I am leaving this tab open on my phone so I can squint at it less deliriously tomorrow on my way to the radio station; I love a poetry thread with torturously conflicted aerosmith posts & I am very patchy with these guys. a lot of what Dickinson I've read has either been through or after being spoonfed it, regurgitated, in Anne Carson. me & my friend are reading poetry aloud to each other sometimes, & I think that's a good way to hear poems that can seem heavier or more serious to me, which is true of anything older, thoughI guess less true of these guys than some others
― daft on the causes of punk (schlump), Wednesday, 5 June 2013 06:57 (ten years ago) link
oh no, wait, it's Bronte in Carson
carry on
― daft on the causes of punk (schlump), Wednesday, 5 June 2013 06:59 (ten years ago) link
dickinson is a totally singular miracle, images about death and life at the same time, unostentatiously ultraspare, invents her own weird typography that's more useful than cummings' (or, well, someone invents it; who cares), so full of loss even when she's happy, hilarious, fractal in the sense that she sees and explains the cosmos in her bees, is w melville/twain/lincoln up on 19c literature's rushmore. whitman, i dunno. i don't like life as much as him and i wish he'd get out of my face about it. that astronomer poem enrages me. he fit right into that levi's commercial. i like the poem aero posted upthread about the live-oak/the isolated self, but we are inversions: it's WW whom i admire when i'm at my best and ED who takes me. i mean who isn't trapped in a coffin? walt whitman, probably.
― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, 5 June 2013 13:40 (ten years ago) link
I've struggled with Whitman more strenuously than with any other American poet. Bet he'd love to wrastle with me.
The only time I really loved him was reading "Out of the Cradle..." about ten years ago in a poetry class I taught.
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 5 June 2013 13:43 (ten years ago) link
i am probably a lot more like whitman, in the way i write, and the way i think, and act, and approach the world, undisciplined, overenthusiastic, obvious, yes, hectoring, i wish i was more like dickinson, who is razor-sharp, restrained, cryptic, a master concealer.
― max, Sunday, November 28, 2010
haha max, when we finally meet, I expect to find the razor-sharp, restrained, cryptic, master concealer you are on ILX.
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 5 June 2013 13:45 (ten years ago) link
it's a kind of gimmick but it almost always kills me when the dash ends a poem: simultaneously conveys an ending and an incompletion. so with something like this one--where suffering is very close and familiar but may be joy after all, where as with the french revolution it is too early to tell--it's both a chill and a relief to topple into all that spacious uncertainty in the second after she goes quiet:
They say that "Time assuages" -Time never did assuage -An actual suffering strengthensAs Sinews do, with age -
Time is a Test of Trouble -But not a RemedyIf such it prove, it prove tooThere was no Malady -
― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, 5 June 2013 13:58 (ten years ago) link
yall need to read ww's 'specimen days'
― j., Wednesday, 5 June 2013 19:01 (ten years ago) link
man dlh otm about Dickinson
― my super-power is to turn into a bowling ball (Drugs A. Money), Thursday, 4 July 2013 02:52 (ten years ago) link
or, well, someone invents it; who cares
hee
― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Thursday, 4 July 2013 16:22 (ten years ago) link
thats such a nice thing to say, al, thank you
― max, Friday, 5 July 2013 02:27 (ten years ago) link
This seems like an impossible decision to make and I don't think I could have voted.
Is it a vote for macrocosm vs microcosm, big vs small? But then both big and small are good. Perhaps Whitman never did small.
Is it a vote for close-knit form or wide open form? But then both are good. And Dickinson's type of close-knit form is miles away from Frost, or Hardy, or Larkin, to the point where she almost wouldn't fit into an anthology called 'people who use close-knit forms'.
Is it a vote, then, for how well each poet did big, or did small, how well each one did their respective job? But then Whitman is one of the best poets of 'the big' and Dickinson one of the best poets of 'the small'. They both did their jobs well.
