Today's double feature, "Emily" and "Gorilla at Large," were both filmed at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago, the central library for the Chicago Public Library System.
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 | On a recent visit to Chicago I toured most of the Harold Washington Library Center, and there was a lot to see. Left: I got waylaid on the 7th floor. LOL -- you can tell by my wife's face she's thinking something like, "Good grief, he's at it again." Can you guess what it is I'm "at"? I'll get to that soon enough. First, let me share a few pics and some info from the center. Right: A plaque about Harold Washington & the library. |  |
Below left: The Harold Washington Library Center Below right: A model of the building
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Below left: The lobby, floor one. Below right: The Wintergarden Ballroom, floor nine (it was closed on this particular day due to a wedding to occur that evening).
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The music library was impressive! Below left: Music scores and books -- and there were practice/rehearsal rooms available! Below right: Vinyl LPs galore to listen to -- and yes there were listening rooms!
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Below: The special collections library was closed on this day, so all I could do was take a pic through the (locked) glass doors.
Below: The Harold Washington Library Center's collection of Dickinson Books -- five shelves worth -- plus, on the right, the "recently returned" Dickinson books that were dropped off to the library that day.
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So do you remember that pic above where my wife's face reveals exactly what she's thinking: "Good grief, he's at it again"? And what was it that I was up to? Well, I was rummaging through all of the Dickinson books on the shelves to see what the library had on hand! Some of the books are highlighted below:
| Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson Once I saw the names of the Editors (Mabel Loomis Todd & Thomas Wentworth Higginson), I realized this was just a reprint of the first posthumously published collections of Dickinson poems from 1890, 1891, and 1896. | Readings on Emily Dickinson A collection of essays on Dickinson including pieces by Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Lowell, Thomas Johnson, John Ciardi, Richard Wilbur, and Archibald MacLeish. I definitely want to read read #1 from Chapter 3. **angry emoji** | Oxford Student Texts, Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems This book includes a nice Chronology of Emily Dickinson's life -- and it also includes a "Historical, literary, and social chronology" so that students can see what else was going onin the world during the same time frame. |
| I didn't need to examine the next series of books on the shelf because I own all five of them: * The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas Johnson and published in 1955 * Volume 3 of the three-volume Variorum set published by R. W. Franklin. * Hope is the Thing with Feathers, another reprint of the 1890, 1891, and 1896 collections published and edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. * Bolts of Memory, a collection of previously unpublished poems edited by Millicent Todd Bingham in 1945. * The Poems of Emily Dickinson, R. W. Franklin's "readers edition" published in 1998. |  |
Below: After Great Pain, The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson by John Cody. On the right: Be sure to read the opening paragraph to the book -- it is from a letter written by Mabel Loomis Todd to her parents about Emily Dickinson (click the image to enlarge). Very interesting!
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I Google-searched the name "John Cody" and found an American Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Chicago and later named a cardinal (HERE); a drummer (HERE), a puppeteer (HERE), a TV reality star from the show "Survivor" (HERE); an artist known as the "Audubon of Moths" (HERE); along with others named "John Cody." However, the John Cody who wrote this book was a psychiatrist.
But there's more to this, and I was completely floored when I learned – as radio host Paul Harvey used to say – "the rest of the story."
It turns out that the psychiatrist who wrote After Great Pain, The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson is the artist known as the "Audubon of Moths" mentioned above.
But there's more to this, and I was completely floored when I learned – as radio host Paul Harvey used to say – "the rest of the story."
It turns out that the psychiatrist who wrote After Great Pain, The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson is the artist known as the "Audubon of Moths" mentioned above.
His website states the following:
When he tried to qualify for entrance to a prep school, he so badly misinterpreted an Emily Dickinson poem that he was not accepted. Taking a lesson from this seemingly unlucky encounter, Cody made a study of the life of and works of our greatest poet, in which he found all the color, richness of texture and enigmatic quality of moths. This resulted in his widely acclaimed book, After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson, published in 1972 by the Harvard University Press.
When he tried to qualify for entrance to a prep school, he so badly misinterpreted an Emily Dickinson poem that he was not accepted. Taking a lesson from this seemingly unlucky encounter, Cody made a study of the life of and works of our greatest poet, in which he found all the color, richness of texture and enigmatic quality of moths. This resulted in his widely acclaimed book, After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson, published in 1972 by the Harvard University Press.
