"New Poems" of Emily DickinsonAuthor(s): John Tyree FainSource: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Feb., 1953), pp. 112-113Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2909700 .

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112 MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, FEBRUARY, 1953

who strives continually to break out of his loneliness, refusing fellowship to a likeness of himself.

Ulysses was published in 1922; "Grace " was written before 1906. If the M'Coy-Bloom parallel is more than accidental-and it seems to be-then it helps to date Joyce's fascination with the gigantic figure of Bloom.

MARVIN MAGALANER The City College of New York

"NEW POEMS" OF EMILY DICKINSON

One of the fascinating problems that should be cleared up in the new edition I of Emily Dickinson's works is the exact relation of the poems to the letters. Whicher says that " some of the pieces included in her Poems were, in fact, bits of letters written as prose." 2 One of these " bits " appears first as follows as part of a letter written in 1872: " Thank you for the passage. How long to live the truth is! A wvord is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day." 3 It might be said that the first editors were justified in making a poem out of the last part of this passage because the writer obviously intended that part as a poem. But dozens of new poems of Emily Dickinson could be found in this manner in the letters. Here are a few prose passages that fall into characteristic verse patterns and that perhaps have as much justification as poems as the famous one just quoted.

"Then will I not repine/ knowing that bird of mine,/ though flown,/ learneth beyond the sea/ melody new for me,/ and will return." (Letter of 1853, p. 162)

" Affection is like bread,/ unnoticed till we starve,/ and then we dream of it,/ and sing of it,/ and paint it,/ when every urchin in the street/ has more than he can eat." (Letter of 1874, p. 276)

". . . could we see all we hope,/ or hear the whole we fear/ told tranquil, like another tale,/ there would be madness near." (Letter of 1874, p. 278)

1 See announcement by the editor, Thomas H. Johnson, New York Times Book Review, August 20, 1950, p. 2.

2 George F. Whicher, This Was a Poet, A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson (New York, 1939), p. 144.

-' Mable Loomis Todd, The Letters of Emily Dickinson (Boston, 1894), p. 269. This passage, beginning with " A word is dead " (No. LXXXIX,

Poems of Emily Dickinson, Boston, 1937, p. 42), was first published as a poem in the 1896 edition of the poems.

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"NEW POEMS " OF EMILY DICKINSON 113

"The slips of the last rose/ of summer repose/ in kindred soil/ with waning bees for mates./ iHow softly summer shuts,/ without the creaking of a door,/ abroad for evermore." (Letter of 1880, p. 286)

If such " poems " occur in the prose of Emily Dickinson's letters, it is inaccurate to say, with Wells, " The prose letters to friends are in relatively grey, everyday tones, against which the lyrical letters to posterity stand out in flaming contrast." 4 Whicher is closer to the truth when he speaks of "the probably unconscious verse" embedded in the prose (p. 178).5 Of this tendency to write verse instead of prose Johnson speaks as follows: " As Emily matured she was unable to write a letter without breaking into song. Letters that start out as prose shape themselves into epigrammatic stanzas. Not one of her later letters was strictly 'prose."' While Johnson's statement is true, he seems to think of the tendency as a stylistic development of the poet's maturity, the implication being that her early letters do not show such a tendency. There is a contrast between the early and later letters, a contrast noted by Mrs. Todd as between "the diffuseness of girlhood and the brilliant senten- tiousness of late middle life " (p. vii). But the tendency to versify in prose is there from beginning to end.

Since the passages already quoted were selected because of their poetic quality, one more metrical, rhymed excerpt may be set down in order to show that some of these " poems " have little if any artistic value. The following passage is from a letter written to Emily's brother Austin before his visit home in the fall of 1851. It is difficult indeed here to assume the poet's unawareness of the pattern.

'. . . there is another sky,/ ever serene and fair,/ and there is another sunshine,/ though it be darkness there;/ never mind faded forests, Austin,/ never mind silent fields-/ here is a little forest,/ whose leaf is ever green; / here is a brighter garden,/ where not a frost has been; / in its unfading flowers/ I hear the bright bee hum;/ prithee, my brother,/ into my garden come! " (p. 97)

JOHN TYREE FAIN University of Florida

4 Henry W. Wells, Introduction to Emily Dickinson (Chicago, 1947), p. 15.

6 On the poetic quality of Emily Dickinson's prose see also a note by Milton Hindus, Kenyon Review, ii (1940), 88-91.

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