publication and reception began. The difference between âthe only poetsâ and â prose â in that letter is not a difference in genre but a difference between us and everyone else, between personal and personified address.
As I began by suggesting, a difference in address can become a difference in genre as the public transmission of a text makes it so, but that historical process does not mean that the writer originally intended that form of address to make such a difference. Many of the debates in recent Dickinson scholarship have taken place over the question of whether Dickinson intended to write poems or letters, or letter-poems, or poem-letters. When, in 1995, Ellen Hart followed in Spicerâs wake by suggesting that âthe relationship between poetry and prose is so complex in Dickinsonâs writing that lineating poetry but not prose [in print] sets up artificial genre distinctions,â Domhnall Mitchell responded in 1998 by measuring various lines of âproseâ and âpoetryâ in the manuscripts in tenths of centimeters, concluding that âcontrary to Hartâs view ⦠there does seem to be some visual indication of a generic shiftâ in some letters. 15
If Mitchell went to an extreme to prove that the difference in genre that Hart claimed was âartificialâ might be inherent after all (and thus, ultimately, might justify Franklinâs editorial procedure in the 1998 Poems ) that may be because what is at stake in such fine distinctions is not the existence of Dickinsonâs writing as either poetic or epistolary but the existence of literary criticism. The reason that the distinction between genres seems an important point of debate for literary critics is that once the genre of a text is established, then, as we saw in the last chapter on lyric reading, protocols of interpretation will follow. In other words, what is at stake in establishing the genre of Dickinsonâs writing is nothing less than its literary afterlife. Even Hart and Martha Nell Smith, whose work on the Dickinson Electronic Archives and in Open Me Carefully seeks to deconstruct âgenre distinctions as the dominant way of organizing Dickinsonâs writingsâ byposting those writings on the Web as various âCorrespondencesâ and by making a volume that does not distinguish between poems and letters, suggest that âDickinsonâs blending of poetry with prose, making poems of letters and letters of poems, [was] a deliberate artistic strategy.â 16
But to motivate generic confusion by attributing it to an âartistic strategyâ is to emphasize generic distinctions once again, and especially to emphasize Dickinsonâs authority as a poet. As I have suggested in the previous chapters, that authority is an effect of lyric reading, or of the sort of interpretation Dickinsonâs early letter to Susan is so anxious not to attract. Dickinsonâs early letter is careful not to turn her reader into a personification rather than a person, yet that is exactly the change that a history of lyric reading has worked on Dickinson. Rather than try to decide whether Dickinson wrote poems or letters, or letters as poems, or poems in letters, I want to focus on the figures of address in her writing, on how and why and where Dickinson invokes âyou.â Rather than measure the length of her lines or isolate metrical passages or concentrate on texts in the fascicles not included (as far as we know) in letters, we might want to notice how Dickinsonâs figures of address tend to insist that we not make about her writing the very generic decisions we have made.
L YRIC M EDIA
We have already noticed that in his preface to the first publication of Dickinsonâs poems in 1890, Higginson began by warning his readers that âthe verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called âthe Poetry of the
As I began by suggesting, a difference in address can become a difference in genre as the public transmission of a text makes it so, but that historical process does not mean that the writer originally intended that form of address to make such a difference. Many of the debates in recent Dickinson scholarship have taken place over the question of whether Dickinson intended to write poems or letters, or letter-poems, or poem-letters. When, in 1995, Ellen Hart followed in Spicerâs wake by suggesting that âthe relationship between poetry and prose is so complex in Dickinsonâs writing that lineating poetry but not prose [in print] sets up artificial genre distinctions,â Domhnall Mitchell responded in 1998 by measuring various lines of âproseâ and âpoetryâ in the manuscripts in tenths of centimeters, concluding that âcontrary to Hartâs view ⦠there does seem to be some visual indication of a generic shiftâ in some letters. 15
If Mitchell went to an extreme to prove that the difference in genre that Hart claimed was âartificialâ might be inherent after all (and thus, ultimately, might justify Franklinâs editorial procedure in the 1998 Poems ) that may be because what is at stake in such fine distinctions is not the existence of Dickinsonâs writing as either poetic or epistolary but the existence of literary criticism. The reason that the distinction between genres seems an important point of debate for literary critics is that once the genre of a text is established, then, as we saw in the last chapter on lyric reading, protocols of interpretation will follow. In other words, what is at stake in establishing the genre of Dickinsonâs writing is nothing less than its literary afterlife. Even Hart and Martha Nell Smith, whose work on the Dickinson Electronic Archives and in Open Me Carefully seeks to deconstruct âgenre distinctions as the dominant way of organizing Dickinsonâs writingsâ byposting those writings on the Web as various âCorrespondencesâ and by making a volume that does not distinguish between poems and letters, suggest that âDickinsonâs blending of poetry with prose, making poems of letters and letters of poems, [was] a deliberate artistic strategy.â 16
But to motivate generic confusion by attributing it to an âartistic strategyâ is to emphasize generic distinctions once again, and especially to emphasize Dickinsonâs authority as a poet. As I have suggested in the previous chapters, that authority is an effect of lyric reading, or of the sort of interpretation Dickinsonâs early letter to Susan is so anxious not to attract. Dickinsonâs early letter is careful not to turn her reader into a personification rather than a person, yet that is exactly the change that a history of lyric reading has worked on Dickinson. Rather than try to decide whether Dickinson wrote poems or letters, or letters as poems, or poems in letters, I want to focus on the figures of address in her writing, on how and why and where Dickinson invokes âyou.â Rather than measure the length of her lines or isolate metrical passages or concentrate on texts in the fascicles not included (as far as we know) in letters, we might want to notice how Dickinsonâs figures of address tend to insist that we not make about her writing the very generic decisions we have made.
L YRIC M EDIA
We have already noticed that in his preface to the first publication of Dickinsonâs poems in 1890, Higginson began by warning his readers that âthe verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called âthe Poetry of the
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