WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.690 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.690 --> 00:00:02.820 align:middle line:90% "Of rhythm is image. 00:00:02.820 --> 00:00:04.290 align:middle line:90% Of image is knowing. 00:00:04.290 --> 00:00:06.960 align:middle line:84% Of knowing, there is a construct." 00:00:06.960 --> 00:00:09.570 align:middle line:84% That is Charles Olson one of the great New England 00:00:09.570 --> 00:00:13.950 align:middle line:84% poets of the 20th century thinking about all of poetry. 00:00:13.950 --> 00:00:15.630 align:middle line:90% "Begin with rhythm. 00:00:15.630 --> 00:00:16.920 align:middle line:90% Words move. 00:00:16.920 --> 00:00:21.690 align:middle line:84% Syllables move, or juxtapose in beauty. 00:00:21.690 --> 00:00:25.830 align:middle line:84% From such juxtapositions, images always so 00:00:25.830 --> 00:00:31.830 align:middle line:84% valued in poetry, which make us see, which makes us think. 00:00:31.830 --> 00:00:35.220 align:middle line:84% To think to have an idea that comes out of seeing 00:00:35.220 --> 00:00:38.580 align:middle line:84% is to work toward knowledge towards knowing. 00:00:38.580 --> 00:00:41.280 align:middle line:84% And after we know one thing, even 00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:44.940 align:middle line:84% if we are always questioning it, we begin to know others. 00:00:44.940 --> 00:00:48.450 align:middle line:84% And before long we have concepts, constructs, 00:00:48.450 --> 00:00:50.580 align:middle line:90% systems of knowing. 00:00:50.580 --> 00:00:56.310 align:middle line:84% Already the movement from ear to eye to mind feels like a dance. 00:00:56.310 --> 00:00:57.270 align:middle line:90% Move your feet. 00:00:57.270 --> 00:00:58.470 align:middle line:90% Move your eyes. 00:00:58.470 --> 00:00:59.610 align:middle line:90% Move your head. 00:00:59.610 --> 00:01:01.290 align:middle line:90% Move your mind." 00:01:01.290 --> 00:01:05.400 align:middle line:84% Emily Dickinson moves all of these and more. 00:01:05.400 --> 00:01:10.350 align:middle line:84% Dickinson's particular syllabic juxtaposition in beauty 00:01:10.350 --> 00:01:14.550 align:middle line:84% is a dance, is the melopoeia Ezra Pound speaks 00:01:14.550 --> 00:01:19.320 align:middle line:84% about when he speaks about three ways in which poetry works. 00:01:19.320 --> 00:01:22.650 align:middle line:84% Her dazzling images or her dance with light 00:01:22.650 --> 00:01:27.450 align:middle line:84% among the things of her world provides the phanopoeia which 00:01:27.450 --> 00:01:29.130 align:middle line:90% is another of those three. 00:01:29.130 --> 00:01:32.400 align:middle line:84% And her dance with ideas including 00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:36.270 align:middle line:84% with the idea of possibility and the idea of God 00:01:36.270 --> 00:01:39.390 align:middle line:84% provides the logopoeia, which Pound 00:01:39.390 --> 00:01:44.130 align:middle line:84% defines as the dance of the intellect among words. 00:01:44.130 --> 00:01:47.040 align:middle line:84% One could almost think that latter day poetic thinkers, 00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:50.400 align:middle line:84% such as Pound and Olson, built their definitions, 00:01:50.400 --> 00:01:53.070 align:middle line:84% their poetics, out of the work of Dickinson. 00:01:53.070 --> 00:01:55.050 align:middle line:90% It would be possible. 00:01:55.050 --> 00:01:58.620 align:middle line:84% In fact while they probably almost certainly did not, 00:01:58.620 --> 00:02:02.640 align:middle line:84% they did have among others Shakespeare in mind. 00:02:02.640 --> 00:02:04.560 align:middle line:84% And in recent readings of Shakespeare-- 00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:07.320 align:middle line:84% and I'm teaching a class on Shakespeare right now-- 00:02:07.320 --> 00:02:09.630 align:middle line:84% in rhythm and diction I am reminded 00:02:09.630 --> 00:02:12.330 align:middle line:90% of no one so much as Dickinson. 00:02:12.330 --> 00:02:14.220 align:middle line:84% I've been in love with Dickinson's poems 00:02:14.220 --> 00:02:15.550 align:middle line:90% for a very long time. 00:02:15.550 --> 00:02:17.940 align:middle line:84% In fact, my first college lecture 00:02:17.940 --> 00:02:21.690 align:middle line:84% as a teaching assistant before some 200 freshman students 00:02:21.690 --> 00:02:24.390 align:middle line:84% was on Dickinson's particular dance. 