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 –
