Prologue
Hello. The target audience for this humanly-written, essayistic mind, heart and soul exploration is: poets; creative writers; writers; artists and “creatives” of all stripes; spiritual people; people interested in history, and the future; anyone interested in any or all of the above.
If you can’t jive with that, this writing isn’t for you.
To elaborate briefly: this wasn’t written by a robot; and it isn’t meant to be read by a robot, either.
One of Emily Dickinson’s most convincing personas (she had a million of ’em) said, “Men eat of fame and die.” She was never famous at all during her lifetime, except in her hometown, where she was one of the best-known and most talked-about citizens in the community, by far.
In fact, she was probably the most talked-about citizen in the town. One indication of this is that she had many nicknames, some of which survive to this day, two of the most important ones being “The Myth” and “The Lady in White,” because at some point she had stopped wearing anything except a white dress.
And while she was reclusive, she also spent a vast amount of time walking and wandering around in the fields, over the hills and through the woods surrounding the town like one of her heroes, Henry David Thoreau, a writer whose works she read and cherished long before he became well-known in the world at large.
With her gigantic dog, Carlo, a Newfoundland who lived seventeen years, and who was named after a dog in Jane Eyre, and who she called “My Shaggy Ally,” Emily wandered her version of the moors here in America. (Robert Burns, Lord Byron, and Charles Dickens also had Newfoundland dogs who they treated like bosom buddies, BFFs, and family members. Byron buried his animal with a gigantic tombstone.)
Miss Emily was a petite (probably around five feet tall), darkly red-haired, explosive, unmarried woman with transfixing eyes and in her white dress, her gigantic, furry, happy, vociferous, energetic and adventurous dog beside her, they disappeared and reappeared together on a regular basis, very much drawing the attention of both the gossips and the literary souls in the area; at that time, small towns always had an unhealthy and a healthy population of both of these types of folks. (Reading aloud to each other was as common as watching TV is now, and writing letters to one another was as common as emails and texting.)
One reason she became a recluse and stayed in her room so often was because she was tired of being observed and commented upon by the “ordinary” citizens of respectable Amherst, Massachusetts. The town didn’t have paparazzi, but if it had, they would have been trying to follow Emily around, probably hanging around outside her father’s house where she always lived, too. And the more she stayed away from them, the more they wanted to know what she was up to.
Emily never married, but she is known to have had love affairs. She called one of her lovers “My Master” in a written phrase that has outraged more than a few feminists over the years, perhaps until they reminded themselves that Dickinson also never submitted to the institution of marriage, either, and that she was one of the most independent and self-sufficient women who ever walked the American ground.
No one knows whether her love affairs were ever “consummated” by either kiss or coitus, but it’s the opinion of this writer that her love affairs were probably mostly epistolary in nature, punctuated by intense bouts of personal contact that ravaged and rejuvenated both Emily and the few men, and perhaps one or two women, she got close to over the years.
T.S. Eliot, a poet who resembles Dickinson in far more ways than anyone has seen or acknowledged so far, was a virgin when he got married at the age of twenty-six. After his marriage ended, he remained celibate, living with a handicapped male friend whose assistant he also was, until he remarried decades later in life. In a similar way, Emily lived in the family home and helped take care of the sick people around her on a daily basis, one of whom included her mother for many years.
We also know from Emily’s poems and letters that one or two of Emily’s lovers died on her, and one or two also left her in the lurch and moved away – breaking her heart, and fueling her art, to the eternal enrichment of American, and world, literature, forever.
In a world where 200,000 books per year are currently published in the UK alone and where the best writers end up lost in the anonymous crowd along with everyone else, at least for now, Emily Dickinson, along with Herman Melville, stands tall as an eternal example of the exemplary artist who does it for the love of the game, and not for any other reason, least of all for fame and/or money, those two satanic American chimeras that fool, and kill, so many millions of personalities in our media-driven world dominated by shallow, cartoonishly evil billionaires like something straight out of a Batman movie; utterly corrupt, secular, money-grubbing, hedonistic, and nihilistic politicians with blinders on; and venal, nefarious, crazy-ass, half-senile, shit-eating-grin, reality-show TV stars of the poisonous snake oil variety pilloried by Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn and The Gilded Age (with friends like this we don’t need enemies).
Emily and Eliot have many other things in common. One of those things is that they were both self-publishers, because their work was far too radical and new for the cozy and conservative establishment presses of the day. Most of Eliot’s best poems appeared in his own magazine, The Criterion, which was a small, yet eventually dominant, literary magazine which Eliot founded and for which he served as sole editor and chief for its entire seventeen-year run. The Wasteland itself was first published by Eliot in his own magazine, a journal with a circulation of around 500; this poem was roundly attacked by all the so-called respectable literary critics and writers of the day when it first appeared. Only a small, crazy elite of folks dominated by the wild, shaggy, unstoppable personality of Ezra Pound got the poem at all. James Joyce was another writer who also knew that Eliot was a literary genius long before anyone else in the culture at large was aware of this fact.
