How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

Lyndall Gordon's new biography on Emily Dickinson, apparently available in England, and on kindle since February of this year, is due for June 14, 2010 print publication in the US, with author events, national review attention, a national radio campaign, online publicity [see, I am part of that net as a Dickinson scholar].

http://www.lyndallg ordon.net/

Lyndall Gordon grew up in Cape Town where she studied history and English, then nineteenth-century American literature at Columbia in New York. In 1973 she came to England through the Rhodes Trust. For many years she was a tutor and lecturer in English at Oxford where she is now Senior Research Fellow at St Hilda’s College. Each summer she participates in the Writing Seminars at Bennington College, Vermont.

The first of her biographies, Eliot's Early Years (1977), began as a student thesis. The British Academy awarded it the Rose Mary Crawshay prize. A sequel, Eliot's New Life, was published at the time of the poet’s centenary (1988). The two books were rewritten as one, T.S.Eliot: An Imperfect Life (1999), with new material collected over twenty years. Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life won the James Tait Black Memorial prize for biography (1984), and Virago brought out a revised edition. Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life (1994), winner of the Cheltenham prize for literature, has also been revised and reissued.

A memoir of three women who died young, Shared Lives (reissued by Virago), is about women's friendship going back to schooldays in the Cape Town of the fifties. The last book was Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (2005).

Lyndall is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and member of PEN. She is married to Professor of Cellular Pathology, Siamon Gordon; they live in Oxford and have two grown-up daughters.

Lyndall Gordon's new biography:

New: Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds

This story approaches Emily Dickinson by way of feuds in her family, beginning in the poet's lifetime. The feuds exploded over adultery, but came to focus on the poet herself. Rival camps claimed her legend and shot each other down over the course of three generations.

From Virago in London and Penguin in New York.

‘unforcedly and powerfully original’ – Caroline Moore, Sunday Telegraph

‘this story of the terrible fascination Dickinson exerted on her heirs is as rich as a novel by Henry James. ...Perhaps for the first time since Dickinson’s death, [this book] invites us to meet the poet head-on’ – Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Daily Telegraph

‘makes you read Dickinson again with polished eyes’ – Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

‘ takes the lid off the violent emotional life of the Dickinson family and its far-reaching effects on the poet's work... an entirely new reading of Dickinson's life with this brilliant tale of turbulence both on and off the page, a situation as intricate as any in the novels of Henry James, where the greatest force lies in what is hidden' - Claire Harman, Literary Review

‘it's a scorcher… everything about it makes me want to sing’ – literary blogger Dovegreyreader

‘gives Emily Dickinson the startling clarity of one of her own poems’ – Frances Wilson, Sunday Times

As a result, I argue once again that Dickinson scholars will
need to carefully reassess Emily Dickinson's indebtedness to
classical world literature, and in particular the European troubadour
tradition of courtly love literature in order to fully analyze and
write exegeses of her writings and make proper sense of her life's
events. Biographers should also take note that all indications are
that Gordon, like Habegger most recently before her with his book
My Wars Are Laid Away In Books, fails to come to grips with the true
identity of the Secret Master, and argues in the English tradition
of a literary persona who had no real human counterpart, a ploy for
Dickinson to ponder who drive her to strive to write erotic/passionate
poetry for the masses. No one argues she is America's premier poet,
but to argue there was no real Master is to ignore the evidence.
Dickinson's writings clearly make it evident that Samuel Bowles
was the Secret Master[see my sig file and book still available
at Amherst Books: http://www.amherstb ooks.com/ or 1-800-503-5865] .

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

My father passed last summer. He was a great lover of E.D.'s poetry. There was a volume that was always next to his bed, collected works. I remember as I was sitting alone in his apartment after he died, I picked up that volume, one I had borrowed from him in the past. One of the few books he had ever asked me to return. At his funeral service I read a few stanzas that were written in tribute to soldiers killed in the civil war

"It seems a shame to be alive
When men so great are dead ..."

Those were the first two lines. A beautiful piece of writing, that poem. Those lines will be with me forever now, until I die. Maybe my daughter will read them when I am dead and gone. Thanks for making me cry.

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Great idea for a forum post words! And adel, what amazing and touching story, I am sorry for your loss.

Among the many ways Emily Dickenson has influenced me, is that she reminds me why we write poetry. She was not known or accomplished as a poet in her lifetime. She was not recognized for her brilliance until after her death. She, like us, do it for the love and the art of poetry.

-Spence

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

My Friend, Dancinghawkie,

looks out for us, thank you DancingHawkie,
she found, Bill Murray Reading Poetry, and guess who he reads, yep
Emily: enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj_LYsvGF0E

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes by Billy Collins

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

Billy Collins

Last edited by WordSlinger 05-11-2010 at 11:41:21 PM

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

Dickinson scholars and students of Dickinson interested in
Emily's Dickinson's indebtedness to classical world literature
will find this post of possible interest.

Thomas Bulfinch was a Boston writer who published his
*The Age of Fable* in 1855. His retelling of the ancient Roman
secret love story of Cupid and Psyche is in Chapter ll. It is
noted that Emily Dickinson began manufacturing her secret love
poems shortly thereafter in 1858.

Once understood as a unifying theme, it is more easily
understood why in 1862 Emily Dickinson made the ultimate act of
dressing in white as a statement of her belief that her Master and
her would achieve immortality for eternity. In my first post, I
capitalized the main Metaphors in the Allegory of Apulius, as told by
Bulfinch in his 1855 version of the Fable, to emphasize the fact that
the allegorical metaphors were *personified* in the same manner I
conclude Emily Dickinson *personified* her Metaphors! Dickinson
scholars not schooled in the world literature classics should take
heed of the important concept of *Personification* in the poetic
arts, as I allege it is central to analyzing her poems and writing
exegeses. I assume Bulfinch to have been her primary source of the
story of the myth, although her classical dictionaries and general
reading would have offered her ample fodder, as well.

Since writing this, I have consulted my library again, at
length: and I can report that neither Ruth Miller nor Jack Capps
refers to Bulfinch's *The Age of Fable* as being in the Dickinson
library. However, Carlton Lowenberg in his *Emily Dickinson's
Textbooks*, page 35, has this entry:

Bulfinch, Thomas. *The Age of Fable; or Beauties of
Mythology*...Boston: Sanborn, Carter & Bazin, 1855(n.c.d.). DL:
Houghton #2133, a.s. "Edw. Dickinson 1856."

It is important to note that Edward Dickinson possessed a copy
of Bulfinch's *The Age of Fable* in the Homestead, autographed, and
it is cataloged as part of the Houghton Collection and it is number
2133 of the *Handlist of Books* acquisitioned from Emily Dickinson's
home. This 1856-autographed book is important to note because within
two years Emily Dickinson was manufacturing her booklets with poems
referencing the fuller version of the love story of Cupid and Psyche
as retold by Bulfinch. And, it is closer to the thematic threads of
Emily Dickinson's secret love poems than the abridged version in
Anthon's *Classical Dictionary*, which also was in the Dickinson
homestead library, but was one of the works rejected by Whicher and
Johnson. Ruth Miller pointed out that Whicher and Johnson, acting as
consultants for Houghton in the library's acquisition process,
rejected many *classical* works. Miller stated that scholars need to
consult the Houghton *Handlist*. I hereby suggest, also, Carlton
Lowenberg's *Emily Dickinson's Textbooks*.

As a result, I argue once again that Dickinson scholars will
need to carefully reassess Emily Dickinson's indebtedness to
classical world literature, and in particular the European troubadour
tradition of courtly love literature in order to fully analyze and
write exegeses of her writings and make proper sense of her life's
events. Biographers should also take note.

Poetic Videos of Emily Dickinson

Here is some cool videos produced on Emilys' Poetry

http://movingpoems.com/poet/emily-dickinson/

Quote

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RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

[In a recent post about "Observations," in which the allegations
were "under the weather" and therefore "all wet" and those in
the observation tower, aka Ivory Tower, could not see "the boats"
for "the sea"--it appears they missed this post in their
bickering and blather about their bickering and blather:
so here it is again, in the interest of Dickinson scholarship.'

I have already written, in a previous essay that the more I plow
around inside Habegger's monumental tome called My Wars Are laid Away
In Books and check over his sources, his proper conclusions, his
omissions, and erroneous conclusions, the more I am struck by something
afoot in Dickinson scholarship: yes, indeed, it WILL take four hundred
years for all this to be sorted out. Again, I am wondering out loud,
what is going on with this attack on the SAMUEL BOWLES WAS MASTER
scenario in the Emily Dickinson biography?

Did Emily Dickinson know how to spell the word cipher? Did she
ever use the word "cipher" in a poem? Or letter? Could she have
spelled it "cypher" in a poem or letter? The answer, obviously, to
any Dickinson scholars with Thomas Johnson's variorum editions of her
writings, letters and poems, to all those cypher/cipher questions is a
resounding yes!!! And she began when she first met Samuel Bowles, by
all accounts, when she was a teen and coming of age as a young adult!
Let us begin, with Emily Dickinson, cryptologist, on:

"cypher/cipher/ciphers/cypherer/cypherless/ciphering"!

Poem 269 (Johnson) was written by Emily Dickinson and
manufactured into booklets 15 and 18, circa 1861-63. Emily
Dickinson placed them into a series of her love letters to the
world, and made it explicit the "Master" was _not_ Jesus, and
yet the poem clearly is about her Secret "Sir/Master:"

Bound a Trouble--and Lives will bear it--
Circumscription--enables Wo--
Still to anticipate--Were no limit--
Who were sufficient to Misery?

State it the Ages--to a cipher--
And it will ache--contented on--
Sing, at it's pain, as any Workman--
Notching the fall of the Even Sun--

--Emily Dickinson

Well, some students of Dickinson would have us all believe that
Emily Dickinson was not into cryptology, when in fact the mathematics
and symbolism of her poems of 1862 match completely and irrevocably
the history of her biography.

Well: Sum, A Blast: SAM B!

"Still--State--Sing--Sun--Ages--And--Misery--Bound" spells SAM B.

Now, Dickinsonians, Emily Dickinson did this to you all, and
made it "cipher" clear: Why? Because her Master and her, their
"Lives" were "Bound a Trouble," that's why. Because Emily Dickinson
decided, as a traditional classicist poet, to "State it the Ages--to
a cipher--": that's why. Because although "it will ache--contented
on": that's why. Because "Sing, at it's pain, as any Workman--":
that's why.

Well, in fact, circa 1851, when Emily Dickinson was a teen,
she wrote Emily Fowler, one of her SECRET CODE UT's. UNSEEN TRAP was
a secret club of the Amherst Academy girls, who used ciphering and
encoding as a means of secret communication, to spy on the boys, and
tell each other who was going out with who, who was cheating on who,
and all that good clandestine girl stuff. Well, Emily Dickinson also
used the same SECRET CODE stuff with the boys, and with boy friends.

OK, let's get down with the "Poems As Gems Or Flowers":

So, to recapitulate: the Habegger-Mitchell review in the current
issue of the EDIS Bulletin of My Wars, wants Dickinsonians to throw out
Sewall's Life and replace it with Habegger's My Wars! Now, wait just
a minute! At least, at the very least, Sewall did NOT take sides on
the Master question. But Habegger clearly throws out Samuel Bowles and
repositions that old canard that Madame Bianchi dragged across the WAY
to Emily Dickinson's heart, and an understanding of her Secret Love
writings: prose and poetry. So, on to the FACTS!

Habegger on page 320 of My Wars discusses Emily Dickinson's letter
to Henry Emmons, cites Aurelia Scott's famous take on it, and then with
characteristic misunderstanding dismisses the monumental importance of
the SECRET CODE of the American bard. Habegger wrote, "There is no
sound basis for reading the first letters of pearl, onyx, and emerald
as a coded reference to Poe, who had no provable impact on Dickinson."

Curiouser and curiouser are Habegger and Habegger-Mitchell in
showing severe lapses of judgement when it comes to the reading of
Emily Dickinson. Vendler of Harvard pointed this out in her review
of My Wars. Habegger is a James scholar, and yet apparently missed
the FACT that Thomas W. Higginson gifted Emily Dickinson a copy of his
book Short Studies of American Authors, which contained as noted by
Johnson in his footnote to Letter 622, "brief critical sketches of
Hawthore, Poe, Thoreau, Howells, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Henry James."

Signing herself "Your Scholar," and including cryptic references
to works Higginson had reviewed in his book, Johnson notes, "The
allusion to Lowell's 'Sweet Despair' in his 'Slipper Hymn' must surely
have mystified Higginson as it perhaps was intended to do." Take note
of Johnson's detailed footnote to Letter 622. Indeed, as went
Higginson, who rarely understood Emily Dickinson, apparently so goes
Habegger, and Mitchell. History will record that scholars who cannot
equal Dickinson for her erudite scholarship should, for the most part,
avoid her. It takes a cryptologic mind to understand a cryptologic
mind. The OSS of WWII, to which Jack Olsen and Al Zuckerman were
active members, as I recall its history, after the war became the CIA,
if I am not mistaken. And the generals would never have put a fourth
grader in charge of decoding the ENIGMA machines of WWII crypto work!
If you haven't got a SECRET CLEARANCE and understand cryptology, stay
out of the KRYPTO ROOM! Trust me on this.

Emily Dickinson, in Letter 622, to Higginson, December 1879,
wrote, "Had I tried before reading your Gift, to thank you, it had
perhaps been possible, but I waited and now it disables my Lips...Your
Scholar--" What a cryptic statement! And to make matters worse, for
poor unsuspecting Higginson, in the text mentioning the authors he
had reviewed, she wrote, ""Of Poe, I know too little to think--
Hawthorne appalls, entices--Mrs Jackson soars to your estimate lawfully
as a Bird, but of Howells and James, one hesitates...though fair as
Lowell's 'Sweet Despair' in the Slipper Hymn."

Obviously, Habegger, a James scholar, missed noting this letter,
inasmuch as he wrote, page 320, "There is no sound basis for reading
the first letters of pearl, onyx, and emerald as a coded reference to
Poe, who had no provable impact on Dickinson." Hey, she read all the
magazines, newspapers, and knew how to SPELL his name, and even read
Higginson's "critical sketch" of Poe!

Obviously, Habegger has done with Dickinson scholar Aurelia Scott
on the cryptology of Letter 171 as he has done with Dickinson scholar
Bill Arnold on the same cryptology, and as he did in dismissing
SAMUEL BOWLES AS MASTER in his biography! He has skated right on by,
past Aurelia Scott and Bill Arnold! Habegger, curiously, ignored
published Dickinson scholarship, extant in the Modern Language
Association International Bibliographical Index! C'est la vie!!!

In my book Emily Dickinson Secret Love, in a chapter entitled
"Sub Rosa: Unraveling the Myth and Mystery" of Emily Dickinson I
discussed in particular Letter 171 (Johnson) from her to Henry Emmons,
a young boyfriend of 1854. It is the KEY SECRET CODE letter of a
series of letters, and intersted scholars, whether Dickinson or
cryptologic, should consult Letters 119, 120, 121, 136, 138, 150, 151,
155, 162, 163, 164, 168, 169, culminating in Letter 171. Again, the
brilliance of Thomas Johnson, as a Dickinson scholar noted for
compiling the poems and the letters in variorum editions, also
demonstrated a cryptological mind of sufficient perspicacity and
perspicuity to understand and acknowledge the truth of the matter;
and that was, that Emily Dickinson was a cryptologist! Consult
Johnson's footnote to Poem 171, and note that he includes the
telling conclusion to an essay by Emmons: "published in the Amherst
Collegiate Magazine for July 1854, entitled 'The Words of Rock
Rimmon,'' gifted to Dickinson; the Aurelia Scott interpretation which
Habegger trashes as nonsense; and even gives us these lines from
Emmons:

"And I arose and looked forth
upon the broad plain with a strange
earnestness thrilling in my heart.
The golden morning's open flowings,
Did sway the trees in murmurous bowings,
In metric chant of blessed poems."

Let's recapitulate Emily Dickinson's CRYPTOLOGIC SECRET CODE from
her letters to Henry Emmons, of 1853-54, noting that this
correspondence
and its secret messaging went on for a number of years, and points to
the early usages throughout her life, begun years earlier as a member
of the SECRET SOCIETY UNSEEN TRAP CLUB of Amherst Academy days:

Letter 119, spring 1853: "Since receiving your beautiful writing
I have often desired to thank you thro' a few of my flowers [insert:
"Gems" or "Poems" in accordance with nineteenth century tradition for
calling poems either "Gems" or "Flowers," noting that books were
published by the thousands on both continents, in all classical
European languages, Italian, German, French, and English, so
designated] and arranged the fairest for you...they compare but
slightly with the immortal blossoms you kindly gathered me, but will
you please accept them--the 'Lily of the field' for the blossoms of
Paradise, and if 'tis ever mine to gather those which fade not, from
the garden we have not seen, you shall have a brighter one than I can
find today." Johnson wrote in his footnote to Letter 119, ""Although
the nature of Emmon's 'beautiful writing' is not specified, it is
possible he had lent E[mily] D[ickinson] a copy of his dissertation
'Sympathy in Action'...." It is also noted, in passing, that Emily
Dickinson refers to Heaven: that immortal Biblical world of a "House
built without hands," in her description of the writings, the gems, the
flowers, they are sending back and forth to each other in these
letters. This Dickinson scholar wonders aloud how Habegger and his
reviewer Mitchell could overlook these letters which discuss the
IMMORTAL POEMS as HEAVENLY from the GARDEN SHE HAD NOT YET SEEN, and
these same Emmons' letters which preceded Letter 171?

Letter 120 seems, except for "Atropos," relatively uncryptic!

Letter 121, spring 1853: "far brighter than my flowers [insert:
"Gems" or "Poems" in accordance with nineteenth century tradition for
calling poems either "Gems" or "Flowers," noting that books were
published by the thousands on both continents, in all classical
European languages, Italian, German, French, and English, so
designated]"..."I _lend_ you the little manuscript." Johnson's
footnote reads, in part, "There is no clue to the nature of the
manuscript which E[mily] D[ickinson] lent Emmons. Since the friendship
of the two was based on a shared interest in ltierature, one may
surmise that she loaned him a gathering of her own poems."

Letter 136, autumn 1853: "I send you the book with pleasure...
Thank you for the beautiful note--It is too full of poesy...but I will
not forget it, nor shall it fade as the leaves [nor as flowers, even
those pressed and dried, because she IS talking about "poems"
METAHORICALLY in SECRET CODE as "gems" or "flowers"!], tho' like them
gold and crimson--[not forgetting these are the bold FALL colors: it
was Autumn in Amherst].

Letter 138, late 1853: brief and cryptic! Signed "E.E.D." in the
telling manner of the great SECRET LOVE SONNETEER: "E.B.B."

Letter 150, early January 1854: "Please recollect if you will two
little volumes of mine which I thought Emily lent you--" Writings, and
not earthly gems or flowers, from her to him, and mentioned anon!

Letter 151, early January 1854: "please not regret the little
mishap of last evening [Emily and Vinnie had been sleigh riding with a
cousin, and Henry Emmons]...I quite forgot Mr Saxe [as in the later
cryptic and anonymous authorship, SAXE HOLM stories, attributed to
Emily Dickinson for their content by Samuel Bowles, initially; and
also, as a well-known poet whose book of poems might have been
misappropriated by the sisters or left in the sleigh accidently!]...
Will you please receive these blossoms [aka "gems" or "poems"]."

Letter 155, 17 February 1854:

"Please, Sir, to let me
be a _Valentine_ to Thee!"

Johnson's footnote notes the uniqueness of this "poem" and not
"flower" to Emmons.

Letter 162, about 1854: "I look in my casket and miss a pearl--I
fear you intend to defraud me. Please not forget your promise to pay
'mine own, with usury.'" Johnson notes in his footnote, "The first
sentence of the letter may be a reminder that Emmons still has not
returned the book which E[mily] D[ickinson] lent him (see Letter no
150)." Indeed, now, Emily Dickinson has shifted her SECRET CODE from
poems as "flowers" to poems as "gems:" specifically, "pearl" is a
SECRET CODE WORD for "poem" and none should be surprised by the famous
"breast fit for pearls" poem which has a provenance from the Samuel
Bowles collection to Amherst College Special Collections and the
conclusion is obvious: the "breast fit for poems"! Hardly, as sexual
as some would have it!!!!!!!

Letter 163, May 1854? [Johnson's question mark]: "I said I should
send some flowers [poems] this week."

Letter 164, May 1854? [Johnson]: "Receive us [poems]."

Letters 168 and 169, 8 August, and August, respectively, 1854:
content indicates Emmons and girlfriend were the subject of these
letters.

Letter 171, 18 August 1854: this is Emily Dickinson's PIECE DE
RESISTANCE of CRYPTOLOGIC SECRET CODE endeavoring!!! Future Dickinson
scholars and biographer are forewarned to carefully comb the
Dickinson-Emmons correspondence for the not-so cryptic usages of
"Gems" and "Flowers" as substitutes for the word "Poems" as it was
commonplace in the nineteenth century, as mentioned repeatedly in
this message and other messages I have delivered up over the years,
and in my book Emily Dickinson's Secret Love, especially pages 56 and
57. Here is the full letter, as it appeared on the page:

18 August
Friday Evening

I find it Friend--I read
it--I stop to thank you
for it, Just as the world
is still--I thank you for them
all--the pearl, and
then the onyx, and then
the emerald stone--
My crown indeed! I do
not fear the King, attired
in this grandeur.
Please send me gems
again--I have a flower--
It looks like them and
for its bright resemblances
receive it...
[Emily Dickinson then quotes the last lines
of Emmons essay quoted above, ending, in part,
with the SECRET CODE CRYPTOLOGIC IDENTIFIER
that by "Gems" and "Flowers" she meant "Poems"
and not "Poe" as suspected by Aurelia Scott
and rejected by Habegger, who then refused to
look at the MLA Bib Indexs evidence further]:
"in metric chant
of blessed poems."

Thomas Johnson made note in his footnote to this letter, "Before
leaving Amherst, Emmons send a farewell gift to E[mily] D[ickinson],
probably a book of poems. An interpretation is offered by Aurelia G.
Scott in NEQ XVI (December 1943) 627-628, in which the writer points
out that the initial letters of pearl, onyx, and emerald spell 'Poe.'"

In my book Emily Dickinson's Secret Love, I go on to say--and
apparently Habegger and Habegger-Mitchell did not consult the Modern
Language Association International Bibliography Index for "Dickinson,"
1998--on page 57:

"Scott went on to say [in her NEQ essay], 'It was not uncommon
custom to make a gift of a ring set with gems, in which the first
letters of the names of the jewels employed spelled a name. So, for
example, Goethe presented to Rosette Stadel a ring with seven gems
and wrote on the slip which accompanied it:

Rubin
Opal
Saphir
Emeraude
Tturckis
Topas
Emeraude'

Indeed, the scholars are correct to assume Miss Emily, an Amherst
Academy member of the 'secret' club called 'UT' in which all the girls
employed 'coded' communication--not only among themselves but with the
boys--was sending Emmons a cryptic message. But I believe they have
gotten the message wrong.

Emmons had published in the Amherst Collegiate Magazine of July
1854 an essay which concluded with some lines of poetry. Miss Emily
was not thanking him for a book by Poe but for 'his' own words which
Miss Emily had read. The P of pearl and the O of onyx and the EM of
emerald and the S of stone taken together spell "P O E M S" and is
the very last word of Emmons' essay. She thanked him for his 'gems'
and asked that he receive her 'flower' which is an often coded word
she used for 'poem' or message which also might include an esoteric
anagram or two.'"

As a cryptologist, and former English professor of world
literature classics, I am all the more impressed with her
accomplishment of a CRYPTOLOGIC SECRET CODE in letter 171, inasmuch as
she employs both an ACROSTIC and ANAGRAM cryptologic methodology, in
using acrostically the "P O E [ ? ] S" of the FIRST LETTERS and then
using anagrammatically the M to fill in the word in combination with E:
"EM"! Cute, huh? Get it: "EM"???????

Thus, Emily Dickinson was into ADVANCED LEVELS OF CRYPTOLOGIC
SECRET CODE making! And, as Goethe, and others before her, she used
it to encode "NAMES" such as "SAM B" and "EM"!!!!!!!

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

OK: where were we Dickinsonians?

OH: we were still on square one: love

Count them: one, two, three ! ! !

Yes, yes, yes: Emily Dickinson had three Masters.

One Master died in 1850 and another she did not communicate with
until 1862.

Thus, it is not hard to figure out that the other Master who was
the Secret Love Master was the one who went to Sea and "left the
Land" just days before she communicated with that third Master.

There were three, count them, one, two, three masters in the life
of Emily Dickinson ! ! !

In Letter 261 (Johnson) written by Emily Dickinson on 25 April 1862
she clearly identified the IDENTITY of the Secret Love Master of The
Masters ! ! ! She wrote, "When a little Girl, I had a friend, who
taught me Immortality--but venturing too near, himself--he never
returned--Soon after, my Tutor died...Then I found one more--but not
contented I be his scholar--so he left the Land."

Her first Tutor gave the "Master Oration" in Amherst when she was
in her teens, as she said "a little Girl." She was his Tutor, he
her "Master/Teacher." He was principal of Amherst Academy between
September 1846 and June of 1847 when Emily Dickinson was sweet
sixteen and impressionable enough to be greatly impressed with a
masterful teacher. Every Dickinson scholar worth their salt knows
who this first Master was !

Her second Tutor was Samuel Bowles, and she signed her "Marchioness"
letter to him as Her "Master/Tutor" in the symbolism of Dickens' tale
of "Dick Swiveller" and the story of the teacher of the servant girl
who saved his life. Indeed, this second "Master/Tutor" was "not
contented [she] be his scholar--so he left the Land" in 1862, the
year after she saved his life, and he ventured onto the Blue Sea and
went to Europe ! ! !

Her third Tutor was Higginson, and she signed herself as "Your Scholar"
and addressed him as "Master" as she sought another teacher in her
quest for developing her writing skills ! !

However, the only one Master of The Masters who inspired the "Master"
letters, inasmuch as her first "Master/Tutor" died in 1850, was the
second of the three, Samuel Bowles ! ! !

In 1998 I wrote, "Lady in white ship-wrecked at sea, Sam swam away, 1862,"
page 143 of my book *Emily Dickinson's Secret Love*: her biography is fraught
with
wrong interpretations of 'who' was 'Master."...In September, 1861, Sam Bowles
became "deathly" ill and took his cure for a month or more in Northampton,
next door to Amherst. In Letter 241, of October 1861, she wrote Sam
"'Swiveller'
may be sure of the 'marchioness.'" In Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop
it
was the "small servant" girl of fourteen who Dick Swiveller became indebted to,
and finally married. This last fact should not escape us. When Dick was
"deathly"
ill, it was she, the Marchioness, who sat by his bedside a full month and nursed
him
back to health. Obviously, letter 241 indicates Emily Dickinson was there for
Sam Bowles in Northampton. Forever grateful, Dick Swiveller said "we'll make a
scholar of the poor marchioness yet!" Dick Swiveller intervened and educated
her
into a "scholar" and schooled her a half-dozen years in the social graces, so by
nineteen she was "good-looking, clever, and good-humored." We know for fact
Sam Bowles was at the Dickinson Homestead in 1849 for tea when she was nineteen.
Thus, in the Dickens' tale, Dick Swiveller realized that the "young lady saving
up for
him after all" the years had made herself worthy, and he married her. End of
tale.
In real life, Emily Dickinson was telling Sam that he could "be sure" of her.
Precisely,
she meant he could be sure of her love and devotion, forever.

In 1862, despite her pleading for him to stay in America, Sam Bowles sailed to
Europe
for his health. Within the week, she wrote Higginson, the Boston editor,
calling herself
"Your scholar." Referring to the sickness of Sam Bowles, who she had feared
would die,
she wrote, "I had a terror--since September." Devoted to Sam as the Marchioness
was
to Dick, Emily Dickinson began to dress in white and refused the company of men.
Her hope was that in the "spirit" of the tale, someday they might marry in real
life.
If not, they were wedded in *spirit.* Forevermore.

No doubt, the Master letters to a "deathly" ill Master were destined for Sam
Bowles!

As an author of letters, letter-poems and poems, already published
in the Springfield Daily Republican, Emily Dickinson explicated her
"EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR" in her delineation of her DEFINITION
of the relationship: "Master-Tutor." She had had two previously, and
was seeking the third !! The second was The Master of The Masters who
inspired circa one thousand Secret Love poems. And SHE was THE Tutor
to ALL three, as her biography CLEARLY proves from the primary
documents available to ALL Dickinson scholars.

Indeed! Emily Dickinson did NOT write poems in a closet intended
for mental imaginings of students of Dickinson. Let us Dickinsonians
accept the TRUTH that she wrote her writings to RECORD herself in
her world, and her poems were an expression of her love of life, and
her love of The Master of The Masters!

As said, there are many Masters, but in the life of Emily Dickinson
there was only ONE Master named Samuel Bowles who inspired circa
one thousand Secret Love poems and myriad letters and letter-poems
addressed DIRECTLY to him in which she identified herself as HIS
Queen, his Lily, his Rose!

The word Master carries many connotations in this world, as it did
in the nineteenth century: and in the case of Emily Dickinson it is
IMPOSSIBLE to execute viable exegeses of her opus of poems without
understanding her biography and how much she wrote autobiographically.
NO DOUBT her circa one thousand letters are autobiographical, and
because so many poems we ponder were IN FACT letter-poems to named
recipients, ESPECIALLY the MASTER, no credible exegegis can masquerade
as legitimate without SPECIFIC reference to her biography.

Isn't it interesting that Dickinsonians who are scholars are the ones
who read these posts to EmMail and the students of Dickinson who are
part of the olde [and I mean olde ] EMWEB clique still only write
about THEMSELVES and offer up nothing about Emily Dickinson. And the
reason IS, they have nothing to say of value, inasmuch as they are not
scholars nor are they truly students of DICKINSON. They are mere olde
EMWEBBERS who wish to muddy already muddled waters. They want to READ
their OWN words, and not words ABOUT Emily Dickinson.

Let US Dickinsonians make this absolutely clear: there will always
be such imposters who want to talk about themselves and not about
Dickinson. But EmMail is for anyone who truly wishes to post about
Emily Dickinson, and her writings, and her biography. So:

READ ON TO THE BITTER END about Emily Dickinson, which some
EMWEBBERS do not wish for you to do, as they wish the TRUTH about
Emily Dickinson and her Master who inspired circa one thousand
Secret Love poems not to be known!

Note folks: that's MORE than HALF of Emily Dickinson's entire
production, and TWICE the total output of most poets, including
Robert Frost!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Dickinson scholarship, the war rages on between those who would
READ the writings Emily Dickinson wrote, and those who READ only
their own musings thereupon. Emily Dickinson wrote poems as part
of a composite opus intended to be READ as an artful expression of
her exact autobiographical conception as an author of an allegorical
work in which she embedded her Master and herself, as King and Queen,
as Bee and Rose, as Bird and Nest. Let there be NO DOUBT, she was
a SYMBOLIST poet in the tradition of the troubadour poets of classical
European literature.

Poem 151 (Johnson) speaks to the question plainly for those with eyes
to READ and minds to THINK about her EXACT words. They are crystal
CLEAR about her Secret Love affair in circa one thousand love poems,
and evident in her circa one thousand letters and letter-poems to
NAMED recipients. The latter are compiled also by Johnson into three
volumes, and recent scholarship amplifies upon them but her writings
in toto need to be read not piecemeal but as an opus.

Know, also, Dickinsonians, that students of Dickinson generally do
not read her writings but do ponder a couple dozen well-known poems,
and little else. They care only about their own mental dazzles and
regard the "exact conception of the author" which ruled the mind and
pen of Emily Dickinson as irrelevant. Just so you KNOW!

Now WE know!

We know that when Emily Dickinson wrote Poem 35 (Johnson) in 1858
and Samuel Bowles published it in his Springfield Daily Republican
that in her telling line, "Nobody knows this little Rose," there
was a modicum of TRUTH in the statement.

But: NOW we KNOW!!

Dickinsonians know all about the "Rose" and the "Bee"--all about
Emily Dickinson and Samuel Bowles! That is, Dickinsonians who can
read and comprehend her biography KNOW!!!

Beginning some time in 1857, Emily Dickinson spent her daily life
embedding into her autobiographical writings, ipso facto--ALL her
letters, poems and letter-poems--her "biography."

Clearly, the outpouring of autobiographical details about her
Secret Love affair in circa one thousand love poems is self-evident
to all Dickinsonians with the collected works at hand and the eyes to
read with COMPREHENSION. Her circa one thousand letters offer an
eyeful, or two, as well Often, poems, letter-poems and letters
written at the SAMe time offer the BEST clues to the only exegeses
which make COMPLETE sense: an AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL interpretation of her
CANON of writings.

The myriad Sir, Sire, Master, He, Him, His referents clearly identify
ALL HER WRITINGS as one and the same: an autobiographical immortal
Soulmate love story written for posterity, masquerading as poetry.

OK: the two-dozen most famously critiqued and well-crafted little
masterpieces, anthologized and beloved worldwide, are poems which
are first-rate and CAN stand on their own, as individual pieces,
and yet they are for the most part part-and-parcel of the grand
scheme of her passion drama like the famous LE ROMAN DE LA ROSE.
Her DREAM ALLEGORY spread out in circa one thousand Secret Love
poems is not unlike the narrative poetic French masterpiece of the
thirteenth century. Dickinson scholars understand all of this,
but students of Dickinson deficient in a knowledge of comparative
literature need to take a walk on the wild side of love which
inspired Emily Dickinson to her own modern masterpiece, her OPUS
work of of writings, as her legacy appears in her many writings.
They NEED to read LE ROMAN DE LA ROSE, just as Emily Dickinson
steeped herself in the French classics.

As a case in point:

In Master Letter 233 (Johnson) Emily Dickinson wrote "Master."

That is the way she started that communication to her Master,
and she wrote in her "exact conception of the author," to wit,
the following: "If you saw a bullet hit a Bird--and he told you
he was'nt shot--you might weep at his courtesy, but you would
certainly doubt his word."

Well, there is NO DOUBT that circa one thousand Secret Love poems,
and myriad letters and letter-poems were written to this SAMe
Master who she soon wrote "God made me--Sir--Master" and left
NO DOUBT that her MALE recipient was her one and only Master,
the one who held the LOADED GUN and SHOT her through her vulnerable
HEART with the modern LOVE BULLET rather than the mythic Cupid
arrow! She literally DIED in his arms, and yet LIVED to tell all
posterity the TRUTH of their Secret Love affair. And her METAPHORS
were uniquely her own, in this, HER, TALE of immortal SOULMATE LOVE!

Someone, somewhere, of no great consequence, once said that "the
'master' question is there, but of no great consequence."
Of course, the lie within that questionable statement is patently
false, inasmuch as these same "of no great consequence" emailers
would have you believe they can offer up any valid exegesis of the
circa one thousand Secret Love poems and myriad letters written by
Emily Dickinson to and about that same MASCULINE Master of great
and significant consequence not only in TRUTHFUL interpretations
of her poems, but elucidation of her letters via her biographical
events during her lifetime.

One wonders did Emily Dickinson write about her Secret Master in
symbols? Did she write it so scholars and students of Dickinson
would comment on her style of creating autobiographical writing?
Or did she write her poems, letters, and letter-poems so readers
would become engaged with the persona of herself and her Secret
Love, her Master, and their immortal Soulmate story?

Surely, Dickinsonians, of all readers in the world, know by
now that Emily Dickinson had an "exact conception of the
author" belief about her own writings, and expected all and
sundry to read her writings with an "exact conception of the
author" in mind.

Author Reid corresponded with Emily Dickinson's sister Lavinia,
and her words are recorded in her writings, along with the
words written by Lavinia to her. Those sterling words are
worth our undivided attention.

Is there any Dickinson scholar worth their salt who doubts that
writer Reid--who wrote nearly a century ago and personally
corresponded with Emily's sister Lavinia, who lived all those
years of her life in the Homestead with her--wrote the TRUTH
about Emily Dickinson's "EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR." What
an astounding and brilliant statement about the precision of the
autobiographical poet, whose circa one thousand Secret Love poems
have so captured the world of readers! Even to author Reid, it
was apparent by her remarks, that Emily Dickinson capured HER heart
as a reader and catapulted her to the realm of early reviewers of
the talent of America's premiere poet.

Right on, write on, read Reid!

As Dickinsonians have noted over the last several years, two,
just TWO old emweb clique members play at the game of selective
scholarship, and they play it poorly. They IGNORE vital documents
WRITTEN by Emily Dickinson's sister Lavinia--to their own peril.
No longer reasonable writers; alas, they are lost sheep in the
wilderness of mindless pettifoggery and have lost FOREVER their
credibility.

They IGNORE Dickinson scholars such as Arnold, Habeggar, Worralls,
Polly Longsworth, Richard Sewall, Theodora Ward, Higgins, Scott,
et al., and refuse to follow normal protocols of good scholarship.

Dickinsonians: students of Dickinson, especially, do NOT be swayed
by these TWO possibiliti-ites aka circumfer-ettes any longer. They
have absolutely NO CREDIBILTY in the world of Dickinson scholarship,
nor will they EVER. No, never, zilch, zip, nada !!!!!!!

Doubting Thomases among the POSSIBILITI-ites and the
CIRCUMFER-ettes should READ what Lavinia Dickinson
wrote [EFFECTively SAID] about her sister Emily Dickinson
and the latter's love of the "EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR" !

Read Reid ! Consult the EmMail archives in which I published a
complete and thorough analysis of Reid's infamous article, which
has risen like cream to the top of the Dickinson milkshake ! Drink
deeply at this well, as it is the fait accompli of the demise of
the POSSIBILITI-ites and the CIRCUMFER-ettes ! Bye-Bye to their
childish nonsense !!!!!!!

R-E-A-D R-E-I-D ! ! ! Lavinia Dickinson, sister to Emily, the
one woman on the face of the planet who KNEW the American bard,
Writer, BETTER than any other documented FEMALE writer who has
penned about her, will NOT be denied her day in court

For Dickinsonians who wish NOT to be fooled by the possibiliti-ites
NOR the circumfer-ents, or -ets, or -ettes,
or whatever they wish to call their
foolish-ness,

READ REID as in R-E-A-D R-E-I-D for the "EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE
AUTHOR" which Emily Dickinson embraced, relished and lived by in her
READ-ing and WRITE-ing and PERFORM-ing of poems ! ! !

Knowledgeable Dickinsonians who have READ Habeggar and REID, and have
READ Bill Arnold's scintillating remarks on this EXCLUSIVE subject,
KNOW that the "EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR" is de rigeur when it
comes to EXEGESES of the poems, letter-poems and letters, and the
BIOGRAPHY of Emily Dickinson, the American bard, writer ! ! ! ! !

N-O-W, and F-O-R-E-V-E-R more, and M-O-R-E !!!!!!!

Emily Dickinson had an "exact conception of the author" when
it came to exegeses of poems--of those she read, and obviously of
those she wrote--and expected others to read and interpret her own
poems with the same exactness. Her sister Lavinia was quoted as
having written of Emily Dickinson:

"Emily was herself a most charming reader. It was done with
great simplicity and naturalness, with an earnest desire to
express the exact conception of the author, without any thought
of herself, or the impression her reading was sure to make."

Now, the key buzz words appear to me to be "exact" and "conception"
and "author." So, let's have a go at an exegesis, shall we?

Apparently, sister Lavinia and cousins Fran and Loo noticed in their
travels with Emily Dickinson that she wrote poetry, and read it, as
well. And she read it well, and _in fact_, she literally gave what
we call today, "poetry readings."

Apparently, Emily Dickinson was "herself a most charming reader."
That's neat to know, seems to fit the poet I know from her biography.

Apparently, Emily Dickinson was aware that her "charming" reading
might "sure to make" an "impression" of those witnessing it. Stands
to reason, as she was _sure_ one smart and elegant lady.

Apparently, from Lavinia, Emily Dickinson "without any thought" for
herself, that is, down-playing the "impression her reading was sure
to make," gave her readings "with great simplicity and naturalness."
Now: THAT, I like. Meaning: if it was her OWN words, she let the
words speak for themselves, and if it was another's poem, she seemed
to not want her "impression" to be of importance, but again, the
WORDS of the poem! In other words: she was NOT an actress, but an
artist, not a stage personae, but a writer--of words.

