winter

If I could bribe them by a Rose
I’d bring them every flower that grows
From Amherst to Cashmere!
I would not stop for night, or storm –
Or frost, or death, or anyone –
My business were so dear!

If they would linger for a Bird
My Tambourin were soonest heard
Among the April Woods!
Unwearied, all the summer long,
Only to break in wilder song
When Winter shook the boughs!

What if they hear me!
Who shall say
That such an importunity
May not at last avail?

That, weary of this Beggar’s face –
They may not finally say, Yes –
To drive her from the Hall?

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I cautious, scanned my little life –
I winnowed what would fade
From what would last till Heads like mine
Should be a-dreaming laid.

I put the latter in a Barn –
The former, blew away.
I went one winter morning
And lo – my priceless Hay

Was not upon the “Scaffold” –
Was not upon the “Beam” –
And from a thriving Farmer –
A Cynic, I became.

Whether a Thief did it –
Whether it was the wind –
Whether Deity’s guiltless –
My business is, to find!

So I begin to ransack!
How is it Hearts, with Thee?
Art thou within the little Barn
Love provided Thee?

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A science — so the Savants say,
“Comparative Anatomy” –
By which a single bone –
Is made a secret to unfold
Of some rare tenant of the mold,
Else perished in the stone –

So to the eye prospective led,
This meekest flower of the mead
Upon a winter’s day,
Stands representative in gold
Of Rose and Lily, manifold,
And countless Butterfly!

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If pain for peace prepares
Lo, what “Augustan” years
Our feet await!

If springs from winter rise,
Can the Anemones
Be reckoned up?

If night stands fast — then noon
To gird us for the sun,
What gaze!

When from a thousand skies
On our developed eyes
Noons blaze!

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Some, too fragile for winter winds,
The thoughtful grave encloses, –
Tenderly tucking them in from frost
Before their feet are cold.

Never the treasures in her nest
The cautious grave exposes,
Building where schoolboy dare not look
And sportsman is not bold.

This covert have all the children
Early aged, and often cold, –
Sparrows unnoticed by the Father;
Lambs for whom time had not a fold.

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Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program presents several Dickinson-inspired events this winter:

Soul at White Heat

January 30, 7:00 PM, Dinkelspiel Auditoreum

Dramatic readings of Dickinson’s poems and letters performed by Word for Word and other theater groups, 19th-century music performed on period instruments, and a lively conversation among Dickinson scholars.

The Music Emily Heard

February 13, 7:30 PM, Campbell Recital Hall, Braun Music Center

An evening of parlor music, hymns, and popular song recreates the musical landscape of Dickinson’s time and place. David Giovacchini and ensemble will perform.

The Ghoul of Amherst

March 12, 7:00 pm, Roble Studio Theater

JoAnne Winter of Word for Word will perform Amy Freed’s “The Ghoul of Amherst”, described as “a short, comic vignette set during Emily’s death bed visit to a dying school chum. It addresses with admiration and humor Miss Dickinson’s more grisly preoccupations with the mysteries of the grave.” (This one sounds like particular fun; anyone who has been following along with the mostly-daily poems can’t help but notice that there’s a striking mixture of humor and horror in Dickinson’s meditations on mortality. We here at Daily Dickinson will be doing a little research on Ms. Freed’s work.)

If you’re in the Bay Area this winter, these look like a great way to spend some evenings; they’re all free and open to the public. Any Daily Dickinson readers who attend can drop us a line and give us a review.

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On December 10th, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, celebrates Dickinson’s 177th birthday with a reading and discussion hosted by Richard Howard, poetry editor of the Paris Review and winner of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for “Untitled Subjects”.

In addition to readings of Dickinson’s work and the discussion of Dickinson’s phenomenal output of 1862–more than 200 poems were produced that year (see Emily Dickinson Revisited: A Study of Periodicity in Her Work by John F. McDermott, M.D. for some interesting charts and graphs…)–the Folger will serve black cake made according to Dickinson’s recipe (more on the pounds of fruit and pints of brandy required here).

Now would be a good time, too, to note that Emily Dickinson: The Poet Lights the Lamp, a one-woman play written and performed by Yvonne Hudson, will be staged at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, on December 5. It’s a grand old time for Dickinson in Foggy Bottom this winter!

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Jeanette Winterson (herself a bit of a celebrity) writes in the Times Online of the conflict between celebrity and creativity. She imagines an “American Idol”-style competition for young writers, and suggests that the successful competitor “should be good-looking, funny, talkative, personable, the right shape for an Armani suit, and a bit of a psychopath.”

Some writers would probably have thrived in this setting; Winterson suggests that Byron, Dickens, and Gertrude Stein would have found something to like in the arrangement (and I’d add Twain, I think, and probably Emerson). Others, like Wordsworth, “would have had a nervous breakdown or gone to join D.H.Lawrence in Mexico.” As ever, Dickinson is mentioned in passing as the shorthand example for shyness.

But there’s quite a bit more to Dickinson’s relationship to fame (or, as it has devolved over the last 121 years since her death, mere notoriety) than simple shyness. It wasn’t that she feared attention or hid from the world; fame was a game that she chose not to play. In I’m nobody, she used her deft humor to mock those who are driven by fame:

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog

There’s a “Don’t give up!” list circulating around the blogosphere (you can see it here, here, and here, for example) that includes the observation that “Emily Dickinson had only seven poems published in her lifetime.” What this list fails to note, of course, is that publishing her poems seems not to have been a very high priority for Dickinson; it was the writing of them, not the publishing of them, that mattered. She was none too keen on having them see the light of day. Rather than a model for the unpublished writer striving to break into print, Dickinson is an example of the amateur who does what she loves for no reward but joy. How dreadfully out of step!

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