wise and panhandling ). His downfall was being drawn into the sick politics of the 60s 70s 80s for gay and leftoid causes. He was always a nice Jewish boy and his poetry was much better when he wrote from that place.
But early innings on Allen still, but he’s definitely in the running,
He crossed the nation many times and wrote it out as he saw it. As he said in once poem, “America, I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.”
WCW was a good poet, but not a great one. The same goes for Stevens.
My heavens above! GVL replies directly and at length, rather than his usual smash-and-grab.
Whatever deficiencies one may find in WCW and Stevens, I still put them ahead of Ginsberg with the transcendental exception of “Howl.”
Arguably there would be no Ginsberg without WCW. Though Whitman laid the foundation for a grand open American poetry which Ginsberg later personified, it had been cobbled over with intricate academic fiefs with Pope Eliot as the all-seeing Eye at the top of the pyramid. It was WCW who held the doors and windows open for the later Black Mountain and Beat Poets rebelling against decoder-ring modernism. Furthermore WCW directly interceded as Ginsberg’s godfather at the publishing houses.
[Ginsberg] crossed the nation many times and wrote it out as he saw it. As he said in once poem, “America, I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.”
Indeed he did and I bless him for it. That was IMO Ginsberg’s true gift — a genius best friend connecting everyone of that era. However, I’d rather read Ginsberg’s collected letters than most of his poems.
It’s an interesting thought experiment to consider the poet Ginsberg might have become and the poetry he might have written had he focused on that rather than his ambition, which he confided to his psychiatrist before he became ALLEN GINSBERG, not to have to work and to have sex with the partners he wanted.
Not that there is anything wrong with that!
Neo, Neo! Where did you find this particular version of one of my favorite poems — once sealed in my memory? Where did you find that grotesque interspersal of a verse about “dews” that “drew quivering…”? In Huntington Cairns magnificent volume, The Limits of Art: A Critic’s Anthology of Western Literature, the poem is cited in full from the 1930 edition The Poems of Emily Dickinson. It contains only five verses, not six. The third and fourth verses read:
We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
As swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
The first line of the final verse reads: “Since then, ‘tis centuries but each…” (not “and yet”). The poet Allen Tate (U.S. Poet Laureate 1943-44) wrote, “If the word great means anything in poetry, this poem is one of the greatest in the English language; it is flawless to the last detail.”
I have always felt that the lively image of the children wrestling is pivotal to the whole poem. It reminds me of that famous Winslow Homer painting of children doing precisely that — wrestling in a ring, happy, careless of death. Tate writes that “the third stanza especially shows Miss Dickinson”s power to fuse: the children, the grain, and the setting sun (time) have the same degree of credibility; the first subtly preparing for the last.”
The quotes are from Tate’s 1936 “Reactionary Essays on Poetry and Ideas,” I don’t know where it came from (Did some Dickinson scholar find it in a draft among Emily’s papers?) but that third verse you quoted is, to my mind, an alien verse. One stumbles through it and it utterly destroys the rhythm, the power, the movement, of the entire poem — a civil, inevitable journey, past life, past time itself and death, to eternity.
I’m sorry, Neo, it seems I always doggedly drag your salon back to the original topic of conversation.
For those who appreciate topic adherence, as Ralph Kinney Bennett humble-brags an apology for (though a fine comment), when it comes to Emily Dickinson I always feel obliged to mention that she was not the shy recluse of legend who wrote her genius poems then shut them away in a drawer unread by others, only to be discovered after her death.
At the peak of my Dickinson phase I read the Habegger biography, “My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson,” which put the kibosh on that urban legend.
Dickinson mailed out hundreds of her poems to family and friends, who read and appreciated her work, then copied the poems out and mailed them out to the next level of their social circles. And so on. Emily was a pyramid scheme poet! But it was for love…
Habegger ascribes Dickinson’s not making her work fully public to the sense of appropriate feminine decorum within her family, and to an idea common to conservative nineteenth-century Americans that “the best sort of writing circulates in private.”
And a big hat tip to Ann above for the quote:
More than half of Dickinson’s poems were written during these four bloody, divisive years [of the Civil War]. Penetrating and haunting poems, most of them fumble for a sign of God’s presence behind the awful blankness of death…
Key.
It is all too easy to read the Great Authors and imagine them writing, while reclined on clouds.