00:02:24.390 --> 00:02:26.430 align:middle line:84% So I haven't come very far in 30 years. 00:02:26.430 --> 00:02:28.830 align:middle line:90% But she has not failed me yet. 00:02:28.830 --> 00:02:31.530 align:middle line:90% And I hope I do not fail her. 00:02:31.530 --> 00:02:33.510 align:middle line:84% In trying to keep to the metaphor of dance, 00:02:33.510 --> 00:02:35.400 align:middle line:84% please remember that in all the poems 00:02:35.400 --> 00:02:40.320 align:middle line:84% I will address the initial dance that of rhythm is unavoidable. 00:02:40.320 --> 00:02:43.200 align:middle line:84% I will address it specifically in some of these poems, 00:02:43.200 --> 00:02:44.430 align:middle line:90% but not in all. 00:02:44.430 --> 00:02:49.110 align:middle line:84% It is a dance of regular rhythm, but not quite. 00:02:49.110 --> 00:02:52.260 align:middle line:84% Because it is a dance of interruption. 00:02:52.260 --> 00:02:55.170 align:middle line:84% The great disservice of early editors of Dickinson 00:02:55.170 --> 00:02:59.400 align:middle line:84% was to believe that poems should have smooth and silky even 00:02:59.400 --> 00:03:03.330 align:middle line:84% lilting rhythms and to remove her long dashes, 00:03:03.330 --> 00:03:07.470 align:middle line:84% her odd capitalizations that specifically give Dickinson's 00:03:07.470 --> 00:03:10.080 align:middle line:90% work its interruptive quality. 00:03:10.080 --> 00:03:12.030 align:middle line:90% A poem interrupts her. 00:03:12.030 --> 00:03:13.950 align:middle line:90% She interrupts the world. 00:03:13.950 --> 00:03:17.010 align:middle line:84% And our reading should be alarming. 00:03:17.010 --> 00:03:18.840 align:middle line:84% After all this is the poet who said 00:03:18.840 --> 00:03:23.310 align:middle line:84% she knew something was a poem when it took her head off. 00:03:23.310 --> 00:03:26.310 align:middle line:84% So please in your continuing readings of Dickinson 00:03:26.310 --> 00:03:27.690 align:middle line:90% and she is a poet to be-- 00:03:27.690 --> 00:03:31.820 align:middle line:90% [NO AUDIO] 00:03:31.820 --> 00:03:32.415 align:middle line:90% Test. 00:03:32.415 --> 00:03:32.915 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:03:32.915 --> 00:03:36.350 align:middle line:90% 00:03:36.350 --> 00:03:39.890 align:middle line:84% OK, so as you continue to read her, 00:03:39.890 --> 00:03:43.820 align:middle line:84% I hate to say this, but get rid of your books that are editions 00:03:43.820 --> 00:03:45.800 align:middle line:84% of her poems edited by her family 00:03:45.800 --> 00:03:48.770 align:middle line:84% members and other 19th century editors, which 00:03:48.770 --> 00:03:51.980 align:middle line:84% are still repeatedly published and made available. 00:03:51.980 --> 00:03:54.290 align:middle line:84% And look for the editions edited either 00:03:54.290 --> 00:03:57.620 align:middle line:84% by Thomas H Johnson, who did a tremendous service to her work 00:03:57.620 --> 00:04:03.080 align:middle line:84% in 1955, or R.W. Franklin, who improved upon Johnson, 00:04:03.080 --> 00:04:05.990 align:middle line:90% but only slightly in 1999. 00:04:05.990 --> 00:04:13.280 align:middle line:84% But while you're at it, at least look a little bit 00:04:13.280 --> 00:04:17.130 align:middle line:84% at the manuscript pages of Dickinson. 00:04:17.130 --> 00:04:21.670 align:middle line:84% You can find them online at least some of them. 00:04:21.670 --> 00:04:23.950 align:middle line:84% And look at Susan Howe's amazing book 00:04:23.950 --> 00:04:26.800 align:middle line:84% My Emily Dickinson for a superb argument 00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:30.100 align:middle line:84% against the editing of Dickinson at all. 00:04:30.100 --> 00:04:31.960 align:middle line:84% You might say this is too much to ask 00:04:31.960 --> 00:04:33.970 align:middle line:84% of an audience that simply wants to read 00:04:33.970 --> 00:04:36.100 align:middle line:90% the work of a great poet. 00:04:36.100 --> 00:04:39.280 align:middle line:84% I think, though, that if the poet is as great as this one 00:04:39.280 --> 00:04:42.680 align:middle line:90% is, it's worth the trouble. 