Luckily, at the library today, The Master Letters: Poems by Lucie Brock-Broido had come in. It’s a book of poetry based on the three letters written by Emily Dickinson that were found with her poems after her death. If you haven’t read them, you can find copies here.  The jacket blurb says of Brock-Broido, her “verse-letters echo and traverse Dickinson’s wilderness of injury and worship; her language is at once blistering and mystical.”

…at once blistering and mystical…

you judge.

Also, None Among Us Has Seen God

My Most Courageous Lord—

The Teutons  have their word for keeping Quiet which our blessing
Language does not have. To say nothing of—Agone, to say nothing

Of the monk who set himself ablaze, in autumn hair & all, the ravish
& the wool of him, the mourning & the sweetest smell of him—Alive—

How did you teach the learning of this Holding & the holding
Back—To say nothing of—Ago, obedience, the hiding in

The feral peace of speaking Not, the root & oath of it—
Old as a prehistoric furrow horse abed in awe & sediment,

Curled on his runic side, in the shape of an O, broken. Wake
Is agape, an outskirt of agony, blouse-white & bad—To say

Nothing of the nook of sleep—which is a ravage in the chamois night-
Sweat of your raff & shames, the fevers of a mirror fire, the rage

Or punishment, the Agapé, the kerosene & bone-red rag.
That was the best moment of his life. The burning down.

“Faith” is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency! (E. Dickinson)

The society that resulted from the European invasion of the Americas seems prone to periods of alternating despair and certainty. The periods of certainty result in territorial and cultural expansion; despair results in upsurges of religiosity and (mental and social) isolationism. The first comes with that awful taste of American-style surety of superiority, that rather hubristic idea that we are the vanguard of human civilization. The second comes when that state crashes – as it inevitably does – against the facts, and falls like a mirror shattered in rage and fear.

My question is how to navigate a society that refuses an even keel?

I was brought to this query by an article on the Daily Beast about religious and anti-religious films written by Marlow Stern.

From superchurch satire ‘Salvation Boulevard’ to the atheist film ‘The Ledge’ and Sundance fave ‘Higher Ground,’ an abnormal number of movies this summer rail against evangelicalism. Marlow Stern speaks with filmmakers and experts from both sides of the debate, including Vera Farmiga of ‘Higher Ground’ and Kirk Cameron of ‘Fireproof.’

Wrestling with it, I found myself thinking about the cycles of religious evangelicism in the US often talked about as the Great Awakenings. (If you’re interested in the topic you might try Jon Butler’s Awash in a Sea of Faith.) It also led me to think about Emily Dickinson and her experience of her community’s salvation.

There is a rather fine short article about E.D. and the complex nature of her faith.

In Dickinson’s teen years, a wave of religious revivals moved through New England. One by one, her friends and family members made the public profession of belief in Christ that was necessary to become a full member of the church. Although she agonized over her relationship to God, Dickinson ultimately did not join the church–not out of defiance but in order to remain true to herself: “I feel that the world holds a predominant place in my affections. I do not feel that I could give up all for Christ, were I called to die” (L13). By the time the First Congregational Church moved to a site near the Homestead on Main Street in 1868, Emily Dickinson had stopped attending services altogether.

Dickinson’s attitude toward spiritual matters was more complex than her poem “Some keep the Sabbath going to church / I keep it staying at home” (Fr236) implies. While her poems are saturated with the language, ritual, and expectation of traditional religious experience, her tone varies tremendously. Some poems affirm the need for faith: “Faith – is the Pierless Bridge / Supporting what We see / Unto the Scene that We do not – ” (Fr978). Irreverence underlies other aspects of her work: “The Bible is an antique Volume – / Written by faded Men / At the suggestion of Holy Spectres -” (Fr1577). At times Dickinson’s poetry expresses outright anger with an absent God:

Of Course – I prayed -
And did God care?
He cared as much as on the Air
A Bird – had stamped her foot -
And cried “Give Me” -
(Fr581)

That’s, I think, the way to handle this current shattered mirror and consequent upswing of despairing faith. The fact that the mirror is broken does not mean what you glimpsed there is no longer true. As best as one can, question, refuse the comfort of simple faith and its feelings of release, refuse the assumptions involved in giving over to the “Gentlemen who see”. Keep formulating alternative responses, but never settle for one; always question, always ask for worldly evidence, for the bird’s perspective on your beliefs.

There’s no way out of the pain of course, no real way to avoid what the mirror reflected. We all have assumptions and we cannot simply leave them all behind, but we can refuse comfort in order to allow questioning. Dickinson remained someone who spoke of gods and the afterlife. That was the basis of her entire world, but her stubborn hold on the world allowed her to remain brilliant, unconventional, a poet.