In the same way, Emily’s poems were also attacked and demeaned even by her few supporters, the most famous of whom at the time was Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Higginson was a former military man who was also a famous writer in his day (now he’s famous only because of his relationship with Emily) and he was also an editor at The Atlantic Monthly, which was much more famous at the time than it is now, even.
Higginson recognized the originality of Emily’s writing, but he also believed it was unpublishable, he never recommended that it be offered to the public (until after her death), and he believed that her writing was full of amateurish mistakes which we now know were and are some of the most profound innovations in writing of the entire nineteenth century, a century filled to overflowing with profound innovations in writing, as in painting.
Higginson also said of Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass, “It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he didn’t burn it afterwards.”
Higginson, a conventional-minded, best-selling writer of his time and one of the most influential editors of his day, who made major decisions about who got published and who did not, was the kind of person who would be calling Charles Bukowski a “bad” writer if he lived in our own day.
It’s one of the eternal ironies that the writers and editors of much lesser talents always dominate the scene while they live, only to fade extremely fast after they pass on. But they have their jobs to do, too, just like the truly great artists do, and Higginson, while he never offered Emily publication while she lived, did offer a kind of emotional rescue and artistic support which she said had saved her life.
Emily’s modes of self-publication were even more profoundly original than those of T.S. Eliot. Like any great poet, she truly knew that all you really need is one great reader. She had a few of them during her lifetime and one of her favorite modes of presenting her work was to send it hidden and surrounded in a basket of wild flowers. When she originally contacted Higginson, she sent him four poems that had been delicately penned and produced with her own hand in a kind of script that resembled both calligraphy and tiny tree branches. Her letters themselves were also poems, prose poems, and the recipients of her missives were always mystified, intrigued, baffled, encouraged, consoled, provoked, and at least slightly altered by every single reading experience. No one knew why she wrote this way, but everyone knew that no one else they knew wrote in any kind of way that was close to this at all.
Her writing style was modernism itself more than half a century before such a thing existed; as such, it can very usefully be compared to the path-breaking style of picture-making employed by Mr. Vincent Van Gogh. Strangely as well, there is exactly one known and confirmed photograph of each of these profound artists, both these photos from their teen years.
A frequent question Van Gogh had to deal with once he started creating masterpieces ahead of their time was: “WHY the hell do you paint this way?” Even other great and profoundly original painters like Paul Gauguin were sometimes outraged and confused by Vincent’s wild work, which they considered both a waste of his talent and the visual ravings of a disturbed person, maybe even a full-on madman.
The fact that he was chastised for wasting his talent by deeply intelligent and otherwise sympathetic people while he was in the midst of creating pictures that perhaps can only be competed with by the likes of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Picasso is a heart-breaking irony almost too big to be contemplated; and yet it must and should be contemplated by all artists and “creatives” because it sheds such a profound and searing light on a core feature of the truly creative artistic personality wherever and whenever it exists.
There is zero doubt that this kind of treatment (sometimes called misunderstanding) contributed to, if it didn’t actually cause, Van Gogh’s suicide, just as a similar kind of treatment caused Arthur Rimbaud to abandon poetry and vanish from Europe without a trace in his early twenties. Bob Dylan was once asked if any poets had deeply influenced his writing and life. His immediate answer on that occasion was: “Arthur Rimbaud and Emily Dickinson.”
We know now that Orson Welles was the greatest American film director of all time, surpassing even folks like John Ford, Howard Hawks, John Huston, or Sam Peckinpah for various reasons. (Charlie Chaplin is probably the only one who can truly compete with Orson; Charlie was British but his films were American.) In his own day, Welles was considered a brilliant and irresponsible loser by the Hollywood establishment for a million different reasons. Two of his greatest films, and two of the greatest films ever made, The Trial and Chimes at Midnight, are still utterly unknown in the USA except to small, isolated bands of artistic elites. (These films are only slightly better known in Europe.)
Leonard Cohen’s term “beautiful loser” has many kaleidoscopic meanings. One of the things it means is that the true artist is beautiful, and the true artist must also accept an outsider status metaphorically akin to a person struggling for food and existing in the streets, homeless. Jesus said, “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” He didn’t mean only himself, and he didn’t mean only men. He also didn’t mean everyone.
Like Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson never left American soil. She was inspired to create some of her greatest poems during the Civil War (she wrote so much at that time that she often collapsed from doing so, as if the war going on outside was driving her on in the only way she knew how), and she died at almost the same age that Lincoln did. Emily, like Lincoln, was a joyful, life-affirming, life-loving person, who also had more than a slight tendency toward depression, otherwise known as melancholia back then; she wrote, “The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” (Lincoln and Dickinson also had similar writing styles in very many ways, which shall be compared by yours truly in another essay at a later date.)
