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.

These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson

In her Author's Note, Martha Ackmann tells of her first encounter with Emily Dickinson's poetry in high school English when she read, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes--"* Ackmann said she "woke up" and spent a lifetime trying to understand the poem and its effect on her. It's one of my favorite Dickinson poems.

Sadly, the selections in my high school American Lit textbook did nothing for me. When a college friend said he liked Dickinson, I shuddered.

It was Steve Allen's Meeting of Minds that changed my mind. The 1977 episode paired the poet with Charles Darwin, Atilla the Hun, and Galileo. Emily Dickinson recited, "I cannot live with You--" ending with, "So We must meet apart--/You there--I--here--/With just the Door ajar/That oceans are--and Prayer--/And that White Sustenance, Despair."** I stood up to attention. Wait! This couldn't be Dickinson! This was amazing stuff.

I bought her complete poems and soon became a fan.

Ackmann's These Fevered Days condescends Emily's life into ten moments that give insight into her life and work. Drawing from Emily's letters and poems, photographs and new understandings, she creates a vivid and fresh portrait of the poet.

Readers encounter Emily's strong, original, and independent mind.

She preferred the struggle of doubt over unexamined certainty, unwilling to profess her faith, regardless of social pressure at Mount Holyoke Seminary.

I loved learning that Emily dove into learning to play the piano, which taught her "style", and how she played late into the night, inventing her own "weird and beautiful melodies."

The vision of a girl with dandelions in her hair taught her how "one image could change everything."

We come to understand Emily's ambition, her life-long love affair with words, her dedication to perfecting her art. She strove to understand the impact of words on others, the responsibility of the writer, and how to remain anonymous while sharing her work. She created fascicles, hand sewn booklets of her poems, kept in her maid's room, unknown until revealed her death.

She enjoyed her costly Mount Holyoke education--$60 a year--learning algebra, astronomy, and botany. When other girls hoped to teach or become missionaries, and of course marry and raise a family, Emily had no vocation but poetry. She was summoned back to Amherst and became mired in deadly household duties. She did enjoy bread making.

Duty is black and brown.~Emily Dickinson

Amherst is not portrayed as a back-water safe zone during the Civil War; we see how the war impacted the community, the shared losses, and Emily's deep anxiety.

I had not known about the vision issue that threatened her sight that brought Emily to Boston for treatment.

Emily's friendships are there: Sue, who married Emily's brother, Austin Dickinson; her school friend and fellow author Helen Hunt Jackson; Samuel Bowles who published Emily's poems clandestinely shared with him; Carlo, her beloved dog.

Emily died a spinster, but she loved the special men in her life.

There was the Rev. Charles Wadsworth, the brilliant preacher Emily met in Philadelphia, "my closest earthly friend" she wrote, who one day unexpectedly came to her door.

Emily sent poems to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (who with Mabel Loomis Todd, a family friend and Austin's lover, would publish the first volume of Emily's poetry.) During the Civil War, Col. Higginson lead the first Negro regiment of Union soldiers and when wounded was returned home by Louisa May Alcott. When they finally met, Emily talked and a dazzled Higginson listened.

Other relationships are cloaked in mystery: the secret love between Emily and her father's peer Otis Phillips Lord, and the mysterious Master to whom she wrote unsent letters.

After Emily's early death at age 55, her family discovered her fascicles of nearly 2,000 poems--and the unsent Master letters. Emily had instructed her papers be burned after her death, but her sister Vinnie could not do that.

Emily comes alive through these ten moments, along with her family and friends and her beloved Amherst.

The book is illustrated with photographs of Emily's family, friends, and homes.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson
by Martha Ackmann
W. W. Norton & Company
Publication: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN 9780393609301
PRICE $26.95 (USD)

The poems:

*After Great Pain- 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 –
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--
A Wooden way
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 –


**I cannot live with You (640)
Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886

I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –

Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –

I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down –
You – could not –

And I – Could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise – with You –
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus' –
That New Grace

Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye –
Except that You than He
Shone closer by –

They'd judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –

Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be –
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame –

And were You – saved –
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –

The Wreckage of Eden by Norman Lock

War--The War with Mexico, the Mormon Rebellion, and the Civil War-- crushed any remaining faith held by U. S. Army Chaplin Robert Winter.

