THE SHOCK OF INSIGHT. The title of this paper comes from a piece the poet Louise Bogan wrote for a celebration of Emily Dickinson

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1 THE SHOCK OF INSIGHT The title of this paper comes from a piece the poet Louise Bogan wrote for a celebration of Emily Dickinson given at Amherst College in 1959 Emily Dickinson: Three Views (1960). I was drawn to it because of the confluence of Louise Bogan and Emily Dickinson that forms the axis of my talk today and because shock is often what poetry provides in crucial clinical moments. I called my proposal The Perfect Poem, and what I meant by that exaggeration is that at such times, lines from a poem resurface from my memory, and lately I have been self indulgent enough to quote them to my patient, or if I can t remember them exactly, reach for a book and find the perfect poem that expresses what I imagine the patient is struggling to say. Or maybe I am struggling to say the perfect thing, realizing that Shakespeare or Emily or Louise can do that far better than I. Today, I have selected a few poems, together with the clinical situations that gave rise to them in my mind, to illustrate how the poetic enlarges the narrative in ways illuminating for both me and my patient. My patient Daphne has been wrestling with her words ever since I ve started working with her. She is a large woman, yet speaks intermittently in a small girl voice. Her unexpressed feelings and thoughts lodge in her throat, and with great effort she is able to articulate them to me. Lately, however, she has been far more voluble, and when I commented on the ease with which she is beginning to speak out, both with me and especially with her partner, she laughed and said that it was quite a transformation. The word transformation hung in the air, and somehow I was inspired to pick up Harold Bloom s wonderful compilation, Till I End My Song, and read Daphne a poem by Louise Bogan, The Dragonfly. [Bloom s book is a collection of last poems by poets throughout English and American poetry and is wonderful companion. Harold Bloom, ed., Till I end My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems, (2010), pp ]

2 The Dragonfly You are made of almost nothing But of enough To be great eyes And diaphanous double vans; [vans wings] To be ceaseless movement, Unending hunger Grappling love. Link between water and air, Earth repels you. Light touches you only to shift into iridescence Upon your body and wings. Twice born, predator, You split the heat. Swift beyond calculation or capture You dart into the shadow Which consumes you. You rocket into the day. But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses, For you, the design and purpose stop. And you fall With the other husks of summer.

3 Daphne loved the poem and said, How did you know I love dragonflies? I didn t. We especially dwelt on the line, Link bêtween water and air, which I think of in terms of the threshold, that sacred space that divides one realm from another, the natural world from eternity. A few sessions later, Daphne told me, with great excitement, of a miraculous thing that happened to her. She had been driving down Riverside Drive in LA, the window open in her jeep. A huge dragonfly flew in and landed on her chest It was as big as a plate! she marveled. Minutes later, when she arrived at work, her partner called her to tell her that the partner s mother had died that morning. How uncanny, we said, I thinking of Freud s essay on The Uncanny, and whatever renders that frisson of awareness that we are not on as firm ground as we thought we were. Since then, the dragonfly has served as a potent metaphor in our work, hovering between earth and sky, between conscious and unconscious communication. Emily Dickinson has been reverberating in my mind ever since I taught a few of her poems to high school juniors in American Lit. Her words often form the musical burden to a talk I m listening to. For example, whenever I hear Bob Stolorow speak of organizing principles, what rings in my mind are these lines: There s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes Heavenly Hurt, it gives us We can find no scar, But internal difference Where the Meanings, are

4 These lines, which I have come to love, anchor concepts in my mind more firmly than the formal prose I m listening to. Even though Emily wrote the poem, somehow I feel it is also mine, as I have committed it to memory. And speaking of the difference between poetry and prose, here is another evocative poem that reminds me of a dear patient who died of brain cancer. 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 Possibility was a favorite word of my patient, whose life had turned out so differently from what he had imagined for himself. I spoke with him frequently on the telephone weeks before he could speak no more with ease, and I took down what he said, his beautiful resignation to what was happening and his belief in the possibility of an afterlife. I also think of our work as embodying the possibility of

