What do you make of this – a paragraph from an article by Don Skoog entitled, “Making Emily Sing: Exploring the Relationship between Poetic and Musical Time in Setting Dickinson’s Poetry to Music.”
“Lewis Turco writes, ‘Music is the most abstract of the arts because there are no conventional meanings attached to notes as there are to words. Some twentieth-century painters chose to jettison representational figures in order to approximate music, and the result was ‘abstract’ art. Similarly, if a poet strips words of their denotations and uses them for their connotations only, the poet is then writing in abstract syntax.’ Turco illustrates this idea by citing Dickinson’s ‘Bloom opon the Mountain stated.’ a poem whose meaning is so diffuse it can be likened to a Jackson Pollack painting, only in blurring watercolors instead house paint. To me, this is the essence of atonal, non-tonal, or post-tonal music as well. The traditional structural connections of key, meter, and melody have been overwritten by a larger range of pitch and rhythmical possibilities, so the concepts of rhyme and melody have been left behind.”
“Lewis Turco writes, ‘Music is the most abstract of the arts because there are no conventional meanings attached to notes as there are to words. Some twentieth-century painters chose to jettison representational figures in order to approximate music, and the result was ‘abstract’ art. Similarly, if a poet strips words of their denotations and uses them for their connotations only, the poet is then writing in abstract syntax.’ Turco illustrates this idea by citing Dickinson’s ‘Bloom opon the Mountain stated.’ a poem whose meaning is so diffuse it can be likened to a Jackson Pollack painting, only in blurring watercolors instead house paint. To me, this is the essence of atonal, non-tonal, or post-tonal music as well. The traditional structural connections of key, meter, and melody have been overwritten by a larger range of pitch and rhythmical possibilities, so the concepts of rhyme and melody have been left behind.”
 | Hmm. A few questions have surfaced for me, to be sure. First, concerning that third sentence, “Similarly, if a poet strips words of their denotations and uses them for their connotations only, the poet is then writing in abstract syntax”: Is this even possible? Is a poet able to “strip words” of their denotations and to convey connotations only? Second, is the meaning of “Bloom opon the Mountain stated” so diffuse it can be likened to a painting by Pollack? Recently, Adam DeGraff posted a fairly thorough stanza-by-stanza analysis of the poem on his blog The Prowling Bee, HERE. Does this investigation and/or your own reading of the poem suggest – Pollack? Below: A "Pollock style" sunset (I don't believe it's actually by Pollock):  |
 | Third, Dickinson’s poem is certainly symbolic, representational – though not wholly metaphorical – but are there indications she stripped the words of their denotations? Can you think of a poem so abstract as to suggest a Pollack? With this poem, I’d say I’m closer to O’Keeffe. I’m not up on contemporary poets, but for Pollack, perhaps I’d gravitate more towards Cummings? Thoughts on all of this? At the left: "Red Hills, Lake George" by Georgia O'Keeffe |
ONE FINAL NOTE: I tried to find Lewis Turco’s article where he likened Dickinson’s poem to a painting by Pollock to see if/how he elaborated his thinking . I believe I found it – except that his blog was on Typepad, and that platform “closed for business” as of September 30, 2025. Therefore, I could not access the article. Alas, I missed it by just days!
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