The Dickinson Project--Poem No. 657

I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors--

Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of eye--
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--

Of Visitors--the fairest--
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise--

This is an interesting little poem that has always appealed to me.  The first couplet gives away the subject of the poem--Poetry--which, in Dickinson's opinion, is a fairer House than Prose.  Personally, I agree with her.  I think most people would think that a writer has more latitude and flexibility in plotting and being descriptive with prose, so Dickinson plays on that perception with her description of her 'House' with all of its windows and doors.  In other words, Dickinson, through her poetry, chooses to let us in in through the poem's 'windows' into her soul; or, she can effectively block us with a 'door' of her own construction (or, even by living as a recluse?).  Conversely, a 'door' is also an entrance, isn't it?  It is another way that Emily lets us into her 'House'.  Although it may take some work, our access depends upon our interpretation of Emily's poem, line-by-line, and word-by-word.  It is, after all, her 'House'.

In the second stanza she describes the overall architecture of her 'House'.  It isn't made of brick or clapboard.  No, Emily uses Cedar, a very long-lasting aromatic smelling wood.  The Gambrels, or roof, of her house is the ever-expansive and infinite Sky.  I think she's hoping that her poetry may live a long life, and that the 'Possibilities' of her poetry are as infinite and expansive as the sky above.

The last stanza, to me, speaks to her having moved in, and made herself at home in her 'House'.  She is the Poet, and any Visitors that she receives are those entirely receptive to poetry, i.e., they are the fairest, in her opinion.  Finally, I love the image created with the concluding couplet, that of Emily's use of her Hands/to gather Paradise to her through the crafting of her lines of poetry.  Each time I finish reading this poem I'm left with a sense of 'admiration'.  Admiration for what she's created in these 12 short lines, and also the recognition of how much she admires the craft of poetry.

This poem, No. 657 in Thomas Johnson's 1955 edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, is thought to have been written by Emily sometime around 1862.  This is also poem No. 466 in Ralph W. Franklin's Reading Edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1999).  From this point forward, I will reference both the Johnson and Franklin numbers for the poems, as many readers have one, or both, collections of her poetry.

Finally, I want to briefly mention the photograph that I've attached to this posting.  This is a photograph I took of Willa Cather's house in the tiny prairie town of Red Cloud, Nebraska.  I thought it appropriate to use a photograph of the house of a famous American writer of prose to illustrate and accompany one of the works of one of America's greatest poets.  My oldest daughter, Amber, and I enjoyed an incredibly fascinating day touring all of the Cather sites in and around Red Cloud, and visiting Willa's house was one of the high-points.  Oh, and do 'click' on the photograph and avail yourself of the larger view.

***

A Poem for the Day: "Cloverton" by Me

Tonight I am featuring a poem that I recently wrote.  I just returned from a week-long trip to Nebraska visiting my daughter and her husband.  My daughter and I took the opportunity to drive a few hours over to Red Cloud, Nebraska and spend the day in Willa Cather country.  Cather is one of America's great novelists of the early 20th century, and was the second female to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1923 for her novel, One of Ours (Edith Wharton was the first in 1921).  One of the stops we made was at the tiny Cloverton Cemetery where Anna Pavelka is buried.  Just down the road from the cemetery is the old farm-house where Anna Pavelka lived and raised all of her children.  Anna was the inspiration for Cather's great character, 'Antonia Shimerda' in her wonderful novel, My Antonia.  This visit to this cemetery, and seeing Anna's grave truly inspired this humble effort of mine.  I'd love to know what you think of the poem.

Cloverton

In the wind, the prairie grasses—

Sweep to and fro, and time just passes.

And here, in quiet, now you sleep,

In dark prairie soil, your rest now to keep.

The wind through the trees—a song of peace,

Song of fleeting seasons, never to cease.

South, down the dusty track, a mile or more,

The house, where thirteen children you bore—

Beneath the pale blue Nebraska sky,

Where among the clouds your soul doth fly.

Fields of grain and grasses gently sway,

And song of the Lark still heard at end of day.

Faded silken flowers, that will never grow—

By the stones of Cloverton, a bit of color they show.

Beneath the pale blue Nebraska sky,

Where among the clouds your soul doth fly.

***

[The photograph I have included is an example of the native Nebraska  tall-grass prairie ecosystem that I took at the Nature Conservancy's Spring Creek Preserve.  This is precisely the prairie ecosystem that Willa Cather and Annie Pavelka would have known growing up in the Red Cloud area.  Unfortunately, it is an incredibly endangered ecosystem these days; there simply isn't much of this native prairie left.  Please do 'click' on the photograph for a larger view.]

Cather Country!

How many of you have read the novels and short stories of Willa Cather?  She is one of my favorite American novelists!  I just returned from spending a week in Nebraska visiting my daughter and her husband in Lincoln (home of the University of Nebraska).

