Bible Needs Refreshing Says Dickinson

That's what I imagine the headline to be in a local or national newspaper, if Emily Dickinson were alive and if she'd just published her poem #1577 (or, under the older numbering-system, #1545). Here is the poem:



The Bible is an antique Volume -
Written by faded Men
At the suggestion of Holy Spectres -
Subjects - Bethlehem -
Eden - the ancient Homestead -
Satan - the Brigadier -
Judas - the Great Defaulter -
David - the Troubadour -
Sin - a distinguished Precipice
Others must resist -
Boys that "believe" are very lonesome -
Other Boys are "lost" -
had but the Tale a warbling Teller -
All the Boys would come -
Orpheus's Sermon captivated -
It did not condemn -





Before I muse on the poem, I should probably discuss Dickinson. If pressed to say who my favorite poets are, I'd invariably answer, "Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins." Their poetry has always captivated me; it takes on big subjects freshly and small subjects ingeniously; and both writers "attacked" poetry in the same original way in which the most successfully innovative visual artists attacked paint-and-canvas.

At the same time, having taught poetry for many years, I know the degree to which even people who like poetry are put off by the poems of Dickinson and Hopkins. Neither poet has ever seemed insuperably difficult to me, but I find it easy to understand why others resist the poems so much. There's no doubt that both poets are quirky, stubbornly eccentric in a variety of ways. Hence their poetry alienates people, even people who read a fair amount of poetry. Both poets are thought of as being ethereal as well--Dickinson, the New England recluse; Hopkins the British Jesuit priest. I think these perceived personae are not terribly accurate; to me, both seem to have been rather earthy people. Hopkins's famous or infamous "sprung rhythm," in which he jams stressed syllabes and alliteration together, is a hurdle over which some readers can't jump. Dickinson's shorthand, elliptical references, her use of dashes, and her almost Germanic penchant for capitalizing words prove difficult for readers. Even when I was an undergraduate, I didn't find these elements discouraging. I found that I either enjoyed them or, if at times they got in the way, I could move easily around them. Mostly I think it's a matter of luck. Sometimes you get lucky and are simply able to "get" poems and poets with which and with whom others struggle. I've always struggled with Milton's poetry, for example, whereas others take to it easily.

Many of Dickinson's poems seem "modern" in the sense of being ahead of their time, and this poem is certainly in that category. She views the Bible from an historical point of view, seeing it not as revealed truth but rather as old stories written by humans, by "faded men." She deliberately reduces parts of the Bible to easily labeled topics there in lines 3-8; to refer to Eden as "the ancient Homestead" seems so wonderfully American, and to call Satan "the Brigadier" brings Satan down to size. Satan becomes merely the head of one part of an army, and one might think of a petty if murderous dictator, dressed up in a uniform that's covered with fake medals. David becomes a traveling musician, singer of psalms, and Sin becomes "a distinguished precipice." I love that comparison. If you sin, you fall, but you fall from a very "distinguished"--that is to say, special--place. Not only your bones will break, but also your soul.

"Others must resist." Just as the poetry of Dickinson and Hopkins proves difficult to many readers, so the Bible (according to Dickinson) proves difficult to people in 1882, when she wrote the poem. The Bible is old fashioned. It's a difficult text. The boys who believe in it are lonsesome, isolated, probably because most of their friends disklike going to church and reading the Bible. Solution? The Bible requires a "Warbler," some "Teller" (speaker or preacher) to freshion up the telling. Churches must invite "the Boys" (potential new believers; converts) with an aesthetically pleasing sermon that's like the song of Orpheus.

This is a strikingly counter-Victorian, counter-Puritan (as in New England Puritan) poem. It is at once whimsical and light and theologically serious. What Dickinson's own religious views were is open to question. She certainly wasn't traditionally Christian in her Amherst community, but her poems are imbued with the rhetoric and rhythm of hymns. She certainly wasn't a thoroughgoing atheist, but her view of heaven and things spiritual seems to have been independently forged. She was a free-thinker, that's for sure. To me she is the unbeatable poet (not that poetry has to be a competition). I just can't think of an American poet who's written a more magnificent, original body of work than she did, and she seems uncannily to have anticipated so many "moves" in poetry that we associate with the Modernist movement. Hail Dickinson.