I mean, who do we remember now? Not those who took hold of the comfort, but those who refused it. There is a reason for that. Not that being remembered is the end-all of desire, but it does point to a lively spot in human awareness, a place where mental sleep has not yet claimed its toll.

This period of upcoming history will be difficult I suspect. No huge wave of desire for comfort, for sleep ever comes without a violent hand for the alarm clocks and a sleeping drug for the awkward pain of living. There will be Emilys of this time, and that voice will be a record of dissent against the coming/ongoing “revival”. I don’t envy her life though, just as I don’t envy Emily’s. So alone, our Amherst Emily must have been with no one who could think as she could, no one who could stand with her in the pain of continual appraisal, constant questioning. So in advance of your life and death, our dearest future unknown Emily, kudos.

As for me, I don’t project that part of me onto human beings, or onto human being-like gods. I’m more inclined to Emily’s flowers, Wordsworth’s Snowdon, and assorted other non-human phenomena. As an aside, I can’t recall any theorist suggesting flowers as Dickinson’s master, despite their power to bestow grace. It seems to me just as viable a suggestion for a poet as any of the aforesaid human beings. It might make a fun thesis for someone.

But to the reason for this post: I am staying briefly with a friend who is house sitting. The lady of the house is off a-travelling, but the master remains at home. Let me introduce you:

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him -
The Mountains straight reply -

And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through -

And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master's Head -
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow - to have shared -

To foe of His - I'm deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -

Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without--the power to die--

He fumbles at your spirit
 As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
 He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance
 For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
 Then nearer, then so slow

Your breath has time to straighten,
 Your brain to bubble cool, --
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
 That scalps your naked soul.

Sexton! My Master's sleeping here.
Pray lead me to his bed!
I came to build the Bird's nest,
And sow the Early seed --

That when the snow creeps slowly
From off his chamber door --
Daisies point the way there --
And the Troubadour.

Needless to say, all the poetry is Emily’s. A final note: if I was going to worship anyone, it would be master.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. In this case I picked up Milk Stone by Pat Lowther, a poet with whom I am completely unfamiliar, only the third or fourth book into the first culling, stopped and headed for the cash register book in hand.

It’s odd that I haven’t heard of her I think, because one of my favourite books is by Carol Shields – Swann, A Mystery – which is very funny in a ouchy and deeply literate kind of way, and is apparently based on Lowther. I can see that now, the connection, but didn’t know enough to see it then.

And now, a long night later, I wonder how much of my memory of the very-long-ago inhalation of Swann impacted my reading of that poem by Lowther in the bookstore. It didn’t consciously, but following a night of restless dreaming of angry, jealous men, I cannot help but think it was there somewhere.

This is “Neither did trees ringing” by Pat Lowther.

Neither did trees ringing with birds
grow from his open-palmed hands

nor could his head
encompass weather
(drift of clouds under the wide arch
of his cranium
so that parched travellers
might walk through the lanes of his eyes
into a kinder country)

nor did his heart grow
a thickness of grapes
in its own winepress
and his mouth flowing with cultured sunlight

Only his hair grayed
and sleep like a slow wrestler
demanded his blessing

which he could not give
Even with children in his arms
his shoulders ached and prickled
for birds

frosting
green things he passed
with his gray hair
he felt blossoms
seeded within him

Neither did his heart
pumping sour wine
ever cease to labour to fill
the cups for a wedding

The thing is that when I read it I was stunned. Emily, I thought. Emily Dickinson – and then chastened myself because this is not like Dickinson really. The obsession is different, the style, the conclusions seem very different. Yet the cry of “Emily” remained. After hours of thinking about it,  and reading the rest of Milk Stone, I had come to the conclusion that it is a kind of mind, an elliptical mind, wandering through language, linking longing to the small things of the earth that puts Pat and Emily together in my head. That and the placement of identity, of soul, in the relationships with men not managed.

Then, this morning, I went to the computer to learn something of Pat’s later production (Milk Stone was published in 1974) and found that a year later she was murdered by her husband. This is also when I learnt of the connection to Swann and of Pat being called a “northern Emily.” Goodness. I think I am going to have to reread Swann now and think about its central character (a dead poet, Mary Swann) and the book’s (very funny and deeply) satirical stance on the literary engine that uses writers as its fuel.

But before that, I am going to acquire the Collected Works that has come out recently and read the rest of what was written during Lowther’s short career.

