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“I always feel close to her when I write,” Kathleen Ellis, a professor of English at the University of Maine, commented on Emily Dickinson last Monday. She, along with two other Maine poets, Candice Stover and Jackie Michaud, paid homage to the 177-year-old bard as they promoted their newest publications, “Vanishing Act,” “Poets from the Pond” and “The Waking Hours,” respectively. Other UMaine faculty and students presented Dickinson poems that were particularly powerful to them.
While she only published seven poems during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson, the reclusive, mysterious resident of Amherst, Massachusetts, posthumously became one of the most influential poets of the 19th century. With over 1,700 poems now unearthed, Dickinson’s terse, epigrammatic poems with her unconventional capitalization, extensive dashes and lack of meter, have sparked much intrigue from readers. This intrigue led many to the University Bookstore on Dec. 10 for Emily’s 177th Birthday Celebration.
Amanda Hallett, a sophomore English major, opened the event with the Dickinson poem “Hope is a thing with feathers,” followed by Michaud who began with Dickinson’s “I never felt at Home-Below.”
“She talks about God so much,” Michaud observed after her reading, yet she further commented that Dickinson expressed so much doubt and ambivalence in her poetry. Drawing from this, Michaud read from her recent work, “The Waking Hours,” a collection of French translations with a variety of religious undertones.
As an interlude to the main presenters, Mark Haggerty and David Gross, two Honors professors, read, respectively, Dickinson’s “Exultation is the going” and “There’s a certain Slant of Light.”
“She was really funny and ironic,” Ellis noted as she began her presentation following Haggerty and Gross. “I like her coy voice,” she continued, reading one of Dickinson’s more whimsical poems: “‘Faith’ is a fine invention / When Gentlemen can see- / But Microscopes are prudent / In an Emergency.” On a more serious note, Ellis commented on the elusive quality of Dickinson’s poetry, stating, “So many of her poems are hesitant.” In her newest book about her dying mother, “Vanishing Act,” Ellis captures this spirit of Dickinson as she meditates over the odd feelings of confronting her mother’s death.
As she began her Dickinson reading, Sharon Tisher, an Honors and environmental law professor, quipped, “Leaving your room is vastly overrated.” To elaborate, Tisher read Dickinson’s “The Brain-is wider than the Sky-,” a token to the limitless possibilities of the mind. Following, Francois Amar, another Honors professor, read Dickinson’s “My Triumph lasted till the Drums,” talking after about the extensive discussion Dickinson’s poetry sparks in his classes.
Concluding the event, Stover, a poet and instructor at the College of the Atlantic, read from her latest book “Poems from the Pond,” a collection of poems ruminating on Somes Pond where she’s lived for the past 17 years. Before then, however, Stover reflected on the Dickinson quote, “To live is so startling, it leaves little time for anything else.” For Stover, people often fail to appreciate the mystifying amazement that is life for which she attempted to capture in her poetry.
Jay Grant, a first-year political science major, laughed about going just for extra credit, admitting that he was fascinated with Dickinson’s poetry. “She locked herself in her house,” he plainly stated, intrigued by her eccentric lifestyle.
Another student, Emily Desjardins, a first-year business major, agreed, “I’m interested in Emily Dickinson,” adding, “It’s different than modern poetry.”
The poetry event ended with a book signing by the three authors who, with vastly different works, all found a correspondence to Dickinson.
Bangor Daily News