We took a couple of day trips and were able to visit Cather's hometown of Red Cloud, Nebraska.  My daughter is quite the Cather scholar and really gave me a superb 'busman's tour' of all of the important Cather sites and scenes from many of her novels.  It was just an awesome experience!

I took several photographs while visiting Red Cloud, and thought that it might be fun to share them with all of you.  The photograph at top upper-right is a black and white conversion that I made of Cather's childhood home in Red Cloud.  Please do make sure that you 'click' on each photograph for the larger view.

Here's Cather's home in color.  The trees are all just starting to change into their fall colors too.








This black and white photograph (at right) is the Miner House (the fictional 'Harling' house), and is where Willa Cather frequently stayed when she came back to Red Cloud to visit family and friends.  This house is thought to have been built in 1878, and is in the Italianate style.  She dedicated My Antonia to two of the Miner girls, Carrie and Irene ("To Carrie and Irene Miner, In memory of affections old and true").

This is the house that Anna Pavelka lived in out on the Nebraska prairie outside of Red Cloud.  Anna is the woman that Willa Cather generally based her character Antonia Shimerda upon in her classic novel, My Antonia.  The root cellar (tornado shelter too?) in the foreground is the one that Jim and Antonia climb out of followed by the gaggle of little children.  While this old abandoned house is owned by the Nebraska State Historical Society, it is in a desperate state of disrepair.  I hope that the means can be found to protect and restore this beautiful piece of Americana.

The photograph, at right, is of Anna Pavelka's grave in the tiny Cloverton Cemetery.  This cemetery is miles from anywhere out in the midst of the endless Nebraska prairie.  It was truly poignant to stand at this woman's grave and realize all that she had accomplished.  Besides being a muse and inspiration for Willa Cather's writing, she bore and raised thirteen children and lived a long life.  I do wish that they (whoever 'they' are) had not planted that ugly metal sign right on top of the poor woman's grave.  Even if one had had to browse about to find her grave, it shouldn't have taken very long.  It isn't a big cemetery at all.

This is a photograph of the St. Juliana Falconieri Catholic Church in Red Cloud.  This is where Annie Pavelka's ('Antonia's') baby was baptized.  It is now owned and protected by the Nebraska State Historical Society.  It was built in 1883 and was used by the diocese until 1903.

This is a photograph that I made of the Red Cloud Burlington Train Depot.  This is the train station that Willa Cather would passed through in her journeys to and from Red Cloud.  It has been lovingly restored too, and was fascinating to visit.  During Red Cloud's heyday, this depot would have seen something like ten trains a day passing through town.  Red Cloud was on the main-line between Kansas City and Denver.

Finally, I am including a photographic portrait of Willa Cather that I have always liked.  The necklace that she is wearing was given to her by her very good friend, and fellow author, Sarah Orne Jewett (The Country of Pointed Firs and Other Stories).  This photo of Willa is thought to have been taken about 1912 and was taken in New York.

Willa Cather was born in Virginia in 1873, and died in 1947.  When Willa was nine years old, her family moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska.  She later attended and graduated from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska.  She then went back east and worked as a teacher, newspaper writer and editor, and an editor of magazines.  Most importantly though, Willa Cather is known for her beautiful novels.  To finish this posting I am including a listing of all of her novels, in the order in which they were published.

Alexander's Bridge (1912)
O Pioneers! (1913)
The Song of the Lark (1915)
My Antonia (1918)
One of Ours (1922, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1923)
A Lost Lady (1923)
The Professor's House (1925)
My Mortal Enemy (1926)
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
Shadows on the Rock (1931)
Lucy Gayheart (1935)
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940)

Review: Some Simply Superb Short Story Collections

So, here's the question--  How many of you enjoy reading collections of short stories?

I have to admit that I rarely did, until about ten years ago when I first discovered the short fiction of Edith Wharton (my favorite American author).  I am now a confirmed reader of short stories.  I usually have a collection of shorts on the bedside table, and it usually accompanies me to beach near Malibu on the weekends.

In reading the short stories of some of my favorite authors I have come to realize that some authors use the short story genre to test out new plot ideas and literary techniques for novels they may be writing, or to experiment with character and scene development.  I've also found that some authors are really just more comfortable with writing short stories in contrast to writing the longer novel.  Also, the pacing of short story plots tends to be faster, the plots themselves less complicated, and the overall effect of dialog and action is maximized.  Nowadays, when I discover a collection of short stories of an author that I am reading (and liking), I usually make an effort to acquire and read them.

The purpose of this blog posting was to take a couple of minutes and share with you some of my favorite short story authors and their collections.  While I am not reviewing each of the collections per se, I have included my impressions of 'why' I believe they merit reading.

