[Wgcp-whc] WG/Poetics--Dickinson minutes, agenda
richard.deming at yale.edu
richard.deming at yale.edu
Thu Feb 17 14:32:04 EST 2005
2/17/05
Dear friends,
On Friday, February 11, the Working Group in Poetics convened to
discuss the work of Emily Dickinson. The first question that we dealt
with was how and why Dickinson might be read within a genealogy of the
avant-garde or innovative/experimental tradition. Aside from the sheer
difficulty and even hermeticism of a large part of her body of work,
the material condition of Dickinsons poems would suggest her position
within alternative traditions. Susan Howe, among others, has argued
that Dickinson eschewed (other than a small handful of exceptions)
submitting her work for publication and that the authentic texts are
the handwritten, bound fascicles that the poet distributed (when she
did) to friends and family. These fascicles, it has been argued,
constitute a form of alternative publishing. Moreover, these versions
included variant lines and substitutions and diacritical marks that
fall outside the purview of conventional standards of publishing. This
raised questions about how publishing disciplines and defines reading
practices. Dickinsons editors, even the most sensitive, have tended to
regularize the poems and normalize their individual and idiosyncratic
poetics. For instance, most of Dickinsons work hovers around
traditional hymn form. The group also discussed why this form would be
the bulwark that supported even her most densely metaphysical poems.
There was some thought that the hymn form was simply at hand or that it
was her attempt to be democrat, using a form that was recognizable to a
larger populace and less identified as aristocratic. There was also
some thinking that the form also constituted a reworking of the hymns
from the overtly religious (and institutional) to a more antinomian
impulse. In any event, the editors (principally Johnson and more
contemporarily Ralph Franklin, former director of the Beinecke) made
editorial decisions that made each poem cohere more rigidly to the
regular stanzas. Vary often this includes telling differences in how
the lines are broken, which resituates rhymes and so forth. Franklin
included the variant lines at the bottom of the poems, but numbered
them, suggesting a sequentially that is presumed rather than certain.
Indeed, throughout the discussion, we noted how scholars and critics on
either side of the textual debate made bold claims about the poet and
her intent that were intuitive rather than empirical. This wasnt
indictment, the group made clear, but was an exploration of the ways
the reading and meaning have insights that are often coming from other
directions than just the poem.
One question that arose during the discussion concerned the role that
cultural institutions have in conveying legitimacy and authority to
texts, which goes beyond even the issues of what might constitute
an authoritative text. For instance, why dont Dickinsons fascicles
themselves count as anything but manuscript materialsin other words
that seem more likely to have editorial adjustments when transferred
into legitimate print culture. This isnt, we discussed, necessarily
true of all writers, but is especially poignant in considering
Dickinson because she didnt intend a publication between that which
she herself put together. Interestingly, Dickinson might be seen as a
reverse version of Duchamp, whose famous piece Fountain, (a urinal
that he signed as R. Mutt and then installed in a gallery exhibition)
challenged the mechanisms of the institutionalization of art. We
have seen, of course, that the institution absorbed Duchamps work just
as Dickinsons resistant texts (which Susan Howe described as having a
halo of wildness) have been absorbed and disciplined in terms of
dominant literacy modes and reading practices.
The session also then included a long, engaged close reading of the
poem Publication - is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man. Clearly,
this seems to be some kind of metacommentary on her own refusal of the
publishing industry and there does seem to be some indication from the
poems claims that publication commodifies art, which is, supposedly,
a higher cultural function. We discussed, too, that there is a neo-
Platonic drift of Dickinsons poem that suggests that language qua
language is a kind of fallen state of some preverbal, idealized
spiritual dimension of thought (this might be read interestingly in
terms of Walter Benjamin, especially his essay On Language as Such and
the Language of Man). However, we noted the ways that the poem
brought not only publication (and by publication does she mean
publishing work, and thus entering the institution of literature ((cf.
Peter Burgers useful discussion of this process in general in Decline
of Modernism)) or simply making a thought publicthat is, bringing it
outside of ones private interior space) but poetry and language itself
into question. Thus, her work is a kind of self-critique as well.
Indeed, we came up with various possible readings of the poems
argument, only to see those arguments become (yes, Ill say it)
deconstructed by the poem itself. We were also fascinated to look
briefly at the ways that even Paul Celan, who translated Dickinson into
German, ended up making the work far more straightforward in English.
We left Dickinson thinking perhaps whereas Whitman was radical more
often in his rhetoric that her work is radical in its material
practices and experimental in its sense of language and syntax. It was
agreed that in the future at some point the group should return again
to her work for further discussion since the implications go beyond
just questions of a poems meaning and open up explorations into
reading, authority, culture, and criticism as a whole.
The group has a special session, tomorrow February 18 at 1.45 in the
Beinecke to look at Whitman manuscripts and primary materials. Anyone
interested in attending should e-mail Nancy Kuhl (nancy.kuhl at yale.edu)
so we know how many to anticipate.
Our next regular meeting will be on Fri. February 25. We will be
joined by Professor David Jackson of Yales Spanish and Portuguese
Department who will discuss the Brazilian Concretistas. A packet of
readings is being assembled and as soon as it is available I will e-
mail everyone.
Also, our group is cosponsoring a reading by Palestinian poet Taha
Muhammad Ali, with translator Peter Cole on Wednesday, February 23,
5:00pm. The other co-sponsors include: Whitney Humanities Center, Yale
Arabic Poetry Colloquium. At a place where rare opportunities are
commonplace, this seems to be especially exceptional.
In terms of the rest of the semester, some key dates include:
3/25Visit from poet, translator Kent Johnson
4/15visit from Cole Swenson, poet, translator, recent nominee for the
national Book Award in poetry.
The Working Group in Contemporary Poetry and Poetics meets every other
Friday at 1:45 PM in room 116 at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale
University to discuss problems and issues of contemporary poetry within
international alternative and /or avant-garde traditions of lyric
poetry. All are welcome to attend.
---R. Deming, group secretary
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