Now to the kernel of the quotation by sister Lavinia, the meat of
the matter, the essence of the thought: Emily Dickinson when doing
these poetry readings, whether her OWN or another's words, had "an
earnest desire to express the exact conception of the author." In
other words: unlike MaDonna, she did NOT grab her crotch and make
herself important. Which is fine, all well and good for My Lady
of the Stage, an Actress, a Stage Personae.

But that is NOT what Emily Dickinson sought. Nor did she desire
we Dickinsonians as readers should make OURSELVES important as
readers. She did NOT say "express yourself," because she did NOT
wish to "express HERSELF" in her public readings, but wished
to "express the exact conception of the author."

Ah, yes, the kernel: the author! The exact conception of the author!

It seems self-evident from the above, if I have analyzed the quotation
properly and written the exegesis accordingly, that the author's
conception is supreme in the mind of Emily Dickinson, as writer, and
as reader. It was, and IS, important, if we are to agree with her:
which, by the way, that Dickinsonians must get to the
"EXACT"--"CONCEPTION"--"OF THE AUTHOR."

In the case of Emily Dickinson, the possibilities and circumferences
of various readers is OUT! What mattered to Emily Dickinson was that
we Dickinsonians GET DOWN, really DIG IT, get into the EXACT words she
used in each and every poem, and all en masse and in conjunction with
each other, inclusive of her biography, and anything and everything we
can put our little minds on and into, in order to understand precisely
what WAS the CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR. And in this case, it was
Emily Dickinson, and her words.

When a writer "reports" what someone says, they are quoting them. If
they didn't "say" it, then the writer CANNOT report what they said.
Journalism 101! In this case Habeggar quotes Mary Reid and Mary Reid
quotes sister Lavinia Dickinson, and cites written documents. Sorry
about that, folks, but the TRUTH hurts!

The TRUTH is that Emily Dickinson believed in the "EXACT
CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR."

Well, welcome to Emily Dickinson's WORLD OF PERSPICUITY: Poem 1455,
"Opinion is a flitting thing, / But Truth, outlasts the Sun--"

Emily Dickinson and Samuel Bowles are UP THERE, looking down and
smiling at us Dickinsonians

So: WHO was that masked man, the Master, anyway?

The Lavinia Dickinson documents which Mary Reid quotes may be
consulted by those Dickinson scholars who wished to look at them,
first hand. But we all know, what Lavinia wrote about her sister
Emily Dickinson in a letter to Mary Reid makes perfect sense
from her biography, and then too we have to take note that they
lived together all those years in the Homestead.

And not even Susan Dickinson next door could claim to know Emily
Dickinson like Lavinia!

So if sister Lavinia thOUGHT that Emily Dickinson had "an earnest
desire to express the exact conception of the author," who am I to
argue with that brilliant riposte to the possibilit-ites and the
circumferents? They ought to get a life!

Read AGAIN and AGAIN: B-I-O-G-R-A-P-H-Y !

The TRUTH of her biography IS: the masculine Master was
Samuel Bowles of Springfield.

Read: B-I-O-G-R-A-P-H-Y !

The TRUTH of the matter at hand, her biography, IS: the
female "Queen" of her King Master Samuel Bowles was,
as far as Emily Dickinson saw fit, herself!

Excuse me: read, read, READ: B-i-o-g-r-a-p-h-y !

When Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 268 (Johnson) in those 1862 days
after Master Sam Bowles went to Europe and left her in the lurch, she
was seeking her third "Master"! Not the LOVE of her life, as she had
already had THAT in SAM B. But she was seeking "My Business is
Circumference," i.e., to encompass in her life the fullness of
that around her. Her "exact conception of the author" would not
be compromised in seeking to PULL all in and write about it. No,
she sought to see all, hear all, sense all, and put her own spin
on things. But no where in this writer's "business" was she asking
the world of readers to spin their own exegeses out of false cloth.
She gave us the woven tapestry, and it was OURS to see as she,
Emily Dickinson, spun her web of intrigue in her EXACT CONCEPTION.

Emily Dickinson had an "exact conception of the author" when
it came to exegeses of poems--of those she read, and obviously of
those she wrote--and expected others to read and interpret her own
poems with the same exactness. Her sister Lavinia was quoted as
saying of Dickinson:

"Emily was herself a most charming reader. It was done with
great simplicity and naturalness, with an earnest desire to
express the exact conception of the author, without any thought
of herself, or the impression her reading was sure to make."

For emphasis, Dickinsonians note, Emily had:

"AN EARNEST DESIRE TO EXPRESS

THE EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR."

Well, Dickinsonians, it seems explicit, does it not? Emily
Dickinson believed that "the exact conception of the author" was
paramount in poetry exegeses and readings.

Of course, that means that "possibility" and "circumference"
is a flawed concept applied to her poetry, and Emily Dickinson
herself would have us read her poems, instead, NOT for the minds
of the readers but for "the exact conception of the author."

In literary criticism, some writers and scholars who were of
the school of the New Critics were _purists_ and called reading
into poems anything of the poet's life, "the biographical fallacy."
Then those same critics expanded their thinking into newer ventures
called Structuralism, and eventually, the school of Deconstruction.

But, Dickinsonians, Emily Dickinson herself would have none of
these schools of thought inasmuch as she was of the old, old school:
that poems have meaning, as the words of the poems have meaning, and
she sought "the exact conception of the author." Otherwise, why
would she refer SO OFTEN to the "Master" and "Sir" and "Sire"--the
masculine referent so OBVIOUS in her circa one thousand Secret Love
poems?

Emily Dickinson's "method for reading a poem" was as _exact_
as science. She was _not_ into circumference or possibility when
it came to an author's words, if she were to do a "reading." There
is no doubt her sister Lavinia said of her that "Emily was herself
a most charming reader. It was done with great simplicity and
naturalness, with an earnest desire to express the exact conception
of the author, without any thought of herself, or the impression her
reading was sure to make."

Who, among Dickinsonians, could argue with that? Well, these
same critics can come full circle and back to the view of Emily
Dickinson: as explicit as you can get, when it comes to poetry
readings or exegeses: "express the exact conception of the author."

Truth of the biography and how it applies to exegeses of
her autobiographical poems is the only thing which is going to solve
the mystery of what was Emily Dickinson's "exact conception of the
author."

When asked about my beliefs that the biography of Emily
Dickinson should be formed as the basis for poem interpretation,
the noted UMass-Amherst professor and Dickinson scholar David Porter
was quoted in an interview in the _Springfield Union News_ as
saying: "readers need to read what Arnold has to say and judge
for themselves."

Master Letter 233 (Johnson) was written by Emily Dickinson and
unlike poems manufactured into booklets, it is a letter-poem meant
for Samuel Bowles, signed, internally "Daisy," in ink, circa winter
1861, while Samuel Bowles, her Master, was in New York state and his
wife was delivering their child, Charles, which Emily Dickinson wanted
named Robert. Emily Dickinson, however, left it in her personal
effects after her death, thus placing it into the series of her love
letters to the world, and made it explicit by its content that the
"Master" was _not_ Jesus, and yet the letter-poem clearly is about her
Secret "Sir/Master;" you see, the love letter to her Master Samuel
Bowles, is in the Amherst College Special Collections, and of which now
I will share some very special aspects of this Master and his _Queen_
primary document of TRUTH:

Dickinsonians, we begin this thread with a quote from Habegger's
_My Wars Are Laid Away in Books_:

"The phrase 'like you,' one of many interlineated additions, makes
explicit the recipient's gender and thus stands in the way of those who
would like Master to be female. Martha Nell Smith has conducted
something of a scorched-earth attack on these two words, calling them
'redundant,' declaring the handwriting comes from a 'much different
time,' even suggesting they are a fraudulent interpolation 'by
whomever.' I have examined the manuscript and can see no basis for the
last two claims."

I whole-hearted agree with Habegger's remarks.

It is reminiscent of other claims elsewhere that certain documents
with a definitive provenance from the Bowles' family to Special
Collections Amherst College Library should somehow be seen as been
sent to Susan Gilbert Dickinson. Such claims are nonsense. Let the
experts with forensic abilities, microscopy, et al., as per
methodologies laid out in Simon Worrall's _The Poet and the Murderer_,
be the judge of those claims to the contrary of known facts. This
holding up to the light and "seeing things" and labelling Emily
Dickinson's interlineations "fraudulent" is ridiculous.

In fact, a careful and judicious reading of Master Letter 233
clearly identifies the recipient as Samuel Bowles. No doubt, all
the evidence of the biography as known of Emily Dickinson puts the
"Sir/Master" as a REAL person, named: Samuel Bowles. No one needed
to doctor a document to suggest the Master had a "beard" as the letter
Emily Dickinson wrote makes that tacitly CLEAR. What else the meaning:
paraphrased, if you had my petals, as in, I, Emily Dickinson, the
flower, Daisy, and I were you, the bearded Master, who should make the
moves, and fly up here and come to Amherst from New York, and pollenate
my blossom, and what would happen to you if the roles were reversed?
It is clear from the letter, that the Master was showing reluctance to
make the trip and visit his Secret Love.

Not only that, we have the internal evidence of the word "Sir"
at least four times, and that IS enough to warrant this Letter 233
as a document in INK in which none can doubt that her "Sir/Master"
was the same "Sir/Master" of circa one thousand Secret Love poems.
Pray tell, what IS Martha Nell Smith playing out as a scholar of
the life of Susan Gilbert Dickinson that she must seek out ghosts and
goblins where none exist? What does Habegger mean when he alleges
that Martha Nell Smith "has conducted something of a scorched-earth
attack" on this Master Letter 233?

Just as her co-author Ellen Louise Hart has published at least
one of the "Sir/Master" poems with the line with the word "Sir" in
omission! And then laid claim to that poem as possibly [that word
again!] intended for a female recipient. How is it possible that such
is considered the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help us, God? Such activities to deny Emily Dickinson her male
Master Samuel Bowles as claimant to her heart and inspiration of circa
one thousand love poems strikes this Dickinson scholar, Bill Arnold,
as outrageous, and yes, worthy of the appellation, "a scorched-earth
attack" on the "Sir/Master" scenario. When one tells the truth as a
scholar, the same rules of a court of law apply. Truth by
commission/omission is a fundamental tenet of the law. Violate either
side of the equation, and the truth test has not been met.

Martha Nell Smith and Ellen Louise Hart must answer to Habegger's
allegation. Their scholarship, as such, IS in serious question as to
its credibility, as it pertains to the "Sir/Master" aspect of the canon
of writings of Emily Dickinson.

For emphasis, Dickinsonians note, Emily had:

"AN EARNEST DESIRE TO EXPRESS

THE EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR."

Well, Dickinsonians, it seems explicit, does it not?
According to her sister Lavinia, Emily Dickinson believed that
"the exact conception of the author" was paramount in poetry
exegeses and readings.

So, what WAS her "exact conception of the author" in "Sir/Master"
Letter 233?

So, WHO was this "Sir/Master" who was a "cipher/cypher" in
"Sir/Master" Letter 233?

Well, the "EXACT" same "_your Queen_" referents in "Sir/Master"
Letter 233 and in "Sir/Master" Letter 249, also in ink, and signed
"Emily," and sent to Samuel Bowles, clearly identifies the recipient
as Samuel Bowles, her editor/Secret Love.

Dickinsonians know that Emily Dickinson's Master was
Samuel Bowles, inasmuch as all the corollary evidence supports
the fact: the biographical record clearly proves that all the
"Bee" and "Rose" and Daisy" and "Lily" referents embedded
in letters to her Master, and letter-poems to Samuel Bowles,
and circa one thousand secret love poems to her Master, with
SAM B letters in capitalized form was created by her to leave
a legacy and poetic record of this greatest of love affairs
of the nineteenth century in American literature, by the
American bard, Emily Dickinson, writer!

RE: WordSlinger Brings Emily Dickinson Today in Jamaica

Quote:

Originally Posted by WordSlinger

Oren,

Well, I'm glad to be the first to introduce you to Emily, really I'm surprised.
I hope you find her poetry fascinating..

WS



Here is a picture found from http://www.craigphillips.com.au
This is what a young Emily today would be like, you'll love it..

To Listen To What Emily Listens to Click Below, You'll love it..

http://borayoon.com/?p=205


(( This Picture Just Tickles ME, lol)))

Word, this is just the modern image I would have of Emily!!!! Thank you for giving us truthful imagary!
I have to admit, until recent college pursuits, (and OP) I didn't read much of other's works. What struck me about Emily was the response from the writing community and the solitary life she led after a great love lost...She seemed to hold fast to that forever kind of love that we all desire... only after realizing that forever love is not always perfect. My bane.

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RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

Polly Longsworth, author of a biography of Emily Dickinson's
brother's steamy Amherst affair, who was not afraid to deal with
the nitty-gritty aspects of life, including sex, delivered in her biography:
*AUSTIN AND MABEL: The Amherst Affair and Love Letters of
Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd.*

Who among the scholars and students of Dickinson quite believe
she will disappoint us in her upcoming biography?

Not I.

I have met Polly in person in Amherst, and you will not meet
a more steely-eyed level-headed shoot-from-the-hip gunslinger
of words of truth in the entire realm of writers in the world.

Sooner or later, a truthful biography will finally come to grips with
the life of Emily Dickinson as she lived it, not as some agendaed writers
supposed it. Such a truthful biography will be based on facts, and
conclusions based on those facts. Fanciful notions will become a
thing of the past. The most factual text of the biography of our
poet Emily Dickinson is by Richard Sewall and is a thousand pages
entitled *The Life of Emily Dickinson.* Enough facts are therein to
support a truthful biography but no doubt one day will be surpassed
by another, armed with new and selected facts which make a more
readable life history. Polly Longsworth was Sewall's protege.

Truth and certainty has always ruled biography, and will always rule!

That is a fair statement all scholars can agree on.

Expect Polly Longsworth to carry on Sewall's tradition, and deliver:
once again, only this time on the centerpiece of Amherst: poet and
writer Emily Dickinson, the truth of her life as she lived it.

Emily Dickinson's *Master* inspired the bulk of her poetry output,
and he cascades across her letters. So, if nearly two thousand poems
and one thousand letters have a *Master* behind them, then who he
was is a fair question: in fact, it is so central to her biography that
her biography needs a major overhaul by scholars. Of this: there
is NO question! Do Dickinsonians really think Polly Longsworth
will *skirt* the MASTER question : ) ? How can she, and deliver?

So one wonders how Polly Longsworth will deal with the telling
truth of those winter days and nights up in Emily Dickinson's
bedroom, in particular as described one winter night: in her poem
"Winter in my Room." In case you are unfamiliar with it all, it is
known as the mysterious Poem 1670 of the Johnson canon.

Poem 1670 (Johnson) is one of my top ten favorites by Emily Dickinson.
Let's refresh our minds with her poem:

Poem 1670 (Johnson), 1742 (Franklin):

In Winter in my room
I came upon a Worm
Pink lank and warm
But as he was a worm
And worms presume
Not quite with him at home
Secured him by a string
To something neighboring
And went along.

A Trifle afterward
A thing occurred
I'd not believe it if I heard
But state with creeping blood
A snake with mottles rare
Surveyed my chamber floor
In features as the worm before
But ringed with power
The very string with which
I tied him--too
When he was mean and new
That string was there--

I shrank--"How fair you are"!
Propitiation's claw--
"Afraid he hissed
Of me"?
"No Cordiality"--
He fathomed me--
Then to a Rhythm *Slim*
Secreted in his Form
As Patterns swim
Projected him.

That time I flew
Both eyes his way
Lest he pursue
Nor ever ceased to run
Till in a distant Town
Towns on from mine
I set me down
This was a dream--

--Emily Dickinson

I guess what impresses me most, as a Dickinson scholar, is the
fact IT is her most blatantly *sexual* poem. The debate *IT* has
created in Dickinson scholarship rages on. But, lest we forget, it
was created by Emily Dickinson, the American bard--Writer!

And why would she have created it if not to leave a genuine
legacy about being a normal lady, one with her awareness of the
snake in the garden of Eden, and left to defy that image she knew
would haunt her biography of the spinster nun dressed in white who
looked forlornly from an upstairs bedroom window on a world teeming
with people, sex, and normal activity in other adult bedrooms but
supposedly not hers: to have the naysayers hold court on the matter.

Trust me on this. As we journalists say: Polly Longsworth will deliver.

Probably what bothers those Dickinsonians about Poem 1670 most
is that "string" and its implications. A woman with a man on a
string is a powerful enough image, and normally not one associated
with our famous poet. But there it is around that "pink" and "lank
worm" for all its worth. My, Oh my, how that bugs Dickinsonians--a
*domineering* blatantly sexual Emily Dickinson? A woman *possessed*
by a man's "pink" and "lank worm"? A poet willing to admit and flaunt
her *sexuality* with the opposite sex? And a poet who described her
relationship *traditionally* with her feminine powers uppermost upon
the man by having him on a 'string."

And if that is not enough, God forbid! She describes how that
"pink" and "lank worm" with string attached became "A snake with
mottles rare." Whew! Enough to take one's breath away--as a reader,
of course.

But no, Emily Dickinson does not stop there. She has the "snake"
tied to her as always with that "string." Even after the "arousal"
stage: Why?

And what man in her life was dominated by this dominatrix of
"string" power as evidenced in the biographical record?

And every writer worth his/her salt KNOWS the male equivalent
is *Master*! Do not be shocked: facts have a way of paving a
path to understanding.

Maybe Polly Longswoth will have Dickinsonians finally put together
her one thousand secret love poems and myriad letters: with
a semblance of understanding. Biography has a way of doing that.

Of course, any biographer worth his salt wants to KNOW who the
"snake"-man was, and how he fit into Emily Dickinson's life? So
do Dickinsonians, scholars and students alike.

No doubt, most readers know "who" I believe that "snake"-man
was, and why: Samuel Bowles. Check out my book for a primer
on this vital question in Dickinson scholarship.

Scholars are like journalists: both must deal in what is true and
certain. In journalism it is called reporting. Reporting is separate
from commentary, which carries an element of opinion thereupon.

So: in essence, what is a report. A report is a telling of the facts:
who, what, where, when and why of people and events, anchoring
them to a historical time frame.

Then, what is a biography. A biography is a telling of the facts:
who, what, where, when and why of people and events surrounding
the central person, anchoring them to a historical time frame.

Given that: we can dismiss almost all supposed biographies which
are not factual but fraudulent supposition. It is a fraud to portray
truth and not report the facts.

What are the facts of Emily Dickinson's *Master* and why he matters
so much?

First of all, he is a he, as her pronouns throughout ALL references to him
are *masculine* without exception, in all her writings: poems and letters.

Second, he clearly in her mind as evidenced by her writings, poems and
letters, is the secret love of her life, and the secret love of her writings,
both poems and letters.

Third, scholars worldwide need to face the truth: the certainty is there,
and the evidence is clear that the *Master* was Samuel Bowles! The
evidence is certainly true that he was recipient of her love letters, and
her love poems, and he was a he, to the exclusion of a she in this matter
of who was *the Master.*

Scholarship is scholarship only if it is true and certain! Think about that
for the rest of your life if you commit to comment in the realm in any way,
shape or form.

Thus, finally, so much of what has been alleged to have been biography
about the life of Emily Dickinson must be dismissed as fraudulent. Period.

No doubt: readers of Dickinson, eventually, will get the truth and certainty.
With time, scholars will weed through the pile and separate the true grain
from the chaff.

Are YOU a Dickinson scholar, or student, who will be separated into the
grain pile,
or thrown out with the chaff?

Trust me on this. Time is on the side of truth.

As Emily Dickinson wrote, in Poem 1455, "Opinion is a flitting thing,/
But Truth, outlasts the Sun--"

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians:

Any Dickinsonian worth his/her salt knows that Emily Dickinson
wrote a letter to Samuel Bowles the year before she dressed in
white and went into seclusion: and signed it "Marchioness."

Why, you ask?

Well, it referred to the Brits, of course. You see, Emily Dickinson
KNEW her classics as did ALL people of the nineteenth century:
before the advent of radio and TV. Back then, READING THE CLASSICS
was classic! Everybody did it. Too bad, some Dickinsonians think
Emily Dickinson was a dunce and read only the comics.

Recently, the future Queen of England jetted off to
southern Greece with the Marchioness of Lansdowne. Wow!

How is THAT related to Emily Dickinson? And WHY would she
sign herself: "Marchioness."

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/marchioness

Noun  1.  marchioness - the wife or widow of a marquis  Â
married woman, wife - a married woman; a man's partner in marriage

Have you read the Dickens' tale Emily Dickinson refers to in that
sig file of the nineteenth century? Why not?

That Dickens' tale called *The Old Curiosity Shop* refers to a
*Master* who befriended a young lady and educated her until
she called that *Master* her Master and herself "your scholar."
Same thing happened with Dickinson. Now WHY would she refer
to the CLASSICS when at that time, Dickens was not even classic!
He is today. Maybe Emily Dickinson, when everybody READ the
CLASSICS and ENGLISH writers in America, was trying to tell us
something about her *life*!

WHY is it British scholars understand this about classics, and the
classic authors, including Emily Dickinson, but American scholars
schooled only in American literature haven't got a clue?

My cousin who is a professional genealogist and I are researching
our ancestors of the early 1800s, and he recently wrote me:

"There are lots of examples of simple farmers' children having presidential
names, as well as those of other well-known politicians. In the early
1800s, when our ancestor was born, it also was common, even among
tenant farmers, to give their children names derived from Greek and
Latin classics--Cassius and Plato, for example. Our ancestress Elizabeth,
also from an agricultrual family, had a brother and sister named Archimedes
and Artimesia."

So, WHY would anyone doubt that Emily Dickinson in relatively sophisticated
Amherst of the 1800s would be any less schooled in the classics and use
them in her writings: letters and poetry?

Thomas Bulfinch was a Boston writer who published his *The Age
of Fable* in 1855. His retelling of the ancient Roman secret love
story of Cupid and Psyche is in Chapter ll. It is noted that Emily
Dickinson began manufacturing her secret love poems shortly
thereafter in 1858.

Once understood as a unifying theme, it is more easily
understood why in 1862 Emily Dickinson made the ultimate act of
dressing in white as a statement of her belief that her Master and
her would achieve immortality for eternity.

The main Metaphors in the Allegory of Apulius in my post, as told by
Bulfinch in his 1855 version of the Fable, are capitalized to emphasize
her allegorical metaphors were *personified* in the same manner I
conclude Emily Dickinson *personified* her Metaphors! Dickinson
scholars not schooled in the world literature classics should take
heed of the important concept of *Personification* in the poetic
arts, as I allege it is central to analyzing her poems and writing
exegeses. I assume Bulfinch to have been her primary source of the
story of the myth, although her classical dictionaries and general
reading would have offered her ample fodder, as well.

Since writing this, I have consulted my library again, at
length: and I can report that neither Ruth Miller nor Jack Capps
refers to Bulfinch's *The Age of Fable* as being in the Dickinson
library. However, Carlton Lowenberg in his *Emily Dickinson's
Textbooks*, page 35, has this entry:

Bulfinch, Thomas. *The Age of Fable; or Beauties of
Mythology*...Boston: Sanborn, Carter & Bazin, 1855(n.c.d.). DL:
Houghton #2133, a.s. "Edw. Dickinson 1856."

It is important to note that Edward Dickinson possessed a copy
of Bulfinch's *The Age of Fable* in the Homestead, autographed, and
it is cataloged as part of the Houghton Collection and it is number
2133 of the *Handlist of Books* acquisitioned from Emily Dickinson's
home. This 1856-autographed book is important to note because within
two years Emily Dickinson was manufacturing her booklets with poems
referencing the fuller version of the love story of Cupid and Psyche
as retold by Bulfinch. And, it is closer to the thematic threads of
Emily Dickinson's secret love poems than the abridged version in
Anthon's *Classical Dictionary*, which also was in the Dickinson
homestead library, but was one of the works rejected by Whicher and
Johnson. Ruth Miller pointed out that Whicher and Johnson, acting as
consultants for Houghton in the library's acquisition process,
rejected many *classical* works. Miller stated that scholars need to
consult the Houghton *Handlist*. I hereby suggest, also, Carlton
Lowenberg's *Emily Dickinson's Textbooks*.

As a result, I argue once again that Dickinson scholars will
need to carefully reassess Emily Dickinson's indebtedness to
classical world literature, and in particular the European troubadour
tradition of courtly love literature in order to fully analyze and
write exegeses of her writings and make proper sense of her life's
events. Biographers should also take note.

Emily Dickinson wrote she "craves him grace" within Poem 321
just as Sam Bowles was sailing across the Sea Blue and she feared he
would drown as she opined in Letter 249 with embedded Poem 226:
"Should you but fail at--Sea--...I'd *harass* God / Until he let you
in!"

An interested Dickinsonian wrote, in part: "To wit, 'Fame is a Bee' was
always an enigmatic poem to me, yet one of my favorites: I understand
it better now, especially the line referring to its sting, in the light of
your info about the Bees (newspapers)."

Dickinsonians, probably, would like to take note that the "Bee" as name
for a newspaper is so popular as to defy logic as to why any
Dickinsonian, anywhere and any time, would ever question Emily
Dickinson's referent to Samuel Bowles as her "Bee" and herself as his
flower, whether Daisy or Rose or Lily, in Poem 3 sent to Samuel Bowles
when she was 21: "How doth the busy bee?"
And in Letter 229 of February 1861: "We offer you our
cups--stintless--as
to the Bee--the Lily, her new Liquors--": then quotes him the poem
"Would you like Summer? Taste of our's--"

The "Bee" newspapers include: The Amherst Bee, Clarence Bee, Ken-Ton
Bee, Lancaster Bee, Depew Bee, Cheeklowga Bee, West Seneca Bee,
Orchard Park Bee, East Aurora Bee, Richmond Bee, Danville Bee,
Beeville Bee, Idaho Bee, Sellwood Bee, Fresno Bee, Modesto Bee,
Sacramento Bee, Memphis Bee, Newtown Bee...truly
ad infinitum. The Newtown Bee is most interesting, having a Springfield
Republican editor leave and turn the Newtown Bee into one of the oldest
one hundred-year old Bee newspapers in America, right down the river
from Sam Bowles' old newspaper. As said, the historical tradition of
the
"Bee" as the honeyed-words of poets and editors--aka writers as in
"Bees buzzing in the Bonnets" of readers--goes back to Plato,
The Athenian Bee, Sophocles, The Attic Bee, as well as Xenophon,
The Athenian Bee, et al. Keep on buzzin

Those of scientific mind, and those who appreciate mathematics, and
still
are "Bee-Loved" of the writings of Emily Dickinson will probably find
the
following facts from the primary documents of the biography of her
life of
supreme interest--and importance when it comes to her concept of "Bee"
love:

Emily Dickinson as a matter of record wrote circa 130 "Bee" and "Bees"
and
"Bee's" poems, mostly capitalized.

Emily Dickinson, beginning in 1845, when she was 14, wrote letters with
the "bee" mentioned, and in 1851, she wrote her first "Bee"--that is,
capitalized--referent. We note in the following year, Samuel Bowles,
her busy
"Bee" at the Springfield Republican, published her telling Poem 3 about
the
newspaper-Bee linkage with her line: "How doth the busy bee?"

Emily Dickinson, between 1845 and 1860, in letters alone, wrote 15
"bee"
or "Bee" referents. Then, suddenly, in 1861 [Dickinsonians should
_wonder_
why?] she began to *capitalize* her "Bee" referent for the most part,
with a
few exceptions: thusly, 19 times up until 1864, when all the "Bee"
referents
stopped, altogether, which just happened to coincide with the time her
relationship with Samuel Bowles ceased, on a passionate, and
highly-emotional
level; and her manufactured booklets ceased; in fact, the secret love
poems
were basically committed to booklet form, the autobiographical thread
was
acomplished, and any further committment to poetic form was less
regularly done
and seemed to take on a different tone and serve a different "Bee"
Master

Emily Dickinson, between 1860 and 1883, wrote letters with "Bees" and
"Bee's" 18 times.

Certainly, Dickinsonians can draw their own conclusions about these
matters. Some Dickinsonians will find of interest the connection
between
newsapaper Bees, and famed poetic Bees--those writers of words with
honeyed
expressions, beginning with Plato, Socrates, et al., and ending with
modern
newspaper "Bee" editors with their hidden sting! Other Dickinsonians
will find
of interest Dickinson's "Bee" letters and her "Bee" biography! For all
Dickinsonians interested in "Bee" matters, I take note of Emily
Dickinson's
1862 letter, of the year she became so upset over the departure of
Samuel
Bowles, *her "Bee"* who "went to sea:" in reaction, she dressed "in
white" and
went into seclusion. Indeed, this letter was written _to_ Samuel
Bowles, her
"Bee," while he was across the sea and she clearly asked him
ironically, her
"Bee," if he can remember her name, from among the other ladies, as
flowers, he
the "Bee" left behind in America: Letter 272, circa August 1862, quoted
in
part:

"Dear Mr Bowles...I tell you, Mr Bowles, it is a Suffering, to have a
sea--no care how Blue--between your Soul, and you [remember,
Dickinsonians, the
story of Cupid-Bowles and Psyche-Soul-Dickinson which she referenced in
myriad
poems]. The Hills you used to love when you were in Northampton, miss
their
old lover, could they speak--and the puzzed look--deepens in Carlo's
forehead,
as Days go by, and you never come [remember Dickinsonians, that Samuel
Bowles
nearly died and recuperated in nearby Northampton the previous summer
of 1861
and Emily Dickinson like the Marchioness nursed him back to health and
cited
the Dickens' tale in a letter of last summer: and she referred to this
linkage
of Master, herself, and Carlo in Master letter 233]. I've learned to
read the
Steamer place--in Newspapers--now. It's 'most like shaking hands, with
you--or
more like your ringing at the door...How sweet it must be to one to
come
Home--whose Home is in so many Houses--and every Heart a 'Best Room.'
I mean you, Mr Bowles...for have not the Clovers, _names_, to the Bees?
Emily." [The manuscript, in ink, is part of the Samuel Bowles
collection at
Amherst College Library]

All for the love of the "Bee" !

Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 446 to Samuel Bowles, the "Bee" editor of
the
Springfield Daily Republican, circa 1875, during his final illness: he
took to
his death bed in 1877, and died January 16, 1878:

Sweet is it as Life, with it's enhancing Shadow of Death.

A Bee his burnished Carriage
Drove boldly to a Rose--
Combinedly alighting--
Himself--his Carriage was--
The Rose received his visit
With frank tranquility
Witholding not a Crescent
To his Cupidity--
Their Moment consummated--
Remained for him--to flee--
Remained for her--of rapture
But the humility.

--Emily Dickinson

There should be no doubt that in _fact_ Emily Dickinson understood the
classical mythology of ancient Greece about the relationship of the
"Bee" to
the Soul, to the mythology of Cupid and Psyche, Love and Soul, the
flitting
Butterflies who feast on the honeyed love of flowers, and all her
literary
allusions and metaphors owe their substance to her reading in the
classical
books in her Homestead library. [This letter, elsewhere listed without
the
prose as Poem 1339 (Johnson), is in ink and the manuscript is housed in
the
Amherst College Library, its provenance part of the Samuel Bowles
collection
catalogued by Jay Leyda.]

Emily Dickinson sent Letter 227 in 1860 to girlfriend Elizabeth
Holland,
wife of Josiah, associate editor to the Springfield Daily Republican,
about
their little boy who was operated on for a foot problem: this will
explain,
among other things, Emily Dickinson's _cryptic_ referents to feet and
ankles,
linking them to poets, when she wrote, in part: "How is your little
Byron?
Hope he gains his foot without losing his genius. Have heard it ably
argued
that the poet's genius lay in his foot--as the bee's prong and his song
are
concomitant...Blossoms belong to the bee, if needs be by _habeas
corpus_.
Emily."

There should be no doubt that in _fact_ Emily Dickinson understood the
classical mythology of ancient Greece about the relationship of the
"Bee" to
the Soul, to the "poet's genius lay in his [her] foot," to the body
[corpus] of
the "Blossoms belong[ing] to the bee," to the honeyed words left on
poet's
lips, to the similarity of the poet's and/or newspaper editor's tart
words as
the "sting" in the "bee's prong."

In early 1878, Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 542 to girlfriend
Elizabeth,
wife of Josiah Holland, former associate editor of the Springfield
Republican
with editor Samuel Bowles, and she _noted_ that they were both "Bee"
members of
the press, involved with the honeyed-stinging words. Her remarks
clearly note
that the business of newsapers was _buzzing busy-ness_ as the bees in
the bee
hive make, and that hum round a newsroom is _why_ the busy bee is
associated
with press rooms. Here is what Emily Dickinson wrote, about the ill
health of
Elizabeth's husband right after the death of Samuel Bowles, and the
vitality-robbing busy work of 18-hour days doing deadline writer's work
at
newspapers, or magazines where her husband now worked as editor of
Scribner's,
in part: "Thank you for Dr Gray's Opinion--that is peace--to us. I am
sorry
your Doctor [Josiah held the title of Dr. Holland] is not well...Give
my love
to him, and tell him the 'Bee' is a reckless Guide. Dear Mr Bowles
found out
too late, that Vitality costs itself."

Now that Dickinsonians clearly understand that "Fame is a bee" by Emily
Dickinson is rooted in her referent to the "Bee" as a famed poet or
famed
newspaper editor who "has a sting," we can look at one of her most
illuminating
poems. Poem 366 was manufactured into booklet 13 in 1862, that fateful
year
she broke with her Master, her "Bee," who travelled to Europe and in
reaction
she dressed in white and went into seclusion. Poem 366, as
autobiographical as
any of her poems, clearly _explains_ why in 1862 she did _in fact_
dress in
white, for Eternity, and separated herself from the man who recognized
her
poetic "Hand" in his published introduction to Poem 3 in his
Springfield Daily
Republican, ten years earlier:

Although I put away his life--
An Ornament too grand
For Forehead low as mine, to wear,
This might have been the Hand

That sowed the flower, he preferred--
Or smoothed a homely pain,
Or pushed the pebble from his path--
Or played his chosen tune--

On Lute the least--the latest--
But just his Ear could know
That whatsoe'er delighted it,
I never would let go--

The foot to bear his errand--
A little Boot I know--
Would leap abroad like Antelope
With just the grant to do--

His weariest Commandment--
A sweeter to obey,
Than "Hide and Seek"--
Or skip to Flutes--
Or All Day, chase the Bee--

Your Servant, Sir, will weary--
The Surgeon, will not come--
The World, will have it's own--to do--
The Dust, will vex your Fame--

The Cold will force your tightest door
Some Febuary Day,
But say my apron bring the stocks
To make your Cottage gay--

That I may take that promise
To Paradise, with me--
To teach the Angels, avarice,
You, Sir, taught first--to me.

variant: last line
Your kiss first taught to me.

--Emily Dickinson

Of supreme interest, to some Dickinsonians, would be the referents to
the
"Bee" as the last word of stanza five placed so that the word "Fame" in
the
next stanza, also capitalized and placed last, cannot escape the
linkage to
Poem 1763's "Fame is a bee." This _same_ Bee had stung her in 1862 as
well,
and as the variant line indicates, with his _first_ kiss and what it
"taught"
her! Of course, history records that her biography is filled with
referents to
the _fact_ Emily Dickinson "played his chosen tune" on the piano for
Samuel
Bowles many times--on his many visits to Amherst over 3 decades!!!
Ironically,
it is noted that Samuel Bowles--the man she addressed as "Sir" so many
times in
these years between 1858 and 1862--found "The Cold" force his "tightest
door /
Some Febuary Day" in 1878, and shows Emily Dickinson to have been quite
*psychic*!! Indeed, "The Dust [does] vex [his] Fame--" even as this
message is
written Her "promise / To Paradise" is *so* noted!

Now that Dickinsonians clearly understand that "Fame is a bee" by Emily
Dickinson is rooted in her referent to the "Bee" as a famed poet or
famed
newspaper editor who "has a sting," we can look at another of her most
illuminating poems. Poem 211 (Johnson) was manufactured into booklet 37
circa
1860, clearly two years earlier than her famous break with the
newspaper "Bee,"
Samuel Bowles, and two years earlier than she communicated with T. W.
Higginson:

Come slowly--Eden!
Lips unused to Thee--
Bashful--sip thy Jessamines--
As the fainting Bee--

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums--
Counts his nectars--
Enters--and is lost in Balms.

--Emily Dickinson

Indeed, as has been pointed out often enough and understood by those
who
accept the secret code of the European troubadours dating back to the
twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, the word "Eden" was Emily Dickinson's
oft-used code
word for her Master, the "Bee" himself, Samuel Bowles. And to reinforce
her
code words, she included the word "Balms"--which was a perfect anagram
of his
signature: Saml B! This highly erotic poem, dating from the mid-point
between
the beginning of the manufacturing of the poem booklets, 1858, and her
dressing
in white and going into seclusion, 1862, matched her passionate period
with her
Master, the newspaper "Bee"--who's sting was _not_ so obvious in this
early
period in their relationship. A well-known Dickinson scholar has
pointed out
that Samuel Bowles gifted Emily Dickinson with a *Jasmine* plant!
Indeed, his
_name_ is embedded within her variant spelling, obviously taken from
*Oliver
Twist* by Dickens, a work often referenced between Samuel Bowles and
Emily
Dickinson in their correspondences over the decades.

Emily Dickinson wrote 3 Phoebe, "Phebe," poems: Poems (Johnson) 403,
1009,
and 1690. Her "phebe" spelling is *highly* significant inasmuch as it
emphasizes the pronunciation as "Phe-be," or ""Fee-Bee," and more anon
in this
message, below. Phoebe was according to ancient Greek mythology one of
the
female Titans, daughter of Heaven and Earth aka Gaea, of which
Dickinson has
created cryptographically in capital letters in the left-hand margin of
the
first stanza of a poem much discussed on these message boards: G-A-E-A.
Phoebe, in Greek, means *the bright one* or "to shine." An apt metaphor
for
the poet to so name herself, seeing as she was so well read in the
ancient
classics.

In Poem 1009, which she manufactured into booklet 90 circa 1865, she
wrote: "I was a Phebe...Upon the Floors of Fame--" This is important to
note,
inasmuch as Dickinson associated the Edenic "Bee" with "Fame" and the
meaning
of "Phoebe"--as she well understood--meant *the bright one* or "to
shine." All
of this is part and parcel of the mythological-meaning of Edenic "Bees"
out of
Paradise, with honeyed words invoking poets to speak, and the
bright-shining
goddess oft associated in Roman times with Diana.

To prove that Emily Dickinson was into encipherment and encoding, one
only
need consult the biographical record of her youth and her involvment
with the
club called the "UT's" or the "Unseen Trap." In my book EDSL, I pointed
out
that this club of her youth was designed to _trap_ the boys into
relationships,
and ultimately marriage, and the name was garnered from the songs of
the
European troubadours. She refers to her girlfriends, including herself,
by
their secret names in Letter 5 when she was fourteen, using ancient
classical
poets, writers and philosophers: Plato, Socrates and Virgil.

Late in life, in the spring of 1883, Emily Dickinson wrote girlfriend
Elizabeth Holland Letter 820, in part: The Birds are very bold this
Morning,
and sing without a Crumb. 'Meat that we know not of,' perhaps, slily
handed
them--I used to spell the one by that name *'Fee Bee'* when a Child,
and have
seen no need to improve! [Indeed, Dickinson is clearly demonsrating
her
long-held tradition of encoding words according to the rules of Cipher
Code:
and such usage of "Fee Bee" for "Phoebe" would be called a "flat" in
which
buried words are plainly in sight when so noted ] Should I spell
all the
things as they sounded to me, and say all the facts as I saw them, it
would
send consternation among more than the *'Fee Bees'*! [Indeed: Elizabeth
Holland, a girlfriend who was privy to the code-making, knew how this
would
expose the ultimate "Bee" of Sam [B]owles!] Vinnie picked the Sub
rosas, and
handed them to me, in your wily Note." [Again, indeed, it was not
real sub
rosas from the garden Vinnie picked, but the encoded words within the
letter
girlfriend Elizabeth sent Emily Dickinson]

No doubt: all of the girlfriends were privy to this encoding within
their letters and Emily Dickinson's poems. Obviously, by now,
Dickinsonians
understand the concept of "Sub Rosa" translates from the Latin into the
English
*under the Rose* aka *to keep secret* and clearly is in keeping with
the broad
"Rose" Secret Love metaphor: as well as "Daisy" and "Lily" from the
writings
of our poet.