In Emily’s later decades, the few who knew her often noticed a strange, unbreakable distance and what seemed to them like a wholly unaccountable sadness unlike “normal” depression (and sometimes an inability to speak). At this point, even her best friend, her sister Lavinia, or Vinnie, who she lived with, didn’t know that there were nearly 2,000 poems, almost all masterpieces of their kind, hidden away in the closet in Emily’s bedroom. This discovery would only be made after Emily’s death. As an American poet, only Walt Whitman can even come close to competing with Emily Dickinson. Harold Bloom, greatest literary critic since Samuel Johnson and Oscar Wilde, said and wrote repeatedly that Emily Dickinson had the most original thinking-mind since William Shakespeare.
David Bowie wrote, “Fame (fame) puts you there where things are hollow.” Emily tried to spare herself from this hollow debacle, while also feeling the endless sting of being both great and unknown.
Emily wrote, “I do not like the man who squanders life for fame,” and, “To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” Her art had made her so sensitive and prescient, she could sometimes hardly handle life at all.
Mathew Arnold wrote, speaking of unfamous Shakespeare, who was also good at hiding and wearing masks, “And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, / Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honoured, self-secure, / Didst tread on earth unguess’d at. – Better so!”
Emily called herself The Empress of Calvary in many of her poems. Another term for the same thing (invented by yours truly) might be THE QUEEN OF CRUCIXION. Van Gogh, Gauguin and Picasso all painted themselves as Jesus nailed to the cross. Bob Dylan wrote in a song, “Say one more stupid thing to me before the final nail is driven in.”
Emily said, “Forever is composed of nows.”
She was known to literally speak with, or talk to, sunrises and sunsets, clouds, hills, rivers, flowers, trees, and especially animals, Carlo included.
(Reread this whenever they get you down.)
Image: A collection of dried leaves, petals and seeds from Pixabay.com
literally stories 
Good second Sunday, Dale
You hit the difference between fame and success as beautifully as a Dickinson poem.
It is vitally important that young people understand fame is not a fairyland. Any idiot can get famous.
Satisfaction and being respected by good people blow fame to smithereens.
You display (again) outstanding scholarship with the human touch.
Leila
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Thank you for the compliments, Leila!
And thank you again, as usual, for all your guidance and inspiration.
I noticed after rereading this essay again after not seeing it for a while that I was able to present the exemplary outward facts of Ms. Emily’s life; but I was unable to even come close to touching her internal world.
Only she herself can do that in her own poems.
She is an especially good writer for all short story authors to study, because perhaps no other American author has ever been able to use brevity, compression and condensation to the maximum in the way she was able to do.
Her use of language is so creative it’s usually baffling the first twenty times you read one of her poems.
Read it 20 times fast, then go back and reread it more slowly. This kind of human creativity should never be turned away from. If you want to learn, or re-learn, or learn more, about how to say a lot in a few words, Emily Dickinson is The Queen with no second.
We in America are surrounded by a vast and truly monstrous Frankenstein/Vampire of a Media Machine that dominates the mental landscape and tries its hardest to subjugate all of us, turning us into mental serfs, and slaves, so it can feed itself and perpetuate itself by devouring our very brains, minds, and souls. The only difference is that Frankenstein and Dracula very much had redeeming qualities too, or were at least sympathetic in certain ways. Not so the soulless American Media Monster Machine.
The more evil, greedy, inhuman, and shallow you are, the more lies you tell, the more you dumb it down, the more foolish you act, the more absurd, stupid, and ridiculous things come out of your mouth, the more verbal garbage you continuously spew out on a daily and nightly basis, the more famous you become, in America.
Yikes!
Sincerely
Dale
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LA
I forgot to add another reason why I think Miss Dickinson’s short and pungent work is worth grappling with: it will tell you things about yourself you never knew, or had forgotten about. (By “you” I don’t mean “you,” of course; I mean ANYONE.)
Thanks again!
DB
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Wonderfully informative and interesting. I enjoyed the way so many other artists were woven into the essay. The fact Bob Dylan cited Emily Dickinson as an influence makes me respect him all the more. “The soul should always stand ajar…” That’s pure genius.
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Hi David
Yes, Dylan is an endless inspiration, although he can also feel impossible to keep up with at times. Every time one turns around, he’s releasing something new, whether it be brilliant bootlegs, new song material, etc. I used to have this quote by him on my wall: “I LIVE LIKE A POET AND I’LL DIE LIKE A POET.” I would feel intimated by him except that I don’t like his prose or his paintings too much (except with some exceptions). And, I’m crazy enough to not feel intimated by him (madness can have its virtues).
As far as rock stars go, he shrouds himself in the same kind of mystery that Emily shrouded herself in. And, she wasn’t a rock star, but she was, in her own way, just as rebellious as the best of ’em – or more so.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Dale
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Greetings, David!