The Country of the Pointed Firs and Selected Short Fiction, By Sarah Orne Jewett

This was a woman profoundly admired by the young Willa Cather; and, in fact, Jewett told Cather (paraphrasing) 'to stop writing like Henry James, and just tell the story.'  Cather was so affected by Jewett's influence that she dedicated her 1913 novel, "O' Pioneers" to Jewett.  This collection of Jewett's short stories is magnificent; they are a quiet, pastoral, lovely and idyllic look at a small slice of Americana in a small Maine sea-side village at the end of the 19th century, and told from the perspective of an unnamed female narrator.  Each of these unpretentious little stories just has the feel of something that your grandmother, or great-aunt, would have told you over a bowl of blueberries and cream.  Cather included Jewett's writing in with Nathanial Hawthorne's and Mark Twain's as some of of America's most timeless fiction.  High praise indeed!

The New York Stories of Edith Wharton, By Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton is near the top of the pinnacle of American fiction for me.  While I have read all of her novels, I have come to realize that her greatest strength may well be her short stories.  They are simply sublime.  They definitely pack a punch!  And while I reference the New York Review of Books edition here, I have a couple of other collection of her shorts and they are all nothing short of brilliant.  She published a volume of ghost stories that are truly some of the best spooky stuff out there.  In my opinion, Wharton is one of the masters of the short genre; she grabs you in a page or two, and doesn't let go.  When finished with a story, you just lean back in your chair and breathe a low, "Whew!"  Yes, she's that good!  Wharton's shorts span more than forty years, from the early 1890s until her death in 1937, and reflect her evolving literary style as well as her changing views on society and the lives and relationships of the people living in it.   If you read only a sample of Wharton shorts, read Autre Temps, Pomegranate Seed, and Roman Fever.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, By Susannah Clarke

If you loved Susannah Clarke's debut novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, you will adore this collection of short stories.  Several of the stories have a direct tie-in to JS&MN, and a several are stand alone, but they're all very good.  This woman can write a story that engages you from the get-go.  These are almost 'fairy tales' in the true sense of the word.  I particularly enjoyed the title story, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, as it expands upon one of Clarke's footnotes from JS&MN (i.e., Footnote 2, Chapter 43).  While this collection is an excellent companion to the novel, it can also serve as a stand-alone introduction to Clarke's style, wit, prose, and imagination.  Having read this collection of short stories, as well as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, it strikes me that, above all, Clarke provides a view of what it means to be English.  I think that these are amazing books, and this collection of short stories a welcome addition to her work.  From this collection of shorts, I highly recommend The Ladies of Grace Adieu, Mrs Mabb, On Lickerish Hill, and Mr Simonelli or the Fairy Widower.

The Troll Garden, By Willa Cather

All six of these short stories are worth reading!  This is an exquisite collection of Cather's early writing.  Once Cather embarked on writing her novels, she only wrote sixteen more short stories, so these early works are an important window into her maturation as a writer.  From this collection, I most especially loved Flavia and Her Artists, A Death in the Desert, and The Marriage of Phaedra.  This is a woman who is in touch with the pulse of the people around her in her time.  This is very good stuff.  As an aside, I am a huge fan of the Victorian poet, Christina Georgina Rossetti, and was quite intrigued to find that Cather uses a stanza from Rossetti's epic poem, Goblin Market, as an epigraph to open the collection.

"We must not look at Goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits;
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"

Like Wharton, Cather is a master at describing, with pathos and drama, the relationships and conflicts between men and women.  Each of these stories is crafted with imagination, tension, and poignancy--it is all here.  Cather is just brilliant!  This is a terrific collection of her short fiction! 

The Withered Arm and Other Stories, By Thomas Hardy

As many of you know, I am on a serious Hardy jag of late.  Hardy is the bomb!  I haven't encountered an author with power like this in some time.  The last author that grabbed me like this was Cormac McCarthy for fiction and Christina Rossetti with her poetry.  Hardy's short stories are nothing short of amazing.  They are macabre, devilish, scary, spooky, bizarre, gut-wrenching, and hauntingly beautiful.  There are several superb collections of Hardy's shorts out there, but I strongly recommend that you find and read the following stories: The Withered Arm, Barbara of the House of Grebe, The Son's Veto, The Fiddler of the Reels, An Imaginative Woman, and The Grave by the Handpost.  If you are a fan of poetry, you can find many references to elements from these shorts in Hardy's poetry too.  Following on that thought, I have to say that much of Thomas Hardy's poetry reads like short stories too; as much of his poetry has the distinct earthy feel and flavor of the folk tales and ballads he would have heard growing up in southwestern England in the mid-19th century.  So, if you want to host a Halloween Party and read some spooky stories aloud, I strongly recommend reading a couple of Hardy stories (and some of his poetry); they'd go well with the Edgar Allen Poe stories (and some rum punches!).

I'd love to know if you if you like short stories, and what are your favorite short story collections.  I'm always looking for some new stuff to read!