Ancient Greek poets wrote that bees were in Paradise and came into this
world as spirits from that nether realm. Their mythology posited that
Edenic
bees brought the power of words to poets when they slumbered in the
daytime in
the meadow under the tree of knowledge and the bees which lighted on
their lips
deposited honey there and gave them the honeyed words of the great
poets after
they awoke and had been visited of the holy spirit. The natural
extension of
the myth to newspaper editors and hence to editors naming their papers
in their
banners the "Bee" came about as a natural reflection of this historical
mythology--coupled with the stinging power of op-ed words [opinionated
editorials].

Emily Dickinson's extensive reading in the classics, and the classical
manuals, several of which were in her personal family library--indeed,
one
written by the father of Helen Fiske Hunt Jackson, a classics'
professor at
Amherst College--account for her many literary allusions to the
classical myths
in her letters and in her poems.

In Letter 567, of late summer 1878, after the February death of Samuel
Bowles, Emily Dickinson wrote his widow Mary and used her code word
"Eden" for
the departed Samuel "B" bee who had come from Eden aka Paradise and
entered her
life and now departed left a void: "To forget you would be
impossible...for you
were his for whom we moan while consciousness remains. As he was
himself Eden,
he is with Eden, for we cannot become what we were not...I hope your
boys and
girls assist his dreadful absence...How fondly we hope they look like
him--that
his beautiful face may be abroad. Was not his countenance on earth
graphic as
a spirit's? The time will be long till you see him, dear, but it will
be
short, for have we not each our heart to dress--heavenly as his?" [It
is
_noted_ that in 1862 Emily Dickinson dressed "in white" and this
statement
clearly confirms her *Eternity* intent of 16 years previously to dress
like the
*spirit* "Bees" from Paradise!]

In Letter 489, circa 1877, Emily Dickinson wrote to Samuel Bowles, the
"Bee" from Paradise: "You have the most triumphant Face out of
Paradise--probably because you are there constantly, instead of
ultimately...."

Note in Poem 226 (Johnson) she feared Samuel Bowles would die at
"Sea." The poem is "absolutely biography" inasmuch as it is encased
within Letter 249 to Samuel Bowles, her "Master." The poem only
"EXISTS" as part of a letter to Samuel Bowles, written in 1862 as he
was ready to travel across the "Sea Blue." Therein, she wrote to her
"Master:" "If I amazed your kindness--My Love is my only
apology...Would you--ask less for your *Queen*--Mr Bowles?"

Now, "CLEARLY" she "IDENTIFIES" herself as Sam's "Queen" and
therefore he is the "King" and "Master." And "NO DOUBT" you can
understand all her "wife" and "Queen" poems fit the scenario she
lived in with Samuel Bowles--in her "letters"--and her "biography."
Oh, by the way, let's also not forget Samuel Bowles called her "his
Queen Recluse"!

REMEMBER THIS: Miss Emily called "HERSELF" "your Queen" to her
"Master" Samuel Bowles! Do not doubt Letter 249! Go ahead:
"MEMORIZE" it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dickinson scholars have memorized it!

Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
MMiss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!

Ad infinitum!!!!!!!

Now, look at Letter 252, also written to "PERSUADE" Samuel
Bowles to "VISIT" her in Amherst before travelling abroad for "SIX
LONG MONTHS." She wrote therein: "When you come to Amherst, please
God it *were Today* [sic!!!!!!! her own "ITALICS!!!!!!!]. History
"records" Samuel Bowles "DID visit her "BEFORE" he went across the
"Sea Blue." "PLEASE GOD IT *WERE TODAY*!!!!!!! Doesn't that sound
like a woman in "NEED" to see "HER" own "Master" and "NOT" tomorrow
but "TODAY"??????? Sounds like she is RAMMING IT DOWN OUR THROATS!

So, now we jump back a few months, while Samuel Bowles "WAS IN
NEW YORK state, outside of New England, and Miss Emily was "BEGGING"
him to "VISIT" her in Amherst, and we "DISCOVER" her mind and
thoughts, her love and pain, her need and desire, in her "poetic"
letter to her "Master," Letter 233 (Johnson):

"Master.

If you saw a bullet hit a Bird--and he told you he
was'nt shot--you might weep at his courtesy, but you would certainly
doubt his word.

One drop more from the gash that stains your Daisy's
bosom--then would you _believe_? Thomas' faith in Anatomy, was
stronger than his faith in faith. God made me--Sir--Master--I
didn't be--myself...He built the heart in me...I heard of a thing
called 'Redemption'...You remember I asked you for it--you gave me
something else...I knew you had altered me...I am older--tonight,
Master--but the love is the same--so are the moon and the crescent.
If it had been God's will that I might breathe where you
breathed--and find the place--myself--at night...if I wish with a
might I cannot repress--that mine were the Queen's place--the love of
the Plantagenet is my only apology...Have you the Heart in your
breast--Sir--is it set like mine--a little to the left--has it
misgiving--if it wake in the night....

These things are reverent--holy, Sir...You say I do not tell
you all--Daisy confessed--and denied not.

Vesuvius dont talk--Etna--dont--Thy--one of them...and
Pompeii heard it, and hid forever--She couldn't look the world in the
face, afterward--I suppose--Bashful Pompeii! "Tell you of the
want"--you know what a leech is, dont you--and remember that Daisy's
arm is small--and you have felt the horizon hav'nt you--and did the
sea--never come so close as to make you dance?

I dont know what you can do for it--thank you--Master--but
if I had the Beard on my cheek--like you--and you--had Daisy's
petals--and you cared so for me--what would become of you? Could you
forget me...Could'nt Carlo, and you and I walk in the meadows an
hour--and nobody care but the Bobolink...I used to think when I
died--I could see you--so I died as fast as I could--but the
"Corporation" are going Heaven too so Eternity wont be
sequestered--now Say I may wait for you--say I need go with no
stranger to the to me--untried country...I waited a long
time--Master--but I can wait more--wait till my hazel hair is
dappled--and you carry the cane...What would you do with me if I came
'in white?' Have you the little chest to put the Alive--in?

I want to see you more--Sir--than all I wish for in this
world--and the wish--altered a little--will be my only one--for the
skies.

Could you come to New England--this summer--could--would you
come to Amherst--Would you like to come--Master?

Would it do harm--yet we both fear God--Would Daisy
disappoint you--no--she would'nt--Sir--it were comfort forever--just
to look in your face, while you looked in mine--then I could play in
the woods till Dark--till you take me where Sundown cannot find
us--and the true keep coming--till the town is full, Will you tell me
if you will?....

--Emily Dickinson

Well, when we look at SAM in the first three lines of Poem 62,
and in the first three lines of Poem 94 [which, by the way,
does it twice for *Doubting Thomases*], we cannot help but
find Emily Dickinson ramming it down our throats in the
first three lines of Poem 188! And the chances of that occurring
by chance are nada, zippo, zilch. It only occurs in *authorial
intention* that in a two year span, from 1858 to 1860, that
our poet would encypher SAM in the first letter positions,
and *ALL* in CAPS, and in the span of 126 created poems,
*T-H-R-E-E T-I-M-E-S* to make it clear she *intended*
Dickinsonians to *K-N-O-W* who was her secret love *Master*!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, our poet was a
cryptologist as she said in Letter 171 of 1854 when she was
23 and had not yet begun her secret love poems.

You know what irks some fans and some students of Dickinson?
It is that it took Bill Arnold, Dickinson scholar, only one little book
called *Emily Dickinson's Secret Love: Mystery *Master* Behind Poems*
to turn their faulty world interpretations of her poems upside down.
Well, too bad! That is the way Emily Dickinson wrote her writings,
with her one thousand secret love poems, prominent, front and
center, and she could care less if the rest of the world is hot and
bothered, and breathing hard. Too bad, too bad, too bad, she said.
You know she wrote that poem about a worm on a string in her
bedroom which turned into an erect talking snake and had no qualms
about offering it to the world as one of her premiere presentations
of her SAM B artistic cryptology
poems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's Poem 1670 (Johnson) in case you missed it, and note that her
best girlfriend Elizabeth Holland's grandaughter was editor of that
edition, and had no qualms about it. Check it out, folks!

It is interesting when one looks at Dickinson's writings in toto
one finds that she clearly conveyed who her secret love was.
In any court of law, any jury basing their decision on the
written documentary evidence in Emily Dickinson's own writings,
would conclude beyond a "reasonable doubt" that Samuel Bowles
was her secret love and the masculine "Sir/Sire/Master" behind
all her love poems, circa one thousand!

The fact that she embedded these facts of her life in her writings,
also found in circa one thousand letters, many to "Him" as well,
and took the extraordinary *S-T-E-P-S* over her entire life to
encypher SAM B letters, and all in capital letters, to make it
crystal clear she intended for them to stand out, leaves only
the inescapable conclusion that she intended for posterity to
*KNOW* ! So, who are we to deny her *authorial intention*?

Take note in the following poem which was written in 1862
that she wrote *words* which she used in letters and letter-poems
to Samuel Bowles in the very *SAME* year and which undeniably
demonstrate he was the *Master* !

Poem 640 below clearly invokes while he is away at sea her
fear that "were You lost" while they were "Oceans" apart that
she would implore "heaven" on his behalf. No doubt the very
same thoughts were imparted in Poem 226 which is not really
a poem apart but part of a letter to Samuel Bowles, Letter 249,
in which she calls herself "your *Queen*--Mr. Bowles." So, who
among the world of Dickinson scholars doubts Samuel Bowles
was the *Master*? Well, none who can read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And why would she not be *Queen* to the *Master Plantagenet King*?
After all, it is not our surmise but the *W-O-R-D-S* of Dickinson!!!

She wrote, in part, in that letter, what has been divorced from her
recipient
by ill-advised editors in creating the host of her poems when in fact
many
were letters, to Samuel Bowles: "Should you but fail at--Sea--In
sight of me--or doomed lie--next Sun--to die--Or rap--at
Paradise--unheard --I'd *harass* God--Until he let you in!" Oh, yes,
this
woman who knew the meaning of words, wrote to Sam B, in this very same
Letter
249, "My Love is my only apology...I have met--no others." Sounds like
*Love* to me! if it sounds like a "Homesick...Housewife," and if it
writes like a "Homesick...Housewife," then it must *BE* a
"Homesick...Housewife."
Make that [sic] also on the word *Love* which she herself capitalized
in
her letter to Samuel
Bowles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Poem 640 (Johnson) was "written" by Emily Dickinson,
manufactured into booklet 9, circa 1862. Emily Dickinson
placed it into a series of her love letters to the world,
and made it explicit the "Master" was not Jesus, and yet
the poem clearly is about her masculine "Sir/Master:"

I cannot live with You--
It would be Life--
And Life is over there--
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to--
Putting up
Our Life--His Porcelain--
Like a Cup--

Discarded of the Housewife--
Quaint--or Broke--
A newer Sevres pleases--
Old Ones crack--

I could not die--with You--
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze downâ€"
You--could not--

And I--Could I stand by
And see You--freeze--
Without my Right of Frost--
Death’s privilege?

Nor could I rise--with You--
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus’--
That New Grace

Glow plain--and foreign
On my homesick Eye--
Except that You than He
Shone closer by--

They’d judge Usâ€"-How--
For You--served Heaven--You know,
Or sought to--
I could not--

Because You saturated Sight--
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be--
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame--

And were You--saved--
And I--condemned to be
Where You were not--
That self--were Hell to Me--

So We must meet apart--
You there--I--here--
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are--and Prayer--
And that White Sustenance--
Despair--

--Emily Dickinson

No doubt, for Dickinsonians, this poem will ring true for the Truth
of 1862, when she and her Master, Samuel Bowles, were "Oceans...apart,"
he
in Europe and she in Amherst, and she already dressed in white, hidden
behind
doors, so that when he returned that fall, Emily Dickinson was already
in
selcusion.

And, as icing on the cake of *DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE* Dickinson scholars
note Emily Dickinson referred to "Paradise" in both poems, one a
letter-poem
of great note, and also in another letter about Samuel Bowles, shortly
after
his death, called him: "THE MOST TRIUMPHANT FACE OUT OF PARADISE."

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

We know that when Emily Dickinson wrote Poem 35 (Johnson) in 1858
and Samuel Bowles published it in his Springfield Daily Republican
that in her telling line, "Nobody knows this little Rose," there
was a modicum of TRUTH in the statement.

Dickinsonians know all about the "Rose" and the "Bee"--all about
Emily Dickinson and Samuel Bowles! That is, Dickinsonians who can
read and comprehend her biography know.

Beginning some time in 1857, Emily Dickinson spent her daily life
embedding into her autobiographical writings, ipso facto--all her
letters, poems and letter-poems- -her "biography."

Clearly, the outpouring of autobiographical details about her
Secret Love affair in circa one thousand love poems is self-evident
to all Dickinsonians with the collected works at hand and the eyes to
read with comprehension. Her circa one thousand letters offer an
eyeful, or two. Often, poems, letter-poems and letters
written at the SAMe time offer the best clues to the only exegeses
which make complete sense: an autobiographical interpretation of her
canon of writings. And none in the world of Dickinson has suggested
that one thousand love letters were written in a vacuum of fantasy love
Not when there is ample evidence in the biography that they were
addressed to her Master!

The myriad Sir, Sire, Master, He, Him, His referents clearly identify
all her writings as one and the same: an autobiographical immortal
Soulmate love story written for posterity, masquerading as poetry.

OK: the two-dozen most famously critiqued and well-crafted little
masterpieces, anthologized and beloved worldwide, are poems which
are first-rate and can stand on their own, as individual pieces,
and yet they are for the most part part-and-parcel of the grand
scheme of her passion drama like the famous Le Roman De La Rose.
Her dream allegory spread out in circa one thousand Secret Love
poems is not unlike the narrative poetic French masterpiece of the
thirteenth century. Dickinson scholars understand all of this,
but students of Dickinson deficient in a knowledge of comparative
literature need to take a walk on the wild side of love which
inspired Emily Dickinson to her own modern masterpiece, her Opus
work of of writings, as her legacy appears in her many writings.
They need to read Le Roman De La Rose, just as Emily Dickinson
steeped herself in the French classics.

As a case in point:

In Master Letter 233 (Johnson) Emily Dickinson wrote "Master."

That is the way she started that communication to her Master,
and she wrote, to wit,
the following: "If you saw a bullet hit a Bird--and he told you
he was'nt shot--you might weep at his courtesy, but you would
certainly doubt his word."

Well, there is no doubt that circa one thousand Secret Love poems,
and myriad letters and letter-poems were written to this SAMe
Master who she soon wrote "God made me--Sir--Master" and left
no doubt that her *male* recipient was her one and only Master,
the one who held the loaded gun and shot her through her vulnerable
heart with the modern love bullet rather than the mythic Cupid
arrow! She literally died in his arms, and yet lived to tell all
posterity the TRUTH of their Secret Love affair. And her metaphors
were uniquely her own, in this, her tale of immortal SOULMATE LOVE!

Someone, somewhere, of no great consequence, once said that "the
'master' question is there, but of no great consequence. "
Of course, the lie within that questionable statement is patently
false, inasmuch as these same "of no great consequence" writers
would have you believe they can offer up any valid exegesis of the
circa one thousand Secret Love poems and myriad letters written by
Emily Dickinson to and about that same *masculine* Master of great
and significant consequence not only in TRUTHFUL interpretations
of her poems, but elucidation of her letters via her biographical
events during her lifetime.

One wonders did Emily Dickinson write about her Secret Master in
symbols? Did she write it so scholars and students of Dickinson
would comment on her style of creating autobiographical writing?
Or did she write her poems, letters, and letter-poems so readers
would become engaged with the persona of herself and her Secret
Love, her Master, and their immortal Soulmate story?

Surely, Dickinsonians, of all readers in the world, know by
now that Emily Dickinson had her secret love belief about her own
writings, and expected all and sundry to read her writings with a
troubadour poet's outpouring in mind.

Her sister Lavinia was quoted as
having written of Emily Dickinson:

"Emily was herself a most charming reader. It was done with
great simplicity and naturalness, with an earnest desire to
express the exact conception of the author, without any thought
of herself, or the impression her reading was sure to make."

Now, the key buzz words appear to me to be "exact" and "conception"
and "author."

Sorry
about that, folks, but the TRUTH hurts!

The TRUTH is that Emily Dickinson believed in the "exact conception
of the author."

Well, welcome to Emily Dickinson's world of perspecuity: Poem 1455,
"Opinion is a flitting thing, / But Truth, outlasts the Sun--"

Emily Dickinson and Samuel Bowles are UP THERE, looking down and
smiling at us Dickinsonians. Soulmates among the Blessed!

So: WHO was that masked man, the Master, anyway?

The TRUTH of her biography IS: the masculine Master was
Samuel Bowles of Springfield.

Read: B-I-O-G-R-A- P-H-Y !

The TRUTH of the matter at hand, her biography, IS: the
female "Queen" of her King Master Samuel Bowles was,
as far as Emily Dickinson saw fit, herself!

When Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 268 (Johnson) in those 1862 days
after Master Sam Bowles went to Europe and left her in the lurch, she
was seeking her third "Master"! Not the LOVE of her life, as she had
already had that in SAM B. She gave us the woven tapestry, and it was
ours to see as she, Emily Dickinson, spun her web of intrigue in her
exact conception: a story of immortal secret love.

In literary criticism, some writers and scholars who were of
the school of the New Critics were *purists*and called reading
into poems anything of the poet's life, "the biographical fallacy."
Then those same critics expanded their thinking into newer ventures
called Structuralism, and eventually, the school of Deconstruction.

But, Dickinsonians, Emily Dickinson herself would have none of
these schools of thought inasmuch as she was of the old, old school:
that poems have meaning, as the words of the poems have meaning, and
she sought "the exact conception of the author." Otherwise, why
would she refer SO OFTEN to the "Master" and "Sir" and "Sire"--the
masculine referent so OBVIOUS in her circa one thousand Secret Love
poems?

Truth of the biography and how it applies to exegeses of
her autobiographical poems is the only thing which is going to solve
the mystery of what was Emily Dickinson's "exact conception of the
author."

When asked about my beliefs that the biography of Emily
Dickinson should be formed as the basis for poem interpretation,
the noted UMass-Amherst professor and Dickinson scholar David Porter
was quoted in an interview in the *Springfield Union News* as
saying: "readers need to read what Arnold has to say and judge
for themselves." He was referring to my book about Emily Dickinson
and Samuel Bowles, cited inh my sig file!

Master Letter 233 (Johnson) was written by Emily Dickinson and
unlike poems manufactured into booklets, it is a letter-poem meant
for Samuel Bowles, signed, internally "Daisy," in ink, circa winter
1861, while Samuel Bowles, her Master, was in New York state and his
wife was delivering their child, Charles, which Emily Dickinson wanted
named Robert. Emily Dickinson, however, left it in her personal
effects after her death, thus placing it into the series of her love
letters to the world, and made it explicit by its content that the
"Master" was *not* Jesus, and yet the letter-poem clearly is about her
Secret "Sir/Master; " you see, the love letter to her Master Samuel
Bowles, is in the Amherst College Special Collections, and of which now
I will share some very special aspects of this Master and his *Queen*
primary document of TRUTH:

Dickinsonians, we begin this thread with a careful and judicious reading
of Master Letter 233 clearly identifies the recipient as Samuel Bowles. No
doubt, all
the evidence of the biography as known of Emily Dickinson puts the
"Sir/Master" as a REAL person, named: Samuel Bowles. No one needed
to doctor a document to suggest the Master had a "beard" as the letter
Emily Dickinson wrote makes that tacitly CLEAR. What else the meaning:
paraphrased, if you had my petals, as in, I, Emily Dickinson, the
flower, Daisy, and I were you, the bearded Master, who should make the
moves, and fly up here and come to Amherst from New York, and pollenate
my blossom, and what would happen to you if the roles were reversed?
It is clear from the letter, that the Master was showing reluctance to
make the trip and visit his Secret Love.

Not only that, we have the internal evidence of the word "Sir"
at least four times, and that IS enough to warrant this Letter 233
as a document in INK in which none can doubt that her "Sir/Master"
was the same "Sir/Master" of circa one thousand Secret Love poems.
When one tells the truth as a scholar, the same rules of a court of law
apply. Truth by commission/omission is a fundamental tenet of the law.
Violate either side of the equation, and the truth test has not been met.

So, what WAS her "exact conception of the author" in "Sir/Master"
Letter 233?

So, WHO was this "Sir/Master" who was a "cipher/cypher" in
"Sir/Master" Letter 233?

Well, the "EXACT" same "*your Queen*" referents in "Sir/Master"
Letter 233 and in "Sir/Master" Letter 249, also in ink, and signed
"Emily," and sent to Samuel Bowles, clearly identifies the recipient
as Samuel Bowles, her editor/Secret Love.

Dickinsonians know that Emily Dickinson's Master was
Samuel Bowles, inasmuch as all the corollary evidence supports
the fact: the biographical record clearly proves that all the
"Bee" and "Rose" and Daisy" and "Lily" referents embedded
in letters to her Master, and letter-poems to Samuel Bowles,
and circa one thousand secret love poems to her Master, with
SAM B letters in capitalized form was created by her to leave
a legacy and poetic record of this greatest of love affairs
of the nineteenth century in American literature, by the
American bard, Emily Dickinson, writer!

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.


Count them: one, two, three ! ! !

Yes, yes, yes: Emily Dickinson had three Masters.

One Master died in 1850 and another she did not communicate with
until 1862.

Thus, it is not hard to figure out that the other Master who was
the Secret Love Master was the one who went to Sea and "left the
Land" just days before she communicated with that third Master.

There were three, count them, one, two, three masters in the life
of Emily Dickinson ! ! !

In Letter 261 (Johnson) written by Emily Dickinson on 25 April 1862
she clearly identified the IDENTITY of the Secret Love Master of The
Masters ! ! ! She wrote, "When a little Girl, I had a friend, who
taught me Immortality--but venturing too near, himself--he never
returned--Soon after, my Tutor died...Then I found one more--but not
contented I be his scholar--so he left the Land."

Her first Tutor gave the "Master Oration" in Amherst when she was
in her teens, as she said "a little Girl." She was his Tutor, he
her "Master/Teacher." He was principal of Amherst Academy between
September 1846 and June of 1847 when Emily Dickinson was sweet
sixteen and impressionable enough to be greatly impressed with a
masterful teacher. Every Dickinson scholar worth their salt knows
who this first Master was !

Her second Tutor was Samuel Bowles, and she signed her "Marchioness"
letter to him as Her "Master/Tutor" in the symbolism of Dickens' tale
of "Dick Swiveller" and the story of the teacher of the servant girl
who saved his life. Indeed, this second "Master/Tutor" was "not
contented [she] be his scholar--so he left the Land" in 1862, the
year after she saved his life, and he ventured onto the Blue Sea and
went to Europe ! ! !

Her third Tutor was Higginson, and she signed herself as "Your Scholar"
and addressed him as "Master" as she sought another teacher in her
quest for developing her writing skills ! !

However, the only one Master of The Masters who inspired the "Master"
letters, inasmuch as her first "Master/Tutor" died in 1850, was the
second of the three, Samuel Bowles ! ! !

In 1998 I wrote, "Lady in white ship-wrecked at sea, Sam swam away, 1862,"
page 143 of my book *Emily Dickinson's Secret Love*: her biography is fraught
with
wrong interpretations of 'who' was 'Master."...In September, 1861, Sam Bowles
became "deathly" ill and took his cure for a month or more in Northampton,
next door to Amherst. In Letter 241, of October 1861, she wrote Sam
"'Swiveller'
may be sure of the 'marchioness.'" In Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop
it
was the "small servant" girl of fourteen who Dick Swiveller became indebted to,
and finally married. This last fact should not escape us. When Dick was
"deathly"
ill, it was she, the Marchioness, who sat by his bedside a full month and nursed
him
back to health. Obviously, letter 241 indicates Emily Dickinson was there for
Sam Bowles in Northampton. Forever grateful, Dick Swiveller said "we'll make a
scholar of the poor marchioness yet!" Dick Swiveller intervened and educated
her
into a "scholar" and schooled her a half-dozen years in the social graces, so by
nineteen she was "good-looking, clever, and good-humored." We know for fact
Sam Bowles was at the Dickinson Homestead in 1849 for tea when she was nineteen.
Thus, in the Dickens' tale, Dick Swiveller realized that the "young lady saving
up for
him after all" the years had made herself worthy, and he married her. End of
tale.
In real life, Emily Dickinson was telling Sam that he could "be sure" of her.
Precisely,
she meant he could be sure of her love and devotion, forever.

In 1862, despite her pleading for him to stay in America, Sam Bowles sailed to
Europe
for his health. Within the week, she wrote Higginson, the Boston editor,
calling herself
"Your scholar." Referring to the sickness of Sam Bowles, who she had feared
would die,
she wrote, "I had a terror--since September." Devoted to Sam as the Marchioness
was
to Dick, Emily Dickinson began to dress in white and refused the company of men.
Her hope was that in the "spirit" of the tale, someday they might marry in real
life.
If not, they were wedded in *spirit.* Forevermore.

No doubt, the Master letters to a "deathly" ill Master were destined for Sam
Bowles!

As an author of letters, letter-poems and poems, already published
in the Springfield Daily Republican, Emily Dickinson explicated her
"EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR" in her delineation of her DEFINITION
of the relationship: "Master-Tutor." She had had two previously, and
was seeking the third !! The second was The Master of The Masters who
inspired circa one thousand Secret Love poems. And SHE was THE Tutor
to ALL three, as her biography CLEARLY proves from the primary
documents available to ALL Dickinson scholars.

Indeed! Emily Dickinson did NOT write poems in a closet intended
for mental imaginings of students of Dickinson. Let us Dickinsonians
accept the TRUTH that she wrote her writings to RECORD herself in
her world, and her poems were an expression of her love of life, and
her love of The Master of The Masters!

As said, there are many Masters, but in the life of Emily Dickinson
there was only ONE Master named Samuel Bowles who inspired circa
one thousand Secret Love poems and myriad letters and letter-poems
addressed DIRECTLY to him in which she identified herself as HIS
Queen, his Lily, his Rose!

The word Master carries many connotations in this world, as it did
in the nineteenth century: and in the case of Emily Dickinson it is
IMPOSSIBLE to execute viable exegeses of her opus of poems without
understanding her biography and how much she wrote autobiographically.
NO DOUBT her circa one thousand letters are autobiographical, and
because so many poems we ponder were IN FACT letter-poems to named
recipients, ESPECIALLY the MASTER, no credible exegegis can masquerade
as legitimate without SPECIFIC reference to her biography.

Isn't it interesting that Dickinsonians who are scholars are the ones
who read these posts to EmMail and the students of Dickinson who are
part of the olde [and I mean olde ] EMWEB clique still only write
about THEMSELVES and offer up nothing about Emily Dickinson. And the
reason IS, they have nothing to say of value, inasmuch as they are not
scholars nor are they truly students of DICKINSON. They are mere olde
EMWEBBERS who wish to muddy already muddled waters. They want to READ
their OWN words, and not words ABOUT Emily Dickinson.

Let US Dickinsonians make this absolutely clear: there will always
be such imposters who want to talk about themselves and not about
Dickinson. But EmMail is for anyone who truly wishes to post about
Emily Dickinson, and her writings, and her biography. So:

READ ON TO THE BITTER END about Emily Dickinson, which some
EMWEBBERS do not wish for you to do, as they wish the TRUTH about
Emily Dickinson and her Master who inspired circa one thousand
Secret Love poems not to be known!

Note folks: that's MORE than HALF of Emily Dickinson's entire
production, and TWICE the total output of most poets, including
Robert Frost!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Dickinson scholarship, the war rages on between those who would
READ the writings Emily Dickinson wrote, and those who READ only
their own musings thereupon. Emily Dickinson wrote poems as part
of a composite opus intended to be READ as an artful expression of
her exact autobiographical conception as an author of an allegorical
work in which she embedded her Master and herself, as King and Queen,
as Bee and Rose, as Bird and Nest. Let there be NO DOUBT, she was
a SYMBOLIST poet in the tradition of the troubadour poets of classical
European literature.

Poem 151 (Johnson) speaks to the question plainly for those with eyes
to READ and minds to THINK about her EXACT words. They are crystal
CLEAR about her Secret Love affair in circa one thousand love poems,
and evident in her circa one thousand letters and letter-poems to
NAMED recipients. The latter are compiled also by Johnson into three
volumes, and recent scholarship amplifies upon them but her writings
in toto need to be read not piecemeal but as an opus.

Know, also, Dickinsonians, that students of Dickinson generally do
not read her writings but do ponder a couple dozen well-known poems,
and little else. They care only about their own mental dazzles and
regard the "exact conception of the author" which ruled the mind and
pen of Emily Dickinson as irrelevant. Just so you KNOW!

Now WE know!

We know that when Emily Dickinson wrote Poem 35 (Johnson) in 1858
and Samuel Bowles published it in his Springfield Daily Republican
that in her telling line, "Nobody knows this little Rose," there
was a modicum of TRUTH in the statement.

But: NOW we KNOW!!

Dickinsonians know all about the "Rose" and the "Bee"--all about
Emily Dickinson and Samuel Bowles! That is, Dickinsonians who can
read and comprehend her biography KNOW!!!

Beginning some time in 1857, Emily Dickinson spent her daily life
embedding into her autobiographical writings, ipso facto--ALL her
letters, poems and letter-poems--her "biography."

Clearly, the outpouring of autobiographical details about her
Secret Love affair in circa one thousand love poems is self-evident
to all Dickinsonians with the collected works at hand and the eyes to
read with COMPREHENSION. Her circa one thousand letters offer an
eyeful, or two, as well Often, poems, letter-poems and letters
written at the SAMe time offer the BEST clues to the only exegeses
which make COMPLETE sense: an AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL interpretation of her
CANON of writings.

The myriad Sir, Sire, Master, He, Him, His referents clearly identify
ALL HER WRITINGS as one and the same: an autobiographical immortal
Soulmate love story written for posterity, masquerading as poetry.

OK: the two-dozen most famously critiqued and well-crafted little
masterpieces, anthologized and beloved worldwide, are poems which
are first-rate and CAN stand on their own, as individual pieces,
and yet they are for the most part part-and-parcel of the grand
scheme of her passion drama like the famous LE ROMAN DE LA ROSE.
Her DREAM ALLEGORY spread out in circa one thousand Secret Love
poems is not unlike the narrative poetic French masterpiece of the
thirteenth century. Dickinson scholars understand all of this,
but students of Dickinson deficient in a knowledge of comparative
literature need to take a walk on the wild side of love which
inspired Emily Dickinson to her own modern masterpiece, her OPUS
work of of writings, as her legacy appears in her many writings.
They NEED to read LE ROMAN DE LA ROSE, just as Emily Dickinson
steeped herself in the French classics.

As a case in point:

In Master Letter 233 (Johnson) Emily Dickinson wrote "Master."

That is the way she started that communication to her Master,
and she wrote in her "exact conception of the author," to wit,
the following: "If you saw a bullet hit a Bird--and he told you
he was'nt shot--you might weep at his courtesy, but you would
certainly doubt his word."

Well, there is NO DOUBT that circa one thousand Secret Love poems,
and myriad letters and letter-poems were written to this SAMe
Master who she soon wrote "God made me--Sir--Master" and left
NO DOUBT that her MALE recipient was her one and only Master,
the one who held the LOADED GUN and SHOT her through her vulnerable
HEART with the modern LOVE BULLET rather than the mythic Cupid
arrow! She literally DIED in his arms, and yet LIVED to tell all
posterity the TRUTH of their Secret Love affair. And her METAPHORS
were uniquely her own, in this, HER, TALE of immortal SOULMATE LOVE!

Someone, somewhere, of no great consequence, once said that "the
'master' question is there, but of no great consequence."
Of course, the lie within that questionable statement is patently
false, inasmuch as these same "of no great consequence" emailers
would have you believe they can offer up any valid exegesis of the
circa one thousand Secret Love poems and myriad letters written by
Emily Dickinson to and about that same MASCULINE Master of great
and significant consequence not only in TRUTHFUL interpretations
of her poems, but elucidation of her letters via her biographical
events during her lifetime.

One wonders did Emily Dickinson write about her Secret Master in
symbols? Did she write it so scholars and students of Dickinson
would comment on her style of creating autobiographical writing?
Or did she write her poems, letters, and letter-poems so readers
would become engaged with the persona of herself and her Secret
Love, her Master, and their immortal Soulmate story?

Surely, Dickinsonians, of all readers in the world, know by
now that Emily Dickinson had an "exact conception of the
author" belief about her own writings, and expected all and
sundry to read her writings with an "exact conception of the
author" in mind.

Author Reid corresponded with Emily Dickinson's sister Lavinia,
and her words are recorded in her writings, along with the
words written by Lavinia to her. Those sterling words are
worth our undivided attention.

Is there any Dickinson scholar worth their salt who doubts that
writer Reid--who wrote nearly a century ago and personally
corresponded with Emily's sister Lavinia, who lived all those
years of her life in the Homestead with her--wrote the TRUTH
about Emily Dickinson's "EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR." What
an astounding and brilliant statement about the precision of the
autobiographical poet, whose circa one thousand Secret Love poems
have so captured the world of readers! Even to author Reid, it
was apparent by her remarks, that Emily Dickinson capured HER heart
as a reader and catapulted her to the realm of early reviewers of
the talent of America's premiere poet.

Right on, write on, read Reid!

As Dickinsonians have noted over the last several years, two,
just TWO old emweb clique members play at the game of selective
scholarship, and they play it poorly. They IGNORE vital documents
WRITTEN by Emily Dickinson's sister Lavinia--to their own peril.
No longer reasonable writers; alas, they are lost sheep in the
wilderness of mindless pettifoggery and have lost FOREVER their
credibility.

They IGNORE Dickinson scholars such as Arnold, Habeggar, Worralls,
Polly Longsworth, Richard Sewall, Theodora Ward, Higgins, Scott,
et al., and refuse to follow normal protocols of good scholarship.

Dickinsonians: students of Dickinson, especially, do NOT be swayed
by these TWO possibiliti-ites aka circumfer-ettes any longer. They
have absolutely NO CREDIBILTY in the world of Dickinson scholarship,
nor will they EVER. No, never, zilch, zip, nada !!!!!!!

Doubting Thomases among the POSSIBILITI-ites and the
CIRCUMFER-ettes should READ what Lavinia Dickinson
wrote [EFFECTively SAID] about her sister Emily Dickinson
and the latter's love of the "EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR" !

Read Reid ! Consult the EmMail archives in which I published a
complete and thorough analysis of Reid's infamous article, which
has risen like cream to the top of the Dickinson milkshake ! Drink
deeply at this well, as it is the fait accompli of the demise of
the POSSIBILITI-ites and the CIRCUMFER-ettes ! Bye-Bye to their
childish nonsense !!!!!!!

R-E-A-D R-E-I-D ! ! ! Lavinia Dickinson, sister to Emily, the
one woman on the face of the planet who KNEW the American bard,
Writer, BETTER than any other documented FEMALE writer who has
penned about her, will NOT be denied her day in court

For Dickinsonians who wish NOT to be fooled by the possibiliti-ites
NOR the circumfer-ents, or -ets, or -ettes,
or whatever they wish to call their
foolish-ness,

READ REID as in R-E-A-D R-E-I-D for the "EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE
AUTHOR" which Emily Dickinson embraced, relished and lived by in her
READ-ing and WRITE-ing and PERFORM-ing of poems ! ! !

Knowledgeable Dickinsonians who have READ Habeggar and REID, and have
READ Bill Arnold's scintillating remarks on this EXCLUSIVE subject,
KNOW that the "EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR" is de rigeur when it
comes to EXEGESES of the poems, letter-poems and letters, and the
BIOGRAPHY of Emily Dickinson, the American bard, writer ! ! ! ! !

N-O-W, and F-O-R-E-V-E-R more, and M-O-R-E !!!!!!!

Emily Dickinson had an "exact conception of the author" when
it came to exegeses of poems--of those she read, and obviously of
those she wrote--and expected others to read and interpret her own
poems with the same exactness. Her sister Lavinia was quoted as
having written of Emily Dickinson:

"Emily was herself a most charming reader. It was done with
great simplicity and naturalness, with an earnest desire to
express the exact conception of the author, without any thought
of herself, or the impression her reading was sure to make."

Now, the key buzz words appear to me to be "exact" and "conception"
and "author." So, let's have a go at an exegesis, shall we?

Apparently, sister Lavinia and cousins Fran and Loo noticed in their
travels with Emily Dickinson that she wrote poetry, and read it, as
well. And she read it well, and _in fact_, she literally gave what
we call today, "poetry readings."

Apparently, Emily Dickinson was "herself a most charming reader."
That's neat to know, seems to fit the poet I know from her biography.

Apparently, Emily Dickinson was aware that her "charming" reading
might "sure to make" an "impression" of those witnessing it. Stands
to reason, as she was _sure_ one smart and elegant lady.

Apparently, from Lavinia, Emily Dickinson "without any thought" for
herself, that is, down-playing the "impression her reading was sure
to make," gave her readings "with great simplicity and naturalness."
Now: THAT, I like. Meaning: if it was her OWN words, she let the
words speak for themselves, and if it was another's poem, she seemed
to not want her "impression" to be of importance, but again, the
WORDS of the poem! In other words: she was NOT an actress, but an
artist, not a stage personae, but a writer--of words.

Now to the kernel of the quotation by sister Lavinia, the meat of
the matter, the essence of the thought: Emily Dickinson when doing
these poetry readings, whether her OWN or another's words, had "an
earnest desire to express the exact conception of the author." In
other words: unlike MaDonna, she did NOT grab her crotch and make
herself important. Which is fine, all well and good for My Lady
of the Stage, an Actress, a Stage Personae.

But that is NOT what Emily Dickinson sought. Nor did she desire
we Dickinsonians as readers should make OURSELVES important as
readers. She did NOT say "express yourself," because she did NOT
wish to "express HERSELF" in her public readings, but wished
to "express the exact conception of the author."

Ah, yes, the kernel: the author! The exact conception of the author!

It seems self-evident from the above, if I have analyzed the quotation
properly and written the exegesis accordingly, that the author's
conception is supreme in the mind of Emily Dickinson, as writer, and
as reader. It was, and IS, important, if we are to agree with her:
which, by the way, that Dickinsonians must get to the
"EXACT"--"CONCEPTION"--"OF THE AUTHOR."

In the case of Emily Dickinson, the possibilities and circumferences
of various readers is OUT! What mattered to Emily Dickinson was that
we Dickinsonians GET DOWN, really DIG IT, get into the EXACT words she
used in each and every poem, and all en masse and in conjunction with
each other, inclusive of her biography, and anything and everything we
can put our little minds on and into, in order to understand precisely
what WAS the CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR. And in this case, it was
Emily Dickinson, and her words.

When a writer "reports" what someone says, they are quoting them. If
they didn't "say" it, then the writer CANNOT report what they said.
Journalism 101! In this case Habeggar quotes Mary Reid and Mary Reid
quotes sister Lavinia Dickinson, and cites written documents. Sorry
about that, folks, but the TRUTH hurts!

The TRUTH is that Emily Dickinson believed in the "EXACT
CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR."

Well, welcome to Emily Dickinson's WORLD OF PERSPICUITY: Poem 1455,
"Opinion is a flitting thing, / But Truth, outlasts the Sun--"

Emily Dickinson and Samuel Bowles are UP THERE, looking down and
smiling at us Dickinsonians

So: WHO was that masked man, the Master, anyway?

The Lavinia Dickinson documents which Mary Reid quotes may be
consulted by those Dickinson scholars who wished to look at them,
first hand. But we all know, what Lavinia wrote about her sister
Emily Dickinson in a letter to Mary Reid makes perfect sense
from her biography, and then too we have to take note that they
lived together all those years in the Homestead.

And not even Susan Dickinson next door could claim to know Emily
Dickinson like Lavinia!

So if sister Lavinia thOUGHT that Emily Dickinson had "an earnest
desire to express the exact conception of the author," who am I to
argue with that brilliant riposte to the possibilit-ites and the
circumferents? They ought to get a life!

Read AGAIN and AGAIN: B-I-O-G-R-A-P-H-Y !

The TRUTH of her biography IS: the masculine Master was
Samuel Bowles of Springfield.