He clings to the memories of the few meetings he had with Emily Dickinson, his first love, although she has always kept him at a distance. When Winter married a pleasant but common girl he loved her in a way. When she dies, Winter relinquishes their daughter's care to his maiden aunt who lives in Amherst, calling on the Dickinson family to befriend her. He makes a poor father, the army sending him across the country and far from Amherst.

Winter does his duty to his country, reciting prayers for the benefit of the dying and over the bodies of the dead who died for the sacred cause of Manifest Destiny, mouthing words to a God he no longer believes in.

The Wreckage of Eden by Norman Lock spans decades of the 19th c and the awful carnage deemed necessary to America's destiny. Along his journey, Winter befriends Abe and Mary Lincoln in Springfield and meets a young Sam Clemens in Missouri. He sees the horror of war and the death camp at Andersonville. Required to visit imprisoned John Brown, their conversation challenges Winter's core beliefs.

Lock reproduces the era with period details and references to writers, politicians and military leaders, but it is Winter's internal world that captured my attention. Winter's spiritual crisis reflects the country's loss of idealism and its corruption, justifying slaughter while annexing Mexican lands. murdering Mormons and Native Americans, and profiting from the labor of enslaved people.

Meanwhile, in Amherst, Emily battles her own war against her dictatorial father who insists she can never marry. She speaks to Winter in cadences right from her poetry, with imagery and 'slant' insight.

Winter learns that he must perform his pastoral duty and endure. Sometimes that is all we can do. Our youthful idealism crumbles under the burgeoning knowledge of the evil men commit, we lose faith and mouth the words expected of us--prayers or pledges become empty symbols.

I wanted to note an epigram or sentence or insight on nearly every page. The issues Winter struggles with demonstrate that the roots of America's problems were planted in our early years.

I am eager to read more books in the American Novel Series by Norman Lock.

I received a free ARC from the publisher through a LibraryThing giveaway.

Find a Reading Group Guide at
http://blpress.org/reading-group-guides/reading-group-guide-wreckage-eden/

The Wreckage of Eden
by Norman Lock
Bellevue Literary Press
Publication Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN-10: 1942658389
ISBN-13: 978-1942658382

Poetry for Kids: Emily Dickinson

I was intrigued by the Poetry for Kids premier title Emily Dickinson. Edited by Susan Snively and with colorwashed illustrations by Christine Davenier, the volume presents 35 of Dickinson's poems. The poems are grouped seasonally, starting with summer and ending with spring.

Poems include easily accessible favorites such as "A narrow fellow in the grass," "A bird came down the walk," and "I never saw a moor", the whimsical, and those celebrating nature.

Some selections surprised me. "He fumbles at your spirit" talks about "prepares your brittle substance/For the etheral blow" and "Deals with one imperial thunderbolt/That scalps your naked soul." It is the line 'scalps your naked soul' that makes the poem so forceful and wrenching. The commentary reads, "The poet captures the noisy music of a thunderstorm, as if trapped inside a huge piano. The sounds heightens the drama, until the thunderbolt delivers its mighty blow."

Poems dealing with darker feelings, like "There's a certain slant of light", and mortaility and death, including "Because I could not stop for death" and "Safe in their alabaster chambers," are poems that seem very serious for small children to tackle. In the publisher's note, Charles Nurnberg states that "the emotion and mood of poetry, even when it is almost too hard to understand, is so essentilal to undertanding the world around us." Thinking about this, I realize that learning about life through these beautiful poems allows children to gain understanding about difficult things they will encounter through personal experience and through the everpresent media.

Each poem includes word definitions and a brief commentary "What Emily Was Thinking." The forward includes a synopsis of the poet's life and publishing history.

The book is for children grades 3 through 7.

Upcoming titles will include Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

A word is dead
When it is said
Some say.
I saw it just
Begins to live
That day.
by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson
Poetry for Kids series
Moon Dance Press
$14.95 hard cover
ISBN: 9781633221178

Love Poems by Emily Dickinson

Further Poems of Emily Dickinson Withheld from Publication by Her Sister Lavina, Edited by Her Niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson, was published by Little, Brown, and Company in 1929. Many years ago I came into possession of a copy of this book.

