Video of "Our Life in Poetry: Emily Dickinson"

Awhile back my daughter sent me a link to the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination based in New York (www.philoctetes.org). For everyone's good fortune, they have begun posting their discussions on the web. January 8th there was a course on Emily Dickinson curated by Michael Braziller, publisher of Persea Books, and Alice Quin, the executive director of the poetry society of America and a professor at Columbia University. I was so excited to see this video, but had a little trepidation. Would this be one of those dissecting discussions where the real agenda was just to prove the owner's intellectual skill? NO! Two people deeply involved in enjoying and sleuthing the poems to release more overtones for enjoyment. And, they offered suggestions for further fun. Alice Quin was particularly a delight in her sensuous appreciation of the poems. There were some interesting comments from people in the audience. The first 50 minutes or so is the most absorbing. To find it click on "Past Programs" and look for the title. And yes i will learn how to send links :-).

Bio of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson rejected the facile Christian revivals of her time and put herself on a path of deep renunciation to help her focus on an inner intuitive sense of the divine. She rejected all religious forms of the divine that abounded in her time and spent her life facing the infinite and eternal with her feet planted in the mortal. Instead she looked unflinchingly at death against the backdrop of the divine. She had many opportunities to do so between the high number of consumption victims in Amherst and the carnage of the Civil War. Her poetry became both her prayer and her path in life. It was a stark path lit by the ecstasy of experiences summed by deep penetration into the mysteries of death and existence. Often with a backdrop or moment of whimsy and humor. "I heard a fly buzz when I died." She said the only commandment she ever followed was "Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not. Neither do they spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

At twenty she began withdrawing from the world. She stayed away from public functions. Then stayed just to her garden. Then to her house, and finally just to her room. Her father was very controlling and very afraid for her health. She had many illnesses. Went blind or nearly blind for years and went blind the last two years of her life. She probably had consumption and is believed to have died of Bright's disease, but underneath these physical and psychological reasons for withdrawal was a conscious choice to choose the life of renunciation and spiritual commitment. For most of her life she simply wore white though she often had many pockets sewn in which to keep a pencil and scraps of paper to write down her poems. She never published her poems since publishing was not the point of the writing and she rejected material success. She also was a great cultivator of flowers and spent hours in her conservatory. She sent countless letters to friends, people in need, often refurbished with her poems and flowers. She had a number of passionate loves and friendships, primarily on paper. For children, she would often lower a basket of gingerbread by a rope out her upstairs window. It was said that the death of her nephew eight year old Gilbert sent her into full retreat. In her later years she saw almost nobody. Letters were her primary contact.

Mentors and inspirational sources were Charles Wadsworth (a well known reverend and fiery thinker of the time), Emerson, Shakespeare, Jonathan Edwards (a Calvinist--but she rejected the outer forms as it was manifest in the churches and by her family and went on her own inner search), the Bible and the Dictionary.

She had little comfort in religious forms but the ecstatic was a balm. And on one level she made no distinction between terror and the joyful. All of it was connected to living. She felt intimately connected with all life. Many poems were written about flowers, flies, a snake, the woods, mountains, sunsets, the sea --all against the backdrop of the eternal. Her last written words were, "Called back." When she died her sister found a box under her bed with over a thousand poems in it. No one had known.

About her poetry, people have spent decades studying it. She left almost 2,000 poems. The scope and body of work is so vast it can be likened to the story of the blind men touching different parts of an elephant and describing what they touch as what an elephant is. Like Shakespeare, Dickinson is revisioned and reframed with each successive modern construct and trend, from psychoanalysis to purported lesbian relationships. Like Shakespeare her work is bigger than anything that can be pinned down. Two cogent analyses come from “My Emily Dickinson” by Susan Howe. According to Howe, Dickinson was inspired by Jonathan Edwards and believed that words were annexed to reality by sensation. (p. 49). In poem after poem it is the sensation which leads you in. And, “Edwards and Dickinson forced people through shock and through subtraction of the ordinary, to a new way of perceiving. Subject and object were fused at that moment, into the immediate ‘feeling’ of understanding. This re-ordering of the forward process of reading is what makes her poetry and the prose of her letters among the most original writing of her century.” (p.51)I believe that the vitality and multi-dimensionality of her poetry is rarely met in modern poetry today. Like a contemplative, her retreats gave her room to hear the non-ordinary. She used the cold steel of her life, her passion for nature, and her constant awareness that there was never any separation from the Immortal as the forge to create her work.

To me one of the last poems she wrote says it all:

The Ecstasy to guess,
Were a receipted Bliss
If Grace could talk.

I believe Grace talked to her and she listened.

And yes, I am yet another person touching the elephant.

