I’m currently taking another online poetry class. This one is about Emily Dickinson. One of the discussion topics was whether her choice not to publish and have a clear authoritative version of her poems empowered or disempowered her. Here is my comment on that.

Disintermediating the Editor

The choice by Dickinson to not have her poems published, to not have an authoritative final version and to use uncommon punctuation and capitalization empowers her as a poet communicating directly with the reader. All poems are interpreted by the reader and in intermediary steps by editors or teachers. By not empowering the editor, Dickson empowers the relationship between the poet and the reader.

This empowerment is further amplified now that the sources are online and even a somewhat casual reader can look at different versions, in her hand writing, as well as different attempts at editing to create their own opinions.

We also read “Bring me the sunset in a cup” which had a bit of a discussion going on about what the “little Alban house” was and how the poem ends up. Here are my comments on that.

One of the comments talks about googling Alban, but doesn’t go a lot into who St. Alban was. Another person spends a lot of time asserting that the little Alban house is the grave, but without explanation why they say that. And one other person ties some of this together by talking about resurrection.

For those who do know the story of St. Alban, “he is venerated as the first recorded British Christian martyr” who offered himself up in lieu of a priest he had been sheltering. With this in mind, the “little Alban house” becomes more than just a grave. It carries connotations of sheltering, sacrificing and being a martyr. Viewed this way, the question of “Whoʹll let me out some gala day” would logically seem to be a reference to the resurrection at the end of time, “with implements to fly away”. Just a resurrection would clearly pass pomposity.