A good history of the publication of Dickinson's poems can be found at https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/book/export/html/108 where Martha Dickinson Bianchi's role in bringing Emily's poetry to publication is mentioned:

When Mabel Loomis Todd ceased her work on Dickinson’s poems, a period of quiet ensued in the publication story. Lavinia Dickinson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Susan Dickinson all died, and Martha Dickinson Bianchi began to assume a larger role in shaping her aunt's legacy. Having inherited Dickinson’s manuscripts from both Lavinia and Susan, Martha edited at least six volumes of Dickinson’s poetry. With a lighter editorial hand than her predecessors, Bianchi did not title the poems and kept their rhyme schemes intact. Incensed by publications about her aunt that she judged inaccurate, Bianchi wrote several memoirs to assert her unique perspective as “the one person now living who saw [Emily Dickinson] face to face” (Bianchi, p. xxii).

Most of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems appear in this book. Such as,

To fill a gap--
Insert the thing that caused it.
Block it up
With other and 't will yawn
The more;
You cannot solder an abyss
With Air.

Amherst by William Nicholson suggests that Emily heard her brother Austin's lovemaking with his mistress in her family's home parlor. Some have written that Emily was in love with Austin's wife--her "Sister Sue"-- or that she loved Austin's lover Mable Loomis Todd. There is supposition that Emily loved Thomas Wentworth Higginson to whom she shared her poems, or her father's friend Judge Otis Phillips Lord, or family friend Samuel Bowles, or any number of people.

Read more at
https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/love_life
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2008/10/emily_dickinsons_secret_lover.html
http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/master-narrative-who-did-emily-dickinson-write-her-love-letters-to
http://www.sappho.com/letters/e_dickinsn.html
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/13/emily-dickinson-lyndall-gordon

The question of Emily's love interest remains conjecture. Emily tells of her great love in these poems from the book. It is obvious why they were withheld from publication by her sister Lavinia. They are so personal, telling a story unbefitting to the Victorian image of womankind.

+++++

Why do I love thee, Sir?
Because--
Require the grass
To answer wherefore, when
He pass,
She cannot keep her place.

The lightning never asked
An eye
Wherefore she shut when
he was by--
Because he knows
She cannot speak,
And reasons not contained
Of talk
There be--preferred by daintier folk.

+++++

Renunciation is a piercing virtue,
The letting go
A presence for an expectation--
Not now.

So well that I can live without--
I love Thee; then how well
Is that?
As well as Jesus?
Prove it me
That He loved men
As I love Thee.

+++++

If he were living--dare I ask?
And how if her were dead?
And so around the words I went
Of meeting them afraid.

I hinted changes, lapse of time,
The surfaces of years
I touched with caution, lest they slit
And show me to my fears.

Reverted to adjoining lives
Adroitly turning out
Wherever I suspected graces--
'T'was prudenter, I though.

And He--I rushed with sudden force
In face of the suspense--
"Was buried"--Buried!"
"He!"
My life just holds the trench.

+++++

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.

+++++

There is a pain so utter
It swallows Being up
Then covers the abyss with trance
So memory can step
Around, across, upon it,
As One within a swoon
Goes steady, when an open eye
Would drop him bone by bone.

+++++

I tie my hat, I crease my shawl,
Life's little duties do precisely
As the very least
Were infinite to me.

I put new blossoms in the glass,
And throw the old away,
I push a petal from my gown
That anchored there--I weigh

The time 't will be till six o'clock,
I have so much to do--
And get [sic; should be yet] existence some way back,
Stopped, struck, my ticking through.

We cannot put ourselves away
As a completed man
Or woman--when the errand's done
We came to flesh upon.

There may be miles on miles of nought
Of action,--sicker far,
To simulate is stinging work
To cover what we are

From Science and from surgery,
Too telescopic eyes
To bear on us unshaded,
For their sake, not for ours.

