From "'A Loving Caw from a Nameless Friend'/A new collection of Emily Dickinson’s letters reveals them to be a major literary achievement, related to her poems and perhaps exceeding them in experimental energy" (NYRB).
February 12, 2025
"She selected four of her favorite poems and mailed them to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an essayist and minor poet...."
"In her cover note dated April 15 [1862]... one of the most famous letters in all of American literature, [Emily] Dickinson asked Higginson if he was 'too deeply occupied, to say if my Verse is alive'.... Higginson, who was bold in politics—an outspoken abolitionist and a secret supporter of John Brown...—but timid in literature, was evidently not encouraging. (His answer has not survived.) 'Thank you for the surgery,' she wrote in a follow-up letter, and, in another, 'I smile when you suggest that I delay "to publish"–that being foreign to my thought, as Firmament to Fin.' She continued to send Higginson poems, and he continued to find fault with them. 'You think my gait "spasmodic,"' she wrote in her third letter. 'You think me "uncontrolled."'... But over a long correspondence with Higginson... Dickinson discovered that letters themselves could be an art form rivaling poetry. Asked for personal details by Higginson... she answered... 'You ask of my Companions. Hills–Sir–and the Sundown–and a Dog–large as myself, that my Father bought me–They are better than Beings, because they know–but do not tell–and the noise in the Pool, at noon–excels my Piano.'"
From "'A Loving Caw from a Nameless Friend'/A new collection of Emily Dickinson’s letters reveals them to be a major literary achievement, related to her poems and perhaps exceeding them in experimental energy" (NYRB).
Here's the book under discussion: "The Letters of Emily Dickinson" (commission earned).
From "'A Loving Caw from a Nameless Friend'/A new collection of Emily Dickinson’s letters reveals them to be a major literary achievement, related to her poems and perhaps exceeding them in experimental energy" (NYRB).
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8 comments:
I have a pen pal I've never met. We found each other online over 20 years ago and currently write letters to each other. Both of us are into fountain pens. The 'letter as an art form' is SO TRUE. Both of us have been through so much in the time we have been trading letters, and we do wax poetic from time to time.
Her voice in these snippets is lovely and poetry in itself. I think this is the first post of yours that has led me to buy a book. Her poetry has always reached into my gut--how wonderful to find her letter do the same!
These sound interesting, so I'll give it a read. Although, Higgenson sounds like the worst sort of New England crank. Obsessed with Abolitionism, Women's sufferage, Homopathy, and his weird relgious beliefs. Against the Mexican War because it was "immoral" but supporting Terrorist John Brown!
Full of love for the black man - in the South. While having zero sympathy for the poor and working man next door. Later, he got all worked about the Tsar and "Russian Oppression".
Some artists are artists in all aspects of their lives. Others, not so much. Some art you can enjoy in museums is made by people you would not want in your house for a meal together. Dickinson seems like the first type, artistic in all her life.
“You ask of my Companions. Hills–Sir–and the Sundown–and a Dog–large as myself, that my Father bought me–They are better than Beings, because they know–but do not tell–and the noise in the Pool, at noon–excels my Piano.”
Beautiful.
A spasmodic gait. It's true. However, this is one of the marvels of her poetry. Higginson is one step below Salieri, who at least could recognize genius.
Weird. When I got bigly interested in poetry in the early 1990s the first two biographies of poets that I read were those of Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson.
Always liked Dickinson. If the letters are of a quality with the verse they will be interesting. Re; RCOCEAN: "There's nothing so lethal as those who humanity in the abstract."
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