00:04:42.680 --> 00:04:45.290 align:middle line:84% Let's begin with her particular dance 00:04:45.290 --> 00:04:50.330 align:middle line:84% in place, her particular place among its flora and fauna. 00:04:50.330 --> 00:04:54.800 align:middle line:84% Here's a small early poem number 19 in Johnson's edition. 00:04:54.800 --> 00:05:00.510 align:middle line:84% "A sepal, a petal, and a thorn upon a common summer's 00:05:00.510 --> 00:05:05.040 align:middle line:84% morn, a flask of dew, a bee or two, 00:05:05.040 --> 00:05:11.640 align:middle line:84% a breeze, a caper in the trees, and I'm a rose." 00:05:11.640 --> 00:05:13.830 align:middle line:84% There's one word in this entire poem 00:05:13.830 --> 00:05:15.930 align:middle line:90% I would call commentary i.e. 00:05:15.930 --> 00:05:19.110 align:middle line:84% that isn't directly related to showing an image. 00:05:19.110 --> 00:05:21.400 align:middle line:84% Rather it says something about an image. 00:05:21.400 --> 00:05:23.040 align:middle line:90% And that is the word common. 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:26.640 align:middle line:84% But even that contributes to what we see and feel, 00:05:26.640 --> 00:05:28.860 align:middle line:90% common summer's mourn. 00:05:28.860 --> 00:05:32.610 align:middle line:84% Every other word that's not a thing or a slight modifier, 00:05:32.610 --> 00:05:37.800 align:middle line:84% like summer's, is a pointer, a delineated, a positioner, A, 00:05:37.800 --> 00:05:41.730 align:middle line:90% and, of, upon, in the. 00:05:41.730 --> 00:05:42.900 align:middle line:90% The images aren't drawn out. 00:05:42.900 --> 00:05:46.470 align:middle line:84% They are simple, and yet they are parts of a whole. 00:05:46.470 --> 00:05:51.390 align:middle line:84% And not until the end of a sort of complete image 00:05:51.390 --> 00:05:56.940 align:middle line:84% that is put together and even anthropomorphized, I'm a rose. 00:05:56.940 --> 00:05:59.070 align:middle line:84% But not really even anthropomorphize, 00:05:59.070 --> 00:06:02.010 align:middle line:84% for I don't hear the poet speaking here is the I, 00:06:02.010 --> 00:06:05.460 align:middle line:84% rather hear the poet letting the natural object speak. 00:06:05.460 --> 00:06:08.400 align:middle line:90% And it's a glorious exclamation. 00:06:08.400 --> 00:06:12.870 align:middle line:84% It's as if a human had said, a leg, skin, an arm, 00:06:12.870 --> 00:06:14.970 align:middle line:90% walking on the common hill. 00:06:14.970 --> 00:06:18.750 align:middle line:84% A rope of sweat, a fly around cooled by breeze 00:06:18.750 --> 00:06:19.780 align:middle line:90% among the trees. 00:06:19.780 --> 00:06:21.800 align:middle line:90% I am. 00:06:21.800 --> 00:06:24.800 align:middle line:84% And in so doing the rose takes shape 00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:28.550 align:middle line:84% not as something for humans, but as something fully 00:06:28.550 --> 00:06:30.770 align:middle line:90% of and for itself. 00:06:30.770 --> 00:06:33.380 align:middle line:84% Dickinson honors the natural world 00:06:33.380 --> 00:06:36.620 align:middle line:90% more than she makes use of it. 00:06:36.620 --> 00:06:40.050 align:middle line:84% Images in poems are almost always visual images. 00:06:40.050 --> 00:06:41.780 align:middle line:90% But here they are much more. 00:06:41.780 --> 00:06:43.940 align:middle line:90% We see, petal. 00:06:43.940 --> 00:06:46.850 align:middle line:90% We feel, thorn and breeze. 00:06:46.850 --> 00:06:50.090 align:middle line:90% We taste dew in a flask. 00:06:50.090 --> 00:06:52.970 align:middle line:84% We have a kind of proprioceptive sense 00:06:52.970 --> 00:06:54.740 align:middle line:90% of what is around the body. 00:06:54.740 --> 00:06:56.510 align:middle line:90% The bee buzzing. 00:06:56.510 --> 00:07:00.470 align:middle line:84% Our fullness as readers is evoked bit by bit 00:07:00.470 --> 00:07:02.930 align:middle line:84% just as the fullness of the flower 00:07:02.930 --> 00:07:06.550 align:middle line:90% comes to be manifest before us. 00:07:06.550 --> 00:07:10.040 align:middle line:90% And what of music here? 00:07:10.040 --> 00:07:14.570 align:middle line:84% Dickinson while using common rhythms 00:07:14.570 --> 00:07:18.510 align:middle line:84% also cast them away through diction, punctuation, 00:07:18.510 --> 00:07:21.050 align:middle line:90% capitalization, and pacing. 