Furthermore, as I read Dickinson (pace Geoffrey Britain), she was as deeply Christian as Ann’s link claims. Hence the concluding two lines of the poem I quoted:
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
The imitation of Christ.
Ralph Kinney Bennett:
I’m not a Dickinson expert, but I recall learning at some point that the first versions of Dickinson’s works that were published had changed certain things about her writing, especially punctuation and capitalization. For example, she had made liberal use of the dash and lots of capital letters, but the versions as originally published got rid of the dashes and many of the capital letters.
The version of this poem with which I’ve always been familiar is the one in this post, although I’ve never committed the whole thing to memory. I especially remember that part with “tippet” and “tulle” in it, because the line inadvertently conjures up ballet for me (there was a well-known American Ballet Theater dancer in the 1970s named Clark Tippet, and of course tulle is a fabric used in ballet).
You’ll notice that the version in this post has a lot of capitalizations and dashes. It’s the version based on Dickinson’s own writing rather than the one published earlier. In the earlier version the poem was also given a title that Dickinson hadn’t given it (a lousy title, I might add) “The Chariot.” And it’s that first published version of the poem that leaves out the verse you don’t like (along with the dashes and capital letters it leaves out). But that verse that seems extra to you was apparently in the original as she wrote it. You can find the two versions at the link I just gave on “The Chariot.”
By the way, the “tippet…tulle” line is part of the way Dickinson suggests that she wasn’t dressed warmly enough for the occasion – which is what I meant when I wrote that the word “cold” fits the poem’s imagery. A tippet is a scarf, and tulle is a very very light fabric.
It sure gives ME a chill. The sun is setting, it’s getting cold and dark, she’s not dressed properly….
One more thing – the verse you’re objecting to is the 4th verse in the expanded poem, not the 3rd. The third is the same (plus dashes and capitals) as in the first published version, the one you recall. So Tate’s comments fit the third verse in either version.
Possibly America’s greatest poet and one of the greatest ever. She wrote so much, you never know when someone will pull one out that really hits the mark.
I’m not going to have a tombstone, but if I was, I’d put some Emily Dickinson on it.
‘Hills, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself.’
Alas, Badgers favor Kipling, as their poet of choice.
And Ogden Nash.
I agree, neo, that Dickinson is hard to love. There’s something cold about her voice, as much as I admire it.
I agree with Gerard’s assessment of Kaddish.
I don’t get Jeffers, though. Never have.
My favorite American poet, aside from Frost whose work I have known since I was a child so he is sort of in a different category, is May Swenson. I would place her talent right up there with Eliot and Frost. (But poetry is very subjective!)
My second-favorite American poet is Philip Levine.
Swenson has written more poems I like — and I haven’t read them all yet, she was very prolific and I only recently acquired her complete works.
Levine, though, wrote two of my favorite poems. Here is one of them:
The Face
.
A strange wind off the night.
I have come here to talk
to you at last, here
in an empty hotel room
half the world away from home.
Our tracks have crossed
how many times—a dozen
at least—and yet it’s more
than forty years since I saw
you, solemn and hurt, gazing
from your favorite window
at the night that would
soon flood your eyes and darken
the living veins. Below,
the city is almost
asleep. An old man, no
taller than a boy, mumbles
drunkenly on his way,
and then only a sentry
passes from time to time,
his head sunk to his chest,
his eyes closed against
the strange summer cold.
We should all be asleep.
The hour is good for
nothing else, and yet
I cannot sleep because
suddenly today I caught
your presence beside me
on the street as I hadn’t
before in all these years
A tall man laid aside
his paper and stared at me,
a man no older, than I,
with the long sad face
that passed from you
to me. I kept walking,
feeling his eyes on me,
and when I turned at last
he was gone, and the bench
filled with dirty children.
I went back—but no—
he was gone, and wherever
I walked I felt those eyes
on me and felt somehow
a time had come when
we might speak at last.
And so I do. I say, Father,
the years have brought
me here, still your son;
they have brought me
to a life I cannot
understand. I’m silent.
A ship is mooring
in the great harbor,
and the only voice
that comes back is the faint
after-ringing of my own.
