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Colin's Emily Dickinson Reflection
Sequencing is difficult. With over 1,700 poems to her pen, one could seemingly compile a sequence of seemingly anything. In my endeavor, I should desire to conveniently ignore critical dilemmas here (as if one could ever hope to do such a thing) and thus not base my sequence on the “fallacies” of intention or affect to the extent practicable.1 And if we are to rely upon the text, we must know which text to rely upon. For the texts of the poem, I have chosen to eschew the versions mangled by her arrogant editors who would maker her poetry “proper.”
I decided to start my sequence with “The thought beneath so slight a film—,” in which Dickinson delicately explores the possibilities of the “film” of language. I think that this is simply an amazing poem; its beautiful simplicity and deft imagery reminds me of Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro.” In each, no word is out of place, superfluous.2 Like the “lace” that enhances what it covers or the “mists” that enhance the mountains, poetry enhances the thought. With this first poem at hand, I decided create a sequence based on the poet’s experience of language. While this might at first seem a bit absurdly self-referential, akin to the photographer taking photos of cameras or the journalist writing newspaper articles about journalism, I think this is a worthy topic for a sequence.
Next, I selected “I dwell in Possibility—.” For Dickinson, her dwelling—poetry—is “A fairer House than Prose—.” This poem, it would seem is a logical progression from the first. We come in from the more distant misted mountains to the closer, domestic, house, as we come from the abstract ”film” of language to the concrete dwelling of poetry. Her “narrow Hands [. . .] gather Paradise” and create this dwelling.
We then go from the dwelling of poetry to the poet himself, who “Distills amazing sense / From ordinary Meanings,” gathering the essence (“Attar”) of the dead roses laying by the door. In “This was a Poet—It is That,” Dickinson uses male pronouns throughout the poem, suggesting another poet “so unconscious— / The Robbing—could not harm— / Himself—to Him—a Fortune—”
We now turn to the poet herself. In “A little Madness in the Spring,” which while not in my estimation autobiographical, we see the dynamism (represented by the clown) of world. Spring, too, is traditionally the time of creation; the creation here being poetry.3
With this creation in mind, “A word is dead” invites us to consider the immortality of poetry. In its creation once placed on paper is immortal.
We then learn that “They shut me up in Prose—,” that less fair house. An uncertain “they” seeks to constrain her in prose, a futile task akin to sending a bird to the animal pound. To break free of the house of prose, she simply has to “will” her way out.
I chose the next poem on a similar vein, even as she is bound (in the house of prose?), she “still can sing.” With “Bind me—I still can sing—,” one presumes those binding her are the same “they” that “shut [her] up in Prose.”
We now move to a Biblical allusion in “A Word made Flesh is seldom.” Here, the Word is God, who is Logos—language, reason. Excluding an extended exercise in exegesis of John, this poem, in essence marks the “consent of Language / This loved Philology”—the love of Logos.
Now the word is less Devine—in this next poem, I take it to mean just that, the word. “A Word dropped careless on a Page,” as in a poem, which “breeds” “Infection.” The “Malaria” of her infectious words escapes her death and causing “Despair” for “Centuries” and for the future generations.
We last go from the “malaria” of the previous poem to “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—.” It would seem that this poem would hardly fit in with the others, yet I should see this as a fitting finale for the sequence. It is the banality of death, the end. It captures a sense of permanence, yet it is not permanent. The poem ends in a dash, leaving it open, as if yet to be completed.
In this sequence I have tried to create a progression, not so much in time (in fact, I created this blind to when each of these poems were written) but rather in ideas, filaments of text, sometimes faint, sometimes clear, from which emerge a whole with meaning greater than the sum of its parts.
1 I understand that by doing such a thing, I am placing within a critical framework. In this sentence, I am of course alluding to Wimsatt and Beardsley’s essays on “The Intentional Fallacy” and “The Affective Fallacy.”
2 In saying this, I do not mean to make too close a comparison between Pound and Dickinson or even between the two poems. Dickinson does not share the modernist crisis of language; her imagery in this poem is more abstract and more complex. There are numerous other differences as well, which I shall not get into here.
3 I should suppose my “affect” got ahead of me here.
