Emily Dickinson
 

Emily Dickinson,
born in Amherst,
christened in Amherst,
never married in Amherst,
blossomed in Amherst,
faded in Amherst,
died in Amherst,
buried in Amherst,
and that was the end of
Emily Dickinson.

Was it the end of Emily Dickinson though? I'd say she's had quite an afterlife in her poetry and readers, at minimum. This piece also glosses over the intense inner life she lived, as if what really mattered was her geographical location.

Well exactly, Hilary. I think I hoped a reader would see that the last line is self-evidently wrong, and read the poem again, backwards, from there. It is, in fact (in my mind, although perhaps not on paper yet), a poem against metropolitanism (or against the need for metropolitanism in every case ).

But it doesn't seem to be working in that sense, so I'll have to have a think about that.

Cheers

David

Hi David, it's quite possible that I am just spectacularly dense, but I didn't find evidence of irony other than - as you put it - the self-evident wrongness. Perhaps that's too much of a leap to ask most readers to make? I don't know. It might just be me.

Hi David,

I missed your intent completely and tentatively took the poem to be almost a dismissal of Emily's posthumous acclaim. My first thought was to respond that I would recuse myself from commenting because being one who had mentioned a couple times on the sphere the names of Shakespeare and Dickinson in the same breath, I held a bias. Your poem at first made me wonder whether UK poets tend to think she gets her reputation primarily because Americans need a little bit of cultural provenance on this side of the Atlantic. I am glad to see how wrong I would have been. It appears you actually want to point out that a poet away from the big cities and dependent on their own resources and imagination can do amazing things with words. To me, it is a small miracle that her work survived, and apparently did so despite her own self-imposed scrutiny.... This has been a lot of wind to say that yes, your poem may not be accomplishing what it set out to do.

All the best,
Jim

Well, I laughed at the ending. Perhaps a title like "Failure" would help to semaphore how ridiculous the narrator's yardstick is.

Maybe sprinkle some dashes/hyphens here and there to telegraph the tongue-in-cheekiness of the ending? (Perhaps "—in Amherst—" throughout?)

Hi David,

It came across to me that Amherst had a negative influence on her, according to the poem. Either that or you were simply alluding to her reclusive nature, being confined to Amherst (with the implication again being negative, or at least sad).

I definitely agree that it glosses over things. It needs to be developed a lot. I think you could do a bit of research about her own attitude to Amherst and how (if at all) she was involved in the community. I think I read that she did have some involvement, rather than being as reclusive as supposed, although I might be wrong there. I also think some sense of how the people of Amherst viewed her would be great.

I'd love to get a sense of what Amherst was like at this time, but I don't get that from the poem as it is. Even the first result on Google when I search 1850s Amherst sounds promising, so there may well be loads more detail that could make for a fine poem: "In the 1850s, Amherst, Massachusetts was a growing town with a bustling center, particularly on Main Street, a dirt road with horse-drawn carts transporting goods. The town was a mix of farms, factories, and a thriving community with shops and the popular Amherst House inn. Amherst Academy, where Emily Dickinson was a student, emphasized both morality and a broad curriculum, including science, with lectures from Amherst College."

I hope this feedback helps.

All the best,

Trev

How about Read It Slant? Haha. I laughed at the ending as well.

Hi David,

Well yeah, my fellow commenters, I get it too, now that I've been led there by the nose after the fact. One word would have kept me from going astray on first reading, but it's probably too cliche at this point after years of use, and that would be the old Saturday Night Live trick of saying something with false sincerity and then adding the emphatic "Not!" afterward to point out the irony intended, so that the poem would read like this:

...buried in Amherst,
and that was the end of
Emily Dickinson—not!

All the best,
Jim

A different title might help. I like James' suggestion.

The title "Nobody" might be a nice nod to one of her most famous poems.

David: Dickinson doesn't deserve conceit, she deserves reality.

I take the poem to be about the inadequacy of the narrator's value system, and not about Emily Dickinson at all.

I'm reminded of the Army engineer Joseph C. Ives' infamous assessment of the Grand Canyon, when he was the head of the first U.S. surveying party to it (1856-1860): "This region can be approached only from the south, and after entering it there is nothing to do but to leave. Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality."

 Just a thought.

I like it. The use of the Solomon Grundy structure, that thumping finality, signals the irony pretty clearly for me. I'm surprised nobody's picked up on the nursery rhyme. I didn't necessarily read it as against metropolitanism, more just the idea that one can stay in one place (wherever that might be) and have the most extraordinary inner life. I think of Blake, too, who barely ever left Lambeth.

Mark

Hi David,

I like the idea of taking a line from one of her poems as a title. James's idea of "Read it Slant," a play on the famous line "tell all the truth but tell it slant" was good. I like Julie's idea of using "Nobody" too. I think there are several titles that could be taken from "I'm Nobody! Who are you?":

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd banish us - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell your name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

BTW, I got your poem all along from the first. I was only pretending to be oblivious—not!

Jim

I like "Nobody" as the title, since Emily's poem has the same irony as your poem to today's reader, i.e., she's far from a nobody.

But I don't think the title has to be an allusion to her work. How about something like "Easy Come, Easy Go"?

The one line that bothers me ever so slightly is "Never married in Amherst," which sort of sounds like it's suggesting she might have married elsewhere but not in Amherst. Also, it seems to imply that not getting married is a form of isolation and obscurity, which is questionable. You could omit that line?

Agree that "Nobody" would also be a good title.

That's just about it, Mark. You put it better than I did. And it is, of course, Solomon Grundy, through and through. I was going to say that, but wasn't sure whether I needed to.

And also this from Julie - "I take the poem to be about the inadequacy of the narrator's value system, and not about Emily Dickinson at all."

Anyway, this squib has received more attention than I expected, so thanks, all, for that.

I really don't think you're spectacularly dense, Hilary. The leap required from the reader may be greater than it should be. I think Jim R might agree with that, as would Trevor and Cameron.

Pretty much all of the titles suggested - "Julie's "Failure", James's "Read It Slant" (a particularly good one), Julie's "Nobody" (also a good one) - would help.

And I did wonder about the dashes, Rogerbob, but couldn't find a good way to insert them into the poem. And I will have to think about the "never married" line.

Cheers all

David