Susan Howe on Emily Dickinson's form
I never knew you could write like this and call it academia!
These Flames and Generosities of the Heart: Emily Dickinson and the Illogic of Sumptuary Values - Susan Howe
Yeah, the second part of the title is super confusing to me too. But the article is mostly understandable, or at least really exciting and pretty in its own form. It's on the transcription, editing, editorializing, and publication of Emily Dickinson's poems, but it's also about Dickinson's antinomianism, her use of space, her spacing, Emerson's poem Circles, and then it ends up being like snippets of crazy academic poetry about Emily Dickinson's poetics.
"The physical act of copying is a mysterious sensuous expression.
Wrapped in the mirror of the word."
Quoting Emerson:
"The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment"
So maybe what I want to ask is, do you think there is room for experimental form in academic writing? I'm thinking both of an aesthetics of nonfiction as well as a transformation of narration, reduction to fragments and quotes, and an appeal to the reader to make the connections. This makes me want to do some experimental essays.
These Flames and Generosities of the Heart: Emily Dickinson and the Illogic of Sumptuary Values - Susan Howe
Yeah, the second part of the title is super confusing to me too. But the article is mostly understandable, or at least really exciting and pretty in its own form. It's on the transcription, editing, editorializing, and publication of Emily Dickinson's poems, but it's also about Dickinson's antinomianism, her use of space, her spacing, Emerson's poem Circles, and then it ends up being like snippets of crazy academic poetry about Emily Dickinson's poetics.
"The physical act of copying is a mysterious sensuous expression.
Wrapped in the mirror of the word."
Quoting Emerson:
"The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment"
So maybe what I want to ask is, do you think there is room for experimental form in academic writing? I'm thinking both of an aesthetics of nonfiction as well as a transformation of narration, reduction to fragments and quotes, and an appeal to the reader to make the connections. This makes me want to do some experimental essays.