Emily was a famous doubter in Christianity and the only one in her family not to proclaim belief in Christ as Savior, so I was curious about this book I found at the Dickinson House gift shop: I Told My Soul to Sing: finding God with Emily Dickinson. It is not an evangelical rendering of Dickinson, but a personal connection among her poetry, letters and the author’s experience.
Kristin LeMay is a professor of writing at Ohio University, so this is not her dissertation or scholarly contribution. It may have no academic value whatsoever, but it has what I prize most: a struggle to unite things she loves, despite their apparent divergence.
Emily wrote, “I work to drive the awe away, yet awe impels the work:” a typical paradox in her style. Her poetry is both inspired and exorcising, a dynamic similar and dissimilar to prayer. LeMay’s thesis is that for Emily writing poetry was like a religious act, a struggle to believe and disbelieve. and it was her relentless struggle that inspired the beauty in her verse.
Here’s the first selection from Dickinson by LeMay:
I shall keep singing!
Birds will pass me
In their way to Yellower Climes–
Each–with a Robin’s expectation–
I–with my Redbreast–
And my Rhymes–
Late–when I take my place in summer–
But–I shall bring a fuller tune–
Vespers–are sweeter than matins–Signor–
Morning–only the seed–of noon–
The birds passing her suggest those eager for the transition, perhaps conversion to a better life, while the poet with “Redbreast” and “Rhymes” lags behind. Yet the lagging yields better singing, “a fuller tune.” The slow-forming verses produce the best result, “Morning–only the seed–of noon–” LeMay compares the daily worship of the Benedictine monks to the composing of a poem. The chanting produces better worship and a fuller life. “Emily’s song–like the Monk’s prayer at Matins–is the means for the conversion it promises, just as its melody is itself the promise of a “fuller tune” she foretells in the final lines” (30-32).
LeMay almost reverently recalls her own pilgrimage to the “Emily Dickinson Room” at Harvard University and witnessing that small square writing desk to which Emily applied herself every morning, often before sunrise. I saw a reproduction of it at the Dickinson House in Amherst. It is a very small space for small poems and expansive thoughts. In this small space a poet gathered the world in a few words. It is not hard to imagine it as prayer.
LeMay, Kristin. I Told My Soul to Sing: Finding God with Emily Dickinson. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2013.
I am envious that you toured ED’s home. Could you feel a connection with her, while you visited the house?
Back in the day, ED was a favorite of mine. At that juncture of my life, I really identified with her dark side.
I like “for Emily, writing poetry was like a religious act, a struggle to believe and disbelieve”. I also like your concluding thought, “…a poet gathered the world in a few words. It is not hard to imagine it as prayer.” 🙂 I can imagine many works of art as prayers.
“Vespers… sweeter than matins… morning only the seed of noon” Well that is encouraging about aging in general. It also brings back memories of hearing Latin chants as a child, uplifting or comforting, though we had no clue what was being said. It is one of the things I like about PBS “Call the Midwives”, the nuns singing their vespers at night after a troubling day. When in Tuscany, we went to a monastery church in the country near Montalcino, where the monks came to the church 5 x day, to sing their prayers, remarkably like Muslim practice.
Monastic singing and prayer is a singular experience. My only experience was visiting the Benedictine monks of the Weston Priory in Vermont. They composed a lot of original folk music in the 1980’s. Thanks for your thoughtful appreciation for this entry.
The stories the guide told helped bring the house alive, but I am not enough connected to Dickinson to feel a “presence.” I think I will learn a lot more about her after this visit than I knew going in.