I must say that I quite literally laughed out loud after reading the first paragraph of your analysis. I've been feeling that way a bit about some of the poetry shared here recently. But I've enjoyed the contemplation. I think it is good to ponder mortality once in awhile.
I've always thought about Emily Dickinson this way, mostly because when I taught 11th-grade American lit, ages ago, it was like I'd assign Emily Dickinson and my students would wake up and realize, suddenly, that many poems were about death --- a thing that had not struck them previously. Maybe it was just that she's direct, and does not use big words like "Thanatopsis."
They would be outraged --- outraged! --- that I was making them read these depressing poems (not, apparently, having been depressed by anything else we had read all year, which could not possibly have been because they weren't paying attention . . .). So naturally all that came to mind, over a distance of 35 years, when I sat down to write about this poem. All you high-school juniors of 1989, this one's totally for you.
Excellent analysis, as usual. I see you sneaked in an allusion to at least one other Dickinson poem, the one that ends "And then a Plank in Reason, broke, / And I dropped down, and down – / And hit a World, at every plunge, / And finished Knowing – then."
Years ago, flipping through the modern edition of the poems, I noticed how many were written during the Civil War (a quick look at my notes suggests that slightly more than half were written then), and later I conducted an informal study--though study is much too strong a word--on the connection between the war and her poetry. Her poems are so oblique that disagreement on the influence of the war (how, and how deep) is unavoidable, but I came away with the impression that it was profound.
One example is this stanza reflecting, it seems to me, the publication of casualty lists: "They perished in the Seamless Grass – / No eye could find the place – / But God can summon every face / On his Repealless – List."
Another example: "It seems a shame to be Alive – / When Men so brave – are dead – / One envies the Distinguished Dust – / Permitted – such a Head – // The Stone – that tells defending Whom / This Spartan put away / What little of Him we – possessed."
You'd like the new edition of her Letters, if you haven't seen it --- so many of these poems were sent in, or as, letters. You see them clearly in their temporal context, and in the context of her concerns in her conversations with people. Even when the poem seems to come out of the clear blue sky (not obviously a response to something), I think the placement in her correspondence adds a lot.
This is not one of the poems that appear in her letters, interestingly . . .
I think about the fact that one of the editors of the 1958 edition of her letters could assert that Dickinson was essentially atemporal and ahistorical . . . just mured up in the house with no idea of what was going on around her . . . and how fantastical an assertion that was!
It's really worth having. I've written on that volume and the new Renee Bergland book on Dickinson and Darwin for an upcoming issue of National Review --- I could easily have devoted the 2K-word limit to either of those books, but especially the Letters. There's a very good review of them in the last Hudson Review as well: https://hudsonreview.com/2024/05/to-be-alive-is-power-emily-dickinsons-letters/
By an interesting coincidence, this is another poem that evokes a musical setting when I read it thanks to my musical tastes around age 20, in this case its setting in John Adams's Harmonium. He's a very uneven composer, but that work, Harmonielehre, parts of Nixon in China (the first couple of scenes and the final scene--the rest of it I have no use for), and then some of his recent works are long-standing favorites of mine, and perhaps this setting most of all. Here starting 11:09:
I have a recording of Harmonium but have never listened to it much. ECM recording from quite a few years ago. I'll have to revisit it. There's a suite derived from Doctor Atomic which I heard and enjoyed recently. I have not ventured upon the entire opera.
That ECM was my recording (I don't think I have a second)--a used cassette came into a music store I frequented in the very early 90s and I bought it after hearing a little of the beginning, and later bought the CD. I have heard the Doctor Atomic music (I think he made it into a symphony), and it's good. Harmonium and Harmonielehre were major pieces culturally because they adopted elements of minimalism for effective expression; that is why I like him (and Michael Nyman in places) more than Reich or Glass. Some of his later works seemed to fall into that quasi-minimalist rut, though they're fun, and there's a streak of gimmickiness in some of his pieces throughout his career. (The worst example for me is On the Transmigration of Souls, the work he wrote to commemorate 9/11, and which was and I think in some quarters still is ballyhooed as some sort of latter-day Coplandesque memorial. It's gimmicky from the beginning and, from what I remember, a bit derivative throughout. --It's not a subject I seek out music about, but for my money Eric Ewazen's Hymn for the Lost and the Living and especially David del Tredici's setting of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" are much better musical responses to 9/11, and I remember being impressed by Bechara El Khoury's New York, Tears and Hope, which was effective when I heard it partly because it recalled for me his symphony The Ruins of Beirut, a memorial of sorts for his city of birth.)
Interesting! I've always known the old business about singing Emily Dickinson to "The Yellow Rose of Texas," but I don't think I've ever known an actual setting for a poem of hers.
"The poet, in a feat of imagination, goes out to sit in the dark alone, to see what it might be like."
I am going to cherish that line.
Great post, as usual!
If we do not contemplate death, how we will ever know how to live life?
We are here today, beyond that is somewhere amongst chance, fate, and destiny.
