Our Emily Dickinson: American Women Poets and the Intimacies of Difference by Vivian K. Pollak (review)

Vivian Pollak has given us a reception study of Dickinson’s poetry, but a carefully circumscribed one, dealing with only five women poets and one editor: Helen Hunt Jackson, Mabel Todd Loomis, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, and Elizabeth Bishop. All were deeply engaged with Dickinson as a contemporary or forerunner, and all five interrogated and defined themselves in part in the light of their responses to Dickinson—what Pollak terms “intimate reading practices” (9). Pollak says that because Dickenson’s ambivalence toward her readers precluded a “coherent genealogy” of women’s poetry, Our Emily Dickinson presents a nonlinear history of poets who individually turned to Dickinson (3). In the process, Pollak acknowledges that the reputation Dickinson has today is not the problematized response of former days.

The poets were encouraged by Dickinson’s example and found in her work much stimulus for thought about their own roles, along with self-affirmation as poets in a masculinist culture. Pollak describes their struggles as poets with gender issues, for which they looked to Dickinson for succor. At the same time, Pollak undertakes to deepen our understanding of Dickinson by extensive historical contextualization. The book provides insight into the reception of a major poet by poets who followed her. Discussion of Dickinson the person and poet and explication of some of her poems further enhance the volume.

Two of Dickinson’s contemporaries figure in the study: the popular writer Helen Hunt Jackson, a poet and fiction writer, and Mabel Todd Loomis, who undertook to edit and promote Dickinson’s work. Jackson, an ambitious and energetic figure, was a leading poet in America in Dickinson’s day but is little known in our day. Jackson felt strongly that Dickinson, whom she knew as a child and had slight contact with in later years, should adopt a more public voice as a poet. She played a role in eliciting some Dickinsonian denials of ambition, and, perhaps to the poet’s chagrin, submitted “Success” for publication in a collection. Dickinson did want recognition but was conflicted about it, while Hunt, having no doubt about poetry’s public role, argued that Dickinson had the same obligation to offer her poems to others through publication as to perform a good action in a social context.

Also a Dickinson contemporary was Mable Todd Loomis, whose life story (given in detail) will interest readers because of her intimate connection with the Dickinson family as the mistress of the poet’s brother, Austin. Loomis, who wanted recognition for herself and probably identified with Dickinson as a woman whose light was obscured, sought a vehicle for her ambition in editing and promoting Dickinson’s work after the poet’s death. Loomis’s wish, prompted by national pride, to discover a great American poet who could rival Elizabeth Barrett Browning was widely shared. Emily’s sister, Vinnie, also had a strong desire to see Emily’s work published. Eventually Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the acquaintance Emily greatly admired, joined in the effort, and thus Loomis succeeded in her goal of bringing the pleasures of Dickinson’s poetry to contemporary readers. When the poems were published, Dickinson was much admired for her sincerity, a highly valued literary prerequisite at the time, but she was castigated for roughness and unconventional form. Loomis, who admired Dickinson without reservations, saw her as self-aware and a mistress of her craft.

Gender issues are critical in Marianne Moore’s relation with the figure of Dickinson. Moore rejected the tradition of women’s poetry that obtained after the Second World War: that is, as personal utterance claiming a special status by virtue of women’s experience. Moore, adamant in her rejection of conventional gender assumptions, wanted nothing to do with the view of women foisted on Dickinson as an explanation of her unusual life choices: a secret sorrow, probably a disappointed love. Moore was introduced to Dickinson’s poetry during her senior year at...