Funny thing the mind. But regardless of the origin of my Emily cry, it still holds when I read in Milk Stone. There is an oddity there, and a sense of unfinished business. It’s like Pat (and Emily) pull me along to the edge of another universe, to a world that swirls with very different colours and shapes, into which, via their poetry, I can peek but not enter. But even that marvelous passport isn’t quite the limit of their connection. It’s as if when reading Emily’s Master poems and this one of Pat’s, I am peeking into the same universe but through different doors. I’m not sure what it is about their created world, their sensed worlds, that leads me to believe this, but I will almost certainly be thinking about it for quite some time.

Given that, and given that Emily’s view of witchcraft was likely shaped in some part by Browne, what does that do to how we interpret the poems I have copied below?

Sir Thomas Browne Religio Medici

I conceive there is a traditional magick, not learned immediately from the devil, but at second hand from his scholars, who, having once the secret betrayed, are able and do empirically practise without his advice; they both proceeding upon the principles of nature; where actives, aptly conjoined to disposed passives, will, under any master, produce their effects. Thus, I think, at first, a great part of philosophy was witchcraft; which, being afterward derived to one another, proved but philosophy, and was indeed no more than the honest effects of nature:–what invented by us, is philosophy; learned from him, is magick.

Emily Dickinson
in Johnson, poem 1158 (1870) / In Franklin, poem 1158 (1869)

Best Witchcraft is Geometry
To the magician’s mind -
His ordinary acts are feats
To thinking of mankind -

in Johnson, poem 1583 (1883) / In Franklin, poem 1612 (1883)

Witchcraft was hung, in History,
But History and I
Find all the Witchcraft that we need
Around us, Every Day -

in Johnson, poem 1708 (unknown date) / in Franklin, poem 1712 (unknown date)

Witchcraft has not a pedigree
‘Tis early as our Breath
And mourners meet it going out
The moment of our death -

Stars! What a phrase – “perceives abstraction and thinks sensation”.

He is claiming for her, I think, a kind of practical mysticism, one based on a different conceptual ordering of sensation.  Let’s not forget this essay was written in 1932, long before much work had been done in cognitive science and sensory anomalies like synaesthesia. Not that I think he was claiming a kind of synaesthesia for her, but he certainly seems to have been able to see her poetic and perceptual abilities as radically different from those who were writing around her.

What does it mean to “perceive abstraction” and “think sensation?” Based on my own experiences (what I think of as my brain veering left), perceiving abstraction and thinking sensation are both based on privileging the knowledge that comes in via the kinesthetic sense versus privileging information from the eye.  In other places in this blog I have posted stuff about the senses and how they work, but simply, each sense has a set of rules by which it judges, responds to and understands the world.  The rules for the ear are different than the rules for the eye. They are both different than the rule of the moving body or the kinesthetic sense.

When we move through the world all our senses work more-or-less separately, and then are woven together in the brain to create a sense of a unified sensual reality.  That was, I’m sure, just as true for Dickinson as for any of us.  What was probably different was which sense-rules took the position of default.  For most human cultures it seems the default sense is the eye.  Its rules of distance, perspective, line, curve, separation, the focus on objects with defined borders (hence, individual identity as central to the notion of self) and the focus on difference versus sameness, these have become also the rules of the self.

(Why this should have been so for Dickinson, I have no conjecture to make but most “mystics” get it from somewhere – some current explanations include temporal lobe seizures, mis-wired senses or other cerebral or chemical anomalies.)

Imagine instead that the rule of the moving body was the default sense.  How would we conceive of the self if this was the case? The body operates in a universe where there are no clearly defined limits, no clear and obvious distinctions between objects.  The edge of a boulder gives way to the slope of the land; the limit of water transitions to the limit of air. Not the tactile sense, that’s not what I mean here, not slapping the surface of the lake and feeling surface tension snap back: instead, the sense of the body moving endlessly from birth to death.  For the body moving there is never a clear point where now is not. The body moving has no memory or experience of not-now. There is memory to enable that. Space and time are endless oceans to the kinaesthetic sense.  The body is always Here and Now.  It is, experientially, what we know of eternity, one of Dickinson’s great obsessions. Imagine trying to write about abstractions like death and eternity if one’s reference point is the body moving.

I am not at all claiming that Tate would have said this stuff about senses.  That’s me thinking through what I know about the implications of what he had to say with what I already know about differently organized perceptual systems.

A final comment on Tate’s essay: near the end of the first section he quotes her poem “The Chariot.”  It’s the one that starts “Because I could not stop for death / He kindly stopped for me.”  He uses this poem to explicate his idea of the relationship between abstraction and sensation in Dickinson’s work. Tate says: “A construction of the human will, elaborated with all the abstracting powers of the mind, is put to the concrete test of experience: the idea of immortality is confronted with the fact of physical disintegration. We are not told what to think; we are told to look at the situation.”  My only disagreement with the passage is that I would say she told us to experience the situation, not look at it.