Read: B-I-O-G-R-A-P-H-Y !

The TRUTH of the matter at hand, her biography, IS: the
female "Queen" of her King Master Samuel Bowles was,
as far as Emily Dickinson saw fit, herself!

Excuse me: read, read, READ: B-i-o-g-r-a-p-h-y !

When Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 268 (Johnson) in those 1862 days
after Master Sam Bowles went to Europe and left her in the lurch, she
was seeking her third "Master"! Not the LOVE of her life, as she had
already had THAT in SAM B. But she was seeking "My Business is
Circumference," i.e., to encompass in her life the fullness of
that around her. Her "exact conception of the author" would not
be compromised in seeking to PULL all in and write about it. No,
she sought to see all, hear all, sense all, and put her own spin
on things. But no where in this writer's "business" was she asking
the world of readers to spin their own exegeses out of false cloth.
She gave us the woven tapestry, and it was OURS to see as she,
Emily Dickinson, spun her web of intrigue in her EXACT CONCEPTION.

Emily Dickinson had an "exact conception of the author" when
it came to exegeses of poems--of those she read, and obviously of
those she wrote--and expected others to read and interpret her own
poems with the same exactness. Her sister Lavinia was quoted as
saying of Dickinson:

"Emily was herself a most charming reader. It was done with
great simplicity and naturalness, with an earnest desire to
express the exact conception of the author, without any thought
of herself, or the impression her reading was sure to make."

For emphasis, Dickinsonians note, Emily had:

"AN EARNEST DESIRE TO EXPRESS

THE EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR."

Well, Dickinsonians, it seems explicit, does it not? Emily
Dickinson believed that "the exact conception of the author" was
paramount in poetry exegeses and readings.

Of course, that means that "possibility" and "circumference"
is a flawed concept applied to her poetry, and Emily Dickinson
herself would have us read her poems, instead, NOT for the minds
of the readers but for "the exact conception of the author."

In literary criticism, some writers and scholars who were of
the school of the New Critics were _purists_ and called reading
into poems anything of the poet's life, "the biographical fallacy."
Then those same critics expanded their thinking into newer ventures
called Structuralism, and eventually, the school of Deconstruction.

But, Dickinsonians, Emily Dickinson herself would have none of
these schools of thought inasmuch as she was of the old, old school:
that poems have meaning, as the words of the poems have meaning, and
she sought "the exact conception of the author." Otherwise, why
would she refer SO OFTEN to the "Master" and "Sir" and "Sire"--the
masculine referent so OBVIOUS in her circa one thousand Secret Love
poems?

Emily Dickinson's "method for reading a poem" was as _exact_
as science. She was _not_ into circumference or possibility when
it came to an author's words, if she were to do a "reading." There
is no doubt her sister Lavinia said of her that "Emily was herself
a most charming reader. It was done with great simplicity and
naturalness, with an earnest desire to express the exact conception
of the author, without any thought of herself, or the impression her
reading was sure to make."

Who, among Dickinsonians, could argue with that? Well, these
same critics can come full circle and back to the view of Emily
Dickinson: as explicit as you can get, when it comes to poetry
readings or exegeses: "express the exact conception of the author."

Truth of the biography and how it applies to exegeses of
her autobiographical poems is the only thing which is going to solve
the mystery of what was Emily Dickinson's "exact conception of the
author."

When asked about my beliefs that the biography of Emily
Dickinson should be formed as the basis for poem interpretation,
the noted UMass-Amherst professor and Dickinson scholar David Porter
was quoted in an interview in the _Springfield Union News_ as
saying: "readers need to read what Arnold has to say and judge
for themselves."

Master Letter 233 (Johnson) was written by Emily Dickinson and
unlike poems manufactured into booklets, it is a letter-poem meant
for Samuel Bowles, signed, internally "Daisy," in ink, circa winter
1861, while Samuel Bowles, her Master, was in New York state and his
wife was delivering their child, Charles, which Emily Dickinson wanted
named Robert. Emily Dickinson, however, left it in her personal
effects after her death, thus placing it into the series of her love
letters to the world, and made it explicit by its content that the
"Master" was _not_ Jesus, and yet the letter-poem clearly is about her
Secret "Sir/Master;" you see, the love letter to her Master Samuel
Bowles, is in the Amherst College Special Collections, and of which now
I will share some very special aspects of this Master and his _Queen_
primary document of TRUTH:

Dickinsonians, we begin this thread with a quote from Habegger's
_My Wars Are Laid Away in Books_:

"The phrase 'like you,' one of many interlineated additions, makes
explicit the recipient's gender and thus stands in the way of those who
would like Master to be female. Martha Nell Smith has conducted
something of a scorched-earth attack on these two words, calling them
'redundant,' declaring the handwriting comes from a 'much different
time,' even suggesting they are a fraudulent interpolation 'by
whomever.' I have examined the manuscript and can see no basis for the
last two claims."

I whole-hearted agree with Habegger's remarks.

It is reminiscent of other claims elsewhere that certain documents
with a definitive provenance from the Bowles' family to Special
Collections Amherst College Library should somehow be seen as been
sent to Susan Gilbert Dickinson. Such claims are nonsense. Let the
experts with forensic abilities, microscopy, et al., as per
methodologies laid out in Simon Worrall's _The Poet and the Murderer_,
be the judge of those claims to the contrary of known facts. This
holding up to the light and "seeing things" and labelling Emily
Dickinson's interlineations "fraudulent" is ridiculous.

In fact, a careful and judicious reading of Master Letter 233
clearly identifies the recipient as Samuel Bowles. No doubt, all
the evidence of the biography as known of Emily Dickinson puts the
"Sir/Master" as a REAL person, named: Samuel Bowles. No one needed
to doctor a document to suggest the Master had a "beard" as the letter
Emily Dickinson wrote makes that tacitly CLEAR. What else the meaning:
paraphrased, if you had my petals, as in, I, Emily Dickinson, the
flower, Daisy, and I were you, the bearded Master, who should make the
moves, and fly up here and come to Amherst from New York, and pollenate
my blossom, and what would happen to you if the roles were reversed?
It is clear from the letter, that the Master was showing reluctance to
make the trip and visit his Secret Love.

Not only that, we have the internal evidence of the word "Sir"
at least four times, and that IS enough to warrant this Letter 233
as a document in INK in which none can doubt that her "Sir/Master"
was the same "Sir/Master" of circa one thousand Secret Love poems.
Pray tell, what IS Martha Nell Smith playing out as a scholar of
the life of Susan Gilbert Dickinson that she must seek out ghosts and
goblins where none exist? What does Habegger mean when he alleges
that Martha Nell Smith "has conducted something of a scorched-earth
attack" on this Master Letter 233?

Just as her co-author Ellen Louise Hart has published at least
one of the "Sir/Master" poems with the line with the word "Sir" in
omission! And then laid claim to that poem as possibly [that word
again!] intended for a female recipient. How is it possible that such
is considered the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help us, God? Such activities to deny Emily Dickinson her male
Master Samuel Bowles as claimant to her heart and inspiration of circa
one thousand love poems strikes this Dickinson scholar, Bill Arnold,
as outrageous, and yes, worthy of the appellation, "a scorched-earth
attack" on the "Sir/Master" scenario. When one tells the truth as a
scholar, the same rules of a court of law apply. Truth by
commission/omission is a fundamental tenet of the law. Violate either
side of the equation, and the truth test has not been met.

Martha Nell Smith and Ellen Louise Hart must answer to Habegger's
allegation. Their scholarship, as such, IS in serious question as to
its credibility, as it pertains to the "Sir/Master" aspect of the canon
of writings of Emily Dickinson.

For emphasis, Dickinsonians note, Emily had:

"AN EARNEST DESIRE TO EXPRESS

THE EXACT CONCEPTION OF THE AUTHOR."

Well, Dickinsonians, it seems explicit, does it not?
According to her sister Lavinia, Emily Dickinson believed that
"the exact conception of the author" was paramount in poetry
exegeses and readings.

So, what WAS her "exact conception of the author" in "Sir/Master"
Letter 233?

So, WHO was this "Sir/Master" who was a "cipher/cypher" in
"Sir/Master" Letter 233?

Well, the "EXACT" same "_your Queen_" referents in "Sir/Master"
Letter 233 and in "Sir/Master" Letter 249, also in ink, and signed
"Emily," and sent to Samuel Bowles, clearly identifies the recipient
as Samuel Bowles, her editor/Secret Love.

Dickinsonians know that Emily Dickinson's Master was
Samuel Bowles, inasmuch as all the corollary evidence supports
the fact: the biographical record clearly proves that all the
"Bee" and "Rose" and Daisy" and "Lily" referents embedded
in letters to her Master, and letter-poems to Samuel Bowles,
and circa one thousand secret love poems to her Master, with
SAM B letters in capitalized form was created by her to leave
a legacy and poetic record of this greatest of love affairs
of the nineteenth century in American literature, by the
American bard, Emily Dickinson, writer!

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

Polly Longsworth, author of a biography of Emily Dickinson's
brother's steamy Amherst affair, who was not afraid to deal with
the nitty-gritty aspects of life, including sex, delivered in her biography:
*AUSTIN AND MABEL: The Amherst Affair and Love Letters of
Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd.*

Who among the scholars and students of Dickinson quite believe
she will disappoint us in her upcoming biography?

Not I.

I have met Polly in person in Amherst, and you will not meet
a more steely-eyed level-headed shoot-from-the-hip gunslinger
of words of truth in the entire realm of writers in the world.

Sooner or later, a truthful biography will finally come to grips with
the life of Emily Dickinson as she lived it, not as some agendaed writers
supposed it. Such a truthful biography will be based on facts, and
conclusions based on those facts. Fanciful notions will become a
thing of the past. The most factual text of the biography of our
poet Emily Dickinson is by Richard Sewall and is a thousand pages
entitled *The Life of Emily Dickinson.* Enough facts are therein to
support a truthful biography but no doubt one day will be surpassed
by another, armed with new and selected facts which make a more
readable life history. Polly Longsworth was Sewall's protege.

Truth and certainty has always ruled biography, and will always rule!

That is a fair statement all scholars can agree on.

Expect Polly Longsworth to carry on Sewall's tradition, and deliver:
once again, only this time on the centerpiece of Amherst: poet and
writer Emily Dickinson, the truth of her life as she lived it.

Emily Dickinson's *Master* inspired the bulk of her poetry output,
and he cascades across her letters. So, if nearly two thousand poems
and one thousand letters have a *Master* behind them, then who he
was is a fair question: in fact, it is so central to her biography that
her biography needs a major overhaul by scholars. Of this: there
is NO question! Do Dickinsonians really think Polly Longsworth
will *skirt* the MASTER question : ) ? How can she, and deliver?

So one wonders how Polly Longsworth will deal with the telling
truth of those winter days and nights up in Emily Dickinson's
bedroom, in particular as described one winter night: in her poem
"Winter in my Room." In case you are unfamiliar with it all, it is
known as the mysterious Poem 1670 of the Johnson canon.

Poem 1670 (Johnson) is one of my top ten favorites by Emily Dickinson.
Let's refresh our minds with her poem:

Poem 1670 (Johnson), 1742 (Franklin):

In Winter in my room
I came upon a Worm
Pink lank and warm
But as he was a worm
And worms presume
Not quite with him at home
Secured him by a string
To something neighboring
And went along.

A Trifle afterward
A thing occurred
I'd not believe it if I heard
But state with creeping blood
A snake with mottles rare
Surveyed my chamber floor
In features as the worm before
But ringed with power
The very string with which
I tied him--too
When he was mean and new
That string was there--

I shrank--"How fair you are"!
Propitiation's claw--
"Afraid he hissed
Of me"?
"No Cordiality"--
He fathomed me--
Then to a Rhythm *Slim*
Secreted in his Form
As Patterns swim
Projected him.

That time I flew
Both eyes his way
Lest he pursue
Nor ever ceased to run
Till in a distant Town
Towns on from mine
I set me down
This was a dream--

--Emily Dickinson

I guess what impresses me most, as a Dickinson scholar, is the
fact IT is her most blatantly *sexual* poem. The debate *IT* has
created in Dickinson scholarship rages on. But, lest we forget, it
was created by Emily Dickinson, the American bard--Writer!

And why would she have created it if not to leave a genuine
legacy about being a normal lady, one with her awareness of the
snake in the garden of Eden, and left to defy that image she knew
would haunt her biography of the spinster nun dressed in white who
looked forlornly from an upstairs bedroom window on a world teeming
with people, sex, and normal activity in other adult bedrooms but
supposedly not hers: to have the naysayers hold court on the matter.

Trust me on this. As we journalists say: Polly Longsworth will deliver.

Probably what bothers those Dickinsonians about Poem 1670 most
is that "string" and its implications. A woman with a man on a
string is a powerful enough image, and normally not one associated
with our famous poet. But there it is around that "pink" and "lank
worm" for all its worth. My, Oh my, how that bugs Dickinsonians--a
*domineering* blatantly sexual Emily Dickinson? A woman *possessed*
by a man's "pink" and "lank worm"? A poet willing to admit and flaunt
her *sexuality* with the opposite sex? And a poet who described her
relationship *traditionally* with her feminine powers uppermost upon
the man by having him on a 'string."

And if that is not enough, God forbid! She describes how that
"pink" and "lank worm" with string attached became "A snake with
mottles rare." Whew! Enough to take one's breath away--as a reader,
of course.

But no, Emily Dickinson does not stop there. She has the "snake"
tied to her as always with that "string." Even after the "arousal"
stage: Why?

And what man in her life was dominated by this dominatrix of
"string" power as evidenced in the biographical record?

And every writer worth his/her salt KNOWS the male equivalent
is *Master*! Do not be shocked: facts have a way of paving a
path to understanding.

Maybe Polly Longswoth will have Dickinsonians finally put together
her one thousand secret love poems and myriad letters: with
a semblance of understanding. Biography has a way of doing that.

Of course, any biographer worth his salt wants to KNOW who the
"snake"-man was, and how he fit into Emily Dickinson's life? So
do Dickinsonians, scholars and students alike.

No doubt, most readers know "who" I believe that "snake"-man
was, and why: Samuel Bowles. Check out my book for a primer
on this vital question in Dickinson scholarship.

Scholars are like journalists: both must deal in what is true and
certain. In journalism it is called reporting. Reporting is separate
from commentary, which carries an element of opinion thereupon.

So: in essence, what is a report. A report is a telling of the facts:
who, what, where, when and why of people and events, anchoring
them to a historical time frame.

Then, what is a biography. A biography is a telling of the facts:
who, what, where, when and why of people and events surrounding
the central person, anchoring them to a historical time frame.

Given that: we can dismiss almost all supposed biographies which
are not factual but fraudulent supposition. It is a fraud to portray
truth and not report the facts.

What are the facts of Emily Dickinson's *Master* and why he matters
so much?

First of all, he is a he, as her pronouns throughout ALL references to him
are *masculine* without exception, in all her writings: poems and letters.

Second, he clearly in her mind as evidenced by her writings, poems and
letters, is the secret love of her life, and the secret love of her writings,
both poems and letters.

Third, scholars worldwide need to face the truth: the certainty is there,
and the evidence is clear that the *Master* was Samuel Bowles! The
evidence is certainly true that he was recipient of her love letters, and
her love poems, and he was a he, to the exclusion of a she in this matter
of who was *the Master.*

Scholarship is scholarship only if it is true and certain! Think about that
for the rest of your life if you commit to comment in the realm in any way,
shape or form.

Thus, finally, so much of what has been alleged to have been biography
about the life of Emily Dickinson must be dismissed as fraudulent. Period.

No doubt: readers of Dickinson, eventually, will get the truth and certainty.
With time, scholars will weed through the pile and separate the true grain
from the chaff.

Are YOU a Dickinson scholar, or student, who will be separated into the
grain pile,
or thrown out with the chaff?

Trust me on this. Time is on the side of truth.

As Emily Dickinson wrote, in Poem 1455, "Opinion is a flitting thing,/
But Truth, outlasts the Sun--"

Last edited by WordSlinger 08-29-2010 at 11:59:50 AM

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

We know that when Emily Dickinson wrote Poem 35 (Johnson) in 1858
and Samuel Bowles published it in his Springfield Daily Republican
that in her telling line, "Nobody knows this little Rose," there
was a modicum of TRUTH in the statement.

Dickinsonians know all about the "Rose" and the "Bee"--all about
Emily Dickinson and Samuel Bowles! That is, Dickinsonians who can
read and comprehend her biography know.

Beginning some time in 1857, Emily Dickinson spent her daily life
embedding into her autobiographical writings, ipso facto--all her
letters, poems and letter-poems--her "biography."

Clearly, the outpouring of autobiographical details about her
Secret Love affair in circa one thousand love poems is self-evident
to all Dickinsonians with the collected works at hand and the eyes to
read with comprehension. Her circa one thousand letters offer an
eyeful, or two. Often, poems, letter-poems and letters
written at the SAMe time offer the best clues to the only exegeses
which make complete sense: an autobiographical interpretation of her
canon of writings. And none in the world of Dickinson has suggested
that one thousand love letters were written in a vacuum of fantasy love
Not when there is ample evidence in the biography that they were
addressed to her Master!

The myriad Sir, Sire, Master, He, Him, His referents clearly identify
all her writings as one and the same: an autobiographical immortal
Soulmate love story written for posterity, masquerading as poetry.

OK: the two-dozen most famously critiqued and well-crafted little
masterpieces, anthologized and beloved worldwide, are poems which
are first-rate and can stand on their own, as individual pieces,
and yet they are for the most part part-and-parcel of the grand
scheme of her passion drama like the famous Le Roman De La Rose.
Her dream allegory spread out in circa one thousand Secret Love
poems is not unlike the narrative poetic French masterpiece of the
thirteenth century. Dickinson scholars understand all of this,
but students of Dickinson deficient in a knowledge of comparative
literature need to take a walk on the wild side of love which
inspired Emily Dickinson to her own modern masterpiece, her Opus
work of of writings, as her legacy appears in her many writings.
They need to read Le Roman De La Rose, just as Emily Dickinson
steeped herself in the French classics.

As a case in point:

In Master Letter 233 (Johnson) Emily Dickinson wrote "Master."

That is the way she started that communication to her Master,
and she wrote, to wit,
the following: "If you saw a bullet hit a Bird--and he told you
he was'nt shot--you might weep at his courtesy, but you would
certainly doubt his word."

Well, there is no doubt that circa one thousand Secret Love poems,
and myriad letters and letter-poems were written to this SAMe
Master who she soon wrote "God made me--Sir--Master" and left
no doubt that her *male* recipient was her one and only Master,
the one who held the loaded gun and shot her through her vulnerable
heart with the modern love bullet rather than the mythic Cupid
arrow! She literally died in his arms, and yet lived to tell all
posterity the TRUTH of their Secret Love affair. And her metaphors
were uniquely her own, in this, her tale of immortal SOULMATE LOVE!

Someone, somewhere, of no great consequence, once said that "the
'master' question is there, but of no great consequence."
Of course, the lie within that questionable statement is patently
false, inasmuch as these same "of no great consequence" writers
would have you believe they can offer up any valid exegesis of the
circa one thousand Secret Love poems and myriad letters written by
Emily Dickinson to and about that same *masculine* Master of great
and significant consequence not only in TRUTHFUL interpretations
of her poems, but elucidation of her letters via her biographical
events during her lifetime.

One wonders did Emily Dickinson write about her Secret Master in
symbols? Did she write it so scholars and students of Dickinson
would comment on her style of creating autobiographical writing?
Or did she write her poems, letters, and letter-poems so readers
would become engaged with the persona of herself and her Secret
Love, her Master, and their immortal Soulmate story?

Surely, Dickinsonians, of all readers in the world, know by
now that Emily Dickinson had her secret love belief about her own
writings, and expected all and sundry to read her writings with a
troubadour poet's outpouring in mind.

Her sister Lavinia was quoted as
having written of Emily Dickinson:

"Emily was herself a most charming reader. It was done with
great simplicity and naturalness, with an earnest desire to
express the exact conception of the author, without any thought
of herself, or the impression her reading was sure to make."

Now, the key buzz words appear to me to be "exact" and "conception"
and "author."

Sorry
about that, folks, but the TRUTH hurts!

The TRUTH is that Emily Dickinson believed in the "exact conception
of the author."

Well, welcome to Emily Dickinson's world of perspecuity: Poem 1455,
"Opinion is a flitting thing, / But Truth, outlasts the Sun--"

Emily Dickinson and Samuel Bowles are UP THERE, looking down and
smiling at us Dickinsonians. Soulmates among the Blessed!

So: WHO was that masked man, the Master, anyway?

The TRUTH of her biography IS: the masculine Master was
Samuel Bowles of Springfield.

Read: B-I-O-G-R-A-P-H-Y !

The TRUTH of the matter at hand, her biography, IS: the
female "Queen" of her King Master Samuel Bowles was,
as far as Emily Dickinson saw fit, herself!

When Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 268 (Johnson) in those 1862 days
after Master Sam Bowles went to Europe and left her in the lurch, she
was seeking her third "Master"! Not the LOVE of her life, as she had
already had that in SAM B. She gave us the woven tapestry, and it was
ours to see as she, Emily Dickinson, spun her web of intrigue in her
exact conception: a story of immortal secret love.

In literary criticism, some writers and scholars who were of
the school of the New Critics were *purists*and called reading
into poems anything of the poet's life, "the biographical fallacy."
Then those same critics expanded their thinking into newer ventures
called Structuralism, and eventually, the school of Deconstruction.

But, Dickinsonians, Emily Dickinson herself would have none of
these schools of thought inasmuch as she was of the old, old school:
that poems have meaning, as the words of the poems have meaning, and
she sought "the exact conception of the author." Otherwise, why
would she refer SO OFTEN to the "Master" and "Sir" and "Sire"--the
masculine referent so OBVIOUS in her circa one thousand Secret Love
poems?

Truth of the biography and how it applies to exegeses of
her autobiographical poems is the only thing which is going to solve
the mystery of what was Emily Dickinson's "exact conception of the
author."

When asked about my beliefs that the biography of Emily
Dickinson should be formed as the basis for poem interpretation,
the noted UMass-Amherst professor and Dickinson scholar David Porter
was quoted in an interview in the *Springfield Union News* as
saying: "readers need to read what Arnold has to say and judge
for themselves." He was referring to my book about Emily Dickinson
and Samuel Bowles, cited inh my sig file!

Master Letter 233 (Johnson) was written by Emily Dickinson and
unlike poems manufactured into booklets, it is a letter-poem meant
for Samuel Bowles, signed, internally "Daisy," in ink, circa winter
1861, while Samuel Bowles, her Master, was in New York state and his
wife was delivering their child, Charles, which Emily Dickinson wanted
named Robert. Emily Dickinson, however, left it in her personal
effects after her death, thus placing it into the series of her love
letters to the world, and made it explicit by its content that the
"Master" was *not* Jesus, and yet the letter-poem clearly is about her
Secret "Sir/Master;" you see, the love letter to her Master Samuel
Bowles, is in the Amherst College Special Collections, and of which now
I will share some very special aspects of this Master and his *Queen*
primary document of TRUTH:

Dickinsonians, we begin this thread with a careful and judicious reading
of Master Letter 233 clearly identifies the recipient as Samuel Bowles. No
doubt, all
the evidence of the biography as known of Emily Dickinson puts the
"Sir/Master" as a REAL person, named: Samuel Bowles. No one needed
to doctor a document to suggest the Master had a "beard" as the letter
Emily Dickinson wrote makes that tacitly CLEAR. What else the meaning:
paraphrased, if you had my petals, as in, I, Emily Dickinson, the
flower, Daisy, and I were you, the bearded Master, who should make the
moves, and fly up here and come to Amherst from New York, and pollenate
my blossom, and what would happen to you if the roles were reversed?
It is clear from the letter, that the Master was showing reluctance to
make the trip and visit his Secret Love.

Not only that, we have the internal evidence of the word "Sir"
at least four times, and that IS enough to warrant this Letter 233
as a document in INK in which none can doubt that her "Sir/Master"
was the same "Sir/Master" of circa one thousand Secret Love poems.
When one tells the truth as a scholar, the same rules of a court of law
apply. Truth by commission/omission is a fundamental tenet of the law.
Violate either side of the equation, and the truth test has not been met.

So, what WAS her "exact conception of the author" in "Sir/Master"
Letter 233?

So, WHO was this "Sir/Master" who was a "cipher/cypher" in
"Sir/Master" Letter 233?

Well, the "EXACT" same "*your Queen*" referents in "Sir/Master"
Letter 233 and in "Sir/Master" Letter 249, also in ink, and signed
"Emily," and sent to Samuel Bowles, clearly identifies the recipient
as Samuel Bowles, her editor/Secret Love.

Dickinsonians know that Emily Dickinson's Master was
Samuel Bowles, inasmuch as all the corollary evidence supports
the fact: the biographical record clearly proves that all the
"Bee" and "Rose" and Daisy" and "Lily" referents embedded
in letters to her Master, and letter-poems to Samuel Bowles,
and circa one thousand secret love poems to her Master, with
SAM B letters in capitalized form was created by her to leave
a legacy and poetic record of this greatest of love affairs
of the nineteenth century in American literature, by the
American bard, Emily Dickinson, writer!

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

Poem 240 by Emily Dickinson is a very special poem.

Poem 240 (Johnson), circa 1861, booklet 8:

Ah, Moon--and Star!
You are very far--
But were no one
Farther than you--
Do you think I'd stop
For a Firmament--
Or a Cubit--or so?

I could borrow a Bonnet
Of the Lark--
And a Chamois' Silver Boot--
And a stirrup of an Antelope--
And be with you--Tonight!

But, Moon, and Star,
Though you're very far--
There is one--farther than you--
He--is more than a firmament--from Me--
So I can never go!

--Emily Dickinson

From my point of view, after much analysis of her 1,775 poems,
I note it is an "enciphered" poem with SAM B written all over it,
and within it.

The CAP letters are unmistakably SAM, in the first line: isn't
it interesting, she began the poem with a CAP "A" in the word "Ah"?
Thus, the first line alone has "Ah" and "Moon" and "Star" for the
full complement of SAM in CAPS? Neat, huh? By now, analytical and mathematical
minds must be wondering: why?

Well, note also, in the left margin:

A, B, A, A, A, B, S

and in the body of the text of the poem:

A, M, S, B, B, A, S, B, A, A, A, B, M, S, M, S!

AMS spells SAM in the first line!

Now, I can assure you that these CAPS alone should be enough
to convince even the most skeptical Dickinson scholar or student
of Dickinson that something *unusual* is afoot here [pun, of
course, on her usage of "Silver Boot" for SB initials of
Sam Bowles!].

By the way, I pointed out in my book EDSL, that "Bootes" as a key
star in a certain constellation in the Heavens is part of Emily
Dickinson's iconography and take note of it again, here! For those
interested in Emily Dickinson and her vast and correct knowledge of
astronomy--check it out.

Did you note that the beginning of the third stanza,
reinforces all of this analysis for the Doubting Thomases?

"But, Moon and Star,"

inverso, the pure ACROSTIC "reads:"

S a M B !

Of course, she used the "EXCLAMATION" [ ! ] point three times in three stanzas.
In all three stanzas she used SAM B, with the middle stanza an embedded pun on
his name: Chamois' Silver Boot!!!

What more must she do? Now, knowing this, what is our interpretation of Poem
240 (Johnson) written circa 1861, in the year of her biography when as she told
Higginson the next year, she had "a terror since September" [SeptemBer has an SB
in it?] and in my book EDSL I pointed out that Sam Bowles almost died in 1861
and took six months off in 1862 to save his life and avoid dying from
exhaustion.

Do you still wonder, Dickinsonians, who the "Master" in the poem
was?

Do you still wonder, Dickinsonians, why she did this cryptography
and same enciphering in so many, many, many, many, many, many, many
poems?

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

... I've never heard of her ... *******giggle*******

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians:

Any Dickinsonian worth his/her salt knows that Emily Dickinson
wrote a letter to Samuel Bowles the year before she dressed in
white and went into seclusion: and signed it "Marchioness."

Why, you ask?

Well, it referred to the Brits, of course. You see, Emily Dickinson
KNEW her classics as did ALL people of the nineteenth century:
before the advent of radio and TV. Back then, READING THE CLASSICS
was classic! Everybody did it. Too bad, some Dickinsonians think
Emily Dickinson was a dunce and read only the comics.

Recently, here in 2007, the future Queen of England jetted off to
southern Greece with the Marchioness of Lansdowne. Wow!

How is THAT related to Emily Dickinson? And WHY would she
sign herself: "Marchioness."

Have you read the Dickens' tale Emily Dickinson refers to in that
sig file of the nineteenth century? Why not?

That Dickens' tale called *The Old Curiosity Shop* refers to a
*Master* who befriended a young lady and educated her until
she called that *Master* her Master and herself "your scholar."
Same thing happened with Dickinson. Now WHY would she refer
to the CLASSICS when at that time, Dickens was not even classic!
He is today. Maybe Emily Dickinson, when everybody READ the
CLASSICS and ENGLISH writers in America, was trying to tell us
something about her *life*!

WHY is it British scholars understand this about classics, and the
classic authors, including Emily Dickinson, but American scholars
schooled only in American literature haven't got a clue?

My cousin who is a professional genealogist and I are researching
our ancestors of the early 1800s, and he recently wrote me:

"There are lots of examples of simple farmers' children having presidential
names, as well as those of other well-known politicians. In the early
1800s, when our ancestor was born, it also was common, even among
tenant farmers, to give their children names derived from Greek and
Latin classics--Cassius and Plato, for example. Our ancestress Elizabeth,
also from an agricultrual family, had a brother and sister named Archimedes
and Artimesia."

So, WHY would anyone doubt that Emily Dickinson in relatively sophisticated
Amherst of the 1800s would be any less schooled in the classics and use
them in her writings: letters and poetry?

Thomas Bulfinch was a Boston writer who published his *The Age
of Fable* in 1855. His retelling of the ancient Roman secret love
story of Cupid and Psyche is in Chapter ll. It is noted that Emily
Dickinson began manufacturing her secret love poems shortly
thereafter in 1858.

Once understood as a unifying theme, it is more easily
understood why in 1862 Emily Dickinson made the ultimate act of
dressing in white as a statement of her belief that her Master and
her would achieve immortality for eternity.

The main Metaphors in the Allegory of Apulius in my post, as told by
Bulfinch in his 1855 version of the Fable, are capitalized to emphasize
her allegorical metaphors were *personified* in the same manner I
conclude Emily Dickinson *personified* her Metaphors! Dickinson
scholars not schooled in the world literature classics should take
heed of the important concept of *Personification* in the poetic
arts, as I allege it is central to analyzing her poems and writing
exegeses. I assume Bulfinch to have been her primary source of the
story of the myth, although her classical dictionaries and general
reading would have offered her ample fodder, as well.

Since writing this, I have consulted my library again, at
length: and I can report that neither Ruth Miller nor Jack Capps
refers to Bulfinch's *The Age of Fable* as being in the Dickinson
library. However, Carlton Lowenberg in his *Emily Dickinson's
Textbooks*, page 35, has this entry:

Bulfinch, Thomas. *The Age of Fable; or Beauties of
Mythology*...Boston: Sanborn, Carter & Bazin, 1855(n.c.d.). DL:
Houghton #2133, a.s. "Edw. Dickinson 1856."

It is important to note that Edward Dickinson possessed a copy
of Bulfinch's *The Age of Fable* in the Homestead, autographed, and
it is cataloged as part of the Houghton Collection and it is number
2133 of the *Handlist of Books* acquisitioned from Emily Dickinson's
home. This 1856-autographed book is important to note because within
two years Emily Dickinson was manufacturing her booklets with poems
referencing the fuller version of the love story of Cupid and Psyche
as retold by Bulfinch. And, it is closer to the thematic threads of
Emily Dickinson's secret love poems than the abridged version in
Anthon's *Classical Dictionary*, which also was in the Dickinson
homestead library, but was one of the works rejected by Whicher and
Johnson. Ruth Miller pointed out that Whicher and Johnson, acting as
consultants for Houghton in the library's acquisition process,
rejected many *classical* works. Miller stated that scholars need to
consult the Houghton *Handlist*. I hereby suggest, also, Carlton
Lowenberg's *Emily Dickinson's Textbooks*.

As a result, I argue once again that Dickinson scholars will
need to carefully reassess Emily Dickinson's indebtedness to
classical world literature, and in particular the European troubadour
tradition of courtly love literature in order to fully analyze and
write exegeses of her writings and make proper sense of her life's
events. Biographers should also take note.

Emily Dickinson wrote she "craves him grace" within Poem 321
just as Sam Bowles was sailing across the Sea Blue and she feared he
would drown as she opined in Letter 249 with embedded Poem 226:
"Should you but fail at--Sea--...I'd *harass* God / Until he let you
in!"

An interested Dickinsonian wrote, in part: "To wit, 'Fame is a Bee' was
always an enigmatic poem to me, yet one of my favorites: I understand
it better now, especially the line referring to its sting, in the light of
your info about the Bees (newspapers)."

Dickinsonians, probably, would like to take note that the "Bee" as name
for a newspaper is so popular as to defy logic as to why any
Dickinsonian, anywhere and any time, would ever question Emily
Dickinson's referent to Samuel Bowles as her "Bee" and herself as his
flower, whether Daisy or Rose or Lily, in Poem 3 sent to Samuel Bowles
when she was 21: "How doth the busy bee?"
And in Letter 229 of February 1861: "We offer you our
cups--stintless--as
to the Bee--the Lily, her new Liquors--": then quotes him the poem
"Would you like Summer? Taste of our's--"

The "Bee" newspapers include: The Amherst Bee, Clarence Bee, Ken-Ton
Bee, Lancaster Bee, Depew Bee, Cheeklowga Bee, West Seneca Bee,
Orchard Park Bee, East Aurora Bee, Richmond Bee, Danville Bee,
Beeville Bee, Idaho Bee, Sellwood Bee, Fresno Bee, Modesto Bee,
Sacramento Bee, Memphis Bee, Newtown Bee...truly
ad infinitum. The Newtown Bee is most interesting, having a Springfield
Republican editor leave and turn the Newtown Bee into one of the oldest
one hundred-year old Bee newspapers in America, right down the river
from Sam Bowles' old newspaper. As said, the historical tradition of
the
"Bee" as the honeyed-words of poets and editors--aka writers as in
"Bees buzzing in the Bonnets" of readers--goes back to Plato,
The Athenian Bee, Sophocles, The Attic Bee, as well as Xenophon,
The Athenian Bee, et al. Keep on buzzin

Those of scientific mind, and those who appreciate mathematics, and
still are "Bee-Loved" of the writings of Emily Dickinson will probably find
the following facts from the primary documents of the biography of her
life of supreme interest--and importance when it comes to her concept
of "Bee" love:

Emily Dickinson as a matter of record wrote circa 130 "Bee" and "Bees"
and "Bee's" poems, mostly capitalized.

Emily Dickinson, beginning in 1845, when she was 14, wrote letters with
the "bee" mentioned, and in 1851, she wrote her first "Bee"--that is,
capitalized--referent. We note in the following year, Samuel Bowles, her
busy "Bee" at the Springfield Republican, published her telling Poem 3
about the newspaper-Bee linkage with her line: "How doth the busy bee?"

Emily Dickinson, between 1845 and 1860, in letters alone, wrote 15 "bee"
or "Bee" referents. Then, suddenly, in 1861 [Dickinsonians should
*wonder* why?] she began to *capitalize* her "Bee" referent for the most
part, with a few exceptions: thusly, 19 times up until 1864, when all the
"Bee" referents stopped, altogether, which just happened to coincide with
the time her relationship with Samuel Bowles ceased, on a passionate, and
highly-emotional level; and her manufactured booklets ceased; in fact, the
secret love poems were basically committed to booklet form, the
autobiographical thread was accomplished, and any further committment
to poetic form was less regularly done and seemed to take on a different
tone and serve a different "Bee" Master.

Emily Dickinson, between 1860 and 1883, wrote letters with "Bees" and
"Bee's" 18 times.

Certainly, Dickinsonians can draw their own conclusions about these
matters. Some Dickinsonians will find of interest the connection between
newsapaper Bees, and famed poetic Bees--those writers of words with
honeyed expressions, beginning with Plato, Socrates, et al., and ending
with modern newspaper "Bee" editors with their hidden sting! Other
Dickinsonians will find of interest Dickinson's "Bee" letters and her "Bee"
biography! For all Dickinsonians interested in "Bee" matters, I take note
of Emily Dickinson's 1862 letter, of the year she became so upset over
the departure of Samuel Bowles, *her "Bee"* who "went to sea:" in reaction,
she dressed "in white" and went into seclusion. Indeed, this letter was
written *to* Samuel Bowles, her "Bee," while he was across the sea and
she clearly asked him ironically, her "Bee," if he can remember her name,
from among the other ladies, as flowers, he the "Bee" left behind in
America: Letter 272, circa August 1862, quoted in part:

"Dear Mr Bowles...I tell you, Mr Bowles, it is a Suffering, to have a
sea--no care how Blue--between your Soul, and you [remember,
Dickinsonians, the story of Cupid-Bowles and Psyche-Soul-Dickinson
which she referenced in myriad poems]. The Hills you used to love when
you were in Northampton, miss their old lover, could they speak--and the
puzzed look--deepens in Carlo's forehead, as Days go by, and you never
come [remember Dickinsonians, that Samuel Bowles nearly died and
recuperated in nearby Northampton the previous summer of 1861
and Emily Dickinson like the Marchioness nursed him back to health and
cited the Dickens' tale in a letter of last summer: and she referred to this
linkage of Master, herself, and Carlo in Master letter 233]. I've learned to
read the Steamer place--in Newspapers--now. It's 'most like shaking hands,
with you--or more like your ringing at the door...How sweet it must be to
one to come Home--whose Home is in so many Houses--and every Heart
a 'Best Room.' I mean you, Mr Bowles...for have not the Clovers, *names*,
to the Bees? Emily." [The manuscript, in ink, is part of the Samuel Bowles
collection at Amherst College Library]

All for the love of the "Bee" !

Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 446 to Samuel Bowles, the "Bee" editor of
the Springfield Daily Republican, circa 1875, during his final illness: he
took to his death bed in 1877, and died January 16, 1878:

Sweet is it as Life, with it's enhancing Shadow of Death.

A Bee his burnished Carriage
Drove boldly to a Rose--
Combinedly alighting--
Himself--his Carriage was--
The Rose received his visit
With frank tranquility
Witholding not a Crescent
To his Cupidity--
Their Moment consummated--
Remained for him--to flee--
Remained for her--of rapture
But the humility.

--Emily Dickinson

There should be no doubt that in *fact* Emily Dickinson understood the
classical mythology of ancient Greece about the relationship of the "Bee" to
the Soul, to the mythology of Cupid and Psyche, Love and Soul, the
flitting Butterflies who feast on the honeyed love of flowers, and all her
literary allusions and metaphors owe their substance to her reading in the
classical books in her Homestead library. [This letter, elsewhere listed without
the prose as Poem 1339 (Johnson), is in ink and the manuscript is housed in
the Amherst College Library, its provenance part of the Samuel Bowles
collection catalogued by Jay Leyda.]

Emily Dickinson sent Letter 227 in 1860 to girlfriend Elizabeth Holland,
wife of Josiah, associate editor to the Springfield Daily Republican,
about their little boy who was operated on for a foot problem: this will
explain, among other things, Emily Dickinson's *cryptic* referents to feet and
ankles, linking them to poets, when she wrote, in part: "How is your little
Byron? Hope he gains his foot without losing his genius. Have heard it ably
argued that the poet's genius lay in his foot--as the bee's prong and his song
are concomitant...Blossoms belong to the bee, if needs be by *habeas
corpus*. Emily."

There should be no doubt that in *fact* Emily Dickinson understood the
classical mythology of ancient Greece about the relationship of the
"Bee" to the Soul, to the "poet's genius lay in his [her] foot," to the body
[corpus] of the "Blossoms belong[ing] to the bee," to the honeyed words left on
poet's lips, to the similarity of the poet's and/or newspaper editor's tart
words as the "sting" in the "bee's prong."

