How about "damaged"? It's the term used by Thomas
Wentworth Higgins (if I've got the name right) after
their one and only meeting, from which he fled. Her
hopes and ambitions to be a well-known poet went with
him, but her poetry continued nonetheless.
Susan Howe's _My Emily Dickinson_ is accurately
titled--"her" Dickinson is an impressional book and
figure of the poet, but again not one who is
recognizable to all others. In fact, I think it does
Dickinson "damage" in a twisted biography that says
more about Howe than Dickinson.
Candice
--- Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Mark
>
> I take your points, absolutely. But 'madness' seemed
> to me a bit
> extreme, while the other terms don't. I agree that
> both male & female
> critics have kept the flame alight. I realize, as I
> no longer have to
> read 'academic' criticism that it is books like
> Susan Howe's My Emily
> Dickinson that really reach me, but then we can find
> essays by male
> poets that also find in her predecessor writing, an
> influence that is
> so important.
>
> She certainly did see from a different angle, and
> that slant is still
> true....
>
> Doug
> On 30-Jun-07, at 9:33 AM, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
> > How about "oddness," "eccentricity," etc. Emily
> Dickinson was an
> > outsider artist. To deny her peculiarities is, I
> think, to disparage
> > the contributions of those whose mental or
> emotional status is, let's
> > say, compromised. To admit them is not to dismiss
> her or diminish the
> > value of what she sees from a slightly different
> angle from the rest
> > of us.
> >
> > It's become something of a cliche to see
> Dickinson's reputation as the
> > hostage of mostly male critics who have noticed
> that she was at the
> > least a bit strange. Those same male critics have
> consistently placed
> > her in the top ranks of American poets. As far
> back as Untermeyer, she
> > was paired with Whitman as the great precursor of
> 20th century
> > American poetry.
> >
> > We use the past, natch, for our own purposes, but
> in doing so we
> > sometimes deny the dead their own integrity, which
> includes their
> > deformities. A pity--what we learn from, I think,
> is difference.
> >
> > Curiously, nobody seems to mind that Smart was as
> mad as a hatter. Or
> > for that matter that Wieners was schizophrenic.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > At 11:19 AM 6/30/2007, you wrote:
> >> Wonderful poet, absolutely, visionary, for sure,
> but I'm not sure
> >> madness fits...
> >>
> >> Doug
> >> On 29-Jun-07, at 1:28 PM, Anny Ballardini wrote:
> >>
> >>> I agree. Welcome back Jon.
> >>>
> >>> On 6/29/07, Jon Corelis
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> The greatest poet of visionary madness, I
> think, in English language
> >>>> poetry.
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> ===================================
> >>>>
> >>>> Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/
> >>>>
> >>>> ===================================
> >>>
> >> Douglas Barbour
> >> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> >> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> >> (780) 436 3320
> >> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> >>
> >> Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> >>
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> >>
> >>
> >> God be with you, my dears. You keep
> >> the old bugger. I shan't be needing him!
> >>
> >> Norman Douglas (last words)
> >
> >
> Douglas Barbour
> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> (780) 436 3320
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
> Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>
>
> God be with you, my dears. You keep
> the old bugger. I shan't be needing him!
>
> Norman Douglas (last words)
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
Pinpoint customers who are looking for what you sell.
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/
|