― cardamon, Saturday, 13 July 2013 22:32 (ten years ago) link
Also it is very upsetting to read Whitman in light of Hart Crane. It makes you realise that Whitman opens a door that Hart Crane was trying to go through and he died before he could.
― cardamon, Saturday, 13 July 2013 22:33 (ten years ago) link
i think every time you read one of the items in whitman's endless lists, he's doing the small - it's part of his view of the big that this be so
this comes out particularly well in 'specimen days' because the memorandum/journal format focuses his style of rendering the small so that you can see how modest a detail merits observation and recording for him
this is probably the flip side of the magnitude of what dickinson finds in her 'small'
― j., Sunday, 14 July 2013 04:03 (ten years ago) link
feels like it's more about Whitman's attempt at absolute clarity, with Dickinson's propensity for obliquity. Both of them were as enormous as universes, but Dickinson had the amazing ability to summarize the universe in wry aphorisms, whereas with Whitman, it was almost like poetry wasn't worth the effort if he couldn't be a supernova...*
― the next night we ate Wale (Drugs A. Money), Sunday, 14 July 2013 08:19 (ten years ago) link
*I'm full of shit, I haven't really read much of either. It's likely that many of you may feel slightly insulted that I even felt the need to point this out...
― the next night we ate Wale (Drugs A. Money), Sunday, 14 July 2013 08:20 (ten years ago) link
No, otm I think
― cardamon, Sunday, 14 July 2013 13:02 (ten years ago) link
Quite telling that Whitman said the only English poet he thought was big enough to fit America was 'Milton, perhaps'
Meanwhile Dickinson read lots of the Metaphysical poets, George Herbert etc IIRC
― cardamon, Sunday, 14 July 2013 13:05 (ten years ago) link
I'm "wife" -- I've finished that --That other state --I'm Czar -- I'm "Woman" now --It's safer so --
How odd the Girl's life looksBehind this soft Eclipse --I think that Earth feels soTo folks in Heaven -- now --
This being comfort -- thenThat other kind -- was pain --But why compare?I'm "Wife"! Stop there!
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 14 July 2013 13:05 (ten years ago) link
i think i am going to buy the collected emily dickinson today. my volume of emily dickinson poems is old and full of semi-colons instead of dashes
― Treeship, Sunday, 14 July 2013 14:36 (ten years ago) link
affectionate, haughty, electrical,
― j., Saturday, 27 July 2013 00:56 (ten years ago) link
both r kinda repetitive/coulda used an editor
I think I like Whitman more because he feels closer to contemporary language + was formative in my learning to read and appreciate longer poems
― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Saturday, 27 July 2013 15:04 (ten years ago) link
Dickinson got editors...who replaced the dashes with commas and semicolons.
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 27 July 2013 15:07 (ten years ago) link
t Alfred that was a joke sry
― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Saturday, 27 July 2013 15:08 (ten years ago) link
it's funny, I like dashes a lot but I really can't get worked up about that particular bit of literary infamy—the sheer frequency of punctuation Dickinson (imo) forces you to relearn the "meaning" of those particular scribbles as you read her.
(... altho I will grant that the dashes make a more striking first impression.)
― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Saturday, 27 July 2013 15:14 (ten years ago) link
*shd be "punctuation IN Dickinson" or "punctuation that Dickinson uses" or sthg
I think the dashes make a big difference, personally
― fervently nice (Treeship), Saturday, 27 July 2013 16:04 (ten years ago) link
No fucking shit
― waterface, Sunday, 28 July 2013 00:53 (ten years ago) link
I've never taken to Dickinson, honestly. I'm not sure I voted here, but had I it would have been for Walt. My high school copy of Leaves was one of the 3 books I brought with me from Texas.
― BIG HOOS aka the denigrated boogeyman (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Sunday, 28 July 2013 01:15 (ten years ago) link
a lot of great writers could have 'used an editor' but i can't really understand how anyone could say that of dickinson -- her stuff is so succinct and compressed.
didn't vote in this, i don't think, but if i did it was probably for walt, just for writing like 10 different poems about lincoln's death.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Sunday, 28 July 2013 01:22 (ten years ago) link
and the most popular is the worst
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 28 July 2013 01:25 (ten years ago) link
Also as far as the poll goes, what's the point in picking one of these people they both do different things? Why choose
― waterface, Sunday, 28 July 2013 01:33 (ten years ago) link
Who do you prefer waterface?