In early 1878, Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 542 to girlfriend Elizabeth,
wife of Josiah Holland, former associate editor of the Springfield Republican
with editor Samuel Bowles, and she *noted* that they were both "Bee"
members of the press, involved with the honeyed-stinging words. Her remarks
clearly note that the business of newsapers was *buzzing busy-ness* as the
bees in the bee hive make, and that hum round a newsroom is _why_ the busy
bee is associated with press rooms. Here is what Emily Dickinson wrote, about
the ill health of Elizabeth's husband right after the death of Samuel Bowles,
and
the vitality-robbing busy work of 18-hour days doing deadline writer's work
at newspapers, or magazines where her husband now worked as editor of
Scribner's, in part: "Thank you for Dr Gray's Opinion--that is peace--to us. I
am
sorry your Doctor [Josiah held the title of Dr. Holland] is not well...Give
my love to him, and tell him the 'Bee' is a reckless Guide. Dear Mr Bowles
found out too late, that Vitality costs itself."

Now that Dickinsonians clearly understand that "Fame is a bee" by Emily
Dickinson is rooted in her referent to the "Bee" as a famed poet or
famed newspaper editor who "has a sting," we can look at one of her most
illuminating poems. Poem 366 was manufactured into booklet 13 in 1862,
that fateful year she broke with her Master, her "Bee," who travelled to Europe
and in reaction she dressed in white and went into seclusion. Poem 366, as
autobiographical as any of her poems, clearly *explains* why in 1862 she did
*in fact* dress in white, for Eternity, and separated herself from the man who
recognized her poetic "Hand" in his published introduction to Poem 3 in his
Springfield Daily Republican, ten years earlier:

Although I put away his life--
An Ornament too grand
For Forehead low as mine, to wear,
This might have been the Hand

That sowed the flower, he preferred--
Or smoothed a homely pain,
Or pushed the pebble from his path--
Or played his chosen tune--

On Lute the least--the latest--
But just his Ear could know
That whatsoe'er delighted it,
I never would let go--

The foot to bear his errand--
A little Boot I know--
Would leap abroad like Antelope
With just the grant to do--

His weariest Commandment--
A sweeter to obey,
Than "Hide and Seek"--
Or skip to Flutes--
Or All Day, chase the Bee--

Your Servant, Sir, will weary--
The Surgeon, will not come--
The World, will have it's own--to do--
The Dust, will vex your Fame--

The Cold will force your tightest door
Some Febuary Day,
But say my apron bring the stocks
To make your Cottage gay--

That I may take that promise
To Paradise, with me--
To teach the Angels, avarice,
You, Sir, taught first--to me.

variant: last line
Your kiss first taught to me.

--Emily Dickinson

Of supreme interest, to some Dickinsonians, would be the referents to the
"Bee" as the last word of stanza five placed so that the word "Fame" in
the next stanza, also capitalized and placed last, cannot escape the
linkage to Poem 1763's "Fame is a bee." This *same* Bee had stung her in
1862 as well, and as the variant line indicates, with his *first* kiss and what
it
"taught" her! Of course, history records that her biography is filled with
referents to the *fact* Emily Dickinson "played his chosen tune" on the piano
for
Samuel Bowles many times--on his many visits to Amherst over 3 decades!!!
Ironically, it is noted that Samuel Bowles--the man she addressed as "Sir" so
many times in these years between 1858 and 1862--found "The Cold" force his
"tightest door / Some Febuary Day" in 1878, and shows Emily Dickinson to have
been quite *psychic*!! Indeed, "The Dust [does] vex [his] Fame--" even as this
message is written. Her "promise / To Paradise" is *so* noted!

Now that Dickinsonians clearly understand that "Fame is a bee" by Emily
Dickinson is rooted in her referent to the "Bee" as a famed poet or
famed newspaper editor who "has a sting," we can look at another of her most
illuminating poems. Poem 211 (Johnson) was manufactured into booklet 37
circa 1860, clearly two years earlier than her famous break with the
newspaper "Bee," Samuel Bowles, and two years earlier than she communicated
with T. W. Higginson:

Come slowly--Eden!
Lips unused to Thee--
Bashful--sip thy Jessamines--
As the fainting Bee--

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums--
Counts his nectars--
Enters--and is lost in Balms.

--Emily Dickinson

Indeed, as has been pointed out often enough and understood by those
who accept the secret code of the European troubadours dating back to the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the word "Eden" was Emily Dickinson's
oft-used code word for her Master, the "Bee" himself, Samuel Bowles. And
to reinforce her code words, she included the word "Balms"--which was a
perfect anagram of his signature: Saml B! This highly erotic poem, dating
from the mid-point between the beginning of the manufacturing of the
poem booklets, 1858, and her dressing in white and going into seclusion,
1862, matched her passionate period with her Master, the newspaper "Bee"
--who's sting was *not* so obvious in this early period in their relationship.
A well-known Dickinson scholar has pointed out that Samuel Bowles gifted
Emily Dickinson with a *Jasmine* plant! Indeed, his *name* is embedded
within her variant spelling, obviously taken from *Oliver Twist* by Dickens,
a work often referenced between Samuel Bowles and Emily Dickinson in their
correspondences over the decades.

Emily Dickinson wrote 3 Phoebe, "Phebe," poems: Poems (Johnson) 403,
1009,
and 1690. Her "phebe" spelling is *highly* significant inasmuch as it
emphasizes the pronunciation as "Phe-be," or ""Fee-Bee," and more anon
in this
message, below. Phoebe was according to ancient Greek mythology one of
the
female Titans, daughter of Heaven and Earth aka Gaea, of which
Dickinson has
created cryptographically in capital letters in the left-hand margin of
the
first stanza of a poem much discussed on these message boards: G-A-E-A.
Phoebe, in Greek, means *the bright one* or "to shine." An apt metaphor
for
the poet to so name herself, seeing as she was so well read in the
ancient
classics.

In Poem 1009, which she manufactured into booklet 90 circa 1865, she
wrote: "I was a Phebe...Upon the Floors of Fame--" This is important to
note,
inasmuch as Dickinson associated the Edenic "Bee" with "Fame" and the
meaning
of "Phoebe"--as she well understood--meant *the bright one* or "to
shine." All
of this is part and parcel of the mythological-meaning of Edenic "Bees"
out of
Paradise, with honeyed words invoking poets to speak, and the
bright-shining
goddess oft associated in Roman times with Diana.

To prove that Emily Dickinson was into encipherment and encoding, one
only
need consult the biographical record of her youth and her involvment
with the
club called the "UT's" or the "Unseen Trap." In my book EDSL, I pointed
out
that this club of her youth was designed to _trap_ the boys into
relationships,
and ultimately marriage, and the name was garnered from the songs of
the
European troubadours. She refers to her girlfriends, including herself,
by
their secret names in Letter 5 when she was fourteen, using ancient
classical
poets, writers and philosophers: Plato, Socrates and Virgil.

Late in life, in the spring of 1883, Emily Dickinson wrote girlfriend
Elizabeth Holland Letter 820, in part: The Birds are very bold this
Morning,
and sing without a Crumb. 'Meat that we know not of,' perhaps, slily
handed
them--I used to spell the one by that name *'Fee Bee'* when a Child,
and have
seen no need to improve! [Indeed, Dickinson is clearly demonsrating
her
long-held tradition of encoding words according to the rules of Cipher
Code:
and such usage of "Fee Bee" for "Phoebe" would be called a "flat" in
which
buried words are plainly in sight when so noted ] Should I spell
all the
things as they sounded to me, and say all the facts as I saw them, it
would
send consternation among more than the *'Fee Bees'*! [Indeed: Elizabeth
Holland, a girlfriend who was privy to the code-making, knew how this
would
expose the ultimate "Bee" of Sam [B]owles!] Vinnie picked the Sub
rosas, and
handed them to me, in your wily Note." [Again, indeed, it was not
real sub
rosas from the garden Vinnie picked, but the encoded words within the
letter
girlfriend Elizabeth sent Emily Dickinson]

No doubt: all of the girlfriends were privy to this encoding within
their letters and Emily Dickinson's poems. Obviously, by now,
Dickinsonians
understand the concept of "Sub Rosa" translates from the Latin into the
English
*under the Rose* aka *to keep secret* and clearly is in keeping with
the broad
"Rose" Secret Love metaphor: as well as "Daisy" and "Lily" from the
writings
of our poet.

Ancient Greek poets wrote that bees were in Paradise and came into this
world as spirits from that nether realm. Their mythology posited that
Edenic
bees brought the power of words to poets when they slumbered in the
daytime in
the meadow under the tree of knowledge and the bees which lighted on
their lips
deposited honey there and gave them the honeyed words of the great
poets after
they awoke and had been visited of the holy spirit. The natural
extension of
the myth to newspaper editors and hence to editors naming their papers
in their
banners the "Bee" came about as a natural reflection of this historical
mythology--coupled with the stinging power of op-ed words [opinionated
editorials].

Emily Dickinson's extensive reading in the classics, and the classical
manuals, several of which were in her personal family library--indeed,
one
written by the father of Helen Fiske Hunt Jackson, a classics'
professor at
Amherst College--account for her many literary allusions to the
classical myths
in her letters and in her poems.

In Letter 567, of late summer 1878, after the February death of Samuel
Bowles, Emily Dickinson wrote his widow Mary and used her code word
"Eden" for
the departed Samuel "B" bee who had come from Eden aka Paradise and
entered her
life and now departed left a void: "To forget you would be
impossible...for you
were his for whom we moan while consciousness remains. As he was
himself Eden,
he is with Eden, for we cannot become what we were not...I hope your
boys and
girls assist his dreadful absence...How fondly we hope they look like
him--that
his beautiful face may be abroad. Was not his countenance on earth
graphic as
a spirit's? The time will be long till you see him, dear, but it will
be
short, for have we not each our heart to dress--heavenly as his?" [It
is
*noted* that in 1862 Emily Dickinson dressed "in white" and this
statement
clearly confirms her *Eternity* intent of 16 years previously to dress
like the *spirit* "Bees" from Paradise!]

In Letter 489, circa 1877, Emily Dickinson wrote to Samuel Bowles, the
"Bee" from Paradise: "You have the most triumphant Face out of
Paradise--probably because you are there constantly, instead of
ultimately...."

Note in Poem 226 (Johnson) she feared Samuel Bowles would die at
"Sea." The poem is "absolutely biography" inasmuch as it is encased
within Letter 249 to Samuel Bowles, her "Master." The poem only
"EXISTS" as part of a letter to Samuel Bowles, written in 1862 as he
was ready to travel across the "Sea Blue." Therein, she wrote to her
"Master:" "If I amazed your kindness--My Love is my only
apology...Would you--ask less for your *Queen*--Mr Bowles?"

Now, "CLEARLY" she "IDENTIFIES" herself as Sam's "Queen" and
therefore he is the "King" and "Master." And "NO DOUBT" you can
understand all her "wife" and "Queen" poems fit the scenario she
lived in with Samuel Bowles--in her "letters"--and her "biography."
Oh, by the way, let's also not forget Samuel Bowles called her "his
Queen Recluse"!

REMEMBER THIS: Miss Emily called "HERSELF" "your Queen" to her
"Master" Samuel Bowles! Do not doubt Letter 249! Go ahead:
"MEMORIZE" it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dickinson scholars have memorized it!

Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
MMiss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!

Ad infinitum!!!!!!!

Now, look at Letter 252, also written to "PERSUADE" Samuel
Bowles to "VISIT" her in Amherst before travelling abroad for "SIX
LONG MONTHS." She wrote therein: "When you come to Amherst, please
God it *were Today* [sic!!!!!!! her own "ITALICS!!!!!!!]. History
"records" Samuel Bowles "DID visit her "BEFORE" he went across the
"Sea Blue." "PLEASE GOD IT *WERE TODAY*!!!!!!! Doesn't that sound
like a woman in "NEED" to see "HER" own "Master" and "NOT" tomorrow
but "TODAY"??????? Sounds like she is RAMMING IT DOWN OUR THROATS!

So, now we jump back a few months, while Samuel Bowles "WAS IN
NEW YORK state, outside of New England, and Miss Emily was "BEGGING"
him to "VISIT" her in Amherst, and we "DISCOVER" her mind and
thoughts, her love and pain, her need and desire, in her "poetic"
letter to her "Master," Letter 233 (Johnson):

"Master.

If you saw a bullet hit a Bird--and he told you he
was'nt shot--you might weep at his courtesy, but you would certainly
doubt his word.

One drop more from the gash that stains your Daisy's
bosom--then would you _believe_? Thomas' faith in Anatomy, was
stronger than his faith in faith. God made me--Sir--Master--I
didn't be--myself...He built the heart in me...I heard of a thing
called 'Redemption'...You remember I asked you for it--you gave me
something else...I knew you had altered me...I am older--tonight,
Master--but the love is the same--so are the moon and the crescent.
If it had been God's will that I might breathe where you
breathed--and find the place--myself--at night...if I wish with a
might I cannot repress--that mine were the Queen's place--the love of
the Plantagenet is my only apology...Have you the Heart in your
breast--Sir--is it set like mine--a little to the left--has it
misgiving--if it wake in the night....

These things are reverent--holy, Sir...You say I do not tell
you all--Daisy confessed--and denied not.

Vesuvius dont talk--Etna--dont--Thy--one of them...and
Pompeii heard it, and hid forever--She couldn't look the world in the
face, afterward--I suppose--Bashful Pompeii! "Tell you of the
want"--you know what a leech is, dont you--and remember that Daisy's
arm is small--and you have felt the horizon hav'nt you--and did the
sea--never come so close as to make you dance?

I dont know what you can do for it--thank you--Master--but
if I had the Beard on my cheek--like you--and you--had Daisy's
petals--and you cared so for me--what would become of you? Could you
forget me...Could'nt Carlo, and you and I walk in the meadows an
hour--and nobody care but the Bobolink...I used to think when I
died--I could see you--so I died as fast as I could--but the
"Corporation" are going Heaven too so Eternity wont be
sequestered--now Say I may wait for you--say I need go with no
stranger to the to me--untried country...I waited a long
time--Master--but I can wait more--wait till my hazel hair is
dappled--and you carry the cane...What would you do with me if I came
'in white?' Have you the little chest to put the Alive--in?

I want to see you more--Sir--than all I wish for in this
world--and the wish--altered a little--will be my only one--for the
skies.

Could you come to New England--this summer--could--would you
come to Amherst--Would you like to come--Master?

Would it do harm--yet we both fear God--Would Daisy
disappoint you--no--she would'nt--Sir--it were comfort forever--just
to look in your face, while you looked in mine--then I could play in
the woods till Dark--till you take me where Sundown cannot find
us--and the true keep coming--till the town is full, Will you tell me
if you will?....

--Emily Dickinson

Well, when we look at SAM in the first three lines of Poem 62,
and in the first three lines of Poem 94 [which, by the way,
does it twice for *Doubting Thomases*], we cannot help but
find Emily Dickinson ramming it down our throats in the
first three lines of Poem 188! And the chances of that occurring
by chance are nada, zippo, zilch. It only occurs in *authorial
intention* that in a two year span, from 1858 to 1860, that
our poet would encypher SAM in the first letter positions,
and *ALL* in CAPS, and in the span of 126 created poems,
*T-H-R-E-E T-I-M-E-S* to make it clear she *intended*
Dickinsonians to *K-N-O-W* who was her secret love *Master*!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, our poet was a
cryptologist as she said in Letter 171 of 1854 when she was
23 and had not yet begun her secret love poems.

You know what irks some fans and some students of Dickinson?
It is that it took Bill Arnold, Dickinson scholar, only one little book
called *Emily Dickinson's Secret Love: Mystery *Master* Behind Poems*
to turn their faulty world interpretations of her poems upside down.
Well, too bad! That is the way Emily Dickinson wrote her writings,
with her one thousand secret love poems, prominent, front and
center, and she could care less if the rest of the world is hot and
bothered, and breathing hard. Too bad, too bad, too bad, she said.
You know she wrote that poem about a worm on a string in her
bedroom which turned into an erect talking snake and had no qualms
about offering it to the world as one of her premiere presentations
of her SAM B artistic cryptology
poems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's Poem 1670 (Johnson) in case you missed it, and note that her
best girlfriend Elizabeth Holland's grandaughter was editor of that
edition, and had no qualms about it. Check it out, folks!

It is interesting when one looks at Dickinson's writings in toto
one finds that she clearly conveyed who her secret love was.
In any court of law, any jury basing their decision on the
written documentary evidence in Emily Dickinson's own writings,
would conclude beyond a "reasonable doubt" that Samuel Bowles
was her secret love and the masculine "Sir/Sire/Master" behind
all her love poems, circa one thousand!

The fact that she embedded these facts of her life in her writings,
also found in circa one thousand letters, many to "Him" as well,
and took the extraordinary *S-T-E-P-S* over her entire life to
encypher SAM B letters, and all in capital letters, to make it
crystal clear she intended for them to stand out, leaves only
the inescapable conclusion that she intended for posterity to
*KNOW* ! So, who are we to deny her *authorial intention*?

Take note in the following poem which was written in 1862
that she wrote *words* which she used in letters and letter-poems
to Samuel Bowles in the very *SAME* year and which undeniably
demonstrate he was the *Master* !

Poem 640 below clearly invokes while he is away at sea her
fear that "were You lost" while they were "Oceans" apart that
she would implore "heaven" on his behalf. No doubt the very
same thoughts were imparted in Poem 226 which is not really
a poem apart but part of a letter to Samuel Bowles, Letter 249,
in which she calls herself "your *Queen*--Mr. Bowles." So, who
among the world of Dickinson scholars doubts Samuel Bowles
was the *Master*? Well, none who can read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And why would she not be *Queen* to the *Master Plantagenet King*?
After all, it is not our surmise but the *W-O-R-D-S* of Dickinson!!!

She wrote, in part, in that letter, what has been divorced from her
recipient
by ill-advised editors in creating the host of her poems when in fact
many
were letters, to Samuel Bowles: "Should you but fail at--Sea--In
sight of me--or doomed lie--next Sun--to die--Or rap--at
Paradise--unheard --I'd *harass* God--Until he let you in!" Oh, yes,
this
woman who knew the meaning of words, wrote to Sam B, in this very same
Letter
249, "My Love is my only apology...I have met--no others." Sounds like
*Love* to me! if it sounds like a "Homesick...Housewife," and if it
writes like a "Homesick...Housewife," then it must *BE* a
"Homesick...Housewife."
Make that [sic] also on the word *Love* which she herself capitalized
in
her letter to Samuel
Bowles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Poem 640 (Johnson) was "written" by Emily Dickinson,
manufactured into booklet 9, circa 1862. Emily Dickinson
placed it into a series of her love letters to the world,
and made it explicit the "Master" was not Jesus, and yet
the poem clearly is about her masculine "Sir/Master:"

I cannot live with You--
It would be Life--
And Life is over there--
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to--
Putting up
Our Life--His Porcelain--
Like a Cup--

Discarded of the Housewife--
Quaint--or Broke--
A newer Sevres pleases--
Old Ones crack--

I could not die--with You--
For One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down—
You--could not--

And I--Could I stand by
And see You--freeze--
Without my Right of Frost--
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise--with You--
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus'--
That New Grace

Glow plain--and foreign
On my homesick Eye--
Except that You than He
Shone closer by--

They'd judge Us—-How--
For You--served Heaven--You know,
Or sought to--
I could not--

Because You saturated Sight--
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be--
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame--

And were You--saved--
And I--condemned to be
Where You were not--
That self--were Hell to Me--

So We must meet apart--
You there--I--here--
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are--and Prayer--
And that White Sustenance--
Despair--

--Emily Dickinson

No doubt, for Dickinsonians, this poem will ring true for the Truth
of 1862, when she and her Master, Samuel Bowles, were "Oceans...apart,"
he in Europe and she in Amherst, and she already dressed in white, hidden
behind doors, so that when he returned that fall, Emily Dickinson was already
in seclusion.

And, as icing on the cake of *DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE* Dickinson scholars
note Emily Dickinson referred to "Paradise" in both poems, one a letter-poem
of great note, and also in another letter about Samuel Bowles, shortly after
his death, called him: "THE MOST TRIUMPHANT FACE OUT OF PARADISE."

We are still on square one: love

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

Letter 272 (Johnson) was written in ink by Emily Dickinson
on "especially lightweight" stationary "intended for overseas
correspondence" given to her by Susan Dickinson. There is no doubt
that Susan Dickinson, her confidante who kept her Secret Love
with Samuel Bowles well hidden, knew Emily Dickinson wrote to her
Master Samuel Bowles who had gone across the Sea Blue to Europe.
Emily Dickinson says so in her letter to Sam, dated August 1862.
The provenance of the letter is that it was saved by the family
of Samuel Bowles and donated to Amherst College Library, where it
now resides for the world to take note of. It reads in part:

Dear Mr Bowles.

...when you get Home, next Winter...

Summer a'nt so long as it was, when we stood looking at it,
before you went away, and when I finish August, we'll hop the Autumn,
very soon--and then 'twill be Yourself. I dont know how many will be
glad to see you, because I never saw your whole friends, but I have
heard, that in large Cities--noted persons chose you. Though how glad
those I know--will be, is easier told.

I tell you, Mr Bowles, it is a Suffering, to have a sea--no care
how Blue--between your Soul, and you. The Hills you used to love when
you were in Northampton, miss their old lover, could they speak--and
the puzzled look--deepens in Carlo's forehead, as Days go by, and you
never come.

I've learned to read the Steamer place--in Newspapers--now. It's
'most like shaking hands, with you--or more like your ringing at the
door...

We reckon--your coming by the Fruit.

...

It is easier to look behind at a pain, than to see it coming...

How sweet it must be to one to come Home--whose Home is in so many
Houses--and every Heart a "Best Room." I mean you, Mr Bowles.

Sue gave me the paper, to write on...for have not the Clovers,
*names*, to the Bees?

--Emily

Now, Dickinsonians, for an exegesis, based on her biography:

I have edited this letter, to be emphatic on Emily Dickinson's
relationship with her Master, Samuel Bowles. Remember: he had visited
her in April, she had gone into turmoil, written myriad letters and
poems, dressed in white, went into seclusion, and now, she gets special
stationary for overseas mail, and in August, at the height of the summer
season when she always had a visit from Samuel Bowles, Emily Dickinson
*confesses* her innermost angst, actual suffering at the Sea Blue which
separates them.

She recounts she knows he is the "Bee" which has so many "Clovers"
[ aka anagram, Clever Lovers ] that he cannot remember their
*names* and she emphasizes the word by underlining! She recalls for him
what it meant to her to have her "old lover" in nearby "Northampton" in
the summer of 1861 when he almost died. She IS metaphorically
"The Hills" and Samuel Bowles even autographed one of her anonymously
published poems in his newspaper with the referent "Pelham Hill, June, 1861."
It was Poem 216, and he had published it the summer before and she is
herein acknowledging their "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers" memories.

Obviously, the poem's first line, and second "Untouched by Morning,"
contain SAM in capital letters and internal anagrams of Sam b in "Safe...
Alabaster...Chambers." The metaphors within the first stanza are
chillingly about these cold, calculating "lovers."

Let us repeat: Samuel Bowles published Poem 216 and signed it with
a clear moniker of "Pelham Hill, June, 1861," as bold as you can get as
to *who* was its author to those in the know, such as Lavinia, Austin,
and Susan, as well as Emily Dickinson, its author, who in this followup
letter reveals he, Samuel Bowles, was the tomb partner in the poem,
the "old lover" who even her dog Carlo misses, he was *there* in
"The Hills" so often!! Quite a metaphor for secret "lovers"!!!

So often, she notes, Samuel Bowles *knows* and she reminds
him that between "you" [Sam] and "your Soul [herself: Emily] is that
"sea--no care how Blue." And "Blue" she was, while he was away.

This is hardly the letter of a cloistered nun, but more the letter
of his "Queen Recluse" in wait for his return, dressed in white, bridal
as the pure snow, that coming winter, when he would come, to visit his
white "Clover" again--yes, he, Sam come to "The Hills"!

A Druidic Difference, Emily Dickinson and Shamanism

By Clifton Snider
English Department, Emeritus
California State University, Long Beach
Source:
http://www.csulb.edu/~csnider/dickinson.shamanism.html


"A Druidic Difference":

Emily Dickinson and Shamanism

That Emily Dickinson published almost no poems while she was alive yet became enormously popular when her first book appeared four years after her death is a well known fact.1 The 1890 volume went through eleven printings and led to a Second Series in 1891 and a Third Series in 1896; an edition of her letters appeared in 1894 (Sewall 707, n.1). Today she and Walt Whitman are generally regarded as the two greatest American poets of the nineteenth century. In Jungian terms, she is a "visionary" artist who compensates for collective psychic imbalance through an archetypal vision of another possibility (see Snider 6-7). What Jung says of visionary literature clearly applies to the best of Dickinson’s work:

[. . .] it can be a revelation whose heights and depths are beyond our fathoming, or a vision of beauty which we can never put into words. [. . .] the primordial experiences rend from top to bottom the curtain upon which is painted the picture of an ordered world, and allow a glimpse into the unfathomable abyss of the unborn and of things yet to be. ("Psychology and Literature" 90).2

Something in her psyche drove her to probe those "heights and depths," which were often beyond her own fathoming. This something Jung calls an "innate drive" (ibid. 101), and I believe that the archetype she chiefly represents and is driven by is shamanism.

Not a shaman in the traditional sense as described by Mircea Eliade in his classic, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Dickinson nevertheless fits Joan B. Townsend's description of neo-shamans as people "often disenchanted with traditional religions and often with much of Western society. Although they tend not to be affiliated with any organized religion, they all continue intensive personal quests for spirituality, meaning, and transcendence" (78). Her personal quest--her personal myth as expressed in her poetry--compensates for contemporary imbalance through a search for meaning in the face of the breakdown of collective myths. Had she lived in another era and been associated with a religion or belief system that included shamans, no doubt Dickinson would have been a shaman in the traditional sense, for she is concerned about the same mysteries that concern shamans and investigates these mysteries using the imagery of shamanism. These mysteries include death and the afterlife, as well as suffering, loss, and healing.

The word "shaman" comes from the Siberian Tungus tribe ( Harner 7); and, according to Eliade, "Shamanism in the strict sense is pre-eminently a religious phenomenon of Siberia and Central Asia." Although he or she is not, strictly speaking, either one, the shaman has traits similar to the magician and medicine man, but "beyond this, he is a psychopomp, and he may also be priest, mystic, and poet" (4). Because it is an archetype, shamanism is not limited to Siberia and Central Asia. It is a world-wide phenomenon with roots in the Paleolithic period. Joan Halifax comments on the fact that "Shamanic knowledge is remarkably consistent across the planet"; further, "the basic themes related to the art and practice of shamanism form a coherent complex" (5).3 An examination of Dickinson's poetry will demonstrate the American poet's close relationship to the shamanic state of mind.

Eliade was among the first to link shamanism to the creation of lyric poetry: "It is [. . .] probable that the pre-ecstatic euphoria [of the shaman] constituted one of the universal sources of lyric poetry." Furthermore, "Poetic creation still remains an act of perfect spiritual freedom. Poetry remakes and prolongs language; every poetic language begins by being a secret language, that is, the creation of a personal universe, of a completely closed world." Eliade's assessment of course applies to any great poet, but it applies especially to Dickinson. He continues: "The purest poetic act seems to re-create language from an inner experience that, like the ecstasy or the religious inspiration of 'primitives,' reveals the essence of things" (510). That Dickinson has her own "language," her own poetic vocabulary that probes her "inner experience" and creates a "personal universe," is clear to any perceptive reader.

In Jungian terms, she has created her own personal myth. Inspired by other poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning ("I think I was enchanted / When first a sombre Girl-- / I read that Foreign Lady-- / The Dark--felt beautiful--" 593; all numbers refer to the numbers assigned to poems in Johnson's The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson), Emily Dickinson created her own inimitable poetry. She had, indeed, what she disclaimed having: "A privilege so awful / What would the Dower be, / Had I the Art to stun myself / With Bolts of Melody!" (505).

Here is her definition of a poet:

This was a Poet--It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings--
And Attar so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door--
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it--before--

Of Pictures, the Discloser--
The Poet--it is He--
Entitles Us--by Contrast--
To ceaseless Poverty--

Of Portion --so unconscious--
The Robbing--could not harm--
Himself--to Him--a Fortune--
Exterior--to Time-- (448)

The high value she places on poetry she reveals in the poem that begins "I reckon--when I count at all--" First she counts poets, then the sun and summer, and she adds:

But, looking back--the First so seems
To comprehend the Whole--
The Others look a needless Show--
So I write--Poets--All--

Their Summer--lasts a Solid Year--
They can afford a Sun
The East--would deem extravagant--
And if the Further Heaven--

Be Beautiful as they prepare
For Those who worship Them--
It is too difficult a Grace--
To justify the Dream-- (569)

Dickinson in both these poems affirms Eliade's belief that lyric poetry "reveals the essence of things."

Living in the middle of the nineteenth century, Dickinson, a product of New England Puritanism, rejected membership in the church and the conversion offered by the many religious revivals that descended on her home town of Amherst, Massachusetts, in her early years (Sewall 24). Still, she was troubled by such Puritan ideas as "Divine immanence, providential history, the Whole Duty of Man; the sense of being Chosen, or Elected; the idea of Redemption" (Sewall 25). Most important of all, the issue of immortality, what she called her "Flood subject," haunts her poetry and letters (see Sewall 26). It is, one might say, a shamanic issue--what happens after death.

She lived in an age when the secular spirit was on the rise. If Holger Kalweit, a contemporary expert on shamanism, can write that today "the one-eyed paradigm of materialism is in a state of decline" (20), in Dickinson's day just the opposite was true. She was a student of science and observed the world with the eye of a scientist:

"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see--
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency. (185)

Yet she would probably not argue with Michael Harner's observation that "shamans say that we need to talk to plants and trees, animals, and rocks because our lives and our spirits are connected with theirs. In shamanic cultures all things are seen to be interrelated and interdependent [. . .] everything that exists is alive" (10). Although nature can be the "blonde Assassin" that beheads the "happy Flower [. . .] In accidental power" (1624), she is also a living being to be revered:

Touch lightly Nature's sweet Guitar
Unless thou know'st the Tune
Or every Bird will point at thee
Because a Bard too soon-- (1369)

Here Dickinson suggests one shouldn't interpret nature poetically until one is qualified--initiated, as it were. In one of her most famous poems, she writes: "I taste a liquor never brewed-- / From Tankards scooped in Pearl [. . .] Inebriate of Air--am I-- / And Debauchee of Dew" (214). In modern parlance, she gets "high" on nature. Even a casual acquaintance with her poetry will show how intimate she feels with nature. Her intimacy is akin to what Owen Barfield calls "original participation" (40-42), the "essence" of which, Barfield says, "is that there stands behind the phenomena . . . a represented which is of the same nature as me" (42).

In a fragmentary poem she declares: "To see the Summer Sky / Is Poetry" (1472). One of the few poems to which she assigned a title ("My Cricket," Johnson, Poems of Emily Dickinson, vol. 3, 1206), goes as follows:

Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.

No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.

Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify

Remit as yet no Grace
No Furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now (1068)

The vocabulary of religious ritual and the reference to pre-Christian myth ("a Druidic Difference") indicates that, like the shaman, she has recognized that nature is endowed with sacred life.

Poem 986, in which the speaker is a man, illustrates the original participation such a recognition permits:

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides--
You may have met Him--did you not
His notice sudden is--

The Grass divides as with a Comb--
A spotted shaft is seen--
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on--

He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn--
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot--
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone--

Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me--
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality--

But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone--

The speaker of this poem has an intimate, spiritual relationship with nature; he feels "a transport / Of cordiality--" for "Nature's People." Feeling "Zero at the Bone" suggests there's something in Dickinson's psyche that matches or at least connects with the snake. The snake is a projection of her psyche, something she encounters on the outside that's already inside, perhaps an extension of the animus that frightens her on account of its cold blooded ruthlessness--possibly her objectivity as an artist.

Another extraordinary snake poem illustrates my point:

In Winter in my Room
I came upon a Worm--
Pink, lank and warm--
But as he was a worm
And worms presume
Not quite with him at home--
Secured him by a string
To something neighboring
And went along.

A Trifle afterward
A thing occurred
I'd not believe it if I heard
But state with creeping blood--
A snake with mottles rare
Surveyed by chamber floor
In feature as the worm before
But ringed with power--
The very string with which
I tied him--too
When he was mean and new
That string was there--

I shrank--"How fair you are!"
Propitiation's claw--
"Afraid," he hissed
"Of me"?
"No cordiality"--
He fathomed me--
Then to a Rhythm Slim
Secreted in his Form
As Patterns swim
Projected him.

That time I flew
Both eyes his way
Lest he pursue
Nor ever ceased to run
Till in a distant Town
Towns on from mine
I set me down
This was a dream. (1670)

The last line indicates clearly that this poem, like Whitman's "The Sleepers," expresses the contents of the unconscious.

On a first reading, it's almost impossible to not interpret the poem as portraying a Freudian fear of sex. Afraid of intimacy ("cordiality"), the speaker feels more than "Zero at the Bone." She feels a mixture of attraction ("'How fair you are'!") and fear ("Nor ever ceased to run"). The worm that becomes a snake is obviously sexual (the flaccid penis that becomes the erect phallus), and were the speaker clearly masculine as in "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" the implications would be even more intriguing than they are already. The worm/snake is elemental, phallic, chthonic, and the speaker at first tries to control this potent archetype, symbolic, as J. E. Cirlot writes, of "energy itself--of force pure and simple" (285). Jung points out that in Egyptian myth, "the snake, because it casts its skin, is a symbol of renewal [. . . and] a sun-symbol, which was believed to be of masculine sex only and to beget itself" (Symbols of Transformation 269). The "renewal" here is actually a transformation from a relatively harmless worm to a scary and sexy snake and a scene reminiscent of Eve's temptation in the Garden of Eden. The snake "fathomed" the speaker as if exploring her desire and depth--physically and psychically. Sexual as he undeniably is, I suggest the snake also symbolizes Dickinson's own latent power as a poet. Fecund, she has power to recreate herself, as does the snake ("ringed with power") and to fathom and project as he does, and she fears this immense potential. (See Figure 1.) Because we do not know when Dickinson wrote this poem, a precisely biographical interpretation is impossible and probably, in any event, not necessary. The body of her work demonstrates that she learned to use her power and that the poet in her conquered her deeply felt fears of poetic ruthlessness by proceeding with her calling.

Fig. 1, Zuni Serpent Warrior Kachina, with Kolowisi, the horned, plumed water serpent on his head, by Steven Comosona (from the collection of Clifton Snider). Although it is doubtful Dickinson ever saw a Zuni kachina, this example illustrates the kind of ritual power her serpent poems evoke. The phallic power of the water serpent, well known in Native American mythology, most famously as the Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl, is further emphasized by its horn. The powerful double stare could easily "fathom" a persona like the speaker of poem that begins, "In Winter in my Room."

Eliade notes that there basically are two ways of becoming a shaman: "hereditary transmission or spontaneous vocation" (21)--a call, in other words, not unlike the Puritan notion of "election." Dickinson describes her call to become a poet thus:

Conversion of the Mind
Like Sanctifying in the Soul--
Is witnessed--not explained--

'Twas a Divine Insanity--
The Danger to be Sane
Should I again experience--

She is recalling how her reading of Elizabeth Barrett Browning called her to poetry. She continues:

'Tis Antidote to turn--

To Tomes of solid Witchcraft--
Magicians be asleep--
But Magic--hath an Element
Like Deity--to keep-- (593)

Like the shaman, the poet is a magician, a maker of witchcraft, insane to outsiders. This idea is echoed in a well-known poem:

Much Madness is divinest Sense--
To a discerning Eye--
Much Sense --the starkest Madness--
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail--
Assent--and you are sane--
Demur--you're straightway dangerous--
And handled with a Chain-- (435)

Poet Adrienne Rich comments insightfully about this poem: "It is an extremely painful and dangerous way to live--split between a publicly acceptable persona, and a part of yourself that you perceive as the essential, the creative and powerful self, yet also as possibly unacceptable, perhaps even monstrous" (175). Pain, as we shall see, is an essential part of the experience of the shaman-poet.

"The Riddle we can guess," Dickinson writes, "We speedily despise-- / Not anything is stale so long / As Yesterday's surprise--" (1222). The riddle is one of her chief rhetorical devices, a device typical of the shaman-poet, as well as of the trickster archetype, betraying the superior knowledge that comes with the "secrets of the profession" (Eliade 17). She writes, for example, of loss without indicating quite what has been lost. Consider two poems on similar themes:

I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod,
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!

Angels--twice descending
Reimbursed my store--
Burglar! Banker--Father!
I am poor one more!-- (49)

My life closed twice before its close--
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.4 (1732)

Both poems are clearly about loss, and the diction (the metonymous "sod" and "Immortality") suggests that death is responsible for the loss. The loss could also be that of a loved one or ones and the suggestion of death metaphorical. We do not know whom she has lost in either poem. It's worth observing, also, that she's intimate enough with God, the "Father," to accuse Him of being a "Burglar" and a "Banker."

The poem that begins "My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--" also relies on the riddle but it is far more complex (William Shullenberger notes the poem gives "students the pleasure of reading a fable and solving its riddles," 102):

My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--
In Corners--till a Day
The Owner passed--identified--
And carried Me away--

And now We roam in Sovereign Woods--
And now We hunt the Doe--
And every time I speak for Him--
The Mountains straight reply--

And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow--
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through--

And when at Night--Our good Day done--
I guard My Master's Head--
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow--to have shared--

To foe of His--I'm deadly foe--
None stir the second time--
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye--
Or an emphatic Thumb--

Though I than He--may longer live
He longer must--than I--
For I have but the power to kill,
Without--the power to die-- (754)

This poem has elicited an amazing amount of critical comment. Rich believes it is "about possession by the daemon, about the dangers and risks of such possession if you are a woman, about the knowledge that power in a woman can seem destructive, and that you cannot live without the daemon once it has possessed you" (173). Helen McNeil believes the poem "is a definition of self as pure artistic agency" (175). The speaker of the poem, she adds, is "feminine, masculine, an object and an animal--all sexes and none, a commanding voice for the expression of knowledge" (176). Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar comment on the "Loaded Gun":

This Gun clearly is a poet, and a Satanically ambitious poet at that. [. . .] The irony of the riddling final quatrain, moreover, hints that it is the Gun and not the Master, the poet and not her muse, who will have the last word. (609)

Judith Farr sees the poem as "primarily [. . .] an accomplished and mysterious ballad with suggestions of Elizabethan obliquity and physicality" (242). She suggests looking at the speaker by turns as a boy, then as a woman, always keeping in mind "the pleasure the speaker experiences" and that "For Dickinson, love is always the muse" (243): "She herself--the gun, the artist--can never 'die' like a real woman. . . She is but the arresting voice that speaks to and for the Master" (244).

Camille Paglia, as might be expected, provides the most arresting critical commentary:

The most blatant of Dickinson's masculine self-portraits is "My Life had stood a Loaded Gun," where she is a totem of phallic force . [. . .] The "Owner" or "Master" is only he, a pronoun. She is the real power, without which he cannot act. [. . .] This poem is one of Romanticism's great transsexual self-transformations. [. . .] the poet is reaching for the remotest extreme of sex experience. (642-643)

That Dickinson frequently adopts a male persona is a given (see Rebecca Patterson, "Emily Dickinson's 'Double' Tim"), so that Paglia's and McNeil's comments are in this respect not astonishing.

To add my own contribution to the welter of commentary surrounding this poem, I think it pertinent to note that the poem, like many of Dickinson's, is a narrative, albeit told in lyrical form--that is, it is a ballad, as Farr points out. Although she is rightly known as a lyric poet, Dickinson does indeed tell stories, as does the shaman when he or she talks about out-of-body experiences and visits to the afterworld. Her subjects in the concluding stanza again include shamanic concerns: mortality and immortality. The concluding two lines ("For I have but the power to kill, / Without--the power to die--") do indeed, as Paglia suggests, indicate the speaker may be a vampire; and in fact a shamanic method of healing is to suck blood from the person who is ill (Eliade 307), so that here we have evidence of a positive side of the vampire archetype. I tend to agree, too, that Dickinson is, at least here, an "androgyne" (Paglia 643).

This poem, as well as numerous others such as Patterson discusses in the article I cite above, presents a persona whose gender is ambiguous. To suggest, as Theodora Ward does, citing Jung as her authority, that the "image of man in woman [. . .] represents the woman's mind" and that a "large proportion" of Dickinson's poems bare this out (70), is, to say the least, an oversimplification and a reduction of Jung's ideas.

