As part of Tucson’s Big Read, aficionados of Emily Dickinson’s poetry assembled at the University of Arizona Poetry Center on Wednesday evening, November 9, 2011, to hear respected literature professor and author Susan Aiken speak about Dickinson’s poetry. Specifically, Aiken addressed the ways in which Dickinson subverted her society’s conventions in her life and her work.
Before Wednesday evening’s gathering, Kore Press, sponsor of Tucson’s Big Read and this lecture, posed the questions to various community members and scholars, “Why poetry? Why Dickinson? Why now?’ Wednesday’s lecture gave Aiken an opportunity to reflect on these questions.
Though Dickinson only published about 10 poems in her lifetime, out of the roughly 1800 that she wrote, Dickinson is now one of the most recognizable figures in all of poetry. Even if one is not a scholar of poetry, many lines that Dickinson penned,such as "Tell all the truth but tell it slant" or “I dwell in possibility” are not foreign to the general public. Aiken utilized these and other poems to illustrate how Dickinson reframed modern conceptions of gender, women, the writing life, religion, and much more.
One of the ways that Dickinson challenged her society’s expectations was by resisting the pleas of others to publish, proclaiming that “Publication— is the Auction/of the Mind of Man—/Poverty— be justifying/for so foul a thing.” Indeed, Dickinson preferred to only share her work with her mentors and friends. Her opposition to publishing is misleading, however, because she very much treasured her poetry, often writing to various mentors regarding her writing, such as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her first letter to him saying, “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?” Higginson certainly thought so, describing Dickinson’s poems as “poetry torn up by the roots.”
In poems such as “What soft—cherubic creatures” Dickinson also addressed preconceived notions of what it was to be a woman in the 19th century. Defying tradition, Dickinson never married, and stayed on her family’s property almost her entire life, devoting as much time as she could to her work as a poet.
Yet another way Dickinson rebelled against 19th century ideologies was by rejecting the commonly held values of Christianity. Though Dickinson was incessantly curious about spirituality and God, she still referred to herself as a “pagan” throughout her life, saying that, “The Bible is an antique Volume—Written by faded men” which is a statement that in her time, would have been met by harsh criticism.
It was such a pleasure to again hear a lecture of Ms. Susan Aiken. Her unfettered enthusiasm for her subject is contagious. Wednesday was definitely one of the many “Wild nights—wild nights!” that one experiences during Tucson’s Big Read.
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