In other words, Dickinson doesn’t discuss the abstraction we know as death, rather she presents an experience, a moving scene, in which the feeling of the abstraction is present in our human lives.  By experiencing moving along in a carriage, past children and grain fields with the gentleman Death, we can feel what the concept of death is like for a woman who lived at the cusp between the Puritan moral centre and the Transcendental egoist.

Where the old-fashioned puritans got together on a rigid doctrine, and could thus be individualists in manners, the nineteenth-century New Englander, lacking a genuine religious center, began to be a social conformist. The common idea of the Redemption, for example, was replaced by the conformist idea of respectability among neighbors whose spiritual disorder, not very evident at the surface, was becoming acute. A great idea was breaking up, and society was moving toward external uniformity, which is usually the measure of the spiritual sterility inside.

It is here in this breaking-up that Dickinson finds herself.  Two things Tate says about the effect of Puritan conceptual centrality:

• “It gave—and this is its significance for Emily Dickinson, and in only slightly lesser degree for Melville and Hawthorne—it gave an heroic proportion and a tragic mode to the experience of the individual.”
• This is the “puritan tragedy:” “Man, measured by a great idea outside himself, is found wanting.”

Tate cites Emerson as the one who killed this. In a really audacious (and delightful) description of Emerson, Tate says: “The Lucifer of Concord…for he was the light-bearer who could see nothing but light, and was fearfully blind. He looked around and saw the uniformity of life, and called it the routine of tradition, the tyranny of the theological idea.”  Later in the same paragraph Tate says that:

“in this way he accelerated a tendency that he disliked. It was a great intellectual mistake. By it Emerson unwittingly became the prophet of a piratical industrialism, a consequence of his own transcendental individualism that he could not foresee.

So Dickinson is questioning the paradox these two systems set up. The moral centre which emphasizes the “great idea outside” and the Transcendental (and Protestant as well) emphasis on the centrality of the individual to the universe. This is the engine of her poetry. Her obsession with how this would play out in great moments of life – like dying – makes Dickinson a voice of the climax of this conceptual change in America.

Oh yes. What a pleasure to read. The hard contingency of fact… Imaginative constructions of the future…

Like all those theories of Emily’s imagined lover, no real evidence, just a disbelief that her passion wasn’t aimed at a specific man or woman.

And like Frank Kermode who, wonderful critic that he is, saw this narrative need of ours to live in the apocalyptic story, to define ourselves by something that isn’t amenable to reason or evidence.

There is so much more in that essay. As I process what he had to say, I will post.

Bleh. I am grouchy.

I think a nap at the beach is called for. It is kind of a grey, cloudy day so Jericho Beach might not be too crowded. I have my blankets in the car and a book of essays about Emily Dickinson, so I will probably survive the day.

I did read a delightful essay in my very early morning wakefulness. By Conrad Aiken, “Emily Dickinson” was originally published in 1924, 31 years before Thomas Johnson’s edition of her complete poems was released. That means he wrote that essay based on the few, highly (and mostly poorly) edited versions of Dickinson’s work that were then available. And yet Aiken’s essay is wonderfully perceptive of Ms. Dickinson and prescient with regard to what some critics would do when pondering Emily’s personal oddities.  In other words, all the things he warned against have been picked up and the resultant theories shaken loose of all evidence, so fascinated have we become about the source of Emily’s “psychic trauma.”

Alan Tate’s essay of 1932, also called “Emily Dickinson,” is in the same volume. I haven’t read it yet;  I am looking forward to it, I have seen it cited so many times.

It’s nearly noon and I haven’t had breakfast yet. I am off to a cafe somewhere, then the beach for a nap. Then Tate.  The best recipe for grouch-hangover that I can devise.

She was also a magical thinker.  She believed in the literal truth of incarnation, but not just of the Christian version that has Jesus as an incarnation of a simultaneously equal and greater god. She believed in the Platonic-like magic that is an eternal idea born as temporal matter.

Along with this she believed in the literal truth of human imaginary powers as magical: imagination can effect material change. For her this power was in the word.

In Religio Medici (a book Emily admits to her mind) Sir Thomas Browne argues for the literal existence of sorcerers and witches but qualifies their origins by saying that although the power must have originally come from dark sources, over generations, and by the intent of the user, the power loses its soul sting and can be used to pursue the goodness that comes with knowledge. In other words, Manfred-like, men become material gods.

Combined with the Christian notion of the Power of the Word, and Emily’s acknowledged belief in the power of the word to incarnate idea into the flesh of its printed angles, what we have is a new kind of witch – a Brownian witch, a Christian witch – a woman who sought to cast spells with words that would do what all good Christians of her time sought to do – to console, to teach, to comfort and to enliven.