If you’re interested, head on over to Leila’s site Saragun Springs for the first official installment of my new weekly Sunday column there, Postcards from the Drifter, this Sunday. This piece, almost finished, is called “The Other Side,” and is much like an autobiographical short story (about me having a stroke last year) where all the things in it are (however outlandish) true.
Leila is also, generously and open-heartedly (as always with her), looking for other good guest writers on her site; if you’re interested, check it out! Mostly for poetry, or essays. (Maybe some short fiction.)
Thanks!
Dale
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Dale
Two weeks ago, my latest depression began. I transitioned from writing stories in whatever shape and stage they were in, to writing queries, synopses, and elevator pitches. Each publishing entity and agent I contacted had different requirements, each pound of flesh unique. I had a story collection ready to publish. Now it was sell, sell, sell, even if I didn’t want or need the $.
Yesterday, a drinking buddy, also a writer, said, “Depression is good. Stop what you’re doing.” Today, I stopped. I decided I needed to write a story, even if it sucked. Then I read your piece on Dickenson, Elliot, Kafka, etc. Now I know why.
Like Emily, I talk to animals. Mostly squirrels. It helps. Your piece arrived right on time. I’ll reread it whenever they (the writing industry) get me down. — Gerry
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Dear Gerry
Thanks SO MUCH for sharing all of the above info with such wonderful honesty and clarity! This single set of comments by a writer of your caliber is worth more than what a million comments by a bunch of lesser writers might have been worth.
And having read several of your short stories and lots of your heartfelt, sympathetic and accurate commentary, I can truly say with certainty that your work is eminently worthy of being collected in book form by a good publisher. It’s far better work than much of the stuff that appears between two covers on a regular basis in this sad, bad age of ours. Unfortunately, aesthetic value is not only not much valued in too many writing places and spaces today, it’s even frowned upon, often, especially when it doesn’t revel in the usual, fashionable, trendy, politically correct identity politics of today, a cynical form of writing that is now and will never be “real” writing of any true lasting value or merit.
I’m SO GLAD you were and will able to find the kind of consolation I was trying to offer all real writers of today in this essay, “The Queen of Crucifixion.” There are still many of us alive out here and we deserve to have our voices heard, too, however much “they” decide to serve up more distracted neglect.
Thanks again so much for sharing your story. You have generously offered back to me the same kind of consolation I was trying to offer to all deep writer/readers of this essay.
Very Sincerely,
Dale
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Dear Gerry
Hi! Stop by Leila’s site Saragun Springs this Sunday for the first installment of my new weekly Sunday column called POSTCARDS FROM THE DRIFTER; or whenever you can. I think you’ll dig it. The plan for this column, at least in the near future, is that it shall be much more overtly autobiographical than most of my LS essays. This Sunday explores myself having a stroke at 57 (last year), and making a “miraculous” recovery; so it has both pain and life-affirmation in it (just like life).
Also, Leila is looking for other guest writers on her site, mostly of poetry, or essays. Maybe some short fiction. Check it out, you’d be a great candidate if interested!
Dale
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Hi Dale
Great topic for your essay! As a result, after reading this, I have been reading about Emily Dickinson. This is the great thing about your essays and knowledge of writers. And you’re all around skill, too, as a writer. You incite the reader and writer’s curiosity to explore this culture, “A place of the forgotten,” (not an exact quote of yours or maybe it is).
AI could not do this.
Some of the things you say are subtly hilarious. Like “No one knows whether her love affairs were ever “consummated” by either kiss or coitus,” The coitus part got me going. When I read your essays I hear a bright intellect in your narration.
Interesting about TS Elliot and this kind of shared lifestyle. Loners with helpers. And a similar writing style. These poets seem eternal.
Ah the crux and vex of a broken heart. Stomp the grapes and create the wine. Let it flow and we can read all about it. I’m definitely reading E. D.’s poetry it’s on the list for today.
Excellent biography of this almost saintly person. An artistic savant with incredible powers. I’ve heard her name my whole life.
I liked how the trapping of fame was avoided, by Emily and the wily Shakespear. The comparison with Van Gogh was also compelling. And how the other artists saw something so original it brought a disdain!
Christopher
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Hi Christopher!
Thanks for your continuing support, and understanding, of my work. I’ve truly found a brother-in-arms in the arts in you, and that’s something that I even go so far as to thank the Big Guy for (you know who I mean, another thing we have in common, surely the most important thing) every now and then, or even more often, actually! Something about the synergy between us is truly one-of-a-kind. (We also have that shared history that includes trouble with the law and the bottle – thank you Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Waylon Jennings for paving the way.) And, you have a way of uncovering and understanding the depths and nuances in my work and bringing it forward in a unique and powerful way – awesome!