00:07:21.050 --> 00:07:26.150 align:middle line:84% So I don't think we should read a sepal, pedal and a thorn 00:07:26.150 --> 00:07:30.710 align:middle line:84% in that simple iambic flow, but rather follow the energy. 00:07:30.710 --> 00:07:34.070 align:middle line:84% A sepal a petal happening quickly before us, 00:07:34.070 --> 00:07:37.820 align:middle line:84% small and quiet, then we pause at the comma and thrust 00:07:37.820 --> 00:07:40.340 align:middle line:84% to the end of the line, and a thorn. 00:07:40.340 --> 00:07:43.350 align:middle line:90% Think of a bugle. 00:07:43.350 --> 00:07:48.300 align:middle line:90% [SINGING] 00:07:48.300 --> 00:07:49.890 align:middle line:84% Don't get caught up in how you think 00:07:49.890 --> 00:07:51.930 align:middle line:84% poems are supposed to scan, rather 00:07:51.930 --> 00:07:53.880 align:middle line:90% follow the poet's language. 00:07:53.880 --> 00:07:56.910 align:middle line:84% After the blast, we relax into the second line 00:07:56.910 --> 00:08:01.140 align:middle line:84% then play as we drink and as bees cavort in the third lines 00:08:01.140 --> 00:08:02.880 align:middle line:90% flask and buzz. 00:08:02.880 --> 00:08:05.730 align:middle line:84% And of course buzz is a word never used yet 00:08:05.730 --> 00:08:08.310 align:middle line:84% we find a similar sound in breeze. 00:08:08.310 --> 00:08:10.830 align:middle line:84% Which rather completes the line above, 00:08:10.830 --> 00:08:13.950 align:middle line:84% as we are moving a caper in the trees, 00:08:13.950 --> 00:08:19.170 align:middle line:84% with caper recalling sepal in its accents and mid-consonant. 00:08:19.170 --> 00:08:21.630 align:middle line:84% And even the vowels around that consonant, 00:08:21.630 --> 00:08:24.120 align:middle line:90% while trees recalls breeze. 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:27.870 align:middle line:84% So that overall the simple phrase "a caper in the trees" 00:08:27.870 --> 00:08:33.690 align:middle line:84% has sound-wise recapitulated the entire poem up to that point. 00:08:33.690 --> 00:08:36.600 align:middle line:84% Then the third of Dickinson's famous long dashes 00:08:36.600 --> 00:08:40.919 align:middle line:84% giving more of a pause than a comma or period or semicolon 00:08:40.919 --> 00:08:42.780 align:middle line:90% when occurring midline. 00:08:42.780 --> 00:08:46.140 align:middle line:84% And at the ends of lines more than a line break. 00:08:46.140 --> 00:08:49.890 align:middle line:84% It's a breath, I think, and an exhalation. 00:08:49.890 --> 00:08:53.430 align:middle line:84% Yet here a rising exclamation, "and I'm 00:08:53.430 --> 00:08:56.700 align:middle line:84% a rose," which may also be a pun, 00:08:56.700 --> 00:09:00.910 align:middle line:90% and I am a rose or I am arisen. 00:09:00.910 --> 00:09:04.170 align:middle line:84% So that the birth of the flower in its own consciousness 00:09:04.170 --> 00:09:07.380 align:middle line:84% is a spiritual rebirth, a resurrection that 00:09:07.380 --> 00:09:08.475 align:middle line:90% happens each spring. 00:09:08.475 --> 00:09:13.250 align:middle line:90% 00:09:13.250 --> 00:09:16.850 align:middle line:84% As you read it again on your own, feel your own sepals, 00:09:16.850 --> 00:09:19.550 align:middle line:84% petals, and thorns, drink your dew, 00:09:19.550 --> 00:09:22.700 align:middle line:84% enjoy the buzzing, the cool breeze, 00:09:22.700 --> 00:09:26.540 align:middle line:84% the dazzle of the forest around you, raise your arms 00:09:26.540 --> 00:09:29.120 align:middle line:90% and call forth your own being. 00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:31.640 align:middle line:90% This is being alive. 00:09:31.640 --> 00:09:35.380 align:middle line:90% This is being in the world. 00:09:35.380 --> 00:09:37.390 align:middle line:84% We've been having ongoing conversations 00:09:37.390 --> 00:09:40.210 align:middle line:84% for the last week or two with the poet in New York about just 00:09:40.210 --> 00:09:43.990 align:middle line:90% how sexy Emily Dickinson is so.