Some Dickinson poems...

Notes on some Dickinson poems... (also sketches of a tent, a puppy, and a sack lunch...)

Important quotes form Habegger...

"The frank erotic passion of Dickinson's mature poetry need not obscure her naivete as a young woman, when she could not allow sex, something 'low' and 'of the earth,' to have anything to do with the love that found fulfillment in 'heaven' (306).

"One of the biggest mistakes we make with Dickinson is to detach her from the religious currents of the 1850s, without which she could not have become herself" (310).

"The pattern running through these varied events - Mother's perplexing illness, Loring's failure, Norcross versus Norcross, the Panic, the A&B fiasco - was one of collapse and cover-up, of trouble too deep-seated to be examined in the light of day" (346).

Whitman day...

Whitman's prose seems too much like his poetry.  He uses many of the same poetic devices, only it's within his paragraphs and sentences.  Why write your prose like poetry, why not just write poetry?

Favorite line from Leaves of Grass, "I know perfectly well my own egotism," (76).  I think Whitman has a hard time separating his narrator from himself.

On pages 60-61, Whitman begins almost every line with "Where;" the use of tis seems to draw people together.  However, in the middle of his "Where" statements are interrupted for a handful of stanzas.  Whitman still uses new locations, but I feel it is important to note that these are not "Where" statements... What is different about these statements?  I admit I'm not sure, but it requires further investigation.  Also, on pg. 60, he mentions "the press" which I believe is his only relation to writers; and it is only the workers in a factory - not real writers.

Whitman's "This Compost"

Something has separated Whitman from nature.
He is angry at nature.
Angry that nature, even though it appears dead, is bringing forth new life; where as his own body as it dies will seem to only die.
The land is continually filled with dead bodies.
How can nature hide all of the death that it has been witness to?
Perhaps the dead things have been buried and can be overturned with a plough or spade.

Perhaps all the soil has once been part of a sick, dead, person!
"The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves." Resurrection - birth from death
The new spring life is so innocent - oblivious to the death it has overcome just be bursting forth from the ground.

Whitman wants to blame the decay of plant life on a diseased wind, yet finds they "... are really not infectious."
He realizes that nature is in fact safe - although in itself causes its own illness, death, and decay.
How can something that dies as if by nothing be safe?
He is amazed that everything can be so clean, fresh, when all of it once came from something that lie dying.

It is this realization that has drawn a line between him and nature.
How can nature "...grow such sweet things out of such corruption?"
Whitman cannot accept that he just cannot understand the workings of the Earth.
How can the Earth be so generous when all we give in return is "death"?

Some Dickinson thoughts...

591 Who's the king?
479 House in the ground? Death passes by in relation to all the sickness around?
756 Mourning a stranger.
401 White heat is what is needed to mold metal into a new creation.
19 Testing the waters between science and Christianity.
51 Dickinson admits that no one will know when she accepts a faith.
101 Who is Shaw?
110 Fascination with nature. Even peasants can appreciate it.
340 The body responds, listens, to the heavens. But Dickinson, cannot hear the heavens calling. All attempt at religion is on the surface bodily level.
344 Trying to watch her family grieve causes her more pain?
379 Understanding and envying the simplicity of a blade of grass.

Becoming a storm cloud...

"Mount Holyoke toughened Dickinson, who worked hard and did well and at one point became 'much interested' in chemistry and physiology."

"One of the questions to be decided was: how would the father Emily took with her, and the father in her mind, shape her adjustment to the close-knit female world she had entered?"

Emily struggled to stay away from the religious influences of the college. "... she had a painful conviction that she ought to 'give up and become a Christian.'"  Emily felt no interest in becoming a Christian.

"Dickinson was becoming a dark storm cloud, with a rising electric potential that would have to declare itself."  Dickinson is given so much power by this author.  Comparing her to a storm cloud is comparing her to a power that is uncontrollable, and also, a power of nature - not a power of humanity.  I think this is a significant comparison to note.  Dickinson herself seems closer to nature through her scientific studies.  Also, the description makes her seem harmful, damaging, destructive - normally poets are thought of as "creators" not "destroyers".

Dickinson seemed to show a general obedience to the law, "As it is, two things stand out in her response - her snapping resentment, and her determined acceptance of 'the law.'"

Many scholars attempt to find a connection between Dickinson and the Women's Rights Movement.  However, this author claims that Dickinson would have not been against the movement, "... was not disposed to see women as an oppressed class or to feel that they must organize themselves in order to free themselves."  However, Dickinson seemed to express little interest in anything which she was not directly affected by.  I find it hard to believe she would have ventured into the political world.  

"All can write autographs, but few paragraphs; for we are mostly no more than names." - B.F. Newton

Dickinson was lent Jane Eyre.  It may have influenced her greatly.

"The double punctuation at the end seems to catch her in the act, disguising her risky opinion as a question deferentially presented to a man almost ten years her senior."

"Nineteen-year-old Emily was in a state of eruption, throwing off the rules her elders had pounded into her."