5 transformation, the tattered hope that somehow the past can be forgiven, overcome. Toward that end, I listen for metaphor, image, whether in working with dreams or hearing the recitative of the quotidian. Perhaps, I am trying to rescue the patient, as well as myself, from prose, the prosaic, so that we both might apprehend the wonder of this world we live in. In another context the same poem applies. A patient of mine is remodeling her house. She exults in tearing down walls, creating open spaces in an old dark house suffused with memories of a beloved husband who recently died of Parkinson s and Alzheimer s. She said, I love the possibility of light! I picked up possibility and quoted the poem. When I recited it to myself, I would say, fairer realm than prose, but house is much more in keeping with the images of doors and windows, which spoke directly to my patient s experience. Helen Vendler, a professor at Harvard and one of the most brilliant commentators of poetry I have yet encountered, has written a fascinating book commenting on certain of Emily s poems. She is as astute an analyst of the human heart as she is of poetry, and thanks to her, I found a poem I d never read before, and believe me, there are hundreds. [Emily wrote about 1800 poems in her short life.) She referenced this poem in relation to the one above and leads me into a discussion of Emily and trauma. They shut me up in Prose As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet Because they liked me still Still! Could themselves have peeped And seen my Brain go round They might as wise have lodged a Bird

6 For Treason in the Pound Himself has but to will And easy as a Star Look down opon Captivity And laugh No more have I Those of you who have the poems in front of you will note the dashes that Emily places after key words, as well as the way she capitalizes certain nouns. The dash is curious, and we can bring to it our own interpretation. It indicates a pause, a space in which to reflect upon the impact the preceding word connotes, as well as the one that follows. In his 1828 American Dictionary that Emily had at her side, Webster defined dash as a mark or line in writing... noting a break or stop in a sentence; as in Virgil, quos eos [what I am; that which I am], denoting a lack of certainty regarding identity. (Quoted by Fred D. White, Approaching Emily Dickinson, 2008, pp ) In any case there is indeterminacy here, a trailing off, especially when the dash occurs at the end of a poem. In the preceding poem, Emily delights in the flights of her imagination, in the business of her most active brain. In other poems, her mental activity is not a compensation for being shut up, but a cause for anguish. Again, thanks to Helen Vendler, I have been introduced to poems unknown to me, but in fact, any browsing through the collected poems edited by R.W. Franklin will yield treasures. One thing I have found is that becoming more acquainted with Emily is a life long occupation, as so much has been written about her life and so much critical ink has been expended on her poetry. Emily s emotional life, as well as her existence as a recluse, has been subjected to every kind of scrutiny, but in a recent biography of Emily and her family, Lyndall Gordon has suggested and offered

7 significant proof that Emily suffered from epilepsy (Gordon, L., Lives Like Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family s Feuds, 2010). Not only did Emily suffer from her own excruciating mental experiences, but also the fact that her brother was having an affair in her own house caused her great pain. What concerns me here, however, is Emily s depiction of internal catastrophe. Several startling poems invite us in to witness her debilitating distress. I felt a Cleaving in my Mind As if my Brain had split I tried to match it Seam by Seam But could not make them fit The thought behind, I strove to join Unto the thought before But Sequence raveled out of Sound Like Balls upon a Floor We speak of splitting in our work, but here the way Emily distinguishes Mind from Brain illustrates to me the confusion patients have between the two. As Vendler puts it, Cleaving does not happen by itself in a healthy brain; some agent has caused it, and here the agent seems internal. The poet feels as if her Brain had split like an overripe fruit, forced to contain more than it can bear (Helen Vendler, Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries, 2010, p.357). Attempts to sew the Mind/Brain back together meet with failure; finally the mind unravels like balls of yarn spilling out upon a floor, the poet unable, perhaps, to reconstitute herself.

