Emily Dickinson Part Two A Loaded Gun by Jerome Charyn

This February I began reading books about Emily Dickinson and  The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson in preparation for making a quilt for the author.

I had this quilt in mind for several years as part of my series that has included William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and T. S. Eliot, and the Bronte sisters. My original idea seemed a horrible cliche'--the poet hidden behind a curtained window--and I stalled. I needed a new vision for my quilt.

I was finally set back into motion after reviewing the galley of These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson by Martha Ackmann.

Next, I ordered A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century by Jerome Charyn (The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King, Cesare). Charyn's essays draw from Dickinson's writings and scholarly studies in a search to finally pin down the slippery poet. Every time we think we have her pegged we find we are holding a void. She will not, can not, be categorized and shelved.

I couldn't let it go. I'd spent two years writing a novel about her, vaporizing her letters and poems, sucking the blood out of her bones, like some hunter of lost souls.~ Author's Note, A Loaded Gun by Jerome Charyn

Charyn's novel The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson (on my TBR pile) did not offer him a sense of closure. "I knew less and less the more I learned about her," he admits.

In this book, he begins with my first encounter with Dickinson: Julie Harris's performance as The Belle of Amherst which I watched many times on a small black and white television. It was my first impression of the poet.

Charyn considers all the poet's relationships, from her companion Carlo, a Newfoundland dog, to her late in life love affair with Judge Otis, with all the thunderstruck men and heartbreaking women in between.

Emily's letters and poems show her deep passions. The spinster was no prude. She had strong loves, earth shattering heartbreaks, and was more than acquainted with despair.

Some chapters take us into roundabout side trips as Charyon explores the multiple influences of the poet. Relax, enjoy the ride.

I loved the chapter Ballerinas in a Box, beginning with the early 20th c poets who discovered Dickinson, to her love affair with Kate Scott, to the art of Joseph I. Cornell, to ballerinas, exploring the nature of art.

Charyn casts his net deep and wide, considering psychology and biography and retellings and imaginings.

Only to conclude that Emily wears too many masks to truly know her. She remains a mystery beyond our ken.

And we, like ghouls, try to toy with her biography, to link her language with her life. We cannot master her, never will, as if her own words skates on some torrid ice that is permanently beyond our pale, yet we seek and seek, as if somehow that soothes us, as if we might crack a certain code, when all we will ever have is "A Woe/of Ecstasy."~ from A Loaded Gun by Jerome Charyn

A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century
by Jerome Charyn
Bellevue Literary Press
Trade Paper US $19.95
ISBN: 9781934137987
Ebook
ISBN: 9781934137994

Read the 'missing chapter' at Stay Thirsty magazine
https://www.staythirstymedia.com/201601-091/html/201601-charyn-emily.html

*****

Previously I had skipped around the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. I decided to start from the beginning of the volume. I noted her use of flowers, nature, and color in the early poems, sources to be considered for use in my quilt. 

I read into some of my favorites, such as this poem segment I shared on #SundaySentence hosted by @ImDavidAbrams on Twitter:

I got so I could take his name--
Without--Tremendous gain--

That Stop sensation--on my Soul--
And Thunder--in the Room--

I got so I could walk across
That Angle in the floor,

Where he turned so, and I turned--how-
And all our Sinew tore--

*****

I have decided to use a fusible collage technique on my quilt to make multiple portrait blocks, inspired by Charyn's comment about Dickinson's many masks. I can see the Victorian ideal of the retiring spinster writing about flowers, the mad woman dressed in white who would not leave her home, the dark woman who challenged convention and religion, the passionate woman of many loves, and the poet obsessed with words.

A poet with so many sides can't be contained in one image.