I also truly enjoyed reading the comments you wrote about your father this weekend under Hugh’s post. If that material doesn’t already add up to a riveting micro-essay of brilliance, or even a kind of awesome, Americana prose poem, I don’t know what does.
If someone put a gun to my head and said, “Choose only ONE writer you want to claim as your main inspiration,” the name Emily Dickinson might blurt right out of my mouth (if Walt Whitman didn’t get there first).
Always looking forward to more in the future!
Dale
PS, I was re-reading one of my favorite poems by her again last night and realized that I only now had begun to truly understand it, forty years after I read it for the first time.
PPS, Almost all of her best poems make a shockingly good impression the first few times you read it, but the endless depths are also there for future contemplation.
PPPS, Harold Bloom said she had the most original mind since Shakespeare…or did I say that in the essay already?
PPPPS, I LOVE love love the last line of your commentary above and have read it many times already!!!!!!! (along with the whole thing more than a few times; all your commentaries everywhere add up to brilliant micro-essays, the whole thing adding up to one very long string of brilliant micro-essays with long and strong common threads tying them all together; you can write nonfiction prose as well as you can write fiction prose, for sure…..)
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Hi Dale
Thanks so much! Sometimes when I write comments I wonder if I’m making sense. Glad to hear I am. It’s a great thing to share one’s opinion and to be heard. It may be as important to the soul as breathing is to the body.
“Brothers in arms in the arts!” Awesome! Love it! And so true. It’s great to have a friend like you to discuss the discourse of these writers and the writer’s life! There is a lot to talk about! This has been a great and inspiring adventure into the literary arts!
I think the woes with the bottle and our mid-western heritage, not far from the big river, are very relatable! We definitely have a lot in common. It’s very cool to share a writing style of “the lean and mean” (DWB). A true miracle! Yes indeed the Lord above he is truly great!
I have been reading E. Dickinson’s poetry on Poetryfoundation.org. She’s very lean too! Makes me wonder if her writing style was the true origin of this type of writing? Pre-Hemingway.
I’m reading poem after poem. And I just keep going–sometimes the TV’s loud–and I’m reading them anyway. I’ve already found more inspiration in my own writing and I think her words can enhance this writer’s life. So thank you once again for showing me the way to another excellent writer!
Thanks again for all the positive vibes on my comments! This is really great to hear, because I’m always admiring your comments. They are flawless! It helps sharpen the writing skills–writing these comments.
Peace from the Bible Belt!
Christopher
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Hi Ananias!
Glad to hear you’re digging Emily’s poems! That is music to my ears, so to speak.
Maybe some day, you and I will publish a short (or long) book of our collected correspondence about reading, writing, art, and life. If so, we can call it: BROTHERS IN ARMS IN THE ARTS. Sometimes it ain’t so easy to dedicate your entire inner life to this kind of thing in the Land of Sad and Pathetic Distractions, where everyone else can sometimes seemingly be fading away into the land of Machine Media Mind Monstrosity for the rest of eternity as the human species slowly devolves into a bunch of robots headed for the ditch in a burning world on fire (like Revelations). On the other hand, it’s easy, because it’s the only real meaning out here (in human terms) and if an artist wants to maintain their individuality, you have to do something like this.
Yes, your comments always make sense. Not only that, they are consistently brilliant, interesting, intriguing, fascinating, poetic, tough, honest, true, and much-needed in the Land of Sad and Pathetic Distractions. Stephen King would love this stuff, if he can find it.
Stop by Saragun Springs this Sunday for the first installment of my official weekly Sunday column, Postcards from the Drifter!
This piece for Sunday, called “The Other Side,” is my version of Denis Johnson’s “Car Crash While Hitchhiking.” On one level, I hate to put myself out on a limb like this and compare myself to him and that particular story. On another level, I’m willing to do it, and am doing it!
More later as always…
Dale
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Hey Dale
“BROTHERS IN ARMS IN THE ARTS!”
I had a thrilling moment!. I was watching “The Brave One,” with Jodie Foster. She said in a sad and profound way, “Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.”
I said out loud, “That’s Emily Dickinson.” Thanks DWB! I just read it! I’m starting to see the brilliance you have spoken of her!
That would be awesome if these comments were published! SK is a cool dude!
It seems we are heading toward an even more counterfeit/controlled society. Where everything is corrupted. AI is an extra layer of insidiousness. Keeping THE BIG LIE eternal. The greed-mongers of Satan have the tools now…
The less informed–the ignorant–who avoided literature their whole lives will happily sink to their necks in it. And don their “Brown Shirts” of blood and march their mindless feet to the drum.
The arts and journalism keep us free, but now the attack is on. The low mind attacks our institutes of higher learning. The low mind that’s never read Chekhov or saw the beauty of Van Gogh–and our fellow citizens voted him in! Now it’s hardball on the illegals which means were next!