8 The presence of Pain is a constant in Emily s writing, as well, I suspect, as in her life. Here is another example. Pain has an Element of Blank It cannot recollect When it begun Or if there were A time when it was not It has no Future but itself Its Infinite contain Its Past enlightened to perceive New Periods of Pain. Emily sustained many losses in her life through death or disaffection, and because of her extreme sensitivity, as well as her urgent need to write her very private poetry, she has left behind her universal testament to the terrorism of suffering and trauma. One poem records the process of mental breakdown, indistinguishable from death because it so obliterates consciousness (Vendler, p.141). I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading treading till it seemed That Sense was breaking through And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum Kept beating beating till I thought My mind was going numb

9 And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race Wrecked, solitary, here And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing then Vendler s analysis of the poem tracks the process of mental breakdown, from Brain to mind to Soul to Being to the final break in Reason. Here Emily captures an on going sense of disintegration, leading to a final collapse. That she can suffer so and yet transmute her agony into poetry is an alchemical feat. We do not know the exact source of her suffering, yet pain, whether emotional or physical, was a constant companion. In the next poem, the alchemical is evident. Here, I refer to the belief in the Middle Ages that base metals could be converted into gold or silver. After great pain, a formal feeling comes The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs

10 The stiff Heart questions was it He that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before? The Feet, mechanical, go round A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Aught Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone This is the Hour of Lead Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow First Chill then Stupor then the letting go This is the lived experience of trauma, unrolled (like balls along a floor) in successive stages of paralysis, numbness, immobility, and timelessness, until The Hour of Lead (recalling Boots of Lead from the previous poem), the heaviness unto death, which punctuates the final disintegration. the letting go represents what a patient describes to me as a free fall into oblivion. I call this poem an alchemical transmutation because Emily takes the shards of trauma, the sense of shattering, what Ferenczi called atomization, and creates a work of art. Recently, a patient, who has lost her father, spoke about the hole in the world left by his sudden and fatal heart attack. I said to her that her recollection of the day she received the news was like The Hour of Lead. She looked at me with what I can only describe as the shock of insight. That Emily can so capture the on going nature of suffering in a few words belies the concretization of language. In her

11 poetry, words, chosen with such urgent, immediate care, invest her personal Gethsemane with universal meaning. A recent book, All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, by the philosophers Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly (2011), invites us to recapture by discernment of the ordinary the poiesis inherent in everyday life. Poiesis is juxtaposed to physis, or the technological, and is the art of discovering what we care about in the world, cultivating in [ourselves] the skill for discerning the meanings that are already there (p.209). Poiesis embodies more than poetry, certainly, but for me, returning to my roots as a student of literature has infused my work with my patients an added dimension of pleasure and fulfillment, for me. In turn, my patients see another side of me that I value. I wish to end this paper with another poem by Louise Bogan. Night The cold remote islands And the blue estuaries Where what breathes, breathes The restless wind of the inlets, And what drinks, drinks The incoming tide; Where shell and weed Wait upon the salt wash of the sea, And the clear nights of stars

12 Swing their lights westward To set behind the land; Where the pulse clinging to the rocks Renews itself forever; Where, again on cloudless nights, The water reflects The firmament s partial setting; O remember In your narrowing dark hours That more things move Than blood in the heart.

13 , The Dragonfly You are made of almost nothing But of enough To be great eyes And diaphanous double vans; [vans wings] To be ceaseless movement, Unending hunger Grappling love. Link between water and air, Earth repels you. Light touches you only to shift into iridescence Upon your body and wings. Twice born, predator, You split the heat. Swift beyond calculation or capture You dart into the shadow Which consumes you. You rocket into the day. But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses, For you, the design and purpose stop. And you fall With the other husks of summer.

14 There s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes Heavenly Hurt, it gives us We can find no scar, But internal difference Where the Meanings, are None may teach it Any Tis the Seal Despair An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air When it comes, the Landscape listens Shadows hold their breath When it goes, tis like the Distance On the look of Death (320) I dwell in Possibility A fairer house than Prose More numerous of Windows Superior for Doors Of Chambers as the Cedars

15 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 (466) They shut me up in Prose As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet Because they liked me still Still! Could themselves have peeped And seen my Brain go round They might as wise have lodged a Bird For Treason in the Pound Himself has but to will And easy as a Star Look down opon Captivity And laugh No more have I (445)