Dickinson's creative animus--and poetic persona--is more complex than that. Take, for example, the poem, "I started Early--Took my Dog--" (520). Here the speaker, apparently a female with her "Apron" and her "Bodice," is chased in images that suggest attempted rape by a masculine sea. Of course, the usual gender assigned to the sea is feminine. In "I make His Crescent fill or lack--" (909), a testimony to the shamanic power of poetry, Dickinson makes the traditionally feminine moon male. And "Wild Nights--Wild Nights!" (249), one of Dickinson's most explicitly sexual poems, reverses the usual sexual/gender activity in the final two lines: "Might I but moor--Tonight-- / In Thee!"

Rebecca Patterson feels that the poem I cite above, "I make His Crescent fill or lack--" (909), refers to Kate Scott (Riddle 175), whom Patterson, writing in 1951, believes was the great love of Dickinson's life. Although much of Patterson's evidence regarding Kate Scott is conjectural, a close and open-minded reading of Dickinson's letters and poetry will leave no doubt that Dickinson loved erotically members of both sexes--in addition to Scott, Dickinson loved her sister-in-law, Sue Dickinson, and probably the family friend Samuel Bowles, and late in her life Judge Otis Phillips Lord. That Dickinson's erotic orientation was at all lesbian was a fact I, for one, was never let in on during my many years of education, in which her work figured prominently; and certainly the poems that appear in the standard anthologies wouldn't indicate such. Yet a close examination by Lillian Faderman of "Emily Dickinson's Homoerotic Poetry" leads Faderman to conclude: "Read as a whole, these poems present a picture of a woman whose love for another woman is characterized often by a quality akin to worship--or 'Idolatry' as Dickinson calls it [. . .]" (25). Like Walt Whitman, Dickinson was capable of changing pronouns in her love poems. Poem 494, for instance, she wrote in two versions. One begins: "Going to Him! Happy letter!" while the other begins: "Going--to--Her! / Happy--Letter! [. . .]" Both continue in the same vein. I quote the second version:

Tell Her--the page I never wrote!
Tell Her, I only said--the Syntax--
And left the Verb and the Pronoun--out!
Tell Her just how the fingers--hurried--
Then--how they--stammered--slow--slow--
And then--you wished you had eyes--in your pages--
So you could see--what moved--them--so--

Stephen Coote includes this poem in The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse. The following is also in that anthology:

Her breast is fit for pearls,
But I was not a "Diver"--
Her brow is fit for thrones
But I have not a crest.
Her heart is fit for home--
I--a Sparrow--built there
Sweet of twigs and twine
My perennial nest. (84)

These poems and the evidence of many other poems, as well as the evidence from the letters and the findings of Patterson, Faderman, and, more recently, Suzanne Juhasz, Cristanne Miller, and Martha Nell Smith (Comic Power in Emily Dickinson ), and Betsy Erkkila ("Homoeroticism and Audience: Emily Dickinson's Female 'Master'"), and others form, I think, incontrovertible evidence of Dickinson's erotic love of women.

What has this to do with my reading of Dickinson as a neo-shaman? I see it as an aspect of her poetic need to cross the gender boundaries of her time; it places her into the shamanistic frame of the "berdache." The berdache is a cross-gender figure in many American Indian tribes; that is, a man-woman or a woman-man who took on roles of the opposite gender and often had sex with and even married the same gender the berdache was originally born to. The connection between such cross-gender figures and shamans goes back probably to the origin of shamanism itself (see Roscoe 24). Eliade cites several examples of "transvestitism and ritual change of sex" among shamans worldwide (257-258). Walter L. Williams, an authority on the berdache, writes: "Shamans are not necessarily berdaches, but because of their spiritual connection, berdaches in many cultures are often considered to be powerful shamans." Furthermore, he notes, "The Mohaves believed that female shamans were spiritually stronger than male ones, but that berdache shamans were stronger than either women or men" (35). Paula Gunn Allen, an American Indian author and professor, writes:

In some groups such as the Cherokee [. . .] shamans are typically trained along cross-gender rather than same gender lines. Thus male shamans train female apprentices, and female shamans train male apprentices. [. . .] gender is understood in a psychological or psychospiritual sense much more than in a physiological one. (206-207).

Finally, lesbian poet Judy Grahn writes: "Had I been born into a tribal society as were my European genetic ancestors, I believe I would have been the European equivalent of a shaman: a hag, a wisewoman, a sorcerer, a dervish, a runic bard, a warrior-priest, a wiccan-woman" (38). Almost the same could be said for Emily Dickinson; and her sexual orientation (whether ever physically realized with another person) and her experimentation with traditional Western gender roles in her poetry both support my contention that she is a neo-shaman who, in another era, like Grahn, would have been a traditional shaman.


Dickinson is famous for dressing in white during the later, secluded years of her life. Whatever else may be said about this idiosyncrasy, clearly it suggests the deliberate adoption of a particular persona. In "Of Tribulation, these are They" (325), Dickinson connects the wearing of white with victory over tribulation: "the ones who overcame most times-- / Wear nothing commoner than Snow--" In another poem she connects the color with death:

Take Your Heaven further on--
This--to Heaven divine Has gone--
Had You earlier blundered in
Possibly, e'en You had seen
An Eternity--put on--
Now--to ring a Door beyond
Is the utmost of Your Hand--
To the Skies--apologize--
Nearer to Your Courtesies
Than this Sufferer polite--
Dressed to meet You--
See--in White! (388)

Interestingly, white is a color associated with the dress of some shamans. In the initiation of Buryat shamans, the neophytes wear white (Eliade 118). Buryat culture divides shamans into white (those assisted by good spirits) and black (those assisted by evil spirits). The white shaman wears a white fur (Eliade 150; see also Figure 2).

Fig. 2, a woman shaman of the Clayoquot tribe from Vancouver Island, photo by Edward S. Curtis, early 20th century (Pritzker 34). Although the photo is in black and white, clearly most of the feathers she wears are white and likely so is the weaving in her apparel.

Death, of course, is one of Dickinson's favorite topics--part of her "Flood" subject. As Farr notes: "In her last years she would call 'the secret of Death' her central preoccupation. [. . .] But it had always concerned her" (4). She depicts death as a suitor in more than one poem. "Death is the supple Suitor / That wins at last--" (1445) she writes in a poem written about 1878. In poem 712 her posthumous speaker declares: "Because I could not stop for Death-- / He kindly stopped for me-- / The Carriage held but just Ourselves-- / And Immortality." I agree with Jungian critic Martin Bickman that "an attraction toward death can reflect a deeper urge toward individuation" (127). Bickman further comments that "apparently irreconcilable opposites [in poem 712 marriage and death] are linked by moving to a deeper psychic level" (121) in Dickinson. This traditional Jungian idea is valid applied to this poem and others like it, but I suggest another approach. I suggest Dickinson depicts a shamanic role, what Eliade calls the psychopomp--the guider of souls after death. (Another poem recalls the shamanic search for souls after death: "My soul, to find them, come, / They cannot call, they're dumb," 1436.) Eliade believes that originally this probably was the role of the shaman: to "escort the soul to the underworld" (208). "The shaman becomes indispensable," Eliade writes, "when the dead person is slow to forsake the world of the living" (208-209). Although Dickinson is not often acknowledged as a mythic poet, here she clearly writes in a mythic tradition. One of the few mythological characters she actually names in her poetry, Orpheus ("The Bible is an antique Volume--" 1545), is perhaps the most renowned of all psychopomps, albeit she alludes to him as a singer/poet ("Orpheus' Sermon captivated-- / It did not condemn--") rather than as a conductor of souls after death.

Like Orpheus, the shaman sometimes suffers the dismemberment of his or her body. Part of his or her initiation, the neophyte shaman's dismemberment is followed by the replacement of old organs with new ones. Sometimes "spirits cut off his head, which they set aside (for the candidate must watch his dismemberment with his own eyes)." The spirits then cut the neophyte into "small pieces, which are then distributed to the spirits of the various diseases." The purpose is to "gain the power to cure. [. . . the neophyte's] bones are [. . .] covered with new flesh, and in some cases he is also given new blood" (Eliade 37). Even if there is no dismemberment, there is suffering and illness. The shaman is a "wounded healer" (often self-wounded) "who has cured himself" (Kalweit 90). The symbolism is that of death and rebirth.

Dickinson wrote obsessively about what I call her "Big Hurt" or her "Big Loss." It was apparently the loss of love and the loved one or ones, whose identity no one knows for sure; the "Master" letters address this love object too. (There are also poems about her other great loss--publication and the public recognition that would have accompanied it.5) "The Soul has Bandaged moments--" she writes, "When too appalled to stir-- / She feels some ghastly Fright come up / And stop to look at her" (512). Here, as in so many other poems, she relives the "Big Loss": "The Horror welcomes her, again, / These, are not brayed of Tongue." The pain is deeply psychic: "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" (280), she says in one of her best poems. In poems that echo the dismemberment of the shaman, she writes, "Proud of my broken heart, since thou didst break it" (1736); "Before I got my eye put out" (327); and "Rearrange a 'Wife's' affection! / When they dislocate my Brain! / Amputate my freckled Bosom! / Make me bearded like a man!" (1737). Here she has adopted her persona of "Empress of Calvary": "None suspect me of the crown, / For I wear the 'Thorns' till Sunset-- / Then--my Diadem put on." Also, she is crossing genders again ("Make me bearded like a man!"). But she refuses to say the exact nature of her "Big Hurt":

Big my Secret but it's bandaged--
It will never get away
Till the Day its Weary Keeper
Leads it through the Grave to thee.

Who "thee" is we can't be absolutely sure.

The same is true for the "Master" letters. They ooze almost embarrassingly with masochistic self-pity and pain:

If you saw a bullet hit a Bird--and he told you he was'nt [sic] shot--you might weep at his courtesy, but you would certainly doubt his word.

One drop more from the gash that stains your Daisy's
bosom--then would you believe ?

(Letters, vol. 2, no. 233)

A love so big it scares her, rushing among her small
heart--pushing aside the blood and leaving her faint . . .
and white in the gust's arm--

(Letters, vol. 2, no. 248)

Examples of similarly violent imagery from the poems include, "She dealt her pretty words like Blades / How glittering they shone-- / And every One unbared a Nerve / Or wantoned with a Bone--" (479); and poem 264:

A Weight with Needles on the pounds--
To push, and pierce, besides--
That if the Flesh resist the Heft--
The puncture--cooly tries--

That not a pore be overlooked
Of all this Compound Frame--
As manifold for Anguish--
As Species--be--for name--

In a poem that again refers to the "Big Hurt," she declares: "Joy to have merited the Pain-- / To merit the Release-- / Joy to have perished every step-- / To Compass Paradise--" (788). The beginning of the second stanza ("Pardon--to look upon thy face-- / With these old fashioned Eyes--") echoes the second Master letter: "it were comfort forever--just to look in your face, while you looked in mine" (Letters, vol. 2, no. 233).

Finally, in poem 410 she not only relives the "Big Hurt" but also describes how it impelled her "to sing," to work out her personal myth in her poetry:

The first Day's Night had come--
And grateful that a thing
So terrible--had been endured--
I told my Soul to sing--

She said her Strings were snapt--
Her Bow--to Atoms blown--
And so to mend her--gave me work
Until another Morn--

And then--a Day as huge
As Yesterdays in pairs,
Unrolled its horror in my face--
Until it blocked my eyes--

My Brain--begun to laugh--
I mumbled--like a fool--
And tho' 'tis Years ago--that Day--
My Brain keeps giggling--still.

And Something's odd--within--
That person that I was--
And this One--do not feel the same--
Could it be Madness--this?

Dickinson here describes the transformation her suffering and subsequent growth as a poet has wrought. The change is so great she feels as if she's a different person, and symbolically she is. Without the foundation and support of tribal religion, her final questioning of her sanity rings true, for her intellect and intellectual environment seemed inimical to such almost mystical experience.

If these poems and letters illustrate the "Big Hurt," where is the healing? Part of the answer lies in the following poem:

On a Columnar Self--
How ample to rely
In Tumult--or Extremity--
How good the Certainty

That Lever cannot pry--
And Wedge cannot divide
Conviction--That Granitic Base--
Though None be on our Side--

Suffice Us--for a Crowd--
Ourself--and Rectitude--
And that Assembly --not far off
From furthest Spirit--God-- (789)

Similar pronouncements appear in "The Soul selects her own Society--" (303) and "The Soul's Superior instants / Occur to Her--alone--" (306).6

These poems are an introvert's declaration of independence, a claiming of the insights that come from the integrity of the Self. The first example, in particular, also shows a key difference between the neo-shaman and the traditional shaman. The latter doesn't look to a "furthest Spirit"; she knows the spirits intimately. Unlike the traditional shaman, Dickinson isn't quite sure what happens after death. If she believes in God, she argues with Him or refuses to communicate altogether.

In a letter of condolence on the death of their father, she writes to her cousins, Louise and Frances Norcross: "Let Emily sing for you because she cannot pray" (Letters, vol. 2, no. 278). She then writes out a version of poem number 335 ("'Tis not that Dying hurts us so--"). When her friend and possible love-object, Samuel Bowles, was sick with a chill and acute sciatica, Dickinson sent the following poem in a letter to him (Sewall 481):

Would you like summer? Taste of ours.
Spices? Buy here!
Ill! We have berries, for the parching!
Weary! Furloughs of down!
Perplexed! Estates of violet trouble ne'er looked on!
Captive! We bring reprieve of roses!
Fainting! Flasks of air!
Even for Death, a fairy medicine.
But, which is it, sir? (691)

The poem reminds me very much of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, except that here the spices and berries are "fairy medicine."7 Sewall is right to declare "she seems to be showering him [Bowles] with metaphors to convince him of the value of metaphors (and of her poems) and of their specific value, right now, to help him get well. A poem is a kind of prayer." And, Sewall continues, "poems are life-giving: she spoke once of the 'balsam word' as having more power to heal than doctors" (482). The natural images she offers are blessed, healing medicines such as a shaman could provide. (See Figure 3.) In one of her few poems of "greeting card" quality, she writes, as Sewall notes: "If I can stop one Heart from breaking / I shall not live in vain / If I can ease one Life the Aching / Or cool one Pain [. . .] I shall not live in Vain" (919).

Fig. 3, Yarn art from the Huichol Indians of Mexico which depicts a
shaman ("El Chaman") blessing in various ways "la milpa," a
cultivated field of corn or maize, by Luchina Pérez Glez.
(from the collection of Clifton Snider, purchased in Puerto Vallarta,
Jalisco, Mexico, May 1997.)

Writing to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (the famous author who infamously failed to recognize her full poetic stature while she lived), Dickinson says in regard to a death: "I felt a palsy, here--the Verses just relieve--" (Letters, vol. 2, no. 265). If, as Kalweit suggests, "only self-borne suffering will stimulate true tolerance and genuine compassion" (98), Emily Dickinson possessed that kind of tolerance and compassion. Manifestly, poetry provided healing for herself from pain--self-inflicted or not--and she meant her poems to provide healing for others. In this she is very much in the shamanic tradition.

Many so-called "New Age" adepts believe in the healing power of crystals. This a shamanic idea. While their bodies are dismembered, many shamans receive a rock or quartz crystal into them (Eliade 132 and 135). Sometimes shamanic power is transferred by the vomiting of a quartz crystal over the neophyte (Kalweit 80). Or the neophyte may drink water that has had crystals in it (Eliade 135). There is something magical and healing about the chthonic substance of crystals. Describing the effects of deep psychic trauma, one of Dickinson's best poems goes as follows:

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round--
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone--

This is the Hour of Lead--
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow--
First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go-- (341)

With profound insight, she implies that such pain can kill ("if outlived"), yet if it does not kill, what remains is "A Quartz contentment." Now this is a metaphor, to be sure, but it is also descriptive of the "letting go" necessary for the healing to come. The catharsis symbolized by the shaman's dismemberment and replenishment with new organs and rock crystals is here strikingly recalled in a highly personal poem which nonetheless applies to all who've experienced such injury to the spirit.

Other shamanic ideas are the bridge that connects earth with heaven (Eliade 397) and the power to fly (Eliade 140). Let us first consider the bridge idea, alluded to in the following poem:

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading--treading--till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through--

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum--
Kept beating--beating--till I thought
My Mind was going numb--

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space--began to toll,

As all the Heaven were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here--

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down--
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And finished knowing--then-- (280)

As I've indicated, part of the shaman's initiation is a symbolic death and rebirth. And the drum, as Eliade notes, "has a role of the first importance in shamanic ceremonies." Drumming "carries the shaman to the 'Center of the World,' [which can be the bridge itself--see Eliade 397] or enables him to fly through the air, or summons and 'imprisons' the spirits, or [. . .] the drumming enables the shaman to concentrate and regain contact with the spiritual world through which he is preparing to travel" (168). Cynthia Griffin Wolff has shown that Dickinson's "Plank in Reason" alludes "to the iconography of conservative, mid-nineteenth-century religious culture" (229-230). She includes in her discussion a picture of what looks like a plank labeled "faith" in Holmes and Barber's Religious Allegories (1848). The plank stretches from solid rock through clouds to the celestial kingdom of heaven. A man holding the Bible walks across on the plank. The emblem is called "WALKING BY FAITH," and is based on II Corinthians 5:7: "For we walk by faith, not by sight" (Wolff 230-231). Wolff concludes that "having renounced faith, Dickinson substitutes a 'Plank in Reason,' which breaks because no rational explanation can be adequate to bridge the abyss between earth and Heaven. The poem concludes with a fall that is an apotheosis of confusion" (230).

Of course Dickinson, as Wolff surely knows, never entirely renounced faith, and I question whether this poem, unlike others such as "I died for Beauty--but was scarce" (449) or "Because I could not stop for Death--" (712), is truly written from the posthumous point of view. Rather, I suggest it describes psychic pain so great it's like a great funeral ceremony separating the poet from the common lives of others. It describes the symbolic death a shaman must endure. The "Plank" is analogous to the bridge, and reason alone, as Wolff says, will not achieve the transport to the other side. It takes being done with "knowing" in a rational sense to do that. It takes spiritual "knowing," shamanic transformation, the kind of experience she describes in poem 875:

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch--
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

I disagree with Wolff that the last line of this poem "explicitly repudiates religious or transcendent implications and converts the verse into no more than an aphoristic definition" (479). The planks are between the stars and the sea, that is, in the center, and her experience, precarious as it is, leads her on.

Here is a definition poem that actually defines what Dickinson means by experience:

Experience is the Angled Road
Preferred against the Mind
By--Paradox--the Mind itself--
Presuming it to lead

Quite Opposite--How Complicate
The Discipline of Man--
Compelling Him to Choose Himself
His Preappointed Pain-- (910)

This is Gnostic, in Jung's sense. Experience, Dickinson maintains, supersedes intellect. There is in this poem the Puritanical idea of predestination ("Compelling Him to Choose Himself / His Preappointed Pain--"). It is written by an obsessive-compulsive introvert who has been called to poetry. She is compelled by the complex Jung says governs all visionary artists, which drives them to remain true (against rational considerations) to their essentially shamanistic vision.

The shamanic idea of flight or ascension is also contained in Dickinson's work:

As from the earth the light Balloon
Asks nothing but release--
Ascension that for which it was,
Its soaring Residence.
The spirit looks upon the Dust
That fastened it so long
With indignation,
As a Bird
Defrauded of its song. (1630)

Here death is looked upon as a joyful release--a flight like that of a bird. Birds, especially the eagle, are closely associated with the shaman as symbols of intercession between the gods and humans (Halifax 23), and Dickinson's poetry is filled with birds. Although the eagle is not prominent, she writes frequently of blue birds, robins, the bobolink, and other birds from her daily observations. She writes of the blue bird:

Before you thought of Spring
Except as a Surmise
You see--God bless his suddenness--
A fellow in the Skies
Of independent Hues
A little weather worn
Inspiriting habiliments
Of Indigo and Brown-
With specimens of Song
As if for you to choose--
Discretion in the interval
With gay delays he goes
To some superior Tree
Without a single Leaf
And shouts for joy to Nobody
But his seraphic self-- (1465)

The "seed form" of such bird song, as Joan Halifax declares, "is found in the psyche of the shaman" (24). The bird is a transcendent symbol, a spiritual symbol par excellence, as the adjective "seraphic" implies. Using bird imagery, Dickinson writes: "With Pinions of Disdain / The soul can farther fly / Than any feather specified / in Ornithology--" (1431). The soul, then, transcends the symbol and, shaman-like, flies.

Like the bridge or plank, Jacob's Ladder also extends from earth to heaven, and Jacob's wrestling with the angel at Peniel is a favorite Biblical story for Dickinson. Referring to the poem recounting this story ("A little East of Jordan," 59), Wolff writes: "Jacob the wrestler was a model for the poet-pugilist; Jacob's struggle was a starting point for Dickinson as artist" (151). Dickinson alludes to the story in the final lines of the poem that begins "How dare the robins sing" (1724): "Extinct be every hum / In deference to him / Whose garden wrestles with the dew, / At daybreak overcome!" The struggle Wolff refers to is the pain and suffering required of the shaman-poet; the reward comes in the rare moments one is allowed to climb the ladder to insight and transcendence--to ecstasy, one of Dickinson's favorite words. "Take all away from me," she writes, "but leave me Ecstasy" (Poem 1640).


Jacob's Ladder is emblematic of the World Tree which connects the three Cosmic Zones or Planes in which shamans believe the world to be configured: underworld, earth, and sky (Eliade 259; see Figure 4). Far more prominent in Dickinson, however, is another "axis" connecting the three worlds: the Cosmic Mountain. As Eliade asserts, the two symbols--World Tree and Cosmic Mountain--are "complementary," and "it is only the shamans and the heroes who actually scale the Cosmic Mountain" (Eliade 269). Now Dickinson, a neo-shaman, never actually reaches the other side of the mountain. A little like Moses on Pisgah, she reaches the summit occasionally and has tentative glimpses of the afterlife. Death, she says in "Of Death I try to think like this--" (1558), is something positive that must be seized by the bold:

I do remember when a Child
With bolder Playmates straying
To where a Brook that seemed a Sea
Withheld us by its roaring
From just a Purple Flower beyond
Until constrained to clutch it
If Doom itself were the result,
The boldest leaped, and clutched it--

As in so many of her poems, she seems to be saying that we know the opposites by each other--here death by what we know of life.8

Fig. 4. This photograph by Louis C. Faron nicely illustrates at least four Dickinsonian shamanic motifs: the ascent, the World Tree, drumming, and out of body or supernatural experience. Joan Halifax writes of this picture: "A female machi (shaman) has ascended her rewe or notched pole. The pole has steps, and the machi climbs to the seventh level to complete her skyward journey. She plays a frame drum that assists her in her climb up the World Tree. In the Mapuche region of Chile, the hallucinogens Anadenathera, Datura, and Brugmancia were used during shamanic seances" (85). Note also that the shaman appears to be dressed in white.

As we have seen she compares herself to Vesuvius in "My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--" (754), just as she does in poem 1705:

Volcanoes be in Sicily
And South America
I judge from my Geography--
Volcanos nearer here
A Lava step at any time
Am I inclined to climb--
A Crater I may contemplate
Vesuvius at Home.

The image of the volcano as herself is a potent symbol, but also, like her famous (albeit inferior) poem, "I never saw a Moor--" (1052), it shows the shamanic ability to travel (fly, as it were) to foreign places without leaving home.

The shaman is able to do this by means of her ability to travel the World Axis. Sometimes she celebrates that axis, just has she has flown via her intuition and imagination to see it:

Ah, Teneriffe!
Retreating Mountain!
Purples of Ages--pause for you--
Sunset--reviews her Sapphire Regiment--
Day--drops you her Red Adieu!

Still--Clad in your Mail of ices--
Thigh of Granite--and thew--of Steel--
Heedless--alike--of pomp--or parting

Ah, Teneriffe!
I'm kneeling--still-- (666)

Wolff interprets this poem as an "image of nature as distant from human concerns and utterly independent both of God's force and of mankind's needs [. . .] because the speaker knows no other way to manifest her respect, she concludes her meditation by 'kneeling' in reverence" (434). I suspect there is more Wolff in this comment than there is Dickinson. A nineteenth-century critic would probably label the speaker's reverence "pantheistic," but I would call it an example of original participation, what Lucien Lévy-Bruhl called participation mystique. Consider what Jungian psychotherapist D. Stephenson Bond says: "the experience of participation mystique is bound up with a subjective perception of intensity, usually an emotional and physical intensity. Perhaps the greater the intensity, the more likely it is that objects will be experienced as having a life of their own" (9). That Dickinson never actually saw the snow-capped volcanic peak of Teneriffe in the Canaries with her physical eyes is evidence of the intensity of her participation. She projects something of herself, whom she sees as a volcano, unto Teneriffe. The mountain is hardly distant from human affairs or from God. In a most profound sense, it is human; it is God--just as it (and God) is in (and therefore is) the speaker herself. It connects the three worlds she as a shaman-poet is most concerned with.

If the number of poems with a posthumous speaker weren't evidence enough of Dickinson's interest in the underworld, one of her few poems published in her lifetime (and one of her better poems) should confirm her interest. Here is the first stanza of the 1859 version:

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers
Untouched by Morning
And untouched by Noon--
Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection--
Rafter of satin,
And Roof of stone. (216)

Even though she sees the "members of the Resurrection" as sleeping (or lying in the 1861 version), a modern point of view, the poem is sufficient to show her interest in the afterworld. Another poem suggests that the sleep of these dead ones continues only until the Resurrection:

'Tis Anguish grander than Delight
'Tis Resurrection Pain--
The meeting Bands of smitten Face
We questioned to, again.

'Tis Transport wild as thrills the Graves
When Cerements let go
And Creatures clad in Miracle
Go up by Two and Two. (984)

Here she writes as a true believer in the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection.

The number of poems which show her interest in the middle and upper Cosmic Zones are almost too numerous to give adequate examples. She has an incredible number of poems about flowers, birds, butterflies, sunsets, and many other aspects of nature; and an amazing number of these are introverted poems that examine the meaning of these and other images vis-à-vis her inner life--her psyche. Consider the following:

'Tis Sunrise--Little Maid--Hast Thou
No Station in the Day?
'Twas not thy wont, to hinder so--
Retrieve thine industry--

'Tis Noon--My little Maid--
Alas--and art thou sleeping yet?
The Lily--waiting to be Wed--
The Bee--Hast thou forgot?

My little Maid--'Tis Night--Alas
That Night should be to thee
Instead of Morning--Had'st thou broached
Thy little Plan to Die--
Dissuade thee, if I could not, Sweet,
I might have aided--thee-- (908)

Gilbert and Gubar call this one of Dickinson's "most chilling dramatic monologues" (623). Dickinson interweaves images of three periods of the day (sunrise, noon, and night) with the lily and the bee to create a portrait of the shadow archetype. She speaks, as Gilbert and Gubar assert, "as the murderous madwoman whom she ordinarily fears" (623).

Because it is an archetype, the shadow, or double, can be positive as well as negative. Shamans can sometimes become animals, which thus become their archetypal doubles. Eliade writes: "we might speak of a new identity for the shaman, who becomes an animal-spirit, and 'speaks,' sings, or flies like the animals and birds" (93). Moreover, "the tutelary animal not only enables the shaman to transform himself; it is in a manner his 'double,' his alter ego" (94). In Dickinson we find at least a parallel to this idea in the following delightful love poem:

Because the Bee may blameless hum
For Thee a Bee do I become
List even unto Me.

Because the Flowers unafraid
May lift a look on thine, a Maid
Alway a Flower would be.

Nor Robins, Robins need not hide
When Thou upon their Crypts intrude
So Wings bestow on Me
Or Petals, or a Dower of Buzz
That Bee to ride, or Flower of Furze
I that way worship Thee. (869)

To say the least, the speaker of this poem is androgynous. The bee, the robin, even the flower (the furze is prickly; it has spines) are all masculine images. The beloved is apparently a she, so that we have another example of gender-crossing and same-sex love where the speaker transforms herself into a bee, a robin and a "Flower of Furze."

Such transformation is typical not only of the shaman, but also of the trickster archetype. For example, as Eliade notes, the Nordic trickster Loki "can take various animal shapes" (386, n.39). Other tricksters from North American Indian culture which are associated with the shaman are Raven and Otter (Halifax 38).

Note how in the following (a poem about the sky--the third Cosmic Plane--and flight) Dickinson subtly identifies with the bird:

She staked her Feathers--Gained an Arc--
Debated--Rose again--
This time--beyond the estimate
Of Envy, or of Men--

And now, among Circumference--
Her steady Boat be seen--
At home--among the Billow--As
The Bough where she was born-- (798)

The bird symbolizes transcendence, the kind that achieves "Circumference," another of Dickinson's favorite words. If the Cosmic Mountain and the World Tree are the center, the axis, then circumference contains the achievement of wholeness, what Jung calls the Self. Taken as a whole, it is what her poetry achieves--the culmination of her personal myth.

Here is a final example of Dickinson's original participation:

My Faith is larger than the Hills--
So when the Hills decay--
My Faith must take the Purple Wheel
To show the Sun the way--

'Tis first He steps upon the Vane--
And then--upon the Hill--
And then abroad the World He go
To do His Golden Will--

And if His Yellow feet should miss--
The Bird would not arise--
The Flowers would slumber on their Stems--
No Bells have Paradise--

How dare I, therefore, stint a faith
On which so vast depends--
Lest Firmament should fail for me--
The Rivet in the Bands (766)

This poem reminds me of Jung's discussion, recounted in Aniela Jaffé's oral biography of him, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, with a Taos Pueblo chief, who said:

"[. . .] we are a people who live on the roof of the world;
we are the sons of Father Sun, and with our religion
we daily help our father to go across the sky. We do
this not only for ourselves, but for the whole world.
If we were to cease practicing our religion, in ten
years the sun would no longer rise. Then it would
be night forever." (252)

The shaman-poet is the rivet that holds human life together on this planet. To a rational, extraverted mind, the idea is absurd. Note, however, what Bond writes:

Our culture is now experiencing the death of myth, which is precisely what Jung meant when he said that when the aging myths of former generations pass away, the mythmaking process is constellated in the lives of individuals. For the birth of the personal myth in the imagination of a single individual may become the rebirth of the greater myths in the imagination of the culture. (75)

The poem I've just quoted is part of Emily Dickinson's personal myth, one rooted, like shamanism itself, in the collective unconscious of our species.

The high regard Dickinson had for poetry she illustrates in the following poem:

To pile like Thunder to its close
Then crumble grand away
While Everything created hid
This--would be Poetry--

Or Love--the two coeval come--
We both and neither prove--
Experience either and consume--
For None see God and live-- (1247)

Like a traditional shaman, she would, "after great pain" "see God and live." Dickinson, of course, is not a traditional shaman; she is a neo-shaman who equates the archetype of love with poetry and through that poetry does what shamans have always done.9 She explores the major issues of human life--love, ecstasy, pain, suffering, death, doubt, faith, the afterlife, a Higher Power--and she reports what she's found. That was her job on earth, her personal myth, her letter to the world.



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Notes
1Sources vary as to the number of poems published in her lifetime. The editor of the authoritative edition of her poems puts the number at seven (Johnson, Poems of Emily Dickinson, vol. 3, 1207) and a recent biographer puts it at eleven (Wolff 245). In any case, the number is very small compared to the 1775 poems she actually wrote.

2Other critics who have to varying degrees used Jung to analyze Dickinson include Theodora Ward (The Capsule of the Mind), Albert Gelpi (Emily Dickinson: The Mind of the Poet and The Tenth Muse: The Psyche of the American Poet), and Martin Bickman, American Romantic Psychology). I know of none, however, who has viewed Dickinson in quite the way I view her.

3Although traditional shamanism is on the decline, shamans continue to practice their rituals and beliefs. See "Korean Shamanism," by Joon-hyuk Kang. Other contemporary cultures that practice shamanism include the Aborigines of Australia, the Huichol Indians of Mexico (Halifax 70-71; see Figure 3 above), and the modern Maya in such locations as Chiapas and Yucatán, Mexico, and Guatemala (Schuster 50-53).

4Despite the wide separation of these poems in The Complete Poems, we do not know even the approximate date of the second poem; it could be early or late. See Johnson, Poems of Emily Dickinson , vol. 3, 1166.

5For example, take poem 985:

The Missing All--prevented Me
From missing minor Things.
If nothing larger than a World's
Departure from a Hinge--
Or Sun's extinction, be observed--
'Twas not so large that I
Could lift my Forehead from my work
For Curiosity.

The loss here, however, goes beyond public recognition of her work. No doubt it includes the "Big Loss" I've alluded to. In any case, this poem is another example of Dickinson's obsessive devotion to her vocation as a poet.

6Here, incidentally, is a good example of her use of dashes to emphasize her meaning: the word "alone" made alone by the dashes.

7Interestingly, Dickinson's contemporary, Christina Rossetti (they were both born in 1830), responded favorably to the edited, posthumous volume of Dickinson's work that appeared in 1890. Rossetti wrote to her brother William on 6 December 1890: "There is a book I might have shown you. [. . .] Poems by Emily Dickinson lately sent me from America--but perhaps you know it. She had (for she is dead) a wonderful Blakean gift, but therewithal a startling recklessness of poetic ways and means" (qtd. in Doriani 37). We do not know for certain whether Dickinson read Rossetti, although it is quite possible that she did. For a discussion of this possibility, see Marsh 539-540. For a discussion of Goblin Market in the context of Dickinson's poetry, see Daneen Wardrop, Emily Dickinson's Gothic.

8This reading is not entirely original with me. Poet Richard Wilbur comments on "Success is counted sweetest" (67): "Certainly Emily Dickinson's critics are right in calling this poem an expression of the idea of compensation--of the idea that every evil confers some balancing good, that through bitterness we learn to appreciate the sweet, that 'Water is taught by thirst'" (131). Thanks to my colleague, Richard Spiese, at California State University, Long Beach, for drawing my attention to this essay. Another example of Dickinson's doctrine of compensation is poem 689:

The Zeroes--taught us--Phosphorus--
We learned to like the Fire
By playing Glaciers--when a Boy--
And Tinder--guessed--by power
Of Opposite--to balance Odd--
If White--a Red--must be!
Paralysis--our Primer--dumb--
Unto Vitality!

The shaman-poet who lives in both the natural world and the supernatural world and experiences both genders is thus able to know each of these pairs of opposites intimately.

Judith Farr calls Dickinson "a poet of the transitus," the word theologians of the Middle Ages used to refer to the "soul's passage" from life to "Eternity" (6-7). With her sister Lavinia and her brother Austin she talked about "'the Extension of Consciousness, after Death'" (qtd. in Farr 9). Dickinson's siblings "were always aware of the facility with which their sister's contemplation moved between this world and an hypothetical other" (9).

9Significantly, Jung has written that "the psychological inference that may be drawn from shamanistic symbolism [. . . is] that it is a projection of the individuation process" (Alchemical Studies 341).



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Works Cited
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Barfield, Owen. Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry. New York: Harcourt, 1965.

Bickman, Martin. American Romantic Psychology: Emerson, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville. Dallas: Spring, 1988.

Bond, D. Stephenson. Living Myth: Personal Meaning as a Way of Life. Boston: Shambhala, 1993.

Cirlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols. 2nd Ed. Trans. Jack Sage. New York: Philosophical Library, 1971.

Coote, Stephen, ed. The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1983.

Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little,1960.

---. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward. 3 vols. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1958.

Doriani, Beth Maclay. Emily Dickinson: Daughter of Prophecy. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1996.

Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Trans.
Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1964.

Erkkila, Betsy. "Homoeroticism and Audience: Emily Dickinson's Female 'Master'." Dickinson and Audience. Ed. Martin Orzeck and Robert Weisbuch. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996. 161- 180.

Faderman, Lillian. "Emily Dickinson's Homoerotic Poetry." Higginson Journal 18 (1978): 19-27.

Farr, Judith. The Passion of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992.

Gelpi, Albert J. Emily Dickinson: The Mind of the Poet. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1966.

---. The Tenth Muse: The Psyche of the American Poet. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1975.

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.

Grahn, Judy. Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds. Boston: Beacon, 1984.

Halifax, Joan. Shaman: The Wounded Healer. London: Thames and Hudson, 1982.

Harner, Michael. "What Is a Shaman?" Shaman's Path: Healing, Personal Growth, and Empowerment. Ed. Gary Doore. Boston: Shambhala, 1988. 7-15.

Johnson, Thomas H. ed. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. 3 vols.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1955.

Joon-hyuk Kang. "Korean Shamanism." Los Angeles Festival Program Book. Los Angeles: McTaggart-Wolk, 1990. 84.

Juhasz, Suzanne, Cristanne Miller, and Martha Nell Smith. Comic Power in Emily Dickinson. Austin: U of Texas P, 1993.

Jung, C. G. Alchemical Studies. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1967. Vol. 13 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Ed. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard Adler. (CW ) 20 Vols.

---. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Ed. Aniela Jaffé. Trans.
Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Pantheon, 1963.

---. "Psychology and Literature." The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966. Vol. 15 of CW. 84-105.

---. Symbols of Transformation: An Analysis of the Prelude to a Case of Schizophrenia. 2nd ed. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1967. Vol. 5 of CW.

Kalweit, Holger. Dreamtime and Inner Space: The World of the Shaman. Trans. Werner Wünsche. Boston: Shambhala, 1988.

McNeil, Helen. Emily Dickinson. New York: Pantheon, 1986.

Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. 1990. New York: Vintage, 1991.

Patterson, Rebecca. "Emily Dickinson's 'Double' Tim: Masculine
Identification." American Imago 28 (1971): 330-363.

---. The Riddle of Emily Dickinson. Boston: Houghton, 1951.

Pritzker, Barry. Edward S. Curtis. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1993.

Rich, Adrienne. "Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson."
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978.
New York: Norton, 1979. 157-183.

Roscoe, Will. The Zuni Man-Woman. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1991.

Schuster, Angela M. H. "Rituals of the Modern Maya." Archaeology 50.4 (1997): 50-53.

Sewall, Richard B. The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York:
Farrar, 1980.

Shullenberger, William. "'My Class had stood--a Loaded Gun'." Approaches to Teaching Dickinson's Poetry. Ed. Robin Rily Fast and Christine Mack Gordon. New York: MLA, 1989. 95-104.

Snider, Clifton. The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On: A Jungian Interpretation of Literature. Wilmette, IL: Chiron, 1991.

Townsend, Joan B. "Neo-Shamanism and the Modern Mystical Moment." Shaman's Path: Healing, Personal Growth, and Empowerment. Ed. Gary Doore. Boston: Shambhala, 1988. 73-83.

Ward, Theodora. The Capsule of the Mind: Chapters in the Life of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1961.

Wardrop, Daneen. Emily Dickinson's Gothic: Goblin with a Gauge. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1996.

Wilbur, Richard. "'Sumptuous Destitution.'" Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Richard B.Sewall. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1963. 127-136.

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American Indian Culture. Boston: Beacon, 1986.

Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. Emily Dickinson. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988.

--Copyright © Clifton Snider, 2008.

This essay first appeared, in a different form, in The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal 14 (1996): 33-64.

Last revised: 31 December 2000.

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RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

We know that when Emily Dickinson wrote Poem 35 (Johnson) in 1858
and Samuel Bowles published it in his Springfield Daily Republican
that in her telling line, "Nobody knows this little Rose," there
was a modicum of TRUTH in the statement.

Dickinsonians know all about the "Rose" and the "Bee"--all about
Emily Dickinson and Samuel Bowles! That is, Dickinsonians who can
read and comprehend her biography know.

Beginning some time in 1857, Emily Dickinson spent her daily life
embedding into her autobiographical writings, ipso facto--all her
letters, poems and letter-poems--her *biography.*

Clearly, the outpouring of autobiographical details about her
Secret Love affair in circa one thousand love poems is self-evident
to all Dickinsonians with the collected works at hand and the eyes to
read with comprehension. Her circa one thousand letters offer an
eyeful, or two. Often, poems, letter-poems and letters
written at the SAMe time offer the best clues to the only exegeses
which make complete sense: an autobiographical interpretation of her
canon of writings. And none in the world of Dickinson has suggested
that one thousand love letters were written in a vacuum of fantasy love
Not when there is ample evidence in the biography that they were
addressed to her Master!