I say, Father, the dark
moon above this battered city
must once have guided you
across the twelve frontiers
you crossed to save
your life. It leads me
nowhere, for I’m a free man,
alone as you were,
but going nowhere. I, too,
have lost my three sons
to America, I, too, have climbed
the long hillsides
of Spain in early light
as our forefathers did,
and gazed down at the sea,
deep and silent. I prayed
for some small hope,
which never came. I know
the life you lost. I
have it here, Father,
where you left it, in
the long face of Spain,
in these hands, long
and broken like your own,
in the silence collecting
between each ringing
of my heart, the silence
you anoint me with each day.
Below, the sentry passes
once more in a new light,
for morning is graying
the streets of this quarter.
He wipes his nose on
the rough green wool
of his sleeve and stamps
his feet. Spain will waken
soon to street cries, to
the cries of children,
the cries of the lost men
and women of Barcelona
naming their despair.
I will walk among them,
tired and useless. Today
I will not talk, not
even to myself, for
it is time to listen,
as though some secret
message came blaring
over the megaphones,
or a voice mumbled below
the waves of traffic, as though
one word mattered more
than another in this world,
in this city, broken and stained,
which is the home of no one,
though it shouts out all
our names. I will listen
as though you spoke and told
me all you never knew
of why the earth takes
back all she gives and
even that comes to be enough.
— Philip Levine
Thank you, Neo, for the information on the poem and the “alien” verse which I had never read before. I resolve to try and incorporate it into my reading of the thing. I’ve been long aware that Emily Dickinson’s poems have gone through various editorial “cleanings” and streamlining, but was completely unaware of this. It is interesting to me, because Huntington Cairns seems such a stickler about gathering the most original or authoritative versions of the works he has incorporated in his marvelous book. I very much appreciate your personal insight about tippet and tulle. The grace and drama, the vast and subtle soul of ballet is laced very much through your being and informs your intellect in marvelous and touching ways.
Ralph Bennett,
Dickinson produced multiple drafts of many of her poems. If memory serves, in this particular case, the version Neo cites is the later of versions, but it has been a while since I read about the poet’s life and methods. The version cited by Neo is the one I know- I memorized it over 25 years ago.
OBH…Churchill cited a passage from ‘The Clattering Train’ in connection with appeasement leading to war.
The whole poem is here:
https://lifeondoverbeach.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/who-is-in-charge-of-the-clattering-train-2/
For meditations on mortality I recommend Wallace Stevens’ “Blanche McCarthy” and “The Emperor of Ice Cream”.
Yancey Ward,
Thank you. And is it not a fine thing that the Creative genius, abroad in the world, that was the source of Dickinson’s poems, is manifest in such myriad ways that we, at the touch of a keyboard, can share our knowledge and delight.
Interesting Emily was a student at Mount Holyoke, Class of 1849. Goole that college name in news to see the incident.
For anyone interested, here’s a link to a previous post of mine about Dickinson and her dog.
Ralph Kinney Bennett:
You’re welcome!
More pleasant talking about poetry and ballet than about Iran.
Sarah Rolph:
What’s the Spain reference in the Levine poem about? I thought he always lived here. Did he spend a stint in Spain? Or is it non-autobiographical?
You ask what I have found, and far and wide I go:
Nothing but Cromwell’s house and Cromwell’s murderous crew,
The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay,
And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen, where are they?
And there is an old beggar wandering in his pride —
His fathers served their fathers before Christ was crucified.
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?
All neighbourly content and easy talk are gone,
But there’s no good complaining, for money’s rant is on.
He that’s mounting up must on his neighbour mount,
And we and all the Muses are things of no account.
They have schooling of their own, but I pass their schooling by,
What can they know that we know that know the time to die?
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?
But there’s another knowledge that my heart destroys,
As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy’s
Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company,
Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
That I am still their servant though all are underground.
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?
I came on a great house in the middle of the night,
Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight,
And all my friends were there and made me welcome too;
But I woke in an old ruin that the winds howled through;
And when I pay attention I must out and walk
Among the dogs and horses that understand my talk.
O what of that, O what of that,
What is there left to say?
huxly stated this.
Whatever deficiencies one may find in WCW and Stevens, I still put them ahead of Ginsberg with the transcendental exception of “Howl.”
Arguably there would be no Ginsberg without WCW.
I agree that Williams was important to Allen as young man and a great influence but then Allen went on from there, on out from there, far out from there.
In the final analysis Allen would have been the poet that he was with or without Williams. Like all real major poets Ginsberg simply had no choice.
Howl would have come.
Kaddish would have come.