I’ll check it out on Sunday! “Car Crash While Hitchhiking.” was one of the first stories I read by DJ. Sounds like a brave and excellent read! Anything like that I want to read!
Thanks for your kind comments!
Peace from the Cross Roads of America ( or what’s left of it). Go Pacers!
Christopher
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Christopher
That is an awesome literary synchronicity moment with Emily Dickinson which you had! Carl Jung himself would make much of this, and DID make much of this kind of so-called “coincidence.” “Everything happens for a reason” doesn’t mean only the so-called “big” things; it also means, and probably even more so, the so-called “small” (or private) events in life that give life itself meaning. Freud also very much “believed” in these kinds of things; but it was Jung who took it to the next level.
Your description of what this society has become and is becoming is horrifying and accurate. And you’re 1,000% correct: they always start with the immigrants and minorities of various kinds; THEN they move on to the artists, journalists and intellectuals (the real ones; the truth-tellers, in other words). No one knows how bad it will get here, but it’s already horrible. I’m heading out to the NO KINGS protest in downtown Chicago in an hour or two here, with my daughters. I’m always ambivalent about public protests, but I also remember Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and Henry David Thoreau, and I felt a lot better after protesting the crucifixion of George Floyd, which was the last time I did this. And, we should all remember the French Revolution, for a million different ambivalent reasons, not for one or two simplistic and overly simplified reasons.
Indiana is a cool state! It’s got lots of cool things in it and about it, including Abraham Lincoln and Kurt Vonnegut, the Indiana Dunes National Park (one of my favorite places anywhere long before it was a national park even), John Cougar, Nelson Algren, author of A Walk on the Wild Side (he lived in the Dunes region for a long time), vast tallgrass prairies and cornfields, Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five (like Lewis Carroll, he did some ambivalent things, but he was NOT a child molester; those are trumped up charges), John Cougar’s recording studio where REM made one of their best records, hills and woods in the southern part of the state, the gorgeous campus of the University of Notre Dame in the northern part, and much else besides, including lots of COOL, VAST CAVES where I have gone spelunking in my younger days, one time for over 24 hours so deep into the cave/S we almost got lost more than once and – almost – never made it out alive.
Thanks about tomorrow! Maybe not as good as Denis Johnson but still, not too shabby! I’ll let you decide!
Later:
Dale
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“Fame is a fickle food / Upon a shifting plate / Whose table once a / Guest but not / The second time is set / Whose crumbs the crows inspect / And with ironic caw / Flap past it to the / Farmer’s corn / Men eat of it and die” -Emily
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Hi Dale,
I reckon you were brilliant at what you did. You see, you tweak interest. You bring your thoughts to the majority. You make folks want to seek out, look, read and try to understand. Now whether or not they agree with your thoughts, the main thing is, they will have come up with their own. I adore tangents and off-shoots. So if any person looks at any piece of literature in an individualistic way, I have no problem with that. I love when any of my stories initiate something that I hadn’t considered, it keeps them alive and evolving.
Folks like your good self write with passion and knowledge. That means that readers become interested and will look…That is what the literally world needs, especially in these days…Folks that will look!!!!
I can’t thank you enough for being a part of the site!!!!!!
Hugh
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Hi Hugh!
I totally agree with you, and it’s a great point: the point of art (including the art of the short story) should never be to make everyone agree with one another (even though I’m agreeing with you right now). It’s kind of like what Stalin and his “art” commissars tried to do in the USSR, or what happens as well, all too frequently, in USA academia these days: everyone has to gather around the exact same political opinions, and make their art adhere to (and serve) THAT and THEM. This is nothing less than a recipe for disaster for the very spirit of art itself (not to mention the human spirit). Also, it’s very possible to get inspired by an artist with whom you don’t agree on everything. As a poet, I LOVE some of the beautiful poems by Ezra Pound (especially his “translations” from the Chinese), his work as an editor and supporter of other artists was amazing, and I also admire him as a person in many ways (including his courage), even though I ABHOR the way he became a fan of Mussolini and also his antisemitism (which he very much apologized for in the last decade of his life, including to every Jewish person he ever came across in person). I also consider the philosopher Nietzsche to be one of my biggest, longest-lasting inspirations, even though I don’t share his atheism (and I even go so far as to make the argument that he wasn’t really an atheist even though he always insisted that he was). Finding inspiration in others doesn’t have to be about agreeing; it’s about seeing something admirable in the other person and/or artist that you can “take” from them (without robbing them of it) and use in your own way – just like you stated in your commentary!
Thanks for the great words of wisdom, Hugh!
Dale
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Absorbing piece on Emily D., reminds me of another Emily, Emily Carr the artist. Both Emilies created eclectic art that has stood out in its originality over the generations. Carr was also a writer as well as an artist. Both lived alone, had animal friends,(Dickinson had her dog, Carr had a pet monkey), suffered from unrequited love, and were considered quite strange and critically panned by many during their lives. They also had a similar affinity with nature, which comes out in their work. I also like the comparisons in the piece re Van Gogh, Lincoln, T. S. Elliot and others.