The myriad Sir, Sire, Master, He, Him, His referents clearly identify
all her writings as one and the same: an autobiographical immortal
Soulmate love story written for posterity, masquerading as poetry.

OK: the two-dozen most famously critiqued and well-crafted little
masterpieces, anthologized and beloved worldwide, are poems which
are first-rate and can stand on their own, as individual pieces,
and yet they are for the most part part-and-parcel of the grand
scheme of her passion drama like the famous Le Roman De La Rose.
Her dream allegory spread out in circa one thousand Secret Love
poems is not unlike the narrative poetic French masterpiece of the
thirteenth century. Dickinson scholars understand all of this,
but students of Dickinson deficient in a knowledge of comparative
literature need to take a walk on the wild side of love which
inspired Emily Dickinson to her own modern masterpiece, her Opus
work of of writings, as her legacy appears in her many writings.
They need to read Le Roman De La Rose, just as Emily Dickinson
steeped herself in the French classics.

As a case in point:

In Master Letter 233 (Johnson) Emily Dickinson wrote "Master."

That is the way she started that communication to her Master,
and she wrote, to wit,
the following: "If you saw a bullet hit a Bird--and he told you
he was'nt shot--you might weep at his courtesy, but you would
certainly doubt his word."

Well, there is no doubt that circa one thousand Secret Love poems,
and myriad letters and letter-poems were written to this SAMe
Master who she soon wrote "God made me--Sir--Master" and left
no doubt that her *male* recipient was her one and only Master,
the one who held the loaded gun and shot her through her vulnerable
heart with the modern love bullet rather than the mythic Cupid
arrow! She literally died in his arms, and yet lived to tell all
posterity the TRUTH of their Secret Love affair. And her metaphors
were uniquely her own, in this, her tale of immortal SOULMATE LOVE!

Someone, somewhere, of no great consequence, once said that "the
'master' question is there, but of no great consequence."
Of course, the lie within that questionable statement is patently
false, inasmuch as these same "of no great consequence" writers
would have you believe they can offer up any valid exegesis of the
circa one thousand Secret Love poems and myriad letters written by
Emily Dickinson to and about that same *masculine* Master of great
and significant consequence not only in TRUTHFUL interpretations
of her poems, but elucidation of her letters via her biographical
events during her lifetime.

One wonders did Emily Dickinson write about her Secret Master in
symbols? Did she write it so scholars and students of Dickinson
would comment on her style of creating autobiographical writing?
Or did she write her poems, letters, and letter-poems so readers
would become engaged with the persona of herself and her Secret
Love, her Master, and their immortal Soulmate story?

Surely, Dickinsonians, of all readers in the world, know by
now that Emily Dickinson had her secret love belief about her own
writings, and expected all and sundry to read her writings with a
troubadour poet's outpouring in mind.

Her sister Lavinia was quoted as
having written of Emily Dickinson:

"Emily was herself a most charming reader. It was done with
great simplicity and naturalness, with an earnest desire to
express the exact conception of the author, without any thought
of herself, or the impression her reading was sure to make."

Now, the key buzz words appear to me to be "exact" and "conception"
and "author."

Sorry
about that, folks, but the TRUTH hurts!

The TRUTH is that Emily Dickinson believed in the "exact conception
of the author."

Well, welcome to Emily Dickinson's world of perspecuity: Poem 1455,
"Opinion is a flitting thing, / But Truth, outlasts the Sun--"

Emily Dickinson and Samuel Bowles are UP THERE, looking down and
smiling at us Dickinsonians. Soulmates among the Blessed!

So: WHO was that masked man, the Master, anyway?

The TRUTH of her biography IS: the masculine Master was
Samuel Bowles of Springfield.

Read: B-I-O-G-R-A-P-H-Y !

The TRUTH of the matter at hand, her biography, IS: the
female "Queen" of her King Master Samuel Bowles was,
as far as Emily Dickinson saw fit, herself!

When Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 268 (Johnson) in those 1862 days
after Master Sam Bowles went to Europe and left her in the lurch, she
was seeking her third "Master"! Not the LOVE of her life, as she had
already had that in SAM B. She gave us the woven tapestry, and it was
ours to see as she, Emily Dickinson, spun her web of intrigue in her
exact conception: a story of immortal secret love.

In literary criticism, some writers and scholars who were of
the school of the New Critics were *purists*and called reading
into poems anything of the poet's life, "the biographical fallacy."
Then those same critics expanded their thinking into newer ventures
called Structuralism, and eventually, the school of Deconstruction.

But, Dickinsonians, Emily Dickinson herself would have none of
these schools of thought inasmuch as she was of the old, old school:
that poems have meaning, as the words of the poems have meaning, and
she sought "the exact conception of the author." Otherwise, why
would she refer SO OFTEN to the "Master" and "Sir" and "Sire"--the
masculine referent so OBVIOUS in her circa one thousand Secret Love
poems?

Truth of the biography and how it applies to exegeses of
her autobiographical poems is the only thing which is going to solve
the mystery of what was Emily Dickinson's "exact conception of the
author."

When asked about my beliefs that the biography of Emily
Dickinson should be formed as the basis for poem interpretation,
the noted UMass-Amherst professor and Dickinson scholar David Porter
was quoted in an interview in the *Springfield Union News* as
saying: "readers need to read what Arnold has to say and judge
for themselves." He was referring to my book about Emily Dickinson
and Samuel Bowles, cited inh my sig file!

Master Letter 233 (Johnson) was written by Emily Dickinson and
unlike poems manufactured into booklets, it is a letter-poem meant
for Samuel Bowles, signed, internally "Daisy," in ink, circa winter
1861, while Samuel Bowles, her Master, was in New York state and his
wife was delivering their child, Charles, which Emily Dickinson wanted
named Robert. Emily Dickinson, however, left it in her personal
effects after her death, thus placing it into the series of her love
letters to the world, and made it explicit by its content that the
"Master" was *not* Jesus, and yet the letter-poem clearly is about her
Secret "Sir/Master;" you see, the love letter to her Master Samuel
Bowles, is in the Amherst College Special Collections, and of which now
I will share some very special aspects of this Master and his *Queen*
primary document of TRUTH:

Dickinsonians, we begin this thread with a careful and judicious reading
of Master Letter 233 clearly identifies the recipient as Samuel Bowles. No
doubt, all the evidence of the biography of Emily Dickinson puts the
"Sir/Master" as a REAL person, named: Samuel Bowles. No one needed
to doctor a document to suggest the Master had a "beard" as the letter
Emily Dickinson wrote makes that tacitly CLEAR. What else the meaning:
paraphrased, if you had my petals, as in, I, Emily Dickinson, the
flower, Daisy, and I were you, the bearded Master, who should make the
moves, and fly up here and come to Amherst from New York, and pollenate
my blossom, and what would happen to you if the roles were reversed?
It is clear from the letter, that the Master was showing reluctance to
make the trip and visit his Secret Love.

Not only that, we have the internal evidence of the word "Sir"
at least four times, and that IS enough to warrant this Letter 233
as a document in INK in which none can doubt that her "Sir/Master"
was the same "Sir/Master" of circa one thousand Secret Love poems.
When one tells the truth as a scholar, the same rules of a court of law
apply. Truth by commission/omission is a fundamental tenet of the law.
Violate either side of the equation, and the truth test has not been met.

So, what WAS her "exact conception of the author" in "Sir/Master"
Letter 233?

So, WHO was this "Sir/Master" who was a "cipher/cypher" in
"Sir/Master" Letter 233?

Well, the "EXACT" same "*your Queen*" referents in "Sir/Master"
Letter 233 and in "Sir/Master" Letter 249, also in ink, and signed
"Emily," and sent to Samuel Bowles, clearly identifies the recipient
as Samuel Bowles, her editor/Secret Love.

Dickinsonians know that Emily Dickinson's Master was
Samuel Bowles, inasmuch as all the corollary evidence supports
the fact: the biographical record clearly proves that all the
"Bee" and "Rose" and Daisy" and "Lily" referents embedded
in letters to her Master, and letter-poems to Samuel Bowles,
and circa one thousand secret love poems to her Master, with
SAM B letters in capitalized form was created by her to leave
a legacy and poetic record of this greatest of love affairs
of the nineteenth century in American literature, by the
American bard, Emily Dickinson, writer!

RE: How Has Emily Dickinson Influenced You?

Hi, Dickinsonians.

Letter 272 (Johnson) was written in ink by Emily Dickinson
on "especially lightweight" stationary "intended for overseas
correspondence" given to her by Susan Dickinson. There is no doubt
that Susan Dickinson, her confidante who kept her Secret Love
with Samuel Bowles well hidden, knew Emily Dickinson wrote to her
Master Samuel Bowles who had gone across the Sea Blue to Europe.
Emily Dickinson says so in her letter to Sam, dated August 1862.
The provenance of the letter is that it was saved by the family
of Samuel Bowles and donated to Amherst College Library, where it
now resides for the world to take note of. It reads in part:

Dear Mr Bowles.

...when you get Home, next Winter...

Summer a'nt so long as it was, when we stood looking at it,
before you went away, and when I finish August, we'll hop the Autumn,
very soon--and then 'twill be Yourself. I dont know how many will be
glad to see you, because I never saw your whole friends, but I have
heard, that in large Cities--noted persons chose you. Though how glad
those I know--will be, is easier told.

I tell you, Mr Bowles, it is a Suffering, to have a sea--no care
how Blue--between your Soul, and you. The Hills you used to love when
you were in Northampton, miss their old lover, could they speak--and
the puzzled look--deepens in Carlo's forehead, as Days go by, and you
never come.

I've learned to read the Steamer place--in Newspapers--now. It's
'most like shaking hands, with you--or more like your ringing at the
door...

We reckon--your coming by the Fruit.

...

It is easier to look behind at a pain, than to see it coming...

How sweet it must be to one to come Home--whose Home is in so many
Houses--and every Heart a "Best Room." I mean you, Mr Bowles.

Sue gave me the paper, to write on...for have not the Clovers,
*names*, to the Bees?

--Emily

Now, Dickinsonians, for an exegesis, based on her biography:

I have edited this letter, to be emphatic on Emily Dickinson's
relationship with her Master, Samuel Bowles. Remember: he had visited
her in April, she had gone into turmoil, written myriad letters and
poems, dressed in white, went into seclusion, and now, she gets special
stationary for overseas mail, and in August, at the height of the summer
season when she always had a visit from Samuel Bowles, Emily Dickinson
*confesses* her innermost angst, actual suffering at the Sea Blue which
separates them.

She recounts she knows he is the "Bee" which has so many "Clovers"
[ aka anagram, Clever Lovers ] that he cannot remember their
*names* and she emphasizes the word by underlining! She recalls for him
what it meant to her to have her "old lover" in nearby "Northampton" in
the summer of 1861 when he almost died. She IS metaphorically
"The Hills" and Samuel Bowles even autographed one of her anonymously
published poems in his newspaper with the referent "Pelham Hill, June, 1861."
It was Poem 216, and he had published it the summer before and she is
herein acknowledging their "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers" memories.

Obviously, the poem's first line, and second "Untouched by Morning,"
contain SAM in capital letters and internal anagrams of Sam b in "Safe...
Alabaster...Chambers." The metaphors within the first stanza are
chillingly about these cold, calculating "lovers."

Let us repeat: Samuel Bowles published Poem 216 and signed it with
a clear moniker of "Pelham Hill, June, 1861," as bold as you can get as
to *who* was its author to those in the know, such as Lavinia, Austin,
and Susan, as well as Emily Dickinson, its author, who in this followup
letter reveals he, Samuel Bowles, was the tomb partner in the poem,
the "old lover" who even her dog Carlo misses, he was *there* in
"The Hills" so often!! Quite a metaphor for secret "lovers"!!!

So often, she notes, Samuel Bowles *knows* and she reminds
him that between "you" [Sam] and "your Soul [herself: Emily] is that
"sea--no care how Blue." And "Blue" she was, while he was away.

This is hardly the letter of a cloistered nun, but more the letter
of his "Queen Recluse" in wait for his return, dressed in white, bridal
as the pure snow, that coming winter, when he would come, to visit his
white "Clover" again--yes, he, Sam come to "The Hills"!

Poem 640 (Johnson) was written by Emily Dickinson,
manufactured into booklet 9, circa 1862. Emily Dickinson
placed it into a series of her love letters to the world,
and made it explicit the "Master" was *not* Jesus, and yet
the poem clearly is about her Secret "Sir/Master:"

I cannot live with You--
It would be Life--
And Life is over there--
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to--
Putting up
Our Life--His Porcelain--
Like a Cup--

Discarded of the Housewife--
Quaint--or Broke--
A newer Sevres pleases--
Old Ones crack--

I could not die--with You--
For One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down—
You--could not--

And I--Could I stand by
And see You--freeze--
Without my Right of Frost--
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise--with You--
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus'--
That New Grace

Glow plain--and foreign
On my homesick Eye--
Except that You than He
Shone closer by--

They'd judge Us—-How--
For You--served Heaven--You know,
Or sought to--
I could not--

Because You saturated Sight--
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be--
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame--

And were You--saved--
And I--condemned to be
Where You were not--
That self--were Hell to Me--

So We must meet apart--
You there--I--here--
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are--and Prayer--
And that White Sustenance--
Despair--

--Emily Dickinson

No doubt, for Dickinsonians, this poem will ring true for the Truth of 1862,
when she and her Master, Samuel Bowles, were "Oceans...apart," he in Europe
and she in Amherst, and she already dressed in white, hidden behind doors,
so that when he returned that fall, Emily Dickinson was already in selcusion.


Any Dickinsonian worth his/her salt knows that Emily Dickinson
wrote a letter to Samuel Bowles the year before she dressed in
white and went into seclusion: and signed it "Marchioness."

Why, you ask?

Well, it referred to the Brits, of course. You see, Emily Dickinson
KNEW her classics as did ALL people of the nineteenth century:
before the advent of radio and TV. Back then, READING THE CLASSICS
was classic! Everybody did it. Too bad, some Dickinsonians think
Emily Dickinson was a dunce and read only the comics.

Recently, here in 2007, the future Queen of England jetted off to
southern Greece with the Marchioness of Lansdowne. Wow!

How is THAT related to Emily Dickinson? And WHY would she
sign herself: "Marchioness."

Have you read the Dickens' tale Emily Dickinson refers to in that
sig file of the nineteenth century? Why not?

That Dickens' tale called *The Old Curiosity Shop* refers to a
*Master* who befriended a young lady and educated her until
she called that *Master* her Master and herself "your scholar."
Same thing happened with Dickinson. Now WHY would she refer
to the CLASSICS when at that time, Dickens was not even classic!
He is today. Maybe Emily Dickinson, when everybody READ the
CLASSICS and ENGLISH writers in America, was trying to tell us
something about her *life*!

WHY is it British scholars understand this about classics, and the
classic authors, including Emily Dickinson, but American scholars
schooled only in American literature haven't got a clue?

My cousin who is a professional genealogist and I are researching
our ancestors of the early 1800s, and he recently wrote me:

"There are lots of examples of simple farmers' children having presidential
names, as well as those of other well-known politicians. In the early
1800s, when our ancestor was born, it also was common, even among
tenant farmers, to give their children names derived from Greek and
Latin classics--Cassius and Plato, for example. Our ancestress Elizabeth,
also from an agricultrual family, had a brother and sister named Archimedes
and Artimesia."

So, WHY would anyone doubt that Emily Dickinson in relatively sophisticated
Amherst of the 1800s would be any less schooled in the classics and use
them in her writings: letters and poetry?

Thomas Bulfinch was a Boston writer who published his *The Age
of Fable* in 1855. His retelling of the ancient Roman secret love
story of Cupid and Psyche is in Chapter ll. It is noted that Emily
Dickinson began manufacturing her secret love poems shortly
thereafter in 1858.

Once understood as a unifying theme, it is more easily
understood why in 1862 Emily Dickinson made the ultimate act of
dressing in white as a statement of her belief that her Master and
her would achieve immortality for eternity.

The main Metaphors in the Allegory of Apulius in my post, as told by
Bulfinch in his 1855 version of the Fable, are capitalized to emphasize
her allegorical metaphors were *personified* in the same manner I
conclude Emily Dickinson *personified* her Metaphors! Dickinson
scholars not schooled in the world literature classics should take
heed of the important concept of *Personification* in the poetic
arts, as I allege it is central to analyzing her poems and writing
exegeses. I assume Bulfinch to have been her primary source of the
story of the myth, although her classical dictionaries and general
reading would have offered her ample fodder, as well.

Since writing this, I have consulted my library again, at
length: and I can report that neither Ruth Miller nor Jack Capps
refers to Bulfinch's *The Age of Fable* as being in the Dickinson
library. However, Carlton Lowenberg in his *Emily Dickinson's
Textbooks*, page 35, has this entry:

Bulfinch, Thomas. *The Age of Fable; or Beauties of
Mythology*...Boston: Sanborn, Carter & Bazin, 1855(n.c.d.). DL:
Houghton #2133, a.s. "Edw. Dickinson 1856."

It is important to note that Edward Dickinson possessed a copy
of Bulfinch's *The Age of Fable* in the Homestead, autographed, and
it is cataloged as part of the Houghton Collection and it is number
2133 of the *Handlist of Books* acquisitioned from Emily Dickinson's
home. This 1856-autographed book is important to note because within
two years Emily Dickinson was manufacturing her booklets with poems
referencing the fuller version of the love story of Cupid and Psyche
as retold by Bulfinch. And, it is closer to the thematic threads of
Emily Dickinson's secret love poems than the abridged version in
Anthon's *Classical Dictionary*, which also was in the Dickinson
homestead library, but was one of the works rejected by Whicher and
Johnson. Ruth Miller pointed out that Whicher and Johnson, acting as
consultants for Houghton in the library's acquisition process,
rejected many *classical* works. Miller stated that scholars need to
consult the Houghton *Handlist*. I hereby suggest, also, Carlton
Lowenberg's *Emily Dickinson's Textbooks*.

As a result, I argue once again that Dickinson scholars will
need to carefully reassess Emily Dickinson's indebtedness to
classical world literature, and in particular the European troubadour
tradition of courtly love literature in order to fully analyze and
write exegeses of her writings and make proper sense of her life's
events. Biographers should also take note.

Emily Dickinson wrote she "craves him grace" within Poem 321
just as Sam Bowles was sailing across the Sea Blue and she feared he
would drown as she opined in Letter 249 with embedded Poem 226:
"Should you but fail at--Sea--...I'd *harass* God / Until he let you
in!"

An interested Dickinsonian wrote, in part: "To wit, 'Fame is a Bee' was
always an enigmatic poem to me, yet one of my favorites: I understand
it better now, especially the line referring to its sting, in the light of
your info about the Bees (newspapers)."

Dickinsonians, probably, would like to take note that the "Bee" as name
for a newspaper is so popular as to defy logic as to why any
Dickinsonian, anywhere and any time, would ever question Emily
Dickinson's referent to Samuel Bowles as her "Bee" and herself as his
flower, whether Daisy or Rose or Lily, in Poem 3 sent to Samuel Bowles
when she was 21: "How doth the busy bee?"
And in Letter 229 of February 1861: "We offer you our
cups--stintless--as
to the Bee--the Lily, her new Liquors--": then quotes him the poem
"Would you like Summer? Taste of our's--"

The "Bee" newspapers include: The Amherst Bee, Clarence Bee, Ken-Ton
Bee, Lancaster Bee, Depew Bee, Cheeklowga Bee, West Seneca Bee,
Orchard Park Bee, East Aurora Bee, Richmond Bee, Danville Bee,
Beeville Bee, Idaho Bee, Sellwood Bee, Fresno Bee, Modesto Bee,
Sacramento Bee, Memphis Bee, Newtown Bee...truly
ad infinitum. The Newtown Bee is most interesting, having a Springfield
Republican editor leave and turn the Newtown Bee into one of the oldest
one hundred-year old Bee newspapers in America, right down the river
from Sam Bowles' old newspaper. As said, the historical tradition of
the
"Bee" as the honeyed-words of poets and editors--aka writers as in
"Bees buzzing in the Bonnets" of readers--goes back to Plato,
The Athenian Bee, Sophocles, The Attic Bee, as well as Xenophon,
The Athenian Bee, et al. Keep on buzzin

Those of scientific mind, and those who appreciate mathematics, and
still are "Bee-Loved" of the writings of Emily Dickinson will probably find
the following facts from the primary documents of the biography of her
life of supreme interest--and importance when it comes to her concept
of "Bee" love:

Emily Dickinson as a matter of record wrote circa 130 "Bee" and "Bees"
and "Bee's" poems, mostly capitalized.

Emily Dickinson, beginning in 1845, when she was 14, wrote letters with
the "bee" mentioned, and in 1851, she wrote her first "Bee"--that is,
capitalized--referent. We note in the following year, Samuel Bowles, her
busy "Bee" at the Springfield Republican, published her telling Poem 3
about the newspaper-Bee linkage with her line: "How doth the busy bee?"

Emily Dickinson, between 1845 and 1860, in letters alone, wrote 15 "bee"
or "Bee" referents. Then, suddenly, in 1861 [Dickinsonians should
*wonder* why?] she began to *capitalize* her "Bee" referent for the most
part, with a few exceptions: thusly, 19 times up until 1864, when all the
"Bee" referents stopped, altogether, which just happened to coincide with
the time her relationship with Samuel Bowles ceased, on a passionate, and
highly-emotional level; and her manufactured booklets ceased; in fact, the
secret love poems were basically committed to booklet form, the
autobiographical thread was accomplished, and any further committment
to poetic form was less regularly done and seemed to take on a different
tone and serve a different "Bee" Master.

Emily Dickinson, between 1860 and 1883, wrote letters with "Bees" and
"Bee's" 18 times.

Certainly, Dickinsonians can draw their own conclusions about these
matters. Some Dickinsonians will find of interest the connection between
newsapaper Bees, and famed poetic Bees--those writers of words with
honeyed expressions, beginning with Plato, Socrates, et al., and ending
with modern newspaper "Bee" editors with their hidden sting! Other
Dickinsonians will find of interest Dickinson's "Bee" letters and her "Bee"
biography! For all Dickinsonians interested in "Bee" matters, I take note
of Emily Dickinson's 1862 letter, of the year she became so upset over
the departure of Samuel Bowles, *her "Bee"* who "went to sea:" in reaction,
she dressed "in white" and went into seclusion. Indeed, this letter was
written *to* Samuel Bowles, her "Bee," while he was across the sea and
she clearly asked him ironically, her "Bee," if he can remember her name,
from among the other ladies, as flowers, he the "Bee" left behind in
America: Letter 272, circa August 1862, quoted in part:

"Dear Mr Bowles...I tell you, Mr Bowles, it is a Suffering, to have a
sea--no care how Blue--between your Soul, and you [remember,
Dickinsonians, the story of Cupid-Bowles and Psyche-Soul-Dickinson
which she referenced in myriad poems]. The Hills you used to love when
you were in Northampton, miss their old lover, could they speak--and the
puzzed look--deepens in Carlo's forehead, as Days go by, and you never
come [remember Dickinsonians, that Samuel Bowles nearly died and
recuperated in nearby Northampton the previous summer of 1861
and Emily Dickinson like the Marchioness nursed him back to health and
cited the Dickens' tale in a letter of last summer: and she referred to this
linkage of Master, herself, and Carlo in Master letter 233]. I've learned to
read the Steamer place--in Newspapers--now. It's 'most like shaking hands,
with you--or more like your ringing at the door...How sweet it must be to
one to come Home--whose Home is in so many Houses--and every Heart
a 'Best Room.' I mean you, Mr Bowles...for have not the Clovers, *names*,
to the Bees? Emily." [The manuscript, in ink, is part of the Samuel Bowles
collection at Amherst College Library]

All for the love of the "Bee" !

Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 446 to Samuel Bowles, the "Bee" editor of
the Springfield Daily Republican, circa 1875, during his final illness: he
took to his death bed in 1877, and died January 16, 1878:

Sweet is it as Life, with it's enhancing Shadow of Death.

A Bee his burnished Carriage
Drove boldly to a Rose--
Combinedly alighting--
Himself--his Carriage was--
The Rose received his visit
With frank tranquility
Witholding not a Crescent
To his Cupidity--
Their Moment consummated--
Remained for him--to flee--
Remained for her--of rapture
But the humility.

--Emily Dickinson

There should be no doubt that in *fact* Emily Dickinson understood the
classical mythology of ancient Greece about the relationship of the "Bee" to
the Soul, to the mythology of Cupid and Psyche, Love and Soul, the
flitting Butterflies who feast on the honeyed love of flowers, and all her
literary allusions and metaphors owe their substance to her reading in the
classical books in her Homestead library. [This letter, elsewhere listed without
the prose as Poem 1339 (Johnson), is in ink and the manuscript is housed in
the Amherst College Library, its provenance part of the Samuel Bowles
collection catalogued by Jay Leyda.]

Emily Dickinson sent Letter 227 in 1860 to girlfriend Elizabeth Holland,
wife of Josiah, associate editor to the Springfield Daily Republican,
about their little boy who was operated on for a foot problem: this will
explain, among other things, Emily Dickinson's *cryptic* referents to feet and
ankles, linking them to poets, when she wrote, in part: "How is your little
Byron? Hope he gains his foot without losing his genius. Have heard it ably
argued that the poet's genius lay in his foot--as the bee's prong and his song
are concomitant...Blossoms belong to the bee, if needs be by *habeas
corpus*. Emily."

There should be no doubt that in *fact* Emily Dickinson understood the
classical mythology of ancient Greece about the relationship of the
"Bee" to the Soul, to the "poet's genius lay in his [her] foot," to the body
[corpus] of the "Blossoms belong[ing] to the bee," to the honeyed words left on
poet's lips, to the similarity of the poet's and/or newspaper editor's tart
words as the "sting" in the "bee's prong."

In early 1878, Emily Dickinson wrote Letter 542 to girlfriend Elizabeth,
wife of Josiah Holland, former associate editor of the Springfield Republican
with editor Samuel Bowles, and she *noted* that they were both "Bee"
members of the press, involved with the honeyed-stinging words. Her remarks
clearly note that the business of newsapers was *buzzing busy-ness* as the
bees in the bee hive make, and that hum round a newsroom is _why_ the busy
bee is associated with press rooms. Here is what Emily Dickinson wrote, about
the ill health of Elizabeth's husband right after the death of Samuel Bowles,
and
the vitality-robbing busy work of 18-hour days doing deadline writer's work
at newspapers, or magazines where her husband now worked as editor of
Scribner's, in part: "Thank you for Dr Gray's Opinion--that is peace--to us. I
am
sorry your Doctor [Josiah held the title of Dr. Holland] is not well...Give
my love to him, and tell him the 'Bee' is a reckless Guide. Dear Mr Bowles
found out too late, that Vitality costs itself."

Now that Dickinsonians clearly understand that "Fame is a bee" by Emily
Dickinson is rooted in her referent to the "Bee" as a famed poet or
famed newspaper editor who "has a sting," we can look at one of her most
illuminating poems. Poem 366 was manufactured into booklet 13 in 1862,
that fateful year she broke with her Master, her "Bee," who travelled to Europe
and in reaction she dressed in white and went into seclusion. Poem 366, as
autobiographical as any of her poems, clearly *explains* why in 1862 she did
*in fact* dress in white, for Eternity, and separated herself from the man who
recognized her poetic "Hand" in his published introduction to Poem 3 in his
Springfield Daily Republican, ten years earlier:

Although I put away his life--
An Ornament too grand
For Forehead low as mine, to wear,
This might have been the Hand

That sowed the flower, he preferred--
Or smoothed a homely pain,
Or pushed the pebble from his path--
Or played his chosen tune--

On Lute the least--the latest--
But just his Ear could know
That whatsoe'er delighted it,
I never would let go--

The foot to bear his errand--
A little Boot I know--
Would leap abroad like Antelope
With just the grant to do--

His weariest Commandment--
A sweeter to obey,
Than "Hide and Seek"--
Or skip to Flutes--
Or All Day, chase the Bee--

Your Servant, Sir, will weary--
The Surgeon, will not come--
The World, will have it's own--to do--
The Dust, will vex your Fame--

The Cold will force your tightest door
Some Febuary Day,
But say my apron bring the stocks
To make your Cottage gay--

That I may take that promise
To Paradise, with me--
To teach the Angels, avarice,
You, Sir, taught first--to me.

variant: last line
Your kiss first taught to me.

--Emily Dickinson

Of supreme interest, to some Dickinsonians, would be the referents to the
"Bee" as the last word of stanza five placed so that the word "Fame" in
the next stanza, also capitalized and placed last, cannot escape the
linkage to Poem 1763's "Fame is a bee." This *same* Bee had stung her in
1862 as well, and as the variant line indicates, with his *first* kiss and what
it
"taught" her! Of course, history records that her biography is filled with
referents to the *fact* Emily Dickinson "played his chosen tune" on the piano
for
Samuel Bowles many times--on his many visits to Amherst over 3 decades!!!
Ironically, it is noted that Samuel Bowles--the man she addressed as "Sir" so
many times in these years between 1858 and 1862--found "The Cold" force his
"tightest door / Some Febuary Day" in 1878, and shows Emily Dickinson to have
been quite *psychic*!! Indeed, "The Dust [does] vex [his] Fame--" even as this
message is written. Her "promise / To Paradise" is *so* noted!

Now that Dickinsonians clearly understand that "Fame is a bee" by Emily
Dickinson is rooted in her referent to the "Bee" as a famed poet or
famed newspaper editor who "has a sting," we can look at another of her most
illuminating poems. Poem 211 (Johnson) was manufactured into booklet 37
circa 1860, clearly two years earlier than her famous break with the
newspaper "Bee," Samuel Bowles, and two years earlier than she communicated
with T. W. Higginson:

Come slowly--Eden!
Lips unused to Thee--
Bashful--sip thy Jessamines--
As the fainting Bee--

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums--
Counts his nectars--
Enters--and is lost in Balms.

--Emily Dickinson

Indeed, as has been pointed out often enough and understood by those
who accept the secret code of the European troubadours dating back to the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the word "Eden" was Emily Dickinson's
oft-used code word for her Master, the "Bee" himself, Samuel Bowles. And
to reinforce her code words, she included the word "Balms"--which was a
perfect anagram of his signature: Saml B! This highly erotic poem, dating
from the mid-point between the beginning of the manufacturing of the
poem booklets, 1858, and her dressing in white and going into seclusion,
1862, matched her passionate period with her Master, the newspaper "Bee"
--who's sting was *not* so obvious in this early period in their relationship.
A well-known Dickinson scholar has pointed out that Samuel Bowles gifted
Emily Dickinson with a *Jasmine* plant! Indeed, his *name* is embedded
within her variant spelling, obviously taken from *Oliver Twist* by Dickens,
a work often referenced between Samuel Bowles and Emily Dickinson in their
correspondences over the decades.

Emily Dickinson wrote 3 Phoebe, "Phebe," poems: Poems (Johnson) 403,
1009,
and 1690. Her "phebe" spelling is *highly* significant inasmuch as it
emphasizes the pronunciation as "Phe-be," or ""Fee-Bee," and more anon
in this
message, below. Phoebe was according to ancient Greek mythology one of
the
female Titans, daughter of Heaven and Earth aka Gaea, of which
Dickinson has
created cryptographically in capital letters in the left-hand margin of
the
first stanza of a poem much discussed on these message boards: G-A-E-A.
Phoebe, in Greek, means *the bright one* or "to shine." An apt metaphor
for
the poet to so name herself, seeing as she was so well read in the
ancient
classics.

In Poem 1009, which she manufactured into booklet 90 circa 1865, she
wrote: "I was a Phebe...Upon the Floors of Fame--" This is important to
note,
inasmuch as Dickinson associated the Edenic "Bee" with "Fame" and the
meaning
of "Phoebe"--as she well understood--meant *the bright one* or "to
shine." All
of this is part and parcel of the mythological-meaning of Edenic "Bees"
out of
Paradise, with honeyed words invoking poets to speak, and the
bright-shining
goddess oft associated in Roman times with Diana.

To prove that Emily Dickinson was into encipherment and encoding, one
only
need consult the biographical record of her youth and her involvment
with the
club called the "UT's" or the "Unseen Trap." In my book EDSL, I pointed
out
that this club of her youth was designed to _trap_ the boys into
relationships,
and ultimately marriage, and the name was garnered from the songs of
the
European troubadours. She refers to her girlfriends, including herself,
by
their secret names in Letter 5 when she was fourteen, using ancient
classical
poets, writers and philosophers: Plato, Socrates and Virgil.

Late in life, in the spring of 1883, Emily Dickinson wrote girlfriend
Elizabeth Holland Letter 820, in part: The Birds are very bold this
Morning,
and sing without a Crumb. 'Meat that we know not of,' perhaps, slily
handed
them--I used to spell the one by that name *'Fee Bee'* when a Child,
and have
seen no need to improve! [Indeed, Dickinson is clearly demonsrating
her
long-held tradition of encoding words according to the rules of Cipher
Code:
and such usage of "Fee Bee" for "Phoebe" would be called a "flat" in
which
buried words are plainly in sight when so noted ] Should I spell
all the
things as they sounded to me, and say all the facts as I saw them, it
would
send consternation among more than the *'Fee Bees'*! [Indeed: Elizabeth
Holland, a girlfriend who was privy to the code-making, knew how this
would
expose the ultimate "Bee" of Sam [B]owles!] Vinnie picked the Sub
rosas, and
handed them to me, in your wily Note." [Again, indeed, it was not
real sub
rosas from the garden Vinnie picked, but the encoded words within the
letter
girlfriend Elizabeth sent Emily Dickinson]

No doubt: all of the girlfriends were privy to this encoding within
their letters and Emily Dickinson's poems. Obviously, by now,
Dickinsonians
understand the concept of "Sub Rosa" translates from the Latin into the
English
*under the Rose* aka *to keep secret* and clearly is in keeping with
the broad
"Rose" Secret Love metaphor: as well as "Daisy" and "Lily" from the
writings
of our poet.

Ancient Greek poets wrote that bees were in Paradise and came into this
world as spirits from that nether realm. Their mythology posited that
Edenic
bees brought the power of words to poets when they slumbered in the
daytime in
the meadow under the tree of knowledge and the bees which lighted on
their lips
deposited honey there and gave them the honeyed words of the great
poets after
they awoke and had been visited of the holy spirit. The natural
extension of
the myth to newspaper editors and hence to editors naming their papers
in their
banners the "Bee" came about as a natural reflection of this historical
mythology--coupled with the stinging power of op-ed words [opinionated
editorials].

Emily Dickinson's extensive reading in the classics, and the classical
manuals, several of which were in her personal family library--indeed,
one
written by the father of Helen Fiske Hunt Jackson, a classics'
professor at
Amherst College--account for her many literary allusions to the
classical myths
in her letters and in her poems.

In Letter 567, of late summer 1878, after the February death of Samuel
Bowles, Emily Dickinson wrote his widow Mary and used her code word
"Eden" for
the departed Samuel "B" bee who had come from Eden aka Paradise and
entered her
life and now departed left a void: "To forget you would be
impossible...for you
were his for whom we moan while consciousness remains. As he was
himself Eden,
he is with Eden, for we cannot become what we were not...I hope your
boys and
girls assist his dreadful absence...How fondly we hope they look like
him--that
his beautiful face may be abroad. Was not his countenance on earth
graphic as
a spirit's? The time will be long till you see him, dear, but it will
be
short, for have we not each our heart to dress--heavenly as his?" [It
is
*noted* that in 1862 Emily Dickinson dressed "in white" and this
statement
clearly confirms her *Eternity* intent of 16 years previously to dress
like the *spirit* "Bees" from Paradise!]

In Letter 489, circa 1877, Emily Dickinson wrote to Samuel Bowles, the
"Bee" from Paradise: "You have the most triumphant Face out of
Paradise--probably because you are there constantly, instead of
ultimately...."

Note in Poem 226 (Johnson) she feared Samuel Bowles would die at
"Sea." The poem is "absolutely biography" inasmuch as it is encased
within Letter 249 to Samuel Bowles, her "Master." The poem only
"EXISTS" as part of a letter to Samuel Bowles, written in 1862 as he
was ready to travel across the "Sea Blue." Therein, she wrote to her
"Master:" "If I amazed your kindness--My Love is my only
apology...Would you--ask less for your *Queen*--Mr Bowles?"

Now, "CLEARLY" she "IDENTIFIES" herself as Sam's "Queen" and
therefore he is the "King" and "Master." And "NO DOUBT" you can
understand all her "wife" and "Queen" poems fit the scenario she
lived in with Samuel Bowles--in her "letters"--and her "biography."
Oh, by the way, let's also not forget Samuel Bowles called her "his
Queen Recluse"!

REMEMBER THIS: Miss Emily called "HERSELF" "your Queen" to her
"Master" Samuel Bowles! Do not doubt Letter 249! Go ahead:
"MEMORIZE" it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dickinson scholars have memorized it!

Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
Miss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!
MMiss Emily wrote "your Queen" to "Master" Samuel Bowles!

Ad infinitum!!!!!!!

Now, look at Letter 252, also written to "PERSUADE" Samuel
Bowles to "VISIT" her in Amherst before travelling abroad for "SIX
LONG MONTHS." She wrote therein: "When you come to Amherst, please
God it *were Today* [sic!!!!!!! her own "ITALICS!!!!!!!]. History
"records" Samuel Bowles "DID visit her "BEFORE" he went across the
"Sea Blue." "PLEASE GOD IT *WERE TODAY*!!!!!!! Doesn't that sound
like a woman in "NEED" to see "HER" own "Master" and "NOT" tomorrow
but "TODAY"??????? Sounds like she is RAMMING IT DOWN OUR THROATS!

So, now we jump back a few months, while Samuel Bowles "WAS IN
NEW YORK state, outside of New England, and Miss Emily was "BEGGING"
him to "VISIT" her in Amherst, and we "DISCOVER" her mind and
thoughts, her love and pain, her need and desire, in her "poetic"
letter to her "Master," Letter 233 (Johnson):

"Master.

If you saw a bullet hit a Bird--and he told you he
was'nt shot--you might weep at his courtesy, but you would certainly
doubt his word.

One drop more from the gash that stains your Daisy's
bosom--then would you _believe_? Thomas' faith in Anatomy, was
stronger than his faith in faith. God made me--Sir--Master--I
didn't be--myself...He built the heart in me...I heard of a thing
called 'Redemption'...You remember I asked you for it--you gave me
something else...I knew you had altered me...I am older--tonight,
Master--but the love is the same--so are the moon and the crescent.
If it had been God's will that I might breathe where you
breathed--and find the place--myself--at night...if I wish with a
might I cannot repress--that mine were the Queen's place--the love of
the Plantagenet is my only apology...Have you the Heart in your
breast--Sir--is it set like mine--a little to the left--has it
misgiving--if it wake in the night....

These things are reverent--holy, Sir...You say I do not tell
you all--Daisy confessed--and denied not.

Vesuvius dont talk--Etna--dont--Thy--one of them...and
Pompeii heard it, and hid forever--She couldn't look the world in the
face, afterward--I suppose--Bashful Pompeii! "Tell you of the
want"--you know what a leech is, dont you--and remember that Daisy's
arm is small--and you have felt the horizon hav'nt you--and did the
sea--never come so close as to make you dance?

I dont know what you can do for it--thank you--Master--but
if I had the Beard on my cheek--like you--and you--had Daisy's
petals--and you cared so for me--what would become of you? Could you
forget me...Could'nt Carlo, and you and I walk in the meadows an
hour--and nobody care but the Bobolink...I used to think when I
died--I could see you--so I died as fast as I could--but the
"Corporation" are going Heaven too so Eternity wont be
sequestered--now Say I may wait for you--say I need go with no
stranger to the to me--untried country...I waited a long
time--Master--but I can wait more--wait till my hazel hair is
dappled--and you carry the cane...What would you do with me if I came
'in white?' Have you the little chest to put the Alive--in?

I want to see you more--Sir--than all I wish for in this
world--and the wish--altered a little--will be my only one--for the
skies.

Could you come to New England--this summer--could--would you
come to Amherst--Would you like to come--Master?

Would it do harm--yet we both fear God--Would Daisy
disappoint you--no--she would'nt--Sir--it were comfort forever--just
to look in your face, while you looked in mine--then I could play in
the woods till Dark--till you take me where Sundown cannot find
us--and the true keep coming--till the town is full, Will you tell me
if you will?....