+++++

I got so I could hear his name
Without--
Tremendous gain!--
That stop-sensation in 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 got so I could stir the box
In which
His letters grew,
Without that forcing in my breath
As staples driven through.

Could dimly recollect a Grace--
I think
They called it "God",
Renowned to ease extremity
When formula had failed--

And shape my hands
Petition's way--
Too ignorant of word
That Ordination utters--
My business with the cloud.

+++++

Staples driven through! Our sinews torn! We tie our hats and go about daily business, dead inside. After great pain Emily wrote the most exquisite verses resounds through the centuries to pierce our hearts with sympathy. She understood all we have experienced.

What did Lavinia know, what caused her to keep back these poems? It is the untold stories that most capture our imaginations.

Men. Women. Love. "Amherst" by William Nicholson

I did not like Emily Dickinson's poetry as represented in the school text books until I saw an episode of Meeting of Minds by Steve Allen, his 1977 talk show where historical figures met and discussed ideas. Emily Dickinson read poetry to Attila the Hun-- poetry I would have never associated with Dickinson.

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--tonight--

In thee!

I bought the complete poems and discovered a whole new Dickinson.

When I saw Amherst by William Nicholson on NetGalley with a ghostly Emily Dickinson hovering over her home on the cover, I requested it.

The novel is about Emily's brother Austin Dickinson and his fifteen-year relationship with Mabel Loomis Todd. They were both married. I was quite ignorant about Austin and Mabel...but Emily was on the cover! She had to figure into the novel somewhere.

I was uncomfortable with the kinky aspect of Mabel and Austin's affair conducted with the consent of Mabel's husband David. I really didn't want to go into it. Why did I request this book? It was creepy.

Nicholson puts forward that Mabel and her husband David advocated an open marriage because people can love more than one person and it won't affect a marriage where there is love and affection. I am no spring chicken, I remember the open marriage, free sex 1960s-70s. Today's young people 'hook up', sex without strings. But I really didn't want to know the details disclosed in Mabel's diary concerning how she merged two lovers into her life. Even if she was responsible for getting Emily's poems into print. I wanted to like Alice, but ended up ambiguous about her. And Nick was such a handsome hunk of loser.

In contemporary times Alice Dickinson struggles with how those 19th c lovers sustained a passion for fifteen years. They believed their love was pure, justified, and consecrated, that they were ordained for each other. Alice and her lover Nick debate the issue, bringing their own experiences and failures, into the discussion. Alice wants to believe in true love, kindred spirits, and a perfect match made in heaven. Nick is a pessimist who lives in the moment and conducts short term affairs.

Did Austin and Mabel sustain their affair for so long because they were true soulmates, or was it the danger and sneaking around that made it so exciting? Do we delude ourselves into false beliefs to justify what we want? Does requited love resolve loneliness? Does gratification result in boredom or completion? Is the chase what is exciting? Do we have only one chance of getting it right? Do we only want what others want?

And what do we want? It seems that we want Darcy. Jane Austen heroes and heroines have become cultural icons. Lizzy and Darcy are to swoon for. Like Alice, we still want the fairy tale princes. Experience be damned. Hope springs eternal.

My thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing the ebook for a fair and unbiased review.

Amherst: A Novel
by William Nicholson
Simon & Schuster
Publication February 10, 2015
$26 hardbound
ISBN: 9781476740409

I cannot live with You – 

It would be Life – 
And Life is over there – 
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to – 
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain – 
Like a Cup – 

Discarded of the Housewife – 
Quaint – or Broke – 
A newer Sevres pleases – 
Old Ones crack – 

I could not die – with You – 
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down – 
You – could not – 

And I – could I stand by
And see You – freeze – 
Without my Right of Frost – 
Death’s privilege?

Nor could I rise – with You – 
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus’ – 
That New Grace

Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye – 
Except that You than He
Shone closer by – 

They’d judge Us – How – 
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to – 
I could not – 

Because You saturated Sight – 
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be – 
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame – 

And were You – saved – 
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not – 
That self – were Hell to Me – 

So We must meet apart – 
You there – I – here – 
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer – 
And that White Sustenance – 
Despair – 

by Emily Dickinson