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Hi Harrison Kim, I just discovered Emily Carr a few months ago, and I read her Klee Wyck – beautiful writing and painting!
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Maria
Thanks, also, for highlighting the work of Emily Carr. Like I said to Harrison, she’s an artist I’d never heard of before. I plan on checking out some of her work today. Also sent you a reply under your other comments. Thank you so much!
Dale
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Hi Harrison!
Thanks for this great response to my Emily essay. As always, I deeply appreciate your reading my work and the great way you comment upon it, as well.
This time, I’m especially inspired by the parallels you drew between Emily Carr and Emily D.
I had never heard of Emily Carr until I read your post, and I definitely plan on checking out her and her work now – and soon! So, thank you again, very much; I always LOVE to hear about new great artists I don’t know about yet, and Emily Carr sounds quite special! Gonna check her out soon!
Dale
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Hi Harrison!
I’m writing a new weekly Sunday column on Leila’s site, Saragun Springs, called Postcards from the Drifter; first column this Sunday. It’s mostly (slightly fictionalized) autobiography, in a new kind of Bukowski-Hemingway mode. I think you’ll find it interesting, if you ever get the hankering to head over there.
Also, generously, and graciously, Leila is looking for other guest writers on her site; mostly of poetry, or essays. (Maybe some short fiction.) Look into it if you’re interested!
Dale
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I just finished “Zen in the art of writing” by Ray Bradbury. Your advice mirrors his very closely. Follow your passion. Don’t chase the market. Write well and the world will chase you. Or not. But you will be satisfied with what you produce, even if it never sells.
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Dear Thurman Hart
Thanks so much for your comments. I plan on seeking out the Bradbury piece you mention soon. Because this kind of thing can never be said enough, or in enough different ways, especially now in the kind of culture we are currently inhabiting, where the twin gods of Money and “Fame” seem to dominate the minds and spirits of so many of the masses, one massive reason being that these things get sold to all of us on a continuous, never-stopping basis as the end-all and be-all of everything, which is certainly snake oil if I’ve ever heard of any (and I have).
Also, in your commentary here, you do a great job of boiling it all down into a few pungent words for the ages. Thanks again, very much appreciated!
Dale
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Tremendously engaging, as ever. In fact this is the wisest appraisal I’ve read of the self-described “wayward Nun”; the last time I was similarly absorbed was perhaps 20 years ago – on reading last chapter of Adam Phillips’s Houdini’s Box, which discussed Emily D. as a consummate “escape artist.” Like Nikos Skalkottas & Fernando Pessoa, E.D. left behind her a trunk-full of gold i.e. thousands of unpublished works. (Babyshambles front-man, Pete Doherty, once talked about having stolen “one or two lines” from Emily D, & then went on to declare, “Aargh, she’s outrageous man! She’s fuckin’ hardcore! Can’t ignore her.”) There’s a kind of glad-eyed sensibility behind all your essays, Dale, which – together with a lightly worn erudition – make them such a pleasure to read.
Geraint
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Geraint
Thanks so much for your great comments and responses, as usual. Your range of reference is one of a kind. Thanks for using the phrases “the Wayward Nun” and escape artist – brilliant additions to this essay and series of comments. Thanks also for mentioning Pessoa – he’s a great poet and writer to mention in conjunction with Miss Emily – those two had much in common, perhaps far more in common than has been recognized by very many of us. Emily is also absolutely outrageous and hardcore in one very important incarnation of her multifaceted persona – thanks for pointing this out!
I want to tell you about something I’ve got coming up soon, which is a weekly Sunday column on Leila’s site Saragun Springs. This Sunday will be column Number One – it shall discuss the cheery topic of myself having a stroke last year, at the age of 57 (and then recovering quickly and how that happened).
This weekly Sunday column for SSs will be, in general, much more overtly autobiographical than most of my essays for LS so far. Hating to repeat myself (in general), I’m trying to take this new column in a bit of a different direction. Stop by whenever you can – it will be there indefinitely, of course; and I know you’ll enjoy this new material, whenever you get the hankering to check out some autobiographical column/essays, including lots of material about other writers and artists as well (of course).
Leila has also been graciously generous enough to start publishing a lot of my poetry on her site. I consider myself a poet first, prose writer second, and all the poems also come with images created by yours truly. Whenever you can – you are uniquely suited to understand any and/or all of this material. She’s also posted a call for other good guest writers on her site – I’d love to see you become one of them.
Thanks so much in any case – I always adore hearing from you!
Dale
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Geraint
Sent you 3 on Saragun Springs but I think one might have vanished.
I was thinking about how Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone was recorded on Bloomsday 60 years ago which reminded me of our discussion here on Literally about Dylan and Chaplin.
