How I have missed you. And what obstacles I have had to defeat in order to at last rearrive here, panting, on the grass. Well, but, I’ve had mental adventures of which you will be the beneficiaries, so don’t mug. Or rather do, because I know it means you missed me.
I’ve been buzzy with otter projects, actual agents and actual editors wanting to see pages and rewrites too, but am now released by the holding pattern of stopping and waiting (and waiting), and so am at last writing to you.
Life has time for kids, time for sleeping, time for watching Firefly on Netflix, plus 30 Rock and American Idol, and time for work. Writing to you comes out of time for work, because there’s no other time for it to come out of. Granted I sometimes see Millionaire Matchmaker without having written to you, but rarely. Usually these are the only priorities that supersede you. So sorry you’ve been so long supersed. I’m trying to save the world with rhetoric. It’s ex/hilarating /hausting.
Dudes, in one of my secret societies (I only have one, but I’m trying to confuse future forensics) (I confess this here because once, someone else in my secret society mentioned that they had other secret societies and it hurt my feelings, and I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of any of my cosocietans, should they happen to read this.) I said something and then some other guy said something obnoxious and so then I said something smartassy and the cosocietans really liked what I said. Want to know it? It was this: “Well what you said stung/k, but…” They liked that I goed stung/k. Isn’t following one thought to the next ex/hilarating /hausting? Anyway, the backslash locution at the end of the above paragraph made me think of that other one, stung/k. They are a shorthand usable by a culture that silent-reads its quips, so they needn’t be pronounceable.
Anyway. Emily Dickinson’s letters. I told you the class I’m teaching at Columbia this term is Poets and Their Letters, which I made up when they asked me what class I’d like to teach but I didn’t think they were going to pick it. All the other choices I gave them were things I’ve taught before. I’m concentrating the course on four poets whose verse I know very well, Keats, Dickinson, Bishop, and Stevens. In turn, in that order, we read their poems, then their letters. Next class we talk about Dickinson’s letters.
I gave them the green book (edited by Johnson), a nice big Selected Letters of ED. To prep, this week I read it straight through. Some journey. I feel like a restrung viola.
Talking about letters in this class has led me to realize that even for those who do not write their blog posts as letters, these days the closest thing to what once were letters, are blog posts. The email has too much brevity, too little gravitas, it compares to the scribble on a visiting card. But the blog, like the letter, is given more than an ounce of thought, and less than a gallon. It has more like a pint of poise and a quart of purpose. Just right for an afternoon’s diversion.
Emily, Emily. It is impertinent to be as I am, pert and in print, but I feel twinny with you. I think we had similar childhoods (talk about jenny from the hood, that’s the hood) in a way – isolated -- and similar strategies for walking it off.
She starts writing these atom bomb letters at 13. It felt strange to read page by page and watch her age. At first the message was the medium’s inadequacy: Her chief theme as a child was to berate the shortage of letters in return. As she got older, she lashed love onto the page with equal passion. Then something cracks leading into the 1860s and she goes nuts just totally saying what she feels like saying even if what she’s using ain’t words. As you all know, I too stood in the long lines at the DPV and took the test and showed my ID and now have a full poetic license, for forms, free verse, language, concrete, rap or pop, there’s nothing with a steering wheel that I don’t got a right to ride. You wanna hear how my girl talks?
Here’s her second letter to Higginson, year is 1862. She'd sent him a few poems and he'd sent back suggested changes:
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MR. HIGGINSON,--Your kindness claimed earlier gratitude, but I was ill, and write to-day from my pillow.
Thank you for the surgery; it was not so painful as I supposed. I bring you others, as you ask, though they might not differ. While my thought is undressed, I can make the distinction; but when I put them in the gown, they look alike and numb.
You asked how old I was? I made no verse, but one or two, until this winter, sir.
I had a terror since September, I could tell to none; and so I sing, as the boy does by the burying ground, because I am afraid.
You inquire my books. For poets, I have Keats, and Mr. and Mrs. Browning. For prose, Mr. Ruskin, Sir Thomas Browne, and the Revelations. I went to school, but in your manner of the phrase had no education. When a little girl, I had a friend who taught me Immortality; but venturing too near, himself, he never returned. Soon after my tutor died, and for several years my lexicon was my only companion. Then I found one more, but he was not contented I be his scholar, so he left the land.
You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself, that my father bought me. They are better than beings because they know, but do not tell; and the noise in the pool at noon excels my piano.
I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind. They are religious, except me, and address an eclipse, every morning, whom they call their "Father."
But I fear my story fatigues you. I would like to learn. Could you tell me how to grow, or is it unconveyed, like melody or witchcraft?
You speak of Mr. Whitman. I never read his book, but was told that it was disgraceful.
I read Miss Prescott's Circumstance, but it followed me in the dark, so I avoided her.
Two editors of journals came to my father's house this winter, and asked me for my mind, and when I asked them "why" they said I was penurious, and they would use it for the world.
I could not weigh myself, myself. My size felt small to me. I read your chapters in the Atlantic, and experienced honor for you. I was sure you would not reject a confiding question.
Is this, sir, what you asked me to tell you? Your friend,
E. DICKINSON.
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Isn’t she perfect? Don’t you just want to cook her into a pie and eat her? Sorry is that weird? Can we read this part again: “I had a terror since September, I could tell to none; and so I sing, as the boy does by the burying ground, because I am afraid.” He had written an article of advice to the young poet that was published in the Atlantic, and that is what made her think to write to him.
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