Nothing is a given, but everything can be taken away, such is death.
I must say that I quite literally laughed out loud after reading the first paragraph of your analysis. I've been feeling that way a bit about some of the poetry shared here recently. But I've enjoyed the contemplation. I think it is good to ponder mortality once in awhile.
I've always thought about Emily Dickinson this way, mostly because when I taught 11th-grade American lit, ages ago, it was like I'd assign Emily Dickinson and my students would wake up and realize, suddenly, that many poems were about death --- a thing that had not struck them previously. Maybe it was just that she's direct, and does not use big words like "Thanatopsis."
They would be outraged --- outraged! --- that I was making them read these depressing poems (not, apparently, having been depressed by anything else we had read all year, which could not possibly have been because they weren't paying attention . . .). So naturally all that came to mind, over a distance of 35 years, when I sat down to write about this poem. All you high-school juniors of 1989, this one's totally for you.
Excellent analysis, as usual. I see you sneaked in an allusion to at least one other Dickinson poem, the one that ends "And then a Plank in Reason, broke, / And I dropped down, and down – / And hit a World, at every plunge, / And finished Knowing – then."
Years ago, flipping through the modern edition of the poems, I noticed how many were written during the Civil War (a quick look at my notes suggests that slightly more than half were written then), and later I conducted an informal study--though study is much too strong a word--on the connection between the war and her poetry. Her poems are so oblique that disagreement on the influence of the war (how, and how deep) is unavoidable, but I came away with the impression that it was profound.
One example is this stanza reflecting, it seems to me, the publication of casualty lists: "They perished in the Seamless Grass – / No eye could find the place – / But God can summon every face / On his Repealless – List."
Another example: "It seems a shame to be Alive – / When Men so brave – are dead – / One envies the Distinguished Dust – / Permitted – such a Head – // The Stone – that tells defending Whom / This Spartan put away / What little of Him we – possessed."
You'd like the new edition of her Letters, if you haven't seen it --- so many of these poems were sent in, or as, letters. You see them clearly in their temporal context, and in the context of her concerns in her conversations with people. Even when the poem seems to come out of the clear blue sky (not obviously a response to something), I think the placement in her correspondence adds a lot.
This is not one of the poems that appear in her letters, interestingly . . .
I think about the fact that one of the editors of the 1958 edition of her letters could assert that Dickinson was essentially atemporal and ahistorical . . . just mured up in the house with no idea of what was going on around her . . . and how fantastical an assertion that was!
I just ordered the letters--in hardback, since it was cheaper than Kindle.
It's really worth having. I've written on that volume and the new Renee Bergland book on Dickinson and Darwin for an upcoming issue of National Review --- I could easily have devoted the 2K-word limit to either of those books, but especially the Letters. There's a very good review of them in the last Hudson Review as well: https://hudsonreview.com/2024/05/to-be-alive-is-power-emily-dickinsons-letters/
By an interesting coincidence, this is another poem that evokes a musical setting when I read it thanks to my musical tastes around age 20, in this case its setting in John Adams's Harmonium. He's a very uneven composer, but that work, Harmonielehre, parts of Nixon in China (the first couple of scenes and the final scene--the rest of it I have no use for), and then some of his recent works are long-standing favorites of mine, and perhaps this setting most of all. Here starting 11:09:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-6z-ow6H1c
I have a recording of Harmonium but have never listened to it much. ECM recording from quite a few years ago. I'll have to revisit it. There's a suite derived from Doctor Atomic which I heard and enjoyed recently. I have not ventured upon the entire opera.
That ECM was my recording (I don't think I have a second)--a used cassette came into a music store I frequented in the very early 90s and I bought it after hearing a little of the beginning, and later bought the CD. I have heard the Doctor Atomic music (I think he made it into a symphony), and it's good. Harmonium and Harmonielehre were major pieces culturally because they adopted elements of minimalism for effective expression; that is why I like him (and Michael Nyman in places) more than Reich or Glass. Some of his later works seemed to fall into that quasi-minimalist rut, though they're fun, and there's a streak of gimmickiness in some of his pieces throughout his career. (The worst example for me is On the Transmigration of Souls, the work he wrote to commemorate 9/11, and which was and I think in some quarters still is ballyhooed as some sort of latter-day Coplandesque memorial. It's gimmicky from the beginning and, from what I remember, a bit derivative throughout. --It's not a subject I seek out music about, but for my money Eric Ewazen's Hymn for the Lost and the Living and especially David del Tredici's setting of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" are much better musical responses to 9/11, and I remember being impressed by Bechara El Khoury's New York, Tears and Hope, which was effective when I heard it partly because it recalled for me his symphony The Ruins of Beirut, a memorial of sorts for his city of birth.)
I've never heard any of those.
I'm listening to it now. Thank you.
Interesting! I've always known the old business about singing Emily Dickinson to "The Yellow Rose of Texas," but I don't think I've ever known an actual setting for a poem of hers.
The third poem set in the work is also hers, "Wild Nights"; the first song is a setting of John Donne.