Hope my messages get through, I think one may have disappeared!
Dale
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Dale,
Your informative and engaging essay has sent me off to read and re-read Emily D. And that surely testimony to the value of your present piece. I confess that she hadn’t been one of my favourites – I’ve always had a strange preference for long and narrative poems – but I knew that she’d been a pioneer of the half-rhyme.
Now I’m a fan and I’m going to read more. Thank you! mick
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Hi Mick!
The fact that this essay has sent you to the work of Emily D makes me so proud and happy that I can’t even quite capture it in words. But this fact says more about you than it does about me – the fact that your open-hearted mind and soul is willing to reconsider a writer and artist whom you’d previously not been too keen on should absolutely be an object lesson for all of us. Way too many people in this world get stuck in their ways by the time they’re thirty or younger – and they stay that way for the rest of their days (their mind and spirit calcifying). You have the true spirit of a real artist – always open to new possibilities. Thank you and thank you again, so much!
I also want to tell you about the new weekly Sunday column I’m writing for Leila’s site Saragun Springs. This new column will be more autobiographical than most of my LS stuff so far – and also with lots of material on other writers and artists, of course. She’s also been posting a lot of my poetry on her site. And also – Leila has posted a call on her site for other new good guest writers to appear there – if they can pass muster. It’s my opinion that you’d be perfect for this – if it suits your fancy.
Thanks again, I always look very much forward to hearing from you!
Dale
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Thanks, Dale! I had no idea that Leila had her own site – should’ve realised. Off to take a look. mick
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Dale, thank you for this wonderful informational essay on Emily Dickinson. I really enjoyed reading it. All the weaving of past and present poets is very artfully done. And I loved that she often talked to the clouds, the sunsets, the rivers and the trees. Smile.
I worked with a Belgian artist Patrick Merckaert who used her poems in conjunction with his beautiful ethereal photos, I still have my favorite one hanging in my study .
I’m Nobody, who are you?
I don’t know if I’m allowed to post a photo – but if you’d like to see it – let me know and I’ll send it.
Greetings, Maria
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Greetings, Maria!
Thanks so much for writing! AND, I would LOVE to see that picture you mentioned, absolutely! The photographic art in conjunction with her poems sounds wonderful. That’s cool that you worked with the artist. Emily talking to all the large and small natural objects is a great lesson for all of us. If only the world at large would pay attention to things like these a little more (instead of what it does pay attention to, all too often), the world would magically transform into a much more peaceful place. The beauty is always there if we open our eyes (and hearts), and it means the world to me that you would write and let me know these things in your comments.
THANK YOU!
Dale
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Dear Maria
THANK YOU so very much for sending the picture; it’s gorgeous, enchanting, entrancing, mysterious and very much ethereal like you said. The way the words of the poem are arranged in the shadows on one side of the picture, as well as the expression on the woman’s face and all her features, plus the overall tone and mood of the picture which matches the poem so well, are all enlivening, inspiring, and inspiriting. I’m sure Emily is smiling down on this.
Can’t thank you enough for sending this picture, it’s a truly beautiful piece of artwork, just like you said!!! I can totally see why you would keep this hanging on your wall, big time. It must’ve been an adventure working with the artist.
Thanks again!!
Dale
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Sorry I cant load the photo! but here is the poem.
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d banish us – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
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Maria
Thank you for trying to send the picture, and thank you for sending the poem!!
I’ve been returning to the picture a lot, and studying its effects. It really does a great job at capturing and reflecting the mood of the poem, with the dark shadows and colors, the red words and lines alternating with the white words and lines, the beautiful features of the woman but not fully exposed, her rebellious, resistant, passionate, open, AND secretive expression – it’s very much almost as if this picture is a portrait of none other than Emily herself, while at the very same time it’s NOT Emily, it’s someone else – like maybe one of her Readers.
Thanks again so much for sending me this piece of art, a real thing of beauty!
Dale
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“To hear an oriole sing / May be a common thing, / Or only a divine. / It is not of the bird / Who sings the same, unheard, / As unto a crowd. / The fashion of the ear / Attireth that it hear / In dun or fair. / So whether it be rune, / Or whether it be none, / Is of within; / The “tune is in the tree,” / The skeptic showeth me; / “No, sir! In thee!” – Emily D.
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“None can torture me, / My soul’s at liberty. / Behind this mortal bone / There knits a bolder one / You cannot prick with straw, / Nor rend with scymitar. / Two bodies therefore be; / Bind one, and one will flee. / The eagle of his nest / No easier divest / And gain the sky, / Than mayest thou, / Except thyself may be, / Thine enemy; / Captivity is consciousness. / So’s liberty.” – Emily D.
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“ADVENTURE most unto itself / The Soul condemned to be. / Attended by a Single Hound, / Its own Identity.” – Emily D.
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