I’ll begin with a bit of an anecdote for you:
Last spring break, I traveled to Amherst, MA to visit Emily Dicksinon’s family homestead. In the car, my father said that he knew little-to-nothing about Dickinson despite having read her work in school. Prior to the break, on calls with extended family detailing my plans, I was asked “didn’t Emily Dickinson kill herself?” and “why do you like that creepy, reclusive poet?” This pattern of misinformation surrounding Dickinson was revealing itself within my family despite their relative literary enthusiasm. Naturally, for the rest of my car ride I interrogated my father about how Dickinson had been taught in his schooling. He replied saying that he was taught little to nothing about her life and they read her poems with barely any context.
Getting more into the literary discussion now…
I’d like to note here that I have a complicated relationship with poets being taught in a biographical way. There is much value to be gained from this approach, but I see it being done in the most heavy-handed way solely to female poets. The digression from the texts themselves to more personal details can be at times voyeuristic in a way I feel begins to ignore the actual poems. Yet, when it comes to Dickinson I cast this notion (and often frustration) completely aside. Learning about Dickinson feels so integral to my enjoyment, comprehension, and appreciation of her work. Is it because I relate to her in some ways? Or perhaps it is a desire to disrupt the formation of Emily Dickinson as an American mythological figure? Regardless, I very much look forward to seeing how reading her poems again after reading her letters will change my reading experience.
This brings me to my questions:
- If you’re new to Emily Dickinson, did you have any misconceptions that have been disproven? Proven?
- While reading her letters so far, what has been your main focus? Is it the biographical elements or the prose/poems of the letters?
- Did learning about the notion of the “letter-poem” genre change the way you read the next set of letters for class?
- What has surprised you the most about reading Dickinson’s letters?
I will respond to question 3 and say yes, absolutely it did! I have frankly never read a letter-poem before, or even heard of such a thing. Learning about it helped me more easily identify poetic devices that now seem so obvious I’m unsure how I ever wholly missed them. I will say, reading the first set of poems, I did think to myself, “These are a lot different than the letters I read in the Whitman archives…” I believe it’s pretty obvious that her letters are MORE than a letter, but literature. But I didn’t consider the letters to be poems, just very descriptive prose. I will say, her letters to Susan (AKA Susie) are more poetic than the ones previously read; I assume this to be because Susan was her lover… erm… I mean close female friend. Anyway, yes — my reading of the letters did change. It’s weird, when you don’t have words yet, but only a feeling, and you must somehow identify it. That’s probably how Emily felt 99% of the time, from what I’ve read. Lol.