We attended two sessions run by experienced teachers of poetry who are themselves poets. The entire focus was the poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). I guess most people have studied at least a few of her 1700 poems but this class made it worth my while to order her complete poems edited by Thomas H. Johnson. You may know that Emily never married and was shy and very quiet. It was not until after her death that her younger sister found the body of her work. She had submitted a few of her poems for print before her death but not many.
Her poetry was unconventional by the standards of the day and might be considered that way today, too. That is why the editor of any collection matters, since the earliest editors made changes in her writings in a way that they thought improved her poetry. During our class, we had plenty of time to compare the original writings with the edited ones and felt that we could see why she wrote what she did and why the editors would have better left the work as it was.
We learned that she wrote secret, private, closeted poems to several married men. One of them is "My life as stood a loaded gun" and is well known, although it was new to me. That poem and several others can easily be read as loneliness, sexual hunger and frustration. Several mature, experienced and educated women in the class felt so. One said,"She belongs to him, whether or not he knows it."
We learned in class that Billy Collins, former poet laureate of the U.S. wrote the poem, "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes". It seems to me tastefully, elegantly written and certainly physical. I wonder what a young woman with her personality and background from her era would think of the poem and the imaginative encounters with her that we have all had by means of it.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
Her poetry was unconventional by the standards of the day and might be considered that way today, too. That is why the editor of any collection matters, since the earliest editors made changes in her writings in a way that they thought improved her poetry. During our class, we had plenty of time to compare the original writings with the edited ones and felt that we could see why she wrote what she did and why the editors would have better left the work as it was.
We learned that she wrote secret, private, closeted poems to several married men. One of them is "My life as stood a loaded gun" and is well known, although it was new to me. That poem and several others can easily be read as loneliness, sexual hunger and frustration. Several mature, experienced and educated women in the class felt so. One said,"She belongs to him, whether or not he knows it."
We learned in class that Billy Collins, former poet laureate of the U.S. wrote the poem, "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes". It seems to me tastefully, elegantly written and certainly physical. I wonder what a young woman with her personality and background from her era would think of the poem and the imaginative encounters with her that we have all had by means of it.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
