Idyl Thoughts

Just days ago, I learned that Mabel Loomis Todd’s father, Eben Jenks Loomis, helped edit at least one of Dickinson’s poems for the first posthumous publications of her work. I wrote about it HERE.  I then investigated Loomis himself and discovered that, above and beyond his work as an astronomer (or whatever it was he did in the field), he also wrote poetry.

“There are eddies from time to time in the current of duty which permit the mind to range out into a field of thought quite about from everyday routine,” Loomis wrote in the introduction to his book “A Sunset Idyl and Other Poems” – and it was during these moments, these “quiet intervals,” where he found the time to dabble in the composition of poesy. 

His book was published in 1903, and he dedicated it to his wife Mary in honor of “the fiftieth year of our wedded life.”  You can view the entire book, HERE. I took a look at one of his poems, the eponymous work, “A Sunset Idyl,” and I wasn’t surprised at all by what I read.  

The first two lines of the work alone called to mind a post I'd published last December (HERE).  At that time, I was reviewing a handful of poems by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the very gentleman who, for the Belle of Amherst, predicted “oblivion.”  In my post I acknowledged this:

“I suppose I’ve been a bit harsh with my reviews of his poems – they’re not bad – but they are certainly what I expected, outdated verse with grandiloquent, pretentious language. Aldrich, like many poets from the 19th century, suffered from what we in the industry call OVP, or Overambitious Versification Pathosis, sometimes referred to as ‘fancy pants syndrome.’”
Now, six months later, I read just two lines of Loomis’ “A Sunset Idyl,” and there, as plain as the drifting clouds athwart the hills, I detected Overambitious Versification Pathosis” (OVP).

All day the drifting clouds had trailed along
Their gray, cool wreaths of mist athwart the hills
 
I experienced several allergic reactions:  I rolled my eyes. I sighed noticeably. I fidgeted. To lessen these effects, I took a cleansing breath and read on (I won't lie; I also used some smelling salts to control a mild bout of lipothymia).
 
The next four lines of Loomis’ work reminded me of yet another post I had published about five months ago, one about a poem written by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (HERE). In a letter to Mabel Loomis Todd, Higginson reflected upon his own seven-stanza, twenty-eight-line poem entitled “Decoration” and noted that Dickinson, after reading his poem, had written a similar but much briefer work. Higginson confessed, “It is the condensed essence of that & so far finer.”
 
[Just FYI: Dickinson’s "far finer" poem to which he referred was “Lay this laurel on the one.”]
 
I don’t mean to be persnickety, but – well, yes, maybe I do -- but many of Loomis’ lines seemed like text-book examples of 19th century long-winded poetry and many of his images evoked similarly-themed works by Dickinson that – in Higginson’s words – were “so far finer.”

Lines 3 through 6 from Loomis’ “A Sunset Idyl,” for example, called to mind Dickinson’s “The skies can’t keep their secret," shown at the right.

​From Eben Jenks Loomis' "A Sunset Idyl":

All day the gentle rain with whispering voice
Had seemed to tell some secret of the clouds,
And the hushed earth had listened all day long
To catch the story from the sky-born rain.

Lines 7 through 12 from Loomis called to mind various thunderstorm poems by Dickinson; one example, "A Cap of Lead across the sky," is shown at the right. 

Once only waked the thunder and the wind;
In the black west a mighty cloud uprose,
And from the lurid purple of its mane
Shook down the rain and thunder to the earth,
And the quick lightning shivering through
​          the gloom
Flashed Ike a sudden meteor in the night.
 

I'm just twelve lines into this ten-and-a-half page poem, and I'm feeling lightheaded again.  Let me retire to my fainting couch to gather my thoughts.

More on "A Sunset Idyl" tomorrow. 

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