My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe (PDF)

Description

For Wallace Stevens, “Poetry is the scholar’s art.” Susan Howe―taking the poet-scholar-critics Charles Olson, H.D., and William Carlos Williams (among others) as her guides―embodies that art in her 1985 My Emily Dickinson (winner of the Before Columbus Foundation Book Award). Howe shows ways in which earlier scholarship had shortened Dickinson’s intellectual reach by ignoring the use to which she put her wide reading. Giving close attention to the well-known poem, “My Life had stood―a Loaded Gun,” Howe tracks Dickens, Browning, Emily Brontë, Shakespeare, and Spenser, as well as local Connecticut River Valley histories, Puritan sermons, captivity narratives, and the popular culture of the day. “Dickinson’s life was language and a lexicon her landscape. Forcing, abbreviating, pushing, padding, subtracting, riddling, interrogating, re-writing, she pulled text from text….”

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review Starts off as a manifesto but becomes richer and more suggestive as it develops. (The New York Sun, Eric Ormsby) About the Author Susan Howe has won the Bollingen Prize, the Frost Medal, and the Griffin Award. She is the author of such seminal works as Debths, ThatThis, TheMidnight, MyEmilyDickinson, TheQuarry, and TheBirthmark.Eliot Weinberger is an essayist, editor, and translator. He lives in New York City.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Susan Howe, „My Emily Dickinson“ (2007, New Directions — Kindle Edition)Of many books on Emily Dickinson, one of the world‘s truly great poets, Ms. Howe‘s work best transmits Ms. Dickinson‘s inner spirit.Ms. Howe — a major poet — meets her intellect and heart with our own Emily Dickinson through deep, deep immersion in “My Life had stood— a Loaded Gun —“ (# 764 in “The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition“ [Editor: R. W. Franklin, 1999, ISBN: 0-674-1824-9, Harvard University Press (Belknap Press)].Poem #764 anchors Ms. Howe’s transmission of insights into Ms. Dickinson’s high spirituality through the poem’s immersion in King Lear, Childe Harold (Robert Browning), neo-Platonism, the Bronte sisters, James Fenimore Cooper, radical abolitionism, the Indian captivity of the Puritan — Mary Rowlandson, Paradise Lost, Charles Dickens, and the theology-philosophy of Jonathan Edwards (who unexpectedly influenced heavily Ms. Dickinson’s view of predestination— albeit with a neo-Platonic twist, that it would be only the one who intellectually developed her spiritual potential who would attain to the mystery).And mystery, full of life and spirituality in Death itself, shall remain unknown, perhaps even in one’s ultimate attainment.Ms. Howe’s concentration on Poem #764 is ideal for a truly deep spiritual union with Ms. Dickinson through the Great Poet’s own condensation of sources from her own spiritual and poetic forebears.Ms. Howe shows convincingly how much our Great Poet packed in Poem #764.From my reading of Our Poet’s work, I am convinced that one could build a commentary like that of Ms. Howe based upon any single poem among scores within Ms. Dickinson’s work.Ms. Howe, in concentrating on Poem #764, shows us the road to immersion in any of Ms. Dickinson’s great work.It would be like learning how to view the work of Picasso through a very able guide through “Guernica.”Ms. Howe’s work has my high recommendation.

⭐I found Susan Howe’s reflections wonderfully provocative as a way of getting at Dickinson’s poetry. I have never felt like I knew what was going on in these cryptic verses, but Howe’s approach seemed to jar something loose such that I could see and feel what is packed into almost every word. I would have given it 5 stars, but my Kindle edition had a stretch of overlapping pages in different font sizes that was very confusing. I wasn’t sure if I actually had all pages.

⭐Howe’s short book is an illuminating take on one of my favorite poets, focusing in particular on a careful reading of “My Life Stood—a Loaded Gun.” Howe does an excellent job of showing the poetic and other influences on Dickinson, especially the Brownings, Shakespeare (King Lear in particular), Fenimore Cooper, and Jonathan Edwards. Sometimes, Howe lets her own poetic rhetoric carry her away into near intelligibility, but I simply take that as her excitement and appreciation for what Dickinson was able to do. If you appreciate Dickinson, give this a read. If you are not sure, definitely read this work of one poet reading another.

⭐I bought this book because of a podcast I heard on Poetry Magazine. Three woman poets were interviewed, and I liked what they said – even though they only mentioned the book indirectly – so I bought the book. And was disappointed in it.I have Helen Vendler’s book Dickinson, which consists of individual poems followed by a lengthy explanation of each one. I have a long-time project of reading (and hopefully) understanding each one.When it comes to poetry criticism, however, (or any literary criticism) I am far out of my depth, even though I subscribe to, and enjoy, the New York Review.All I can say is this morning, after trying to appreciate it on two different occasions, it went into the trash. Lots of other books end up there, including some other people rave about, so it has some distinguished company.

⭐terrifically interesting for all its historical gestures and the author’s obviously serious, quasi-academic intensity. Yet how can a book about Dickinson that does want to bring the varied historical sources together and to bear on its subject not include reference to {suddenly I’m blanking out both poet and her astonishing essay that builds on and around Dickinson’s jolting line, “my life had stood a loaded gun”, and its feminist ramifications} ????

⭐Some interesting ideas, but read like a PHD thesis, and as the author was a poet, it was a bit difficult to decipher some of it. The main ideas were repeated all the way through, and made me hungry for the comprehensive ED book written in the 70s. I wanted to know more about her life and the interpretation of some of her more obscure poems.MK

⭐It’s the book, the author, what’s said in it…that is absolutely priceless. Susan Howe does a close reading on Emily Dickinson, her poetry and other poets and authors of her time – relating it historically, politically, as well as spiritually. And I already loved Emily D. Now she lives in me.

⭐Susan Howe gives stellar study of Emily Dickinson. Though it’s been out for many years, this is my first reading. As poet and nonfiction writer, I shall read this book many times. Emily is one of my heroes, and Susan Howe’s research more than information — it brings Emily Dickinson to life in this millenium.

⭐Very academic and difficult, I thought.

⭐L’idée développée est intéressante. Mais le ton de l’ouvrage est trop “universitaire français”. De la part d’un auteur anglo-saxon on attend plus de vie, et un moindre étalage d’érudition !

⭐

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