The Complete Poems - Emily Dickinson

"When it goes, 'tis like the distance
On the look of death."

You may have noticed that of all the books I have discussed so far none of them have contained more than a few lines of poetry. As a student of literature I must understand and appreciate the significance of poetic expression and the vast array of forms and meters in which poetry is found. That said, I must openly admit that poetry rarely attracts my attention and I tend to encounter verse more often through drama or narrative (Shakespeare or Chaucer) than by reading short poems. Some of this might have to do with just how concentrated the artistic effect of poetry can be. What I mean is this: in narratives the artistic significance has a great deal more to do with structure and character development whereas in poetry, given the short form we must search for artistic significance in word choice, cadence, and the subtle imagery created by interplay between the two. Poetry is significantly more condensed and as a result open to an unfortunately larger degree of critical license in its interpretation. While some might see this as a point of greater interest in poetry to me I find that it also opens the critical world up for a greater degree of disparity. Besides, I think I just like stories better...

Now, with the above it may seem strange that Emily Dickinson, a poetess who is admittedly generally out of vogue in critical circles, is my absolute favorite. I'm not exactly sure what it is in Dickinson's poetry that strikes a chord with me but it must be a weird and wonderful combination of her simple yet accessible rhyme scheme (she is often maligned for her nursery-style rhyme), profound vocabulary, and her pleasantly macabre style.

The particular poem I've chosen to quote above I first read in high school and even wrote a short bit of accompanying guitar music to perform for a class project. For some reason "There's a Certain Slant of Light"'s depiction of autumn as a prefigured memento-mori reminds the reader of the perpetual presence of death but in a way that has potential for comfort as well as sadness, like the prismatic aspects of church organ music.

Another aspect of Dickinson that, like a bad critic, I can't help but attach to my reading of her poetry. So much of Emily's poetry focuses on death and the potential for human sadness yet it was written by a woman in near seclusion and never intended to be published. in some ways I can't help but wonder how this woman appears to have captured such a profound vision of a nearly universal human experience that may only have touched her to a limited degree. But perhaps this is merely the purest distillation of a human pondering of the ending of life. Perhaps I'm simply morbid and simply find her poetry interesting but in any case I don't mind in the least that hers is the only book of poetry on my shelf (at least the only one that I have ever actively sought).
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Dickison, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1890.

Death is a Lonely Business - Ray Bradbury

"Venice California, in the old days had much to recommend it to people who liked to be sad."

You may remember a certain book I spoke of in that ever-so-long ago last blog. To refresh your memory: I had attended a Ray Bradbury book signing on the suggestion of a friend of mine before I had ever read one of his books. As a result the first Bradbury novel I ever read bears his real signature on its title page, which somehow made the experience all the more interesting.

What also made it interesting was the familiarity with which I could recognize the setting. Death is a Lonely Business, as is obvious from the above quote, is set in Venice Beach, a town that Bradbury knew quite well and which he paints with a kind of barren notstalgia that brings to life an even less glamorous but still romantic past of a now ultra-funky neighborhood.

The novel itself is a detective story yet it is by no means hard-boiled. In fact the murder that initiates Bradbury's narrative is less gruesome than it is puzzling and less violent than it is mysterious. This novel is the first to introduce some of Bradbury's most eccentric but interesting characters that show up twice more to form a sort of disjointed trilogy of an unashamedly dusty vision of Los Angeles's golden-days as they have solidified in the mind of the author (the other novels are A Graveyard for Lunatics, which will be the subject of my next post, and Let's All Kill Constance, which I have yet to add to the collection).

The two most active characters in the narrative are the unlikely duo of an unnamed writer (the narrator and no doubt a pseudo-biographical avatar of the author) and the detective Elmo Crumley. My memories of Crumley lack the kind of lost-innocence, unshaven, and jaded depiction that we are used to in our noir-stories. Instead Crumley is a man of everyday ideals who must use his brain as well as the help of his writer-friend to find the reasons that a man has been found dead in the submerged circus-lion cage of a Venice canal.

Though she does not play as important a role in solving the mystery Bradbury's most fascinating character by far is Constance Rattagan. Constance is a retired movie star who lives alone in a huge house by the beach and enjoys swimming naked, drives a huge convertible, and unabashedly keeps her old films on continuous reel in her parlor so she can revel in her glory days. Constance has always represented an interesting balance to me. Anyone familiar with Bradbury knows that he constantly explores the concept of nostalgia. To most people an overbearing sense. But Bradbury paints Constance differently. She takes absolute pride in her age and owns up to the fact that her glamorous youth can never be reclaimed. But that doesn't stop her from taking pride in the actress that she once was. Quite frankly I have no recollection of how she fit into the plot of Death is a Lonely Business but her characterization left a heavy impression on me and is most of the reason I hope to seek out Let's All Kill Constance as soon as I have time to read it.
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Bradbury, Ray. Death is a Lonely Business. New York: Avon Books, 1999.