>The last time I lingered with Emily Dickinson I began to feel she had
>abandoned many of her poems as having insoluble problems, and that 'wanting
>them to go on after the end' feeling that many readers have is a symptom of
>this. Philip Larkin's little review of ED in Required Writing grumbles about
>something like this, I seem to recall.
That's interesting, Max.
When I read the whole volume, it took on the nature, almost, of a strange
modenrist novel for me. But then, I tend to agree with Susan Howe's take in
_My Emily Dickinson_, where, in so many words, she makes the case for
Dickinson as a modernist strange attractor, one of the great influences of
te latter half of the 20th century. I can't recommend the Howe book highly
enough. Another of those poet's works of criticism that transcends the
genre (criticism). I guess what some readers might see as a sense of
abandonment or whatever is a sense of openness to others, a refusal of
closure that many contemporary writers actively seek in their work.
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
The blank page
as merely an interval or
an intrusion. We could not rescue it
nor could we huddle, as if the page were
big enough.
Kathleen Fraser
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