Heavy Hitters #2: Emily Dickinson v Walt Whitman

(What wd you recommend for someone getting into Pessoa?)

For the poetry I turn to this blog sometimes.

There is a Penguin paperbk but I don't like the flow of it.

Way cool. ty xyz

Some more Pessoa poems here, they are wonderful and made my day yesterday:

http://www.asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Poetry&id=32&curr_index=6&curPage=archive

gonna write in

eidolons

at the end of every whitman stanza, feelin just jazzed abt eidolons

a good day to revisit this one:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174748

had never read this one before:

http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/195

"When Lilacs..." never failed to move my student, especially when I made them read a stanza allowed, row by row. The cumulative effect, with everyone's rhythms -- halting, assured, bad English, excellent English -- made it seem representatively American.

*aloud

eidolons!!

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/05/whitman-illuminated-song-of-myself-allen-crawford-review

q to hart crane readers:

does the old complete poems from the 60s edited by brom weber include 'the bridge' complete? i'm having no luck finding out from the internet

I think so. The 1st ed liveright has it and the more recent one I have has it. I also have another stand alone version that has annotations

did any one read the new emily dickinson fragments book? i don't think i voted in this poll but seeing as how she's in my top 3 pantheon of poets i def would've voted for her.

THE LARGEST fire ever known
Occurs each afternoon,

hell yeah https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LKQY9PlWMec/maxresdefault.jpg

holy god emily dickinson is the greatest poet in the universe

What? Not Li Po? Not Francois Villon? Not Szymborska? Not Yeats? Not Tu Fu? Not Dante? Not Homer? Not Catullus? Not Cavafy? Not Marianne Moore? Not Khayyam? Not Chaucer? Not Arnaut Daniel? Not Baudelaire? Not Heine? Not Milton? Not Po Chu-I?

Why didn't I get the memo?

i do feel that she manages to out-ironise every poet who ever wrote

did empson ever write about her? cos he would have feasted on her lines.

i do feel that she manages to out-ironise every poet who ever wrote

I must disagree.

The Heart asks Pleasure – first –
And then – Excuse from Pain –
And then – those little Anodynes
That deaden suffering –

And then – to go to sleep –
And then – if it should be
The will of the Inquisitor
The privilege to die –

that poem is funny though. it's "true" at one level, but it's also a deliberately absurd reduction of human experience. her poems are full of these kinds of moments:

Surgeons must be careful
When they take the knife !
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit,--Life!

i also think there is something ironic about phrases like "on her divine majority, intrude no more!" to joyfully embrace misanthropy is a kind of ironic experience, even if the sentiment is meant sincerely. the whole fantasy of emperors jostling for her attention as she closes the "valves of her attention like stone." it's fun.

What I mean is - her tone, while perfectly sincere when it's talking about a religious concept or a moral idea, is also qualified by numerous ironies. One of those being that she is aware that you, the reader are aware, that her sincerity is partly performed, and her intellectual insight through and past simple ideas and pieties is so great that she is providing several levels of silent meta-commentary on her own framing of the idea in the poem, not merely the idea itself. All this is only to add to the other obvious ironies one feels - that as a woman she shouldn't be writing or thinking this, but has a better grasp than anyone she knows. That her doubt, caution, fear and knowingness are there in the poem, unhidden, but exist with a kind of innocence which she earnestly feels and she earnestly knows has been foisted on her by virtue of her sex. Battles of knowledge, battles of form. The ironies are transcendent, because they cling to the surface of the ground, and yet are able to see all which passes all around. They express complete awareness, and the limitations of expression by one human personality.

the POLL selects its own society

dickinson really is kind of a unique poet -- i can't think of anyone else who writes quite like her.

I'm a common reader of poetry. When you say ironic, I think:

Henry was programmed for happiness.
What happened O, O bloody friends?
Hoho, heehee.

there once was a man from nantucket

What a lovely thread.

yeah i quoted that first whitman bit upthread that aerosmith quoted in a text message and got a <3

http://www.musicboxfilms.com/a-quiet-passion-movies-153.php#overview

Sight & Sounds gave it a good write-up.

“Nature is a haunted house--but Art--a house that tries to be haunted.”

Going to heaven!
I don't know when,
Pray do not ask me how,--
Indeed, I'm too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to heaven!--
How dim it sounds!
And yet it will be done
As sure as flocks go home by night
Unto the shepherd's arm!

Perhaps you're going too!
Who knows?
If you should get there first,
Save just a little place for me
Close to the two I lost!
The smallest "robe" will fit me,
And just a bit of "crown";
For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home.

I'm glad I don't believe it,
For it would stop my breath,
And I'd like to look a little more
At such a curious earth!
I am glad they did believe it
Whom I have never found
Since the mighty autumn afternoon
I left them in the ground.

magnificent and terrifying

Watch the movie.

terrifying

1862:

You cannot put a Fire out --
A Thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a Fan --
Upon the slowest Night --

You cannot fold a Flood --
And put it in a Drawer --
Because the Winds would find it out --
And tell your Cedar Floor --

I many times thought Peace had come
When Peace was far away --
As Wrecked Men -- deem they sight the Land --
At Centre of the Sea --

And struggle slacker -- but to prove
As hopelessly as I --
How many the fictitious Shores --
Before the Harbor be --

Love those Dickinson poems. I don't think Whitman poems work so well in small doses. I guess I think Dickinson might be the better poet, but Whitman means more to me personally. I remember being on summer break during college, staying with my grandparents, not knowing many people my own age in the area, and Whitman was kind of like a companion to me. It's hokey as hell, but I used to sometimes sit out in the woods behind their house with "Leaves of Grass". Dickinson's poems are like finely-cut gems, whereas Whitman's are like big woolly sweaters. No doubt there's a lot of hocus pocus in Whitman, something I'm sure Dickinson's austere gimlet eye could have skewered deftly, but it's deeply comforting hocus pocus nonetheless.

i like it when she's ambitious:

Such are the inlets of the mind—-
His outlets-— would you see
Ascend with me the eminence
Of immortality—-

(tho prayerful as ever)

I don't think Whitman poems work so well in small doses.

dickinson does suffer in large ones i think, she can drive u crazy circling her obsessions (like the gnats around the porch light in lolita: "continuously darning the air in one spot") not to mention that one rhythm she likes so much that's practically a personal haiku.

that fire/flood/winds/floor one i posted upthread still gives me chills tho: all four elements, in conspiracy. sometimes she reminds me of the log lady

i seem to have invented a new kind of dash, above. the circle is now complete. ascend w me the eminence

This is Emily.
Emily stays inside.
She reads. She writes poetry. She writes letters. She bakes. She does a bit of bird watching. Then she writes some more.
Emily is safe from COVID-19.
Be like Emily. pic.twitter.com/4Weuc9puug

— Mathieu Duplay 🌈 🇪🇺 (@mathieu_duplay) March 16, 2020

Dickinson's poems are like finely-cut gems, whereas Whitman's are like big woolly sweaters. No doubt there's a lot of hocus pocus in Whitman, something I'm sure Dickinson's austere gimlet eye could have skewered deftly, but it's deeply comforting hocus pocus nonetheless.

― o. nate, Thursday, May 18, 2017 8:44 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is why i like whitman -- he celebrates mess. one of my students today said that whitman would get cancelled if he was alive today. he was too open and seemed to lack a filter, in their view.