In April 1932, The New England Quarterly printed six “Unpublished Poems of Emily Dickinson.” The poems, which had been sent to Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Dickinson in the mid- to late-1800s, were provided to the periodical by Higginson’s daughter, Margaret Higginson Barney.
Barney, along with Frederic Ives Carpenter, a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature in the Department of English at the University of Chicago, presented the poems along with a short introduction on Dickinson. I’m not sure I’d classify their lead-in appraisal of the poet as a “glowing endorsement” but more a rating of rather muted radiance.
Ouch! As luminance goes, Barney & Carpenter’s opening statement set the stage with a rather dim spotlight by alluding to a writer’s “experimental or imperfect work.” They then proceeded with mention of “carelessness of metre…incompletion of rhyme…abruptness…(and) anacoluthon” (sentence construction in which the expected grammatical sequence is absent). The two then burnish (with heavy emphasis on the “burn”) their glare of literary obstacles with the gravest offense of all, “the absence of apparent sense.” Ouch, part deux!
Barney and Carpenter assert that Dickinson’s published works have “sometimes been praised for their studied carelessness” – contending that such issues with her poetry “have seemed too excellent to be the result of spontaneous self-expression.” Not so, they say, with the previously unpublished “less perfect” poems. Ouch, thrice!
Barney and Carpenter suggest that these six poems were not selected for the early, posthumous publications of Dickinson’s poetry because they are “unsuccessful in so far as formal perfection is concerned.” However, they presented the poems “now” (i.e., in 1932) because “the very quality of their imperfection reveals something of the method of Emily Dickinson, the poet” – although they do not discuss what that “something” is nor do they include variants considered by Dickinson for individual words or lines (i.e., “something” that might actually reveal “something” about her writing process).
The poems failed, the two asserted, “not through lack of inspiration, but through lack of art.”
Quite a back-handed compliment, no?
That last statement called to mind episode 23 of the third season of “I Love Lucy,” “Lucy Writes a Novel.” In that installment, Lucy pens her great-American novel, “Real Gone with the Wind,” and hilarity ensues. Ricky, Fred and Ethel tear up the manuscript after secretly reading what she has written about them, but then learn a publishing firm might be interested in the work. They piece together the ripped pages, and Lucy stays up all night re-typing her magnum opus – only to discover later that the editor hopes to publish it in a how-to textbook on writing, in a section called "Don't Let This Happen to You!”
Barney, along with Frederic Ives Carpenter, a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature in the Department of English at the University of Chicago, presented the poems along with a short introduction on Dickinson. I’m not sure I’d classify their lead-in appraisal of the poet as a “glowing endorsement” but more a rating of rather muted radiance.
Ouch! As luminance goes, Barney & Carpenter’s opening statement set the stage with a rather dim spotlight by alluding to a writer’s “experimental or imperfect work.” They then proceeded with mention of “carelessness of metre…incompletion of rhyme…abruptness…(and) anacoluthon” (sentence construction in which the expected grammatical sequence is absent). The two then burnish (with heavy emphasis on the “burn”) their glare of literary obstacles with the gravest offense of all, “the absence of apparent sense.” Ouch, part deux!
Barney and Carpenter assert that Dickinson’s published works have “sometimes been praised for their studied carelessness” – contending that such issues with her poetry “have seemed too excellent to be the result of spontaneous self-expression.” Not so, they say, with the previously unpublished “less perfect” poems. Ouch, thrice!
Barney and Carpenter suggest that these six poems were not selected for the early, posthumous publications of Dickinson’s poetry because they are “unsuccessful in so far as formal perfection is concerned.” However, they presented the poems “now” (i.e., in 1932) because “the very quality of their imperfection reveals something of the method of Emily Dickinson, the poet” – although they do not discuss what that “something” is nor do they include variants considered by Dickinson for individual words or lines (i.e., “something” that might actually reveal “something” about her writing process).
The poems failed, the two asserted, “not through lack of inspiration, but through lack of art.”
Quite a back-handed compliment, no?
That last statement called to mind episode 23 of the third season of “I Love Lucy,” “Lucy Writes a Novel.” In that installment, Lucy pens her great-American novel, “Real Gone with the Wind,” and hilarity ensues. Ricky, Fred and Ethel tear up the manuscript after secretly reading what she has written about them, but then learn a publishing firm might be interested in the work. They piece together the ripped pages, and Lucy stays up all night re-typing her magnum opus – only to discover later that the editor hopes to publish it in a how-to textbook on writing, in a section called "Don't Let This Happen to You!”
By the way, believing she had written a best seller, Lucy planned a sequel to her novel – “Sugar Cane Mutiny.”
Below: The article from "The New England Quarterly"
Below: The article from "The New England Quarterly"
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