Emily Dickinson: From Ballerina to Gymnast

Abstract

Emily Dickinson has said that Possible's slow fuse is lit/ By the Imagination (1687).1 Although these lines have not been dated, and therefore cannot be taken as hard evidence for developmental theory of poetry in work, they invite us to challenge the contention that she had reached full artistic maturity by the early 1860's and lived the rest of life without experiencing any substantial artistic growth. If only for the sake of stimulus, we need fresh contextual view. Charles R. Anderson has established Emily Dickinson's reputation as serious and significant American poet,2 but his work has not been sufficiently influential. Instead, critics have continued to make psychological case studies of personal life or have speculated on the identity of purported lover.3 Perhaps we should honor F. 0. Matthiessen's desiderata, particularly his appeal for a systematic study of diction,4 and ask ourselves if Emily Dickinson was reflecting on the course of career when she wrote in 1882 that My are laid away in Books - (1549). If the packet holographs were Books, what were Wars? And what, if anything, was vanquished? I will consider these questions in the course of my discussion. I will begin, however, with larger and more fundamental question: Does Emily Dickinson's canon reveal developmental theory of poetry, beginning with an apprenticeship in the late 1850's, burgeoning in the 1860's, and reaching maturity in the 1870's and 1880's? The question cannot be answered conclusively. Thomas H. Johnson's dating of the poems is an approximation; we cannot even fix the sequence of poems during given year or season. All we can do is get some feeling for what Richard Wilbur has called her main drift.5 And that impression will stand upon representativeness, not upon strict chronological accuracy. I am concerned with the shape, the sense, the general direction of Emily Dickinson's poetic consciousness. The fact that I am controverted by few individual poems does not nullify the focus of my reading. Moreover, I would argue that Emily Dickinson never reached the point of full selfsatisfaction never won Wars with any final rout but carried with her, to the end, the temptations, the doubts, and the