Supermarket would have come and Vortex Sutra would have been along as well.
The thousands of readings would have happened and all the books and sutras and mantras would have come. Peter Orlovsky was much more important to Allen than Williams.
Ginsberg was not merely driven, he was compelled. I’m aware of having to hold back the edges of my gown before going through hell and all that but Howl would have been published and published pretty much as it was without Williams. Williams ended up just the barker on the outside of the Howl freak show. By the time Howl came along the imagists except perhaps for Eliot were in the rear view mirror.
I’ve made the Howl locale Caffe Mediterraneum my local restaurant for years and lived across Telegraph in the building of “The Green Door” (50s pop hit by the way). Yes above old Cody’s books where the beats beat their feet and smoked their reefer. Missed the Six Gallery where it was first determined that Howl was going to be published. The reading made the book, not Williams. After the reading (which Ginsberg organized) his path was set and he caromed off the culture until the end of his days.
He also put up an enormous volume of work ( a requirement of great poets) and several long works (another requirement of great poets) that resonated in the era that they were written and resonate today. Williams’ Paterson no longer finds willing readers outside of the academy.
I’ve been to Black Mountain (after it passed) and known Creeley Olson Spicer Cage and Cunningham and other “graduates” of said school but don’t find any above minor poet status — though I revere Snyder. Hell, Thom Gunn was my poetry mentor at Berkeley.
I know what breath grouping is and
I once worked in projective verse
But found the work was for the worse.
As for Stevens, he had crafted many stunningly beautiful poems of which I committed a number to memory, but for all that at the end — dillitante lacking in the ability to work and proclaim in the affirmative. Crane over Stevens always and forever.
It’s an interesting thought experiment to consider the poet Ginsberg might have become and the poetry he might have written had he focused on that rather than his ambition, which he confided to his psychiatrist before he became ALLEN GINSBERG, not to have to work and to have sex with the partners he wanted.
My experience with Allen’s ambition was not a thought experiment. He confided his primary ambition to me as we began our interview in the office of City Lights Press on upper Grant while the lithe young hippie artist Dan Welch was putting his clothes back on behind him in the bedroom and tiptoeing out after his tryst with the king of the beats. Allen’s ambition at that most satisfied moment was to find out if a good looking hippie writer like myself wanted to come back later that night for a coffee and a chillum. I declined.
But Allen’s main ambition was to be the Poet Laureate of the World so that good looking young men would always be willing to sleep with this sort of goofy looking Jewish guy. Naomi said to him in the asylum, “Get married, Allen. Don’t take drugs.” His whole ambition was to avoid that. He wanted to live the Whitmanesque life and die the good grey poet read by many and loved by beautiful boys. He made it happen through his compulsions.
Williams and Stevens? Close but no cigar.
Not that there is anything wrong with that!
Curious that Dickinson figured in these comments to Neo’s other post today:
Frederick on January 5, 2020 at 3:30 pm said:
…I never had any trouble talking about Shakespeare (or Emily Dickinson for that matter) with my colleagues in the English department,
…
Frederick on January 5, 2020 at 4:23 pm said:
… I think what those numbers mean is that science and other technical fields have to build on each other more so than the humanities does.
For example, you can write a new and startling interpretation of an Emily Dickinson poem that no one wrote before, totally different from anyone else’s. And next year so can someone else. Same goes for philosophy. Each new philosopher can start from zero if they wish.
With the sciences, you can’t. If the humanities worked the way the sciences did, this is what would happen with my new interpretation of an Emily Dickinson poem: …
“Cancel culture” would seem to be a counter-example: if someone proved tomorrow that Emily Dickinson was really a racist white male, then no one could ever interpret Emily Dickinson in an another way without losing their career. And that sort of thing is true today. But the next generation of academics may have totally different views.
Science does not work that way at all.
* * *
I think I understand what Frederick was trying to explain, but a discussion of Dickinson & scientific method does seem to be as “cold” as a discussion of Dickinson & death.
PS I kinda-sorta guessed that a “tippet” was an article of clothing that should be made of something warmer than tulle, but FTR here is the definition:
“a woman’s long fur scarf or shawl worn around the neck and shoulders;”
and/or
“a long, narrow strip of cloth forming part of or attached to a hood or sleeve.”
Re: Hard to love…
Dickinson is aloof and somewhat difficult, though there are more difficult poets to be sure. No getting around that. T.S. Eliot ain’t the worst of them.