Coming Soon: the silence of the iambs
The book is dedicated to "C. W. L. — a Saturniid among Geometridae."
Metaphorically, calling someone "a saturniid among geometridae" means describing them as a brilliant, magnificent giant standing out completely among ordinary people. Cody used his passion for moths to convey that "C.W.L." possessed a rare, breathtaking grandeur that eclipsed everyone else around them.
BTW: C. W. L. was Dr. Charles William Laughlin, an American psychiatrist who was a mentor, close colleague, and deeply influential figure in Cody's professional and personal life.
Metaphorically, calling someone "a saturniid among geometridae" means describing them as a brilliant, magnificent giant standing out completely among ordinary people. Cody used his passion for moths to convey that "C.W.L." possessed a rare, breathtaking grandeur that eclipsed everyone else around them.
BTW: C. W. L. was Dr. Charles William Laughlin, an American psychiatrist who was a mentor, close colleague, and deeply influential figure in Cody's professional and personal life.
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Below left: Emily Dickinson. What caught my eye with this book was the author's name, Donna DICKENSON. I believe this is the author, HERE, an American philosopher who specializes in medical ethics.
Below center: Emily Dickinson, A Collection of Critical Essays
Below right: Interestingly, I just purchased a book with the same title, Emily Dickinson, A Collection of Critical Essays, from an online book seller; however this book includes totally different essays.
Below center: Emily Dickinson, A Collection of Critical Essays
Below right: Interestingly, I just purchased a book with the same title, Emily Dickinson, A Collection of Critical Essays, from an online book seller; however this book includes totally different essays.
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Below left: The Emily Dickinson Handbook. Center and right: Click the images to enlarge -- and then read the letter Samuel G. Ward sent to Thomas Wentworth Higginson who sent it to Mabel Loomis Todd. Higginson said of the letter, "This is the most remarkable criticism yet made on E. D."
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Below: Language as Object, Emily Dickinson and Contemporary Art -- and some of the pages that jumped out at me.
 |  Lectern for Emily Dickinson (front view) by Carla Rae Johnson |  The Glass by Will Barnet |
 How Dickinson Stayed Home by Roni Horn The letters on the floor spell "My business is circumference." |  Toward the Blue Peninsula by Joseph Cornell |
Below: Emily Dickinson in Love, The Case for Otis Lord
 | What caught me eye with this book was that god-awful pic of Emily Dickinson on the cover. Where did that picture ever come from? Just recently I visited Amherst, MA, and I saw that very pic painted on some sort of outdoor utility box on the street. I wrote about it on my travelogue "Dial 'Em' for Emily, HERE. A copy of what I wrote is below (click to enlarge).  |
Below left: The Marriage of Emily Dickinson: A Study of the Fascicles by William Shurr. In his "Acknowledgements," Shurr praises Richard Sewall: "The name of Richard B. Sewall should stand apart from this list for special mention, for his incomparable biography of Dickinson." Below center: Sewall's biography flanked Shurr's book on the shelf. Below right: The introduction to Shurr's book, which analyzes a sequence of love throughout Dickinson’s fascicles, opens with a quote from Piaget: "Once an area of knowledge has been reduced to a self-regulating system or 'structure,' the feeling that one has at last come upon its innermost source of movement is hardly avoidable."
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Below left: Dickinson, The Modern Idiom by David Porter Below right: An interesting bit of Chapter 3
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| Right: I searched the library's catalogue on Dickinson, and in addition to the books on the shelves, the list included musical pieces available for check-out. One of the selections on hand was Aaron Copland's "Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson." I wrote about this piece back in 2024. Part 1 is HERE; Part 2 is HERE; Part 3 is HERE. An additional post with more info is HERE. Below: Aaron Copland's "Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson" | |
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| Below: Aaron Copland's take on "I felt a funeral in my brain." I also compose original pieces based on Dickinson's poetry; however, in the case of this poem, I set it Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale." | Below: Copland's version of "Because I could not stop for Death" -- using Mabel Loomis Todd's title for the poem, "The Chariot." I also set this song to music, and in my version, the song is a tango. |
You can listen to the complete piece by clicking HERE.
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