In the 90’s, I studied with a professor who was of the New Critics school. He stressed that we should not focus on an author’s biography. We were to focus almost solely on the work.
As the granddaughter of a poet who had dubbed himself “The Coal Miner Poet,” that didn’t sit right with me. (His biography was in his title! And can we just appreciate the badassery of giving yourself a title?)
I thought about my two uncles who wrote poetry, too. Knowing their stories enriched their work for me.
Ditto any author. While I don’t need to know everything about an author’s background, I was delighted to learn that, for instance, Louisa Alcott had three sisters and drew heavily on her life at Orchard House.
(And psst…ironically, Dickinson is exactly the kind of poet the New Critics loved, because her poems almost demand close reading without biography.) That being said, my study of Dickinson is being frustrated right now by the intense focus of others on her life’s story.
While I, like many others, I suspect, was fascinated to hear that Taylor Swift is a distant relation of Dickinson’s, and I was quick to put together Dickinson’s chrysolite from her “There Is a World By Men Unseen” and compare it to Swift’s “Opalite,” a comparison I’m not at all sure was purposeful on Swift’s part but is fun to play with (the song’s controversy aside, of course), I have been frustrated by my efforts to find actual discussions of Dickinson’s poetry.
I have not looked for written discussions and criticism yet. I have been focusing on videos and podcasts for now, just so I could listen or watch while I do other things. (Laundry abhors silence.)
I mentioned Adam Walker’s wonderful lectures on Youtube, and John Green’s excellent yet mere blink of a video on her. Today I discovered Wobbly Bits, videos from 2015 that appear to be the filming of what might be an MFA-style workshop discussion of her poems. All of these videos I have found helpful, especially the latter. Listening to multiple takes on a poem helps.
But so many others go on and on about the salacious behavior of those around Dickinson and what is merely speculative about her.
Are they interested in her work, or her biography?
Do they want to know what she means when she speaks of telling the truth in a poem, or do they want to talk about how she supposedly only wore white? (I haven’t tracked the truth down about white, as I have heard arguments both ways and I really don’t give a good goddamn.)
Is it because she’s a woman that they focus on what are admittedly (sometimes) intriguing details about her life?
If her work were weaker, I would be more tempted to care whether she loved men or women. If she ever left her house.
Are they afraid to dive into her difficult poems? Are they afraid to admit that even when her poems appear transparent, they are (oh, here I go) chrysolite, maybe even opalite?
Listen, Linda (see internet circa 2015 for the reference), what I am discovering is the almost futility in imagining I will be able to fully understand any of her poems. But I’m trying. I’m enjoying the atmosphere, the weather of them.
As I said yesterday, I can get the “guh-guh” feeling of them (see Dirty Dancing for that reference, the scene where Swayze gets through to Grey about how to feel dancing).
But if I listen to one more podcast or watch one more YouTube video where they focus on her goddamn flowers…
Fine, her love of flowers, her knowledge of them, says a lot about her.
But her poems are flowers that have never grown anywhere else. Never will.
Why are we looking at her flowers, besties?
HAVE YOU READ HER POEMS?
This post was sponsored by Word Raccoon and fueled by inferior library tea, the beverage of frustrated poets and their writing sidekicks.
Salud!
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