HAUS FÜR POESIE

Emily Dickinson (born 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts; died 1886 in the same place) is undoubtedly one of the most important poets writing in English, although during her lifetime only ten of her nearly 1,800 poems appeared in magazines. She herself became increasingly skeptical toward publication (“Publication – is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man”), so it was not until 1890—four years after her death, and with substantial editorial alterations—that the first volume of her poetry appeared, becoming a great popular success. Yet Dickinson already had a readership before then: her poems were part of the intense correspondence she maintained with numerous acquaintances. Contrary to the mythologization of her as a recluse, Dickinson kept abreast of contemporary literature and events, even though from the 1860s onward she lived more and more reclusively in her family’s “Homestead.”

During the American Civil War (1861–65), she wrote more than half of her poems, though the war itself is rarely mentioned in them. Instead, her imagery draws on nature, science, and technology, and often in an antithetical, ambiguous structure, she addresses fundamental existential questions, pursuing them apart from the religious revival movements of her time. Dickinson’s favored form was the hymn stanza, which she broke open through musical, syntactically sophisticated lines, slant rhymes, idiosyncratic spelling, and punctuation. She is well known for her dashes, which repeatedly slow down the verse. At the core of her poetics is “slanted” speech—the circling around or defining of concepts and terms through negation, gradually approaching them: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant – / Success in Circuit lies […] The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind –.”

Following the reading and discussion, Portuguese singer and actress Mia Tomé, together with pianist Clara Lacerda, will present musical settings of Emily Dickinson’s poems, released this year on the album Há um Herbário no Deserto—in the original English and in Portuguese translation by Ana Luísa Amaral.

The event will be interpreted between English and German.
With the kind support of ECHOO Conference Interpreting.

Reading & discussion: Mirko Bonné, Ryan Ruby, Donna Stonecipher
Music: Mia Tomé & Clara Lacerda
Moderation: Uljana Wolf