16 I felt a Cleaving in my Mind As if my Brain had split I tried to match it Seam by Seam But could not make them fit The thought behind, I strove to join Unto the thought before But Sequence raveled out of Sound Like Balls upon a Floor (867) Pain has an element of Blank It cannot recollect When it begun Or if there were A time when it was not It has no Future but itself Its infinite contain Its Past enlightened to perceive New Periods of Pain. (760) I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading treading till it seemed The Sense was breaking through

17 And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum Kept beating beating till I thought My mind was going numb And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race Wrecked, solitary, here And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped own, and down And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing then (340) After great pain, a formal feeling comes The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs The stiff Heart questions was it He that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before? The Feet, mechanical, go round A Wooden way

18 Of Ground, or Air, or Aught Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone This is the Hour of Lead Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow First Chill then Stupor then, the letting go (372) NIGHT The cold remote islands And the blue estuaries Where what breathes, breathes The restless wind of the inlets, And what drinks, drinks The incoming tide; Where shell and weed Wait upon the salt wash of the sea, And the clear nights of stars Swing their lights westward To set behind the land; Where the pulse clinging to the rocks Renews itself forever; Where, again on cloudless nights

19 The water reflects The firmament s partial setting; O remember In your narrowing dark hours That more things move Than blood in the heart. A BONUS POEM FOR MORE OF THE FLOOR IMAGERY I stepped from Plank to Plank A slow and cautious way The Stars about my Head I felt About my Feet the Sea I knew not but the next Would be my final inch This gave me that precarious Gait Some call Experience (926)

20 REFERENCES Bogan, L. (1968). The Blue Estuaries: Poems New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. MacLeish, A., Bogan, L., Wilbur, R. (1960). Emily Dickinson: Three Views. Amherst, MA: Amherst College Press. Bloom, H. (2010). Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems. New York: Harper Collins. Dickinson, E. (2005). The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Ed. R.W. Franklin). Cambridge, MA: The Beklnap Press of Harvard University Press. Dreyfus, H., & Kelly, S.D. (2011). All things Shining: Reading the Western classics to find meaning in a secular age. New York: Free Press. Gordon, L. (2010). Lives like loaded guns: Emily Dickinson and her family s feuds. New York: Viking Press. Vendler, H. (2010). Dickinson: Selected poems and commentaries. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. White, F.D. (2008). Appproaching Emily Dickinson: Critical currents and crosscurrents since Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House. Emily had at her side

21 ADDITIONAL POEMS Ashes denote that Fire was Revere the Grayest Pile For the Departed Creature s sake That hovered there awhile Fire exists the first in light And then consolidates Only the Chemist can disclose Into what Carbonate #423 The first Day s Night had come And grateful that a thing So terrible had been endured I told my Soul to sing She said her strings were snapt Her Bow to atoms blown And so to mend her gave me work Until another Morn And then a Day as huge As Yesterday s in pairs, Unrolled its horror in my face Until it blocked my eyes My Brain began to laugh I mumbled like a fool And tho tis Years ago that Day My Brain keeps giggling still. And Something s odd within That person that I was And this One do not feel the same Could it be Madness this? #194 Title divine is mine! The Wife without the Sign! Acute Degree conferred on me

22 Empress of Calvary! Royal all but the Crown! Betrothed without the Swoon God sends to us Women When you hold Garnet to Garnet Gold to Gold Born Bridalled Shrouded In a Day My Husband women say Stroking the Melody Is this the way? #764 My Life had stood a Loaded Gun In Corners till a Day The Owner passed identified And carried Me away And now We roam in Sovreign Woods And now We hunt the Doe And every time I speak for Him The Mountains straight reply And do I smile, such cordial light Upon the Valley glow It is as a Vesuvian face Had let its pleasure through And when at Night Our good Day done I guard My Master s Head Tis better than the Eider Duck s Deep Pillow to have shared To foe of His I m deadly foe None stir the second time On whom I lay a Yellow Eye Or an emphatic Thumb Though I than He may longer live He longer must than I For I have but the power to kill, Without the power to die