Emily Emily Emily

I have been reading my way through Dickinson's poems and have only reached the quarter mark at #450. First I have to say I had an amazing experience. To understand some of her poems I have to stretch and listen and remain open at a level that recreates the creative experience for me. After reading a number of her poems I've literally felt that I've written a poem myself. I've read and experienced that Dickinson tried to fashion her poems to throw the reader into the event that she was talking about. Devices she uses are paradoxes, eliptical sentences, NOT summing up a poem at the end, not giving you mental hand holds to take you through the poem. Sometimes she uses structures which literally scramble your brain such as beginning a poem with the end of a sentence and ending at the beginning. You follow her inner steps when you read her work. You have to since there is nothing else to hold onto. But what I am talking about carries this one step deeper. She gives you materials to go play in literally extraordinairy experiences. How does she do this? I don't know yet. I've just had the experience. I've ideas, but don't want to come up with a facile answer. I figure with 3/4 more poems to go it will sing to me. Or maybe not. I've learned that there are scholars who have spent over 30 years studying her work. Her scope is beyond breath.


By the way i'm reading her poems from: "The Poems of Emily Dickinson," (the reading edition) edited by R.W. Franklin of The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998,1999. This edition is supposed to be the most complete and most accurate respresentation of the poems as they were written by Dickinson. Earlier editions changed her spelling, changed her punctuation to be "correct". Emily Dickinson had such a strong ear that she would change spellings, and had a whole system of dashes (rising up, down, long, short to indicate how to read the poem). She also had revisions and revisions and revisions making it very difficult to discover which was her favorite. Maybe the last one was. Maybe not. Maybe she was like Bob Dylan who is always changing how his songs are sung. As you can see, her kind of poetry writing is a publishers nightmare. Unfortunately, current printing practices being what they are the dashes cannot be duplicated. Franklin has painstakingly prepared these poems for publication always with respect and an ear on the poet. He's published another edition with all the versions, but this edition is pared down to one version per poem.

Notes from fall: Search for the right director

September 4.

If I’m going to be in this play I’m going to have to find a director. It would be too splintering for me to have three different points of view: playwright, actor, and director. . (I’ve already run into arguments between the playwright and actor. The playwright finally had to say in a firm voice, “Trust the words and if after you’ve memorized the section and worked it and it still sounds off to you, get back to me.” So far there has been no discussion :)

So if you know a director who loves poetry, music, and movement/dance, give me a post. I’d love some suggestions.

--christina

Notes from summer: playing a part

August 2. I’ve decided that I’m going to play the part of Emily Dickinson at least in the staged readings so I’ve been working on imbuing myself even more with Emily Dickinson’s life. Have recently read “The Passion of Emily Dickinson” by Judith Farr and “The Gardens of Emily Dickinson” by the same author. Also I’m reading all of Dickinson’s poems (almost 2.0000) and picking ones to read out loud. The variety and complexity and subtlety and wisdom and strength of music is so dense and rich it’s like running into a wall.

I’ve read almost 400 poems so far and I’m starting to feel a thread of Emily Dickinson’s inner life. Nothing to be put into words, but to be felt. I need to add that part of the fun is I’m consulting the 1828 Dictionary first put out by Noah Webster which was almost Dickinson’s Bible. She loved this book and read it incessantly. It’s so much fun to have some of the poems get revealed by finding the definition of a word which has a slightly different meaning back in her day. I’ve also read that often she would take one of the more archaic meanings of the word and so I get to be a bit of a word sleuth.

In preparation for the reading and eventually doing a full production of the play I’m beginning to memorize the script and choreograph it. It’s helping me get into the nuances of the piece. In the beginning it was quite daunting, but I’m now reaching the stage of it being an exciting challenge and a joy. I’m sure this will continue to spiral around which is where the juice comes from, right?? There’s a deep familiarity in the rhythms and the sounds.

--christina

Notes from summer: a reading

We're catching up on old posts this week...

July, 2007 1. The play has been read off the page with two actors (myself being one) and to our ears it worked. What a joy and a relief. Though I have been excited about this work, to hear it off the page is the first major test. Plays can live well on a page, but just don’t morph well into live action and sound.

And being written in lyric poetry – no surprise to people who know my work - it’s crucial that it have an internal through line and glad to say both actors felt it. I know. I know. I was one of the actors, but often I’m my severest critic.

Now there needs to be more private readings to kick the tires of the words and meanings.

—christina

WE SEA-CREATURE FOLKS

August 18, 2006

What is the thin stuff of us,
the elemental wisp
breathing us together
making us visible
distinguishable from air-
not merely flesh
encapsulating bone
restraining sinew
tempering the thrash of spirit-
not seam of bone
or bend of joint
not even, even, even beat of heart—

Stamina has a hand
in the mix of motile thrust;
patience lays her comforts down;
vision draws all in
and into the forward glide and lurch,
and beyond the ribonucleic miracle of mind.

what is the driver
the thin stuff of us
most substantial, transubstantial, and
unseen—
so modest a word
to be so overused
so limitless in power
to be so overused,
permitted a shy corner here
a podium there
a poem, song, or Valentine,
and in our embraces,
the celebration of us all.

Jennifer Weil
Opening Night
Skeleton Woman
A gift to the cast.

© 2006 Jennifer Weil