Althouse: "As the daughter of a successful lawyer, Dickinson would have had ample access to quality paper..."

October 23, 2013

"As the daughter of a successful lawyer, Dickinson would have had ample access to quality paper..."

"... leading some scholars to argue that later in her life she was deliberately experimenting with ways of presenting poetry beyond the conventions of the printed page."

5 comments:

Richard Dolan said...: "Ample access" here means, most likely, only ability to purchase, unless dear old dad kept stacks of unused bond paper or the like at home. ED was a bit of a recluse, though, and her preferred form of 'access' seems to have been to use whatever was at hand (and didn't require her to venture out).; 10/23/13, 10:34 AM
Uncle Pavian said...: If she was so interested in experimenting with poetry, how come all of Emily Dickinson's extant works can be sung to the theme song from Gilligan's Island?; 10/23/13, 10:50 AM
Caedmon said...: Poet myself - it's not unusual to do the first draft on the back of an envelope. You are not usually at your desk when the idea strikes you.; 10/23/13, 10:57 AM
George M. Spencer said...: She was highly productive in the early 1860s--during the Civil War which may explain why death is so much on her mind, aside from the fact that people dropped like flies in those days...

Dying
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.; 10/23/13, 11:18 AM
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