― fervently nice (Treeship), Sunday, 28 July 2013 02:35 (ten years ago) link
man waterface we're not trying to settle a qn of objective value here, peace out
― i better not get any (thomp), Sunday, 28 July 2013 09:50 (ten years ago) link
i think waterface is right that maybe we shouldn't insist that one is terrible and that there can only be one good poet in the world.
― fervently nice (Treeship), Sunday, 28 July 2013 16:04 (ten years ago) link
re: "could use an editor"—I was thinking (apart from the whole punctuation question) more of the monolithic inaccessibility of Dickinson's oeuvre—been reading Helen Vendler's recent selection of poems+commentaries, which helps somewhat...
― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Sunday, 28 July 2013 16:21 (ten years ago) link
... but maybe I would be better served by a volume of selected poems+letters? idk
― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Sunday, 28 July 2013 16:22 (ten years ago) link
i think the fact that some of her poems are much more cryptic than others is part of the deal with her. it helps sustain the impression that her work was a private thing that she did for herself... that we are overhearing intimate yet impossibly eloquent thoughts
― fervently nice (Treeship), Sunday, 28 July 2013 16:34 (ten years ago) link
guys stop ruining this thread.
― horseshoe, Sunday, 28 July 2013 19:48 (ten years ago) link
ILE selects its own society - Then shuts the door -
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 28 July 2013 20:01 (ten years ago) link
heh
― fervently nice (Treeship), Monday, 29 July 2013 05:23 (ten years ago) link
What horseshoe said
― waterface, Monday, 29 July 2013 11:19 (ten years ago) link
bd., how is the vendler? i have seen it on a friends desk and thought 'that seems like an excellent book to have' but also thought 'that seems like a book i would open twice'
― i better not get any (thomp), Tuesday, 30 July 2013 22:19 (ten years ago) link
I bought it and returned it a few days later, only because my library carried it (I own her thin book on Stevens' short poems though lol go figure).
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 30 July 2013 22:27 (ten years ago) link
No problems with Dickinson.
re: Whitman. Should he have just left it at the first ed. of Leaves of Grass? Don't know enough about Whitman but is there ever a debate of a fall in quality from one ed. to the nxt?
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 19 March 2014 14:14 (ten years ago) link
taught Whitman recently; teaching Dickinson now. my kids are struggling with Dickinson. the other day a kid was like, "she's simple but she's not. it's confusing." that kid otm.
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 19 March 2014 14:56 (ten years ago) link
once i went to a 24-hr marathon reading of emily dickinson held at a catholic school, it was kind of like this
― j., Sunday, August 26, 2012 12:43 AM (1 year ago)
srsly, this helped me a bunch. you just get a real good reader who knows D to plow through a bunch in a row so they can ~hear~ it
― j., Wednesday, 19 March 2014 16:39 (ten years ago) link
"she's simple but she's not. it's confusing."
= great writing in one sentencce.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 19 March 2014 17:03 (ten years ago) link
is there ever a debate of a fall in quality from one ed. to the nxt?― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, March 19, 2014 2:14 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, March 19, 2014 2:14 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Many American citizens are literally paralyzed by (bernard snowy), Wednesday, 19 March 2014 20:35 (ten years ago) link
Thanks - been reading some Whitman too and you know we should've done a Whitman vs Pessoa thread.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 23 March 2014 11:10 (ten years ago) link
Actually I think Bloom linked Whitman and Pessoa together in his book Genius (along w Lorca, Hart Crane, Cernuda)
(What wd you recommend for someone getting into Pessoa?)
― lolipsism (Drugs A. Money), Wednesday, 26 March 2014 19:26 (ten years ago) link