Crazy Lady

You may be familiar with the slogan "Question Authority," which has appeared on numerous buttons, posters, t-shirts, etc., over the years.  Among American poets of the nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson stands as a poster child for that slogan.  From the oddball content and structure of her poems (what's up with all those dashes?) to her disinterest in publication to her choices for how she lived her life, Dickinson represents a truly idiosyncratic American poet, matched only by Whitman in creating poetry that emerged from the mass of numbing sameness produced by most American poets.  Ironically, her singularity did not come from heeding Whitman's call for a unique American voice, but from the simple choice to live her life as she wished.

A common perception of Dickinson is that she was a somewhat loony woman living the life of an "old maid" because of some sort of psychological or emotional disorder.  It says a great deal about our culture that we would struggle with the notion that she would choose to live the life she lived.  Cultural authority at that time generally dictated two "acceptable" roles for single women of Dickinson's social standing: either marriage and motherhood, or a life devoted to charitable works (as a sort of secular nun).  Dickinson  was interested in neither one of these options.  (A little bit later in the semester we'll see just how insidious the concepts of marriage and motherhood would become with regards to defining the worth of women.)

But nothing defines her individuality more than her poetry, which looks and sounds like nothing else written during that time.  Again, we can tend to misread that and assume that the privacy of her life left her unexposed and unfamiliar to prevailing poetic trends.  She was, in fact, quite well read and aware of what was happening in the world around her.  While she was none too keen on the function of organized religions (something she had in common with Melville)--because they acted as intermediaries between the individual and God, they diminished the personal relationship with God--she wrote much poetry that was deeply spiritual and demonstrated her awareness of religious texts.  Her poetry owes a great deal to biblical verse, particularly the psalms.  Her poems about nature and God indicate that she had more than a passing familiarity with Transcendentalism, a spiritual philosophy primarily from pre-Civil War America that held, among some of its major tenets, that "pieces of God" are in all of us, and we are all part of God (which meant humans are intrinsically divine, not sinful; take that, Calvinists!) and that Nature was a far better expression of God than all the sermons in the world.  In her poem "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church," note, for example, both her disdain for the limitations of organized religion (which diminishes the personal relationship with God) and the sanctification of Nature--two key elements to transcendentalist thinking.  You can even see something else that we often don't associate with Dickinson--a wry sense of humor.  The line "And the sermon is never long" is a not-so-subtle dig at the tendency some preachers at the time had to see themselves as religious rock gods who enjoyed being the center of attention.  (A theme Hawthorne would also explore, in his short story "The Minister's Black Veil.") Given the existence of televangelists and Prosperity Gospel advocates in our own time, things don't seem to have changed much since Dickinson's time.

Nevertheless, there is no denying the uniqueness of her poetry in her time.  Among American poets, she was the yin to Whitman's yang--Whitman wrote hugely expansive, muscular, naked-to-the-world poems, while Dickinson wrote intensely personal, contemplative (which helps account for the dashes, which can signal, among other things, the hesitation and carefulness of the poem's narrator, sort of like the verbal pauses we take when we're trying to compose our thoughts while we think), minimalist poems.  American poetry would not see poetry like this again until the modernist movement of the early 20th century and the compressed poetry of people like William Carlos Williams and E.E.Cummings.  

The privacy and intense personal nature of her poetry are what provide the interesting characteristics to her spiritual and religious poetry.  She has no interest in proselytizing, indulging in public displays of praise, or spreading any sort of word.  God may be a deity, but she treats him like a companion--and even as a lover, as in her poem titled "God is a distant--stately Lover--."  We see something similar in the poem "Because I could not stop for Death," which instead of treating Death like the Grim Reaper with a scythe, treats him as a courtly lover: patient, courteous--but also cold and relentless.  The third stanza, where she points out that they passed a school, grain fields and a setting sun, isn't so much a travelogue or reminiscence as a reminder that everything dies, and that no one--even a child--is exempt. 

"I heard a Fly buzz" is another example of Dickinson approaching the subject of Death in an unconventional, and even whimsical way (and not just because of the fact that this poem and "Because I could not stop for Death" are narrated by someone who's already dead, though that certainly helps).  Here we have this crucial moment, the moment when our narrator is about to pass from this life into the unknown.  She is in a room full of weeping people, praying for the dying narrator ("And Breaths were gathering firm/For that last Onset - when the King [God/Christ]/Be witnessed..."), waiting for this most dramatic moment, terrifying and exhilarating--and along comes a stupid fly.  What a great reminder of  just how full of ourselves we are.  While we weep and moan and pray and mythologize Death, a filthy housefly (a creature that vomits and poops frequently, by the way) comes along, completely indifferent to our grandiosity and self-importance.  In a sense, Dickinson is easing into Realism by creating a context that deflates our perceived significance in the grand scheme of things.


Below you'll find one of my favorite and most intriguing Dickinson poems: "I know that he exists."  As is the case in many of her poems, "I know that he exists" is about her personal relationship with God.  The first line, in fact, can be quite comforting for many readers, because the narrator asserts ("know," not "think" or "believe") the existence of a Supreme Being (something that many American Realists would be loathe to do).  However, as is also often the case with Dickinson, she frames that relationship as a friend or even a kind of drinking buddy; she certainly is not awestruck, and fear and trembling aren't even part of the conversation.

In this particular poem what's intriguing is the analogy she uses to ponder that nature of her relationship with God: a game of hide and seek.  What I'd like your thoughts on is why do you think she would use that analogy to describe her relationship with God, and what do you make of the third and fourth stanzas, where the poem seems to take a dark turn, and something seems to happen that makes the game less ... fun. For now I'll just say that in her poetry Dickinson is not shy sometimes about chiding God.

I KNOW that he exists
Somewhere, in silence.
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.
’T is an instant’s play,	5
’T is a fond ambush,
Just to make bliss
Earn her own surprise!
But should the play
Prove piercing earnest,	10
Should the glee glaze
In death’s stiff stare,
Would not the fun
Look too expensive?
Would not the jest	15
Have crawled too far?