--Emily Dickinson

Well, when we look at SAM in the first three lines of Poem 62,
and in the first three lines of Poem 94 [which, by the way,
does it twice for *Doubting Thomases*], we cannot help but
find Emily Dickinson ramming it down our throats in the
first three lines of Poem 188! And the chances of that occurring
by chance are nada, zippo, zilch. It only occurs in *authorial
intention* that in a two year span, from 1858 to 1860, that
our poet would encypher SAM in the first letter positions,
and *ALL* in CAPS, and in the span of 126 created poems,
*T-H-R-E-E T-I-M-E-S* to make it clear she *intended*
Dickinsonians to *K-N-O-W* who was her secret love *Master*!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, our poet was a
cryptologist as she said in Letter 171 of 1854 when she was
23 and had not yet begun her secret love poems.

You know what irks some fans and some students of Dickinson?
It is that it took Bill Arnold, Dickinson scholar, only one little book
called *Emily Dickinson's Secret Love: Mystery *Master* Behind Poems*
to turn their faulty world interpretations of her poems upside down.
Well, too bad! That is the way Emily Dickinson wrote her writings,
with her one thousand secret love poems, prominent, front and
center, and she could care less if the rest of the world is hot and
bothered, and breathing hard. Too bad, too bad, too bad, she said.
You know she wrote that poem about a worm on a string in her
bedroom which turned into an erect talking snake and had no qualms
about offering it to the world as one of her premiere presentations
of her SAM B artistic cryptology
poems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's Poem 1670 (Johnson) in case you missed it, and note that her
best girlfriend Elizabeth Holland's grandaughter was editor of that
edition, and had no qualms about it. Check it out, folks!

It is interesting when one looks at Dickinson's writings in toto
one finds that she clearly conveyed who her secret love was.
In any court of law, any jury basing their decision on the
written documentary evidence in Emily Dickinson's own writings,
would conclude beyond a "reasonable doubt" that Samuel Bowles
was her secret love and the masculine "Sir/Sire/Master" behind
all her love poems, circa one thousand!

The fact that she embedded these facts of her life in her writings,
also found in circa one thousand letters, many to "Him" as well,
and took the extraordinary *S-T-E-P-S* over her entire life to
encypher SAM B letters, and all in capital letters, to make it
crystal clear she intended for them to stand out, leaves only
the inescapable conclusion that she intended for posterity to
*KNOW* ! So, who are we to deny her *authorial intention*?

Take note in the following poem which was written in 1862
that she wrote *words* which she used in letters and letter-poems
to Samuel Bowles in the very *SAME* year and which undeniably
demonstrate he was the *Master* !

Poem 640 below clearly invokes while he is away at sea her
fear that "were You lost" while they were "Oceans" apart that
she would implore "heaven" on his behalf. No doubt the very
same thoughts were imparted in Poem 226 which is not really
a poem apart but part of a letter to Samuel Bowles, Letter 249,
in which she calls herself "your *Queen*--Mr. Bowles." So, who
among the world of Dickinson scholars doubts Samuel Bowles
was the *Master*? Well, none who can read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And why would she not be *Queen* to the *Master Plantagenet King*?
After all, it is not our surmise but the *W-O-R-D-S* of Dickinson!!!

She wrote, in part, in that letter, what has been divorced from her
recipient
by ill-advised editors in creating the host of her poems when in fact
many
were letters, to Samuel Bowles: "Should you but fail at--Sea--In
sight of me--or doomed lie--next Sun--to die--Or rap--at
Paradise--unheard --I'd *harass* God--Until he let you in!" Oh, yes,
this
woman who knew the meaning of words, wrote to Sam B, in this very same
Letter
249, "My Love is my only apology...I have met--no others." Sounds like
*Love* to me! if it sounds like a "Homesick...Housewife," and if it
writes like a "Homesick...Housewife," then it must *BE* a
"Homesick...Housewife."
Make that [sic] also on the word *Love* which she herself capitalized
in
her letter to Samuel
Bowles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Poem 640 (Johnson) was "written" by Emily Dickinson,
manufactured into booklet 9, circa 1862. Emily Dickinson
placed it into a series of her love letters to the world,
and made it explicit the "Master" was not Jesus, and yet
the poem clearly is about her masculine "Sir/Master:"

I cannot live with You--
It would be Life--
And Life is over there--
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to--
Putting up
Our Life--His Porcelain--
Like a Cup--

Discarded of the Housewife--
Quaint--or Broke--
A newer Sevres pleases--
Old Ones crack--

I could not die--with You--
For One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down—
You--could not--

And I--Could I stand by
And see You--freeze--
Without my Right of Frost--
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise--with You--
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus'--
That New Grace

Glow plain--and foreign
On my homesick Eye--
Except that You than He
Shone closer by--

They'd judge Us—-How--
For You--served Heaven--You know,
Or sought to--
I could not--

Because You saturated Sight--
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be--
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame--

And were You--saved--
And I--condemned to be
Where You were not--
That self--were Hell to Me--

So We must meet apart--
You there--I--here--
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are--and Prayer--
And that White Sustenance--
Despair--

--Emily Dickinson

No doubt, for Dickinsonians, this poem will ring true for the Truth
of 1862, when she and her Master, Samuel Bowles, were "Oceans...apart,"
he in Europe and she in Amherst, and she already dressed in white, hidden
behind doors, so that when he returned that fall, Emily Dickinson was already
in seclusion.

And, as icing on the cake of *DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE* Dickinson scholars
note Emily Dickinson referred to "Paradise" in both poems, one a letter-poem
of great note, and also in another letter about Samuel Bowles, shortly after
his death, called him: "THE MOST TRIUMPHANT FACE OUT OF PARADISE."

Letter 272 (Johnson) was written in ink by Emily Dickinson
on "especially lightweight" stationary "intended for overseas
correspondence" given to her by Susan Dickinson. There is no doubt
that Susan Dickinson, her confidante who kept her Secret Love
with Samuel Bowles well hidden, knew Emily Dickinson wrote to her
Master Samuel Bowles who had gone across the Sea Blue to Europe.
Emily Dickinson says so in her letter to Sam, dated August 1862.
The provenance of the letter is that it was saved by the family
of Samuel Bowles and donated to Amherst College Library, where it
now resides for the world to take note of. It reads in part:

Dear Mr Bowles.

...when you get Home, next Winter...

Summer a'nt so long as it was, when we stood looking at it,
before you went away, and when I finish August, we'll hop the Autumn,
very soon--and then 'twill be Yourself. I dont know how many will be
glad to see you, because I never saw your whole friends, but I have
heard, that in large Cities--noted persons chose you. Though how glad
those I know--will be, is easier told.

I tell you, Mr Bowles, it is a Suffering, to have a sea--no care
how Blue--between your Soul, and you. The Hills you used to love when
you were in Northampton, miss their old lover, could they speak--and
the puzzled look--deepens in Carlo's forehead, as Days go by, and you
never come.

I've learned to read the Steamer place--in Newspapers--now. It's
'most like shaking hands, with you--or more like your ringing at the
door...

We reckon--your coming by the Fruit.

...

It is easier to look behind at a pain, than to see it coming...

How sweet it must be to one to come Home--whose Home is in so many
Houses--and every Heart a "Best Room." I mean you, Mr Bowles.

Sue gave me the paper, to write on...for have not the Clovers,
*names*, to the Bees?

--Emily

Now, Dickinsonians, for an exegesis, based on her biography:

I have edited this letter, to be emphatic on Emily Dickinson's
relationship with her Master, Samuel Bowles. Remember: he had visited
her in April, she had gone into turmoil, written myriad letters and
poems, dressed in white, went into seclusion, and now, she gets special
stationary for overseas mail, and in August, at the height of the summer
season when she always had a visit from Samuel Bowles, Emily Dickinson
*confesses* her innermost angst, actual suffering at the Sea Blue which
separates them.

She recounts she knows he is the "Bee" which has so many "Clovers"
[ aka anagram, Clever Lovers ] that he cannot remember their
*names* and she emphasizes the word by underlining! She recalls for him
what it meant to her to have her "old lover" in nearby "Northampton" in
the summer of 1861 when he almost died. She IS metaphorically
"The Hills" and Samuel Bowles even autographed one of her anonymously
published poems in his newspaper with the referent "Pelham Hill, June, 1861."
It was Poem 216, and he had published it the summer before and she is
herein acknowledging their "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers" memories.

Obviously, the poem's first line, and second "Untouched by Morning,"
contain SAM in capital letters and internal anagrams of Sam b in "Safe...
Alabaster...Chambers." The metaphors within the first stanza are
chillingly about these cold, calculating "lovers."

Let us repeat: Samuel Bowles published Poem 216 and signed it with
a clear moniker of "Pelham Hill, June, 1861," as bold as you can get as
to *who* was its author to those in the know, such as Lavinia, Austin,
and Susan, as well as Emily Dickinson, its author, who in this followup
letter reveals he, Samuel Bowles, was the tomb partner in the poem,
the "old lover" who even her dog Carlo misses, he was *there* in
"The Hills" so often!! Quite a metaphor for secret "lovers"!!!

So often, she notes, Samuel Bowles *knows* and she reminds
him that between "you" [Sam] and "your Soul [herself: Emily] is that
"sea--no care how Blue." And "Blue" she was, while he was away.

This is hardly the letter of a cloistered nun, but more the letter
of his "Queen Recluse" in wait for his return, dressed in white, bridal
as the pure snow, that coming winter, when he would come, to visit his
white "Clover" again--yes, he, Sam come to "The Hills"!


Why Cupid annd Psyche, you ask? Why biography, with Emily Dickinson, poet?

For the nonce, in Palm Beach this spring a set of 11 papier peint panels
designed by
French painter Merry-Joseph Blondel in 1815, a good 15 years before the birth of
Emily Dickinson,
would make the perfect Valentine's gift, in a rare sale of Cupid and Psyche
depicted art.
They are expected to fetch $ 300,000! Imagine, artwork which might have
inspired all
the Cupid and Psyche literary allusions in the writings of Emily Dickinson, that
*first kiss*
which launched a zillion paintings and poems. The story of the God Cupid and
the mortal
Psyche, depicted in so many love poems of Emily Dickinson, by direct statement
and by
descriptive details, is at the heart of the thematic love story in circa one
thousand poems
by the American bard.

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Why biography, you ask? Of course, as a reader of Dickinson's
poems, you know the answer. Do you understand her semiotic
signs throughout one thousand poems replete with classical
references to the ancient Greek myths? How about her grand
allegorical reference scheme with she as the damsel of spring
and he as the knight of Springfield? And those amethyst sunsets
over Pelham Hills in which Master and Queen wandered through
the meadows behind the Homestead? And she like Psyche the
Butterfly flitting from flower spot to flower spot, the target of
the love arrows of Cupid with his maddening rendition of the
*Rites of Spring* twanging from his blow strings? Young love!

Re-read her first long poem published by her *Master* in his
Springfield newspaper and she was but a budding poet just
out of her teens, seeking authenticity as a published author:
and he gave that to her, and much more.

Well, I gave another lecture on my book *Emily Dickinson's
Secret Love: Mystery "Master" Behind Poems* to a group of
readers who knew little of the poetry of the American
bard. They were as the other group, surprised when I said
she wrote more than one thousand secret love poems.
Someone asked, well, why aren't there more scholars
out there who know? Good question, I answered. Maybe we
need another one thousand Masters theses on Dickinson's
love poems, and at least a half-dozen Ph.D's!

Again, I asked how many heard of the Cupid and Psyche
poems, the word Psyche being a personification in her poems
of her *Soul* and Cupid being her secret lover, this from
the myth found in her writings, and facts in her
biography? None, as you would expect. They had not
gotten to those Dickinson poems. Who's fault was that?
The professors, I said. They are failing you. And the
biographers, they are failing us all. They are only
interested in creating a myth about a spinster Emily
Dickinson. What tripe!

Thomas Bulfinch was a Boston writer who published his *The Age
of Fable* in 1855. His retelling of the ancient Roman secret love
story of Cupid and Psyche is in Chapter ll. It is noted that Emily
Dickinson began manufacturing her secret love poems shortly
thereafter in 1858.

Once understood as a unifying theme, it is more easily
understood why in 1862 Emily Dickinson made the ultimate act of
dressing in white as a statement of her belief that her Master and
her would achieve immortality for eternity.

The main Metaphors in the Allegory of Apulius in my post, as told by
Bulfinch in his 1855 version of the Fable, are capitalized to emphasize
her allegorical metaphors were *personified* in the same manner I
conclude Emily Dickinson *personified* her Metaphors! Dickinson
scholars not schooled in the world literature classics should take
heed of the important concept of *Personification* in the poetic
arts, as I allege it is central to analyzing her poems and writing
exegeses. I assume Bulfinch to have been her primary source of the
story of the myth, although her classical dictionaries and general
reading would have offered her ample fodder, as well.

Since writing this, I have consulted my library again, at
length: and I can report that neither Ruth Miller nor Jack Capps
refers to Bulfinch's *The Age of Fable* as being in the Dickinson
library. However, Carlton Lowenberg in his *Emily Dickinson's
Textbooks*, page 35, has this entry:

Bulfinch, Thomas. *The Age of Fable; or Beauties of
Mythology*...Boston: Sanborn, Carter & Bazin, 1855(n.c.d.). DL:
Houghton #2133, a.s. "Edw. Dickinson 1856."

It is important to note that Edward Dickinson possessed a copy
of Bulfinch's *The Age of Fable* in the Homestead, autographed, and
it is cataloged as part of the Houghton Collection and it is number
2133 of the *Handlist of Books* acquisitioned from Emily Dickinson's
home. This 1856-autographed book is important to note because within
two years Emily Dickinson was manufacturing her booklets with poems
referencing the fuller version of the love story of Cupid and Psyche
as retold by Bulfinch. And, it is closer to the thematic threads of
Emily Dickinson's secret love poems than the abridged version in
Anthon's *Classical Dictionary*, which also was in the Dickinson
homestead library, but was one of the works rejected by Whicher and
Johnson. Ruth Miller pointed out that Whicher and Johnson, acting as
consultants for Houghton in the library's acquisition process,
rejected many *classical* works. Miller stated that scholars need to
consult the Houghton *Handlist*. I hereby suggest, also, Carlton
Lowenberg's *Emily Dickinson's Textbooks*.

As a result, I argue once again that Dickinson scholars will
need to carefully reassess Emily Dickinson's indebtedness to
classical world literature, and in particular the European troubadour
tradition of courtly love literature in order to fully analyze and
write exegeses of her writings and make proper sense of her life's
events. Biographers should also take note.

Again, I asked how many heard of her Bee and Flower poems,
hundreds of them? None. But those sound like nature
poems, some said.

And these same Dickinsonians, especially students of Dickinson,
do not seem to recall that *Psyche* was a earthly butterfly and
Cupid was an angelic God: respectively *Soul* and *Love* and
their marriage and wedlock in bed the joining into the ultimate
word: *Soulmate*! Didn't know about that? Didn't know that
Emily Dickinson wrote allegorical poems thematic about that
famed love story? Even using direct referents to "Cupid"? Nor
that Cupid forbid Psyche from seeing him naked in the light
of day? And if she, Psyche, ever did, he would fly away across
the Sea Blue and never bed with her again?

Even the one about "Come slowly--Eden!, I asked? They had
no idea of what I was referring to. I said, well, if you
must know, her secret lover was known as "Eden" to her,
and the first two words you can figure out for yourselves,
especially if you read sophisticated stuff like *The New
Yorker* magazine. There were a few chuckles in this
crowd, just like all others.

It is quite amazing, here in the new millennium, that the
literalists still misread and misrepresent the writings of the
American bard, Emily Dickinson. It is as if these students of
Dickinson had never taken a course in world literature or in
American literature. They equate Emily Dickinson with Robert
Frost, and relegate her to a nature poet of the Hallmark cards
hall of fame. And nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth is that Emily Dickinson used three flowers to
symbolize herself, and capitalized them: Rose, Daisy and Lily.
There were others, less subtle, including the faint Gentian.

The truth is that Emily Dickinson used the Bee as the
symbol of her Master, often addressing him in *direct address*
in the classic manner of the troubadour poets going back to the
ancient world of the Greeks and Homeric age poetry. To her, he
was simply symbolically, "Bee."

Her poem "Nobody knows this little Rose" was published by her
Master Samuel Bowles in 1858 in his Springfield Daily Republican.
No doubt Emily Dickinson saw herself as the symbolic Rose who was
married to that famous pilgrim Miles Standish from whose line
Samuel Bowles was descended. She developed the theme in numerous
poems.

In her Master letters and poems she addressed her Master
directly as the Bee, including a poem addressed directly to
Samuel Bowles, and herself as Rose, Daisy and Lily.

Let none say that Emily Dickinson was a garden-variety poet
like Robert Frost. She was a female troubadour poet in the great
European tradition, and her King and Sovereign and Master was the
great "Bee" himself, identified in letters and letter-poems
addressed directly to him: Samuel *Bee* Bowles!

Theirs was a love born in the mystery of the ancient Greek
myths, Soul and soul mate: Psyche and Cupid! Read on, and discover
the truth which students of Dickinson cannot see, even those with
eyes and some with degrees from universities, but they must have
been asleep in their English classes. God forbid they should be
heeded in their classifying Emily Dickinson as a common
run-of-the-mill nature poet.

I asked how many heard of "The Snake" poem? As always,
one person piped up that that was not a love poem. I said
it was not only a love poem, it was a secret love poem,
written to, published by, and commented upon by her secret
lover Samuel Bowles, her editor and publisher during her
lifetime. Oh, said that person, how do you know? And I
said: I am a biographer of Dickinson, and I have read all
about her. The facts are there to be discovered, I said.

OK, I said, I've got you all then: how about the poem
about the worm in her bedroom, she has on a string, and it
becomes engorged with blood and rises up into a snake and
hisses to her that she is afraid of him, anyone heard of
that one? Sound like Eve in the garden of Eden, I asked?
Ah-hah, I quipped, now you get the "Eden" connection. She
called herself "Eve" then, I added, because this audience
knew relatively little about our famous American poet.
But they were obviously interested. Maybe they saw her
name on JEOPARDY! We were in a bookstore reading area,
and I doubted they had been in the poetry stacks.

Well, the audience wanted to know more about the
snake-in-Emily Dickinson's bedroom poem. You know I
delighted them with a reading of Poem 1670 from the
Johnson texts, beginning, "In winter in my room...." I
offered that this particular snake was a profligate macho
man who carried a hand-gun and rode all the way from
Springfield on a horse named Pone, and Emily Dickinson was
pleased to invite him up into her bedroom. The audience
was stunned. How little they know about Dickinson or her
biography.

So, it is time we establish one thousand Master candidates
and a half-dozen Ph.D's across America who will FOCUS on
the Secret Love poems of the American bard. It is obvious
by now that the "queering" of Dickinson is DEAD and the
masculine love interest is ALIVE and very well in Amherst
history. So, let's get future professors and teachers who
will discover the Truth and tell it like it was, with a
love-snake up in Emily Dickinson's bedroom.

Emily Dickinson knew the value of her "exact conception of
the author" that "Circumference is Biography" as she wrote in
Poem 533, in her 1878 redaction. In fact, in 1882, in Letter
762, she wrote, "Would it too deeply incovenience [you] to tell
me Dates of the Bridal and Death of our dear Eliza Coleman, for
Prof Crowell, who is preparing a Biography...[and in Letter 763]
With the sweetest of thanks for the prompt and earnest reply."

Dickinsonians note Emily Dickinson in Letter 962 wrote of
biography, "Holme's Life of Emerson [italics] is sweetly
commended." This was the same letter, in fact, in which Emily
Dickinson acknowledged Samuel Bowles and his friend who died
the day before, and was "Called Back," would be reunted in
Heaven. Her meaning was that Death does not end all but draws
the Spirit back to that Eternal World where it is "Zero at the
Bone," and same world she had called Heaven and where she expected
to be reunited with her Master Samuel Bowles as she noted in
Master Letter 233.

No doubt Dickinsonians note her views on biography extended
to herself as Queen Emily and him as Master Sam. In Letter 974,
to Maria Whitney, she wrote, "I was much quickened toward you and
all Celestial things to read (see) that the Life of our loved Mr
Bowles would be with us in Autumn, and how fitting (sweet) that his
and George Eliots should be given so near." Can anyone doubt her
"Circumference is Biography" when she used the word "sweet" three
times in these latter years in reference to nonfiction biography
and finding the TRUTH in print?

Journalists and biographers know that the most important
element of "My Circumference is Biography" is the time-line,
the chronology; therefore, when Emily Dickinson wrote Poem 533
in 1862 and redacted it to include "My Circumference is Biography"
in 1878, she was making a most telling statement: and it was, viz.:
MASTER SAMUEL BOWLES AND I WED IN 1862 AND MASTER SAMUEL BOWLES
AND I DIED IN 1878! Like "TWO BUTTERFLIES" who "went out at noon,"
and "waltzed upon a Farm" and "espied Circumference / and took a
Bout with him." They "staked" it ALL in 1862, and "lost themselves
/ In Gambols of the Sun." But she wanted it understood clearly, in
1878, when her Master Samuel Bowles died, and she metaphorically
died, indeed, passing away of a broken heart a mere 8 years later,
she reminded us, "To all surviving Butterflies / Be this Biography--
/ Example--"

Emily Dickinson made her "exact conception of the author"
explicitly clear, in a REDACTION FROM THE HEART: I am telling
all you "surviving Butterlies [i.e. couples]" that this "Be [yeah:
that "Bee" again!!!!!!!!] "Biography" and her life is "Example"
of what SOULMATES, like Cupid & Psyche, are all about to a known
and demonstrable CLASSICIST POET, the American bard!

In Poem 533 (Johnson) Emily Dickinson demonstrated in clear
troubadour Totem Artwork the truth of her statement "My Business
is Circumference" become MY BUSINESS IS BIOGRAPHY! Here it is,
composite from its variant:

Two Butterflies went out at Noon
And waltzed upon a Farm
And then espied Circumference
And took a Bout with him--

Then staked themselves and lost themselves
In Gambols of the Sun--
And Both were quenched in Noon--
And they were hurled from noon--

To all surviving Butterflies
Be this Biography--
Example--and monition
To entomology--

--Emily Dickinson

In this redaction, Dickinsonians note clearly, without a doubt,
Emily Dickinson demanded of her readers a strict "exact conception
of the author" by her readers, who can toy with her variants, but
"biography" in stanza 3 shows her "condensation" art!

The two Butterflies, no doubt, were condensed from the myth
of Cupid and Psyche, Love and Soul, Master Sam and Queen Emily,
redacted in the horrendous aftermath of her Master's death, 1878,
when nearly every letter, letter-poem, and poem was harkening back
to 1862, the momentous year, the fateful year, she went into total
seclusion dressed in white, the eternal bride of her Master, in a
SOULMATE LOVE like the "Two Butterflies...espied Circumference."

The Last Dance on Earth, the "Circumference" of detail, with
Eternity in 1862 representing Heaven, her "Zero at the Bone" Soul
identity, she as Psyche, she as Soul, the other "Butterfly"--her
"B [owles]" for the eternal flight. Her oft repeated SECRET CODE
of "Sun" for Sam and "Farm" for Emily, the moving symbol for her
Cupid, Love, with his quiver of arrows to her heart, and the static
symbol for her Psyche, self, as "Pelham Hill" and its symbolic
world of the farmlands, meadows, woodlands, nature in the wild.
It is amazing that her "exact conception of the author" was to
remind all Dickinsonians that underlying her 1862 version of
Poem 533 was this "Circumference is Biography."

In Poem 1343 (Johnson) Emily Dickinson demonstrated in clear
troubadour Totem Artwork the truth of her statement "My Business
is Circumference." Indeed, "My Bee"! For in Poem 1343, she begins
with that "Clover Plank" and its "Bee"--"A Bee I personally knew."
Egads! How autobiographical can woman, Mrs. Eve, "Bee" about her
husband Mr. Adam with a Sex-is-the-Birds-and-Bees Allegorical poem,
for the faint-of-heart, in the time-honored tradition of metaphor-
made symbolically-explicit--into Allegory, of the first-rank! His
"single Clover Plank," her "Billows of Circumfernce," all
"Transpiring in the Grass"? C'mon, if that ain't Birds and Bees
stuff even a fourth grader can guess at! And then to end it, with
a wham Bam, thank you, Mam! couplet: "Did not so much as wring from
him / A wandering 'Alas'--" Shades of Adam and Eve, and gathering
fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil!

Ah, her Business as a Circumference included "condensation"
from the fabled myths of childhood--about what the Birds and Bees
do, to make more Birds and Bees--and here we are explicating "My
Business is Circumference"!

When Emily Dickinson took her 1862 Poem 533 and redacted it
circa the same time frame as this Poem 1343, she took the earlier
usage of the word "Firmament" and redacted it into the word
"Circumference." Indeed, in Letter 950, Emily Dickinson spelled
out her Allegorical usages of the Masonic Point in a Circle "exact
conception of the author" by stating the opposite of what normally
is attributed to these words, when she wrote: "The Bible dealt with
the Centre [sic: the French way!], not with the Circumference." The
Ideal had, indeed, become Real! Mr. Adam and Mrs. Eve had become
Master Sam and Queen Emily!

In fact, in Letter 838, Emily Dickinson expanded upon this
Allegorical theme of Sex is the Birds and the Bees, when she wrote,
"Drunkards of Summer are quite as frequent as Drunkards of Wine, and
the Bee that comes Home sober is the Butt of the Clover." I remind
Dickinsonians that in my book Emily Dickinson's Secret Love: Mystery
"Master" Behind Poems that I pointed out the Clever Lover anagram in
the word "Clover" which is a hallmark of Poem 1343, as well as
Letter 838, et alia!

In fact, in Poem 313, Emily Dickinson again borrowed this
Allegory from her first usage in letter 9 of 1846, when she was
15-years old, when she wrote: "I have lately come to the conclusion
that I am Eve, alias Mrs. Adam." This allegorical theme was carried
forward into her first known Poem 1, when she wrote: "Oh the Earth
was made [italics] for lovers, for damsel and hopeless swain, / For
sighing, and gentle whispering, and unity [italics] made of twain
[italics]."

In Poem 313, another My Business is Circumference poem, she
explicated her meaning by saying, in essence, that Heaven is not
enough, and the Earth is too much! This allegorical reversal of
symbolic meanings is clarified in her very first Poem 1: man and
woman are "too much" and simplified via Jesus's dictum that the
two shall become one and what God has, indeed, joined together, as
soulmates, Adam and Eve, let no man put asunder! Emily Dickinson,
in Poem 1, clearly made Samuel Bowles her Sun, and she his Moon,
when she wrote: "All things do go a courting, in earth, or sea, or
air, / God hath made nothing single but thee [italics] in His world
so fair! / The bride [italics], and then the bridegroom [italics],
the two [italics], and then the one [italics], / Adam, and Eve, his
consort, the moon, and then the sun."

We recall Samuel Bowles as Master, was according to her, "the
most triumphant Face out of Paradise." In other words, nothing was
as "fair" or "triumphant" to first woman, Emily as Mrs. Eve, as first
man Sam as Mr. Adam, which "God hath made nothing single but thee in
His world so fair! [italics therein so noted]"

Thus, Emily Dickinson's letter 950 to "Sister" Elizabeth
Holland, who was privy to the SECRET CODE between these Unseen Trap
girlhood correspondents, wrote: "I sh'd begin every sentence with
'I say unto you--'" Indeed, the most oft-repeated phrase of Jesus
the Nazarene to his disciples was, "Verily, Verily, I say unto you."
Translated into modern English, it means: "Truthfully, truthfully,
I say unto you." Emily Dickinson then went on: "The Bible dealt
with the Centre, not with the Circumference--" As noted in her
Letter 268 to Higginson, when she elaborated upon "My Business is
Circumference," Emily Dickinson reminded us all that her Poems were
Zero, come from the Heavenly Centre of the Godhead, and she had
read and observed all the details of the Circumference of
Reality--Earthbound and Earthviewed--and "condensed" it into the
compressed words as an "exact conception of the author," herself!
Thus, it becomes our duty as readers to get to her circumferenced
"exact conception of the author."

In Letter 268 (Johnson) of 1862, after her Master Samuel
Bowles left her and went to Europe, Emily Dickinson in response
began to dress in white and went into seclusion, then wrote to
T. W. Higginson, creating a new and third major master, after
Humphrey, Bowles--and now in Higginson. Although, all three
were her intellectual mentors, only Samuel Bowles was the Secret
Love "Master" Behind her poems, and who inspired circa one thousand
love poems, and numerous letter-poems to himself, Samuel Bowles,
directly as addressee. As said, in Letter 268, in part, she wrote
about herself, denying she had a picture to send Higginson--
thus she sent a poetic description, then commented upon the notion
her father was upset with her inasmuch as she had no "Mold" or
picture of herself should she die young: she was 31.

In Letter 268, she remarked she was "your scholar," and signed
herself, "Your Scholar." This was a favorite ruse of Emily
Dickinson, and developed from her childhood days at Amherst
Academy when she truly was a "scholar" and her male teachers were
her mentors or "Masters." Dickinsonians: none of this is meant,
by way of discussion, to diminish the reality and fact of her
biographical truth, that Emily Dickinson borrowed heavily from
Dickens' metaphoric love scheme of Master Dick Swiveller
and scholar Marchioness, the two roles she attributed in letter
form for Master Samuel Bowles and herself as Scholar Emily Dickinson
[see Letter 241].

In Letter 268, Emily Dickinson created an appeal to Higginson
as her new intellectual Master of her poetry, in two paragraphs:

"Will you tell me my fault, frankly as to yourself, for I had
rather wince, than die. Men do not call the surgeon, to commend--the
Bone, but to set it Sir, and fracture within, is more critical. And
for this, Preceptor, I shall bring you--Obedience--the Blossom from
my Garden, and every gratitude I know. Perhaps you smile at me. I
could not stop for that--My Business is Circumference--An ignorance,
not of Customs, but if caught with the Dawn--or the Sunset see
me--Myself the only Kangaroo among the Beauty, Sir, if you please,
it afflicts me, and I thought that insruction would take it away."

Dickinsonians should note that detractors always emphasize the
final metaphor about an Australian mammal as if that meant anything
about Emily Dickinson! Some have even extrapolated it to the level
of title-making of bizarre theses about the American bard. Some
lack reading comprehension. They ignore her conditional "if." They
ignore her construction of sentence artistry! She wrote, "but if
caught with the Dawn...." Thus, "if" that happened, then ipso facto,
others would see her as "the only Kangaroo among the Beauty." And
she did not want to be seen as "the only Kangaroo among the Beauty."

Emily Dickinson did not want the broken "Bone" to be
"commend[ed]," but to be fixed by "the surgeon"! Thus, she compared
Higginson to the surgeon, and sought his assistance as a doctor of
her Poem[s], now compared to the "Bone[s]"! Didn't she write about
"Zero at the Bone[s]"? For the truly ignorant, in mathematical
theory, the center of the circle is "Zero at the Bone." And the
first "Circumference" out from the center is granted a proportional
value of "One" or "l." Thus, round the "Sun" at "Zero," scientists
discover Mercury at One, Venus at Two, Earth at Three, Mars at Four,
proportionally. Not to be dismissed, the precision of her words
made Emily Dickinson mathematically precise! Not to be seen as
"the only Kangaroo among the Beauty."

Instead, I gave you the whole paragraph. And now, in Emily
Dickinson's own "exact conception of the author," I offer you her
mind, her thoughts expressed in her own exegesis:

Emily Dickinson was role-playing the "your scholar" servant
girl to the "Master Higginson" editor man, and sought a new and true
confidante to assist her poetry writing, now that Samuel Bowles had
gone to Europe--and inasmuch as Susan Gilbert, other than for one
poem, showed no interest in the matter, other than as confidante
sharing a vicarious interest in the porch-shared gossip about Emily
Dickinson's secret love affair with Samuel Bowles!

Emily Dickinson used her SECRET CODE of "flowers" for poems,
referring to them therein as "the Blossom[s] from my
Garden[Booklets]" that she had, indeed, sent him, as poem enclosures.
Her SECRET CODE was expanded to Higginson among her cryptic
recipients, although it
is doubted that he truly ever understood his charge!

Emily Dickinson feared she had the "fracture within" her poetry,
a common question among aspiring poets without a true critic--and
obviously Susan Gilbert failed her in that regard, too busy with her
partying and drinking and playing hostess at the Evergreens to those
who had made a name for themselves, unlike our American bard.

Emily Dickinson admited to her posturing to her Master
Higginson,
a true editor, well known and well respected, when she said, ending
this missive: "You see my posture is benighted."

Emily Dickinson, thus, ended on the notion she was a troubadour
poet so "knighted" but in her darkened pun upon the "exact
conception"--seeking not to be in the dark but in the light, and seen
as one who took "instruction" to improve her art. In the European
tradition of the classicist, she let Higginson know she was well-read
enough to have read poet Robert Browning in a oblique response to a
query by him. Early in a literary correspondence, these thrust and
parry verbal sword plays are to be expected between two brilliant
writers. I believe in the vernacular, it is known as "feeling each
other out!"

So, what did Emily Dickinson mean by "My Business is
Circumference"? A clue, at least in this letter, and other letters
to the Bowles, Samuel and his wife Mary, and Elizabeth Holland and
girlfriends, anchored more on the word "Business" than the word used
as subject: "Circumference." For, she wrote him later in the same
letter: "Because you have much business, beside the growth of me...."

Emily Dickinson noted that Master Samuel Bowles was consumed
by his business, his Corporation, et al., and she expected that her
new mentor, Master Higginson, would be consumed equally. But whereas
Samuel Bowles' business was publishing, writing, editing, Higginson's
wass slightly different. However, both men were making a living as
writers--and that was their business [pun intended].

Emily Dickinson, as Mary Reid eloquently pointed out, was into
a process in her writing as a classicist, to be first of all: a very
capable reader. After she read, and re-read something from a past
master, whether in Italian, or German, or French, or even a great
English writer such as Shakespeare, or stories in the Bible--then,
and only then did Emily Dickinson take the fullness of the ideas and
metaphors of a particular story or myth and "condense" it into her
writings, prose and poetry.

Emily Dickinson was cryptic, precisely because she was like that
fine point in the center of a circumscribed circle, at the "Zero at
the Bone" center. Thus, she took all the details she read or
observed, out to the "Circumference"--which mathematically describe
the inscribed area, and then selected cryptically those key elements
and details from her reading and observing--to then write
cryptically! Ipso facto. If you read comprehensively and with full
circumference, you could then pull back to the "Zero" center and
write cryptically. It is the duty of all good readers of Dickinson,
looking inside her cicumferenced circle, to discover the core point,
the "Zero at the Bone" cryptic poet--Emily Dickinson herself--and
make exegeses which express her "exact conception of the author."

Emily Dickinson expected no less of her readers, nor Higginson.
She sought the "fracture within." She did not expect him to write
that he saw purple-people eaters! God forbid! That was precisely
the opposite of her intention in seeking him out as a mentor, after
Samuel Bowles went to Europe, and Susan Gilbert had failed her. She
needed someone to point out the internal flaws in her "condensation"
art, as she knew she was cryptic and was not about to change!

Emily Dickinson meant by "My Business is Circumference" as she
detailed in her paragraph to Higginson, that she had taken details
from the circumscribed circle of her reading or observation, away
from her "Zero at the Bone" center. In ancient Egyptian iconography,
scholars note they used a cord with two sticks tied on either end:
one stick to be driven at the center of the to-be circumscribed
circle, and the otherstick to circumscribe a circular enclosure in
the sand. Thus, Dickinson was informing Higginson of her methodology
in her "Business" as a poet. And she wished he, as Master mentor,
would point out to her, as Scholar student, flaws in her actual
poems, so that others would not see her as "the only Kangaroo among
the Beauty, Sir."

Emily Dickinson meant by "My Business is Circumference" that
if Higginson saw "fracture within" and "it afflicts me"--she wished
he would speak up so "that instruction would take it away."

Again, Dickinsonians, I, Bill Arnold, author of Emily
Dickinson's Secret Love: Mystery "Master" Behind Poems, wish to
tell you all, yet once again, that the "Circumference" was her
"Business" process was one in which she made "condensation" from a
wealth of details, selected to a cryptic few she then expressed!
Obviously, she expected that we as readers would find her
"exact conception of the author" and express her "exact conception"
in our exegeses, after careful analysis.

Emily Dickinson used the word "Circumference" in six letters,
and in 17 poems. That is the full extent of it, and each and every
one will be explored in this and following essays to EmMail. For the
nonce, however, we note, they are, in chronological order: Letters
268, the infamous and most misunderstood "My business is
Circumference;" and Letters 689, 897, 898, 946, and 950. The first
letter is of 1862, the years she had her terrible fight and flight
with her Master, he to Europe, and she to seclusion. The next series
of letters date from the last decade of her life, circa 1881 to
1884. No stone will be left unturned in our full and in depth
analysis and explication of "Circumference" on EmMail.

Also, for the nonce, Dickinsonians note that Emily Dickinson
used the word "Circumference" in only 17 poems: the first poem was
Poem 313 (Johnson) of 1862, the same year of her first usage in a
letter, coupling both usages with her separation from her Master
Samuel Bowles; thereafter, she wrote "Circumference" as a word in
Poems 354, 378, 515, 533, 552, and 633, all of 1862, and all
implicitly relevant to the Master question; thereafter, she wrote
"Circumference" as a word in Poems 798 and 802 of 1863; then 883,
889, 943, and 967, all of 1864, and again, all implicitly relevant
to the Master question, inasmuch as she was still seeing Samuel
Bowles on his frequent and regular visits to her; then, she wrote
"Circumference" as a word in Poems 1084 of 1866; 1343 of 1875;
1620 of 1884; and lastly, 1663, undated [the latter is noted as
a Susan Gilbert transcript by her confidante, not editor, who did
not take the caution to date her transcriptions, thus placing in
doubt even her accuracy of words faithful to manuscripts she must
have seen and let slip through her careless hands; grievous errors,
not committed by the qualified and accurate work of Mabel Loomis
Todd, her first true editor in which the name Emily Dickinson was
attached to the letters and poems themselves; obviously, Samuel
Bowles was her first editor, but his publications of her poems,
at her behest, were anonymous].

Inasmuch as there are Dickinson message boards, and some
anonymous message boarders on private lists wish to come on EmMail
and post nonsense unrelated to Dickinson, to muddle the truth of the
matter about "Circumference," and will do it again, please be
advised, Dickinsonians, to delete their sidebars and take note of
true Dickinson scholarship: thusly, it seems prudent to refresh our
minds with the true meaning of "Circumference," an "exact conception
of the author" which Emily Dickinson espoused. You will recall that
these Dickinson detractors recently inundated EmMail with matters
more properly served on a Sylvia Plath message board. But bear up
against their ignorance, for they have biased agendas unrelated to
matters: Emily Dickinson and her poetry.

"Emily was herself a most charming reader. It was done with
great simplicity and naturalness, with an earnest desire to
express the exact conception of the author, without any thought
of herself, or the impression her reading was sure to make." Her
sister Lavinia certainly knew the truth of that statement, and we
wish to apply it to Emily Dickinson's usages of "Circumference"
as a word in her writings, prose and poetry.

Now, the key words appear to me to be "exact" and "conception"
and "author." A proper exegesis acknowledges Emily Dickinson was
"herself a most charming reader." Apparently, Emily Dickinson was
aware that her "charming" reading might "sure to make" an
"impression" of those witnessing it.

Emily Dickinson "without any thought" for herself, that is,
down-playing the "impression her reading was sure to make," gave her
readings "with great simplicity and naturalness." Obviously,
Emily Dickinson meant: if it were her own words, she let the words
speak for themselves, and if it was another's poem, she did not
want her "impression" to be of importance, but again, the words of
the poem! In other words: she was not an actress, but an artist, not
a stage personae, but a writer--of words. She was a classicist,
an intellectual, to whom only the words and their "exact conception"
mattered.

Now to the kernel of the quotation by sister Lavinia, the meat
of the matter, the essence of the thought: Emily Dickinson when doing
these poetry readings, whether her own or another's words, had "an
earnest desire to express the exact conception of the author." In
other word the expression was not as important as the "exact
conception" behind the poem. Is that clear enough, from the American
bard, herself? The expression, stressed by New Critics, is flawed.
For Emily Dickinson, the "exact conception of the author" mattered,
and that, alone!