But her poems which I love, I love fiercely and some of that love reflects back upon her. I’d love to have known her and I’m sure that would have been difficult too.
Happy New Year, Emily!
Oblio on January 4, 2020 at 5:10 pm said:
You can sing it to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song.
You are welcome.
* * *
You are evil.
Re Philip Levine and Spain– an interesting article in Tablet magazine says this:
There are poets who draw me in, direct me to the most comfortable chair in the room, smile and chat with me.
How I love those poets! I feel like they are friends and I have been enriched by their friendships. I wouldn’t have made it much farther into poetry if I hadn’t found poets like Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Frank O’Hara, Lew Welch, James Tate, Russell Edson, Diane Wakoski and Marge Piercy to name a few of varying greatness. Even William Blake (though he can get pretty damn obscure).
Aside from the frog poem (“I’m Nobody! Who are you?”) Emily is not like that. I would put on my best clothes and be prepared to wait when I called upon her.
But still … she is a friend.
I spent nine cold, long winters in Massachusetts, and ever since then it’s the first stanza of one of her poems that resonates most with me, and makes me feel that I know her:
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes
Geez. I thought this topic was dead when I started typing my earlier comment.
Gerard: We will have to agree to disagree.
I was never a Berkeley student but I was a regular habitue of Telegraph, Moe’s and Cody’s (while it lasted) from 1982 to 2016 and heard my share of poetry readings. After a few years I gave up on the Med for its squalor and sat with my lattes further down the street.
Allen Ginsberg? Not really even close for me, except as I say “Howl” (though I also love his Supermarket poem) to Williams and Stevens.
So you say this and I say that. Hello, Goodbye. It’s been a pleasure crossing rapiers.
Perhaps it may not interest many here, but today I learned that Ram Dass AKA Richard Alpert — Timothy Leary’s partner in psychedelic crime as well as Allen Ginsberg’s, later turned sort of Hindu guru — died two weeks ago on Dec. 22 in Maui.
God, Hanuman and Maharaji bless you, friend. Maharaji was Richard’s teacher after he gave up the LSD quest.
I have my cavils with many sixties figures, but Ram Dass remained cheerful, humble and honest. Many would have worshiped him as a cult figure if he had allowed it.
I once attended a workshop Ram Dass led. I regret that I lost the Hindu prayer beads he gave to all participants, which each included a thread from one of Maharaji’s blankets.
Maharaji’s miracle stories continue to baffle me, but not his teachings of love.
Not evil, I hope. It’s an old church musician trick. The same metric scheme works for “Amazing Grace,” so perhaps Dickinson owed something to John Newton.
This has been worth reading just to read Gerard’s memories. Thank you, Gerard.
I only met Ginsberg once. We talked about Blake and drank beer.
Oblio on January 6, 2020 at 7:28 am said:
Not evil, I hope. It’s an old church musician trick. The same metric scheme works for “Amazing Grace,” so perhaps Dickinson owed something to John Newton.
This has been worth reading just to read Gerard’s memories. Thank you, Gerard.
I only met Ginsberg once. We talked about Blake and drank beer.
* * *
Ditto to the reminiscences and anthologizing of the commentariat at large.
And, as it happens, I am an old church musician – just hadn’t had the occasion to fit any tunes to Dickinson, especially that particular melody!
“Amazing Grace” fits the poem much better.
I occasionally set familar hymn texts to something other than the “standard” tune just to wake up the congregation. The even-older church musicians didn’t have printed music at all, and their worshippers were accustomed to mixing-and-matching texts and tunes.
PS I can’t make “Gilligan” / “Grace” switch places at all, but I assure you that “Gilligan” / “Ghostriders in the Sky” works both ways.
PPSS Try “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” to “Angel of Music” from “Phantom of the Opera.”
Try Faulkner. Don’t know about hard to love, but sure as hell is hard to read.
MHollywood,
I came to this wonderful thread very late. Who wrote the Jasmine poem?
Cappy:
Been there, done that.
Tried that, anyway. Granted, it was back in college that I tried Faulkner – not for assignment, so I had a choice. I found him impenetrable at the time.
Oh boy, I hate to even add to this, because I have no way to decipher how much I love Emily Dickenson’s poetry. Respect? Not a factor. Cold? Not for me.
