Thursday, November the 24th, 2011

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The Necessity Of Puddings : A Postscript

I wonder if it would be possible, given sufficient intellectual rigour, and pen and paper, and time, and a good library, and copious amounts of tea, to write a study of the poetry of Emily Dickinson demonstrating, without fear of contradiction, that the key to her work, the one overriding fact that, more than any other, gives us an insight into her singular genius, and allows us for the first time to see her whole, free of ambiguities and uncertainties, free too of the enigmatic patina that has accreted around her, like an enshrouding mist, so that we can at last take her proper measure, is the assertion, by her champion Thomas Wentworth Higginson, that she was able to connect, in her own mind, albeit timidly and suggestively, but nonetheless inextricably, for once we have heard it we ourselves cannot do the untangling, and thus the iron link or chain is now in our own heads, transmitted across the years from the brain of the Belle of Amherst, comets, and meteors, and puddings.