I can’t remember when I found the online copy (linked later in this post) of Sharon Leiter’s “Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson, A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work.” I’m sure it was related to some past Dickinson post of mine, but which one? Who knows! However, I saved the link with a note to myself to check out the opening to the Foreword of the book by Gregory Orr – who, coincidentally, is from Charlottesville, Virginia, the city where I live.
Sooo…before proceeding with today’s post, I had to search “Gregory Orr,” and I found this, HERE, and this, HERE.
From a page at the Poetry Foundation, I discovered that “After 44 years in the University of Virginia’s English department, Orr retired in 2019.”
Okay, so on with today’s post: What captured my attention in Orr’s Foreword to Leiter’s “Critical Companion” was his opening statement: “More of Emily Dickinson’s poems begin with ‘I’ than any other word.”
TBH, I’m surprised – with the various and random posts I’ve done in the past about how often Dickinson used various and random words – that I never looked into that. I’m not at home now to check exactly how many poems Dickinson wrote beginning with “I,” so I accessed the Wikipedia list of Dickinson’s poems (HERE), and the number is 143.
Of course, Orr’s Foreword is not just about the objective count of Dickinson’s poems that begin with “I,” but it really focuses on how a reader identifies with a poem’s speaker when the pronoun “I” is used.
Orr said, “Paradoxically, in the lyric this pronoun of self functions inclusively, rather than exclusively. The reader is invited to identify with the poem’s speaker for the brief, intensified moment of the poem’s unfolding,” and later he mentioned Dickinson’s letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson where she stipulated, “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse—it does not mean—me—but a supposed person.”
Just FYI: I discussed that very missive in a recent post dealing with internal rhyme, HERE.
With the use of the first person singular pronoun, Orr notes that “The reader is invited to identify with the poem’s speaker for the brief, intensified moment of the poem’s unfolding,” and he continues with examples from other poets, most notably Walt Whitman:
“Although in most poems this lyric invitation is implicit, Walt Whitman states it outright and with typical confidence in the opening lines of ‘Song of Myself,’ recognizing that all the deeper emotional and spiritual transactions of his sequence derive from it:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume, you shall assume
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."
This invocation called to mine a site I discovered several years ago, “Whitman Alabama,” “an experiment in using documentary and poetry to reveal the threads that tie us together—as people, as states, and as a nation”:
“For two years, filmmaker Jennifer Crandall has crisscrossed this deep Southern state, inviting people to look into a camera and share a part of themselves through the words of Walt Whitman. The 19th century poet’s ‘Song of Myself’ is a quintessential reflection of our American identities.”
Check it out here (IT IS WONDERFUL), HERE.
Leiter’s “Critical Companion” is HERE – and Orr’s Foreword begins on page 6 of the 465 pages.
Sooo…before proceeding with today’s post, I had to search “Gregory Orr,” and I found this, HERE, and this, HERE.
From a page at the Poetry Foundation, I discovered that “After 44 years in the University of Virginia’s English department, Orr retired in 2019.”
Okay, so on with today’s post: What captured my attention in Orr’s Foreword to Leiter’s “Critical Companion” was his opening statement: “More of Emily Dickinson’s poems begin with ‘I’ than any other word.”
TBH, I’m surprised – with the various and random posts I’ve done in the past about how often Dickinson used various and random words – that I never looked into that. I’m not at home now to check exactly how many poems Dickinson wrote beginning with “I,” so I accessed the Wikipedia list of Dickinson’s poems (HERE), and the number is 143.
Of course, Orr’s Foreword is not just about the objective count of Dickinson’s poems that begin with “I,” but it really focuses on how a reader identifies with a poem’s speaker when the pronoun “I” is used.
Orr said, “Paradoxically, in the lyric this pronoun of self functions inclusively, rather than exclusively. The reader is invited to identify with the poem’s speaker for the brief, intensified moment of the poem’s unfolding,” and later he mentioned Dickinson’s letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson where she stipulated, “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse—it does not mean—me—but a supposed person.”
Just FYI: I discussed that very missive in a recent post dealing with internal rhyme, HERE.
With the use of the first person singular pronoun, Orr notes that “The reader is invited to identify with the poem’s speaker for the brief, intensified moment of the poem’s unfolding,” and he continues with examples from other poets, most notably Walt Whitman:
“Although in most poems this lyric invitation is implicit, Walt Whitman states it outright and with typical confidence in the opening lines of ‘Song of Myself,’ recognizing that all the deeper emotional and spiritual transactions of his sequence derive from it:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume, you shall assume
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."
This invocation called to mine a site I discovered several years ago, “Whitman Alabama,” “an experiment in using documentary and poetry to reveal the threads that tie us together—as people, as states, and as a nation”:
“For two years, filmmaker Jennifer Crandall has crisscrossed this deep Southern state, inviting people to look into a camera and share a part of themselves through the words of Walt Whitman. The 19th century poet’s ‘Song of Myself’ is a quintessential reflection of our American identities.”
Check it out here (IT IS WONDERFUL), HERE.
Leiter’s “Critical Companion” is HERE – and Orr’s Foreword begins on page 6 of the 465 pages.
More on all of this tomorrow – including another odd little coincidence involving the quote from Stanley Kunitz with which Orr opens his Foreword.
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