My mother was a poet, and Emily Dickenson was her favorite. A factor? I suppose so. But, more than anything, it reminds me of Parker’s story about his mother who killed the rooster that attacked him. Words to hear. A child’s blood.
WELL, huxley, I too have had some run ins with Ram Dass as I sketched out here:
http://americandigest.org/ram-dass-another-ghost-from-my-youth-goin-down-slow/
Apparently, it was also hard to love T. S. Eliot.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/the_love_song_of_ts_eliot.html
mizpants: I did.
neo, I just assumed that Levine’s father was Spanish, since the poem seems to be about seeking and finding the spirit of his father in Spain. When I google it, I find that Levine spent some time in Spain as an adult, as someone else has mentioned, but that his parents were both Russian immigrants. So I guess he is taking liberties in the poem, setting it in Spain because his emotions about Spain fit with his emotions about his father, and/or he was in Spain at the time when this poem emerged. So, semi-autobiographical.
I obviously had never looked into it, and just assumed that it was about what it seems to be about. When I read this poem to my mom, toward the end of her life, she didn’t understand it the way I did at all; she seemed to think it was about the Spanish Civil War. I didn’t get that, but perhaps she was on to something….
So, Gerard, can you help us understand Jeffers?
Oh yes, the letters. Just out of quarantine. Thousands of them. It will be years before that life long love of Eliot will even be a bit understood.
CONTEMPLATION OF THE SWORD, by ROBINSON JEFFERS
First Line: Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
Last Line: Reason will not decide at last: the sword will decide
“I believe that the Universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.)
“The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars, none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine.
“It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love and there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one’s affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one’s self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions — the world of spirits.
“I think it is our privilege and felicity to love God for his beauty, without claiming or expecting love from him. We are not important to him, but he to us.”
Letter to Sister Mary James Power
“I think it is our privilege and felicity to love God for his beauty, without claiming or expecting love from him. We are not important to him, but he to us.” – Jeffers via Gerard
Contrariwise, I believe (per LDS doctrine) that we are very important to God, because we are his children, being that he organized us into spiritual intelligences, and then provided the mortal/temporal housing.
Jesus calls his closest disciples his friends, as well, so I am assuming he thought they were important, and then extended that to everyone who believes his gospel and followes him.
Gerard,
As it happens, “The Green Door” started playing a couple of days ago on the record player of my mind, and hasn’t quit yet. I think it’s been in absentia for at least 30 years. “Midnight, one more night without sleeping….”
Heh! :>))
I still have many boxes needing unpacking. Many of them contain many of my books, including my much-loved copy of Louis Untermeyer’s anthology of Modern American Poetry and Modern British Poetry, Combined Edition.
Among other things, it includes Kenneth Fearing’s “American Rhapsody #4,” for which I have been fruitlessly searching the Internet for years. I remembered the title as simply “American Rhapsody,” but searching for “Kenneth Rexroth” plus that title gets me nowhere. I had no idea you have to add the “4”!
It also has Robinson Jeffers’ poem “Night,” which I’ve always liked a lot, and my copy of his collected poetry is also still entrapped in cardboard somewhere in the cellar.
So for those who may not know of it, Mr. Untermeyer’s collection contains hundreds and hundreds of poems, along with prefatory material. But wait! Archive.org has it available (6th Ed.) for download:
https://ia800703.us.archive.org/7/items/modernamericanpo030000mbp/modernamericanpo030000mbp.pdf
(Also in other formats at
https://archive.org/details/modernamericanpo030000mbp/page/n6 )
Highly recommended!
And of course you can find in the collection Mr. Fearing’s and Mr. Jeffers’ poems mentioned above, whether downloaded or online. Along with much other delectable stuff.
Turning to my personal most favoritest ev-ah, I have to include Stevens’ “Sunday Morning” (in particular the first stanza, for the imagery) and Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium). About 1/89th of a tier below that … are too many wonderful poems to list. But I must include Donne, Keats, and, gosh!, Mr. Eliot — in particular “Ash Wednesday” and the first of the Six Preludes. Plus more of Stevens and Yeats, of course.
Great topic, great discussion, wonderful comments. Thanks, Neo. And thanks, to all the commenters. :<)))
PS. Also I seem to remember some dude wrote a sonnet about how he beats the blues. “When in disgrace ….” In my case, I can think of my Honey, my daughter, or my dog. ;>)))