Poetry, Uncategorized | Poem a day

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Brenda Wineapple’s White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson is the first book to portray one of the most remarkable friendships in American letters, that of Emily Dickinson—recluse, poet—and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, minister, literary figure, active abolitionist.Higginson, a former pastor at the Free Church of Worcester, Massachusetts, wrote often for the cultural magazine of the day, The Atlantic Monthly—on gymnastics, women’s rights, and slavery. His article “Letter to a Young Contributor” gave advice to readers who wanted to write for the magazine and offered tips on how to submit one’s work (”use black ink, good pens, white paper”).Among the letters Higginson received in response was one scrawled in looping, difficult handwriting. Four poems were enclosed in a smaller envelope. He deciphered the scribble: “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?” Thus began a correspondence that would last a lifetime…

Brenda Wineapple re-creates the extraordinary, delicate friendship that led to the publication of Dickinson’s poetry. And though she and Higginson met face-to-face only twice (he had never met anyone “who drained my nerve power so much,” he said), their friendship reveals much about Dickinson, throwing light onto both the darkened door of the poet’s imagination and a corner of the noisy century that she and Colonel Higginson shared.

Herewith Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat‘, the inspiration for the title of this shimmering, revelatory work.

Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White Heat’?Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White Heat’?
Then crouch within the door—
Red — is the Fire’s common tint—
But when the vivid Ore
Has vanquished Flame’s conditions—
It quivers from the Forge
Without a color, but the Light
of unannointed Blaze—

Least Village, boasts it’s Blacksmith—
Whose Anvil’s even ring
Stands symbol for the finer Forge
That soundless tugs — within —

Refining these impatient Ores
With Hammer, and with Blaze
Until the designated Light
Repudiate the Forge—