Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar

by Cristanne Miller

In this inventive work on Emily Dickinson’s poetry, Cristanne Miller traces the roots of Dickinson’s unusual, compressed, ungrammatical, and richly ambiguous style, finding them in sources as different as the New Testament and the daily patterns of women’s speech. Dickinson writes as she does both because she is steeped in the great patriarchal texts of her culture, from the Bible and hymns to Herbert’s poetry and Emerson’s prose, and because she is conscious of writing as a woman in an age and culture that assume great and serious poets are male.

Miller observes that Dickinson’s language deviates from normal construction along definable and consistent lines; consequently it lends itself to the categorical analysis of an interpretive “grammar” such as the one she has constructed in this book. In order to facilitate the reading of Dickinson’s poems and to reveal the values and assumptions behind the poet’s manipulations of language, Miller examines in this grammar how specific elements of the poet’s style tend to function in various contexts. Because many, especially modernist, poets use some of the same techniques, the grammar throws light on the poetic syntax of other writers as well.

In the course of her analysis, Miller draws not only on traditional historical and linguistic sources but also on current sociolinguistic studies of gender and speech and on feminist descriptions of women’s writing. Dickinson’s language, she concludes, could almost have been designed as a model for twentieth-century theories of what a women’s language might be. As a critical examination of the relationship between linguistic style and literary identity in America’s greatest woman poet, Emily A Poet’s Grammar provides a significant addition to feminist literary studies.

Genres: Poetry

212 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 1989

Reviews

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

18 ‘Almost all of Dickinson’s unusual uses of language contribute to the same limited number of basic effects: multiplicity of meaning, indeterminacy of reference and degree of personal involvement in the poem, and the establishment of a diction that swings between stylized aphorism and the informality of speech. Multiplicity, indeterminacy, and a fluctuating tone provide the poet with the linguistic and psychological freedom she needs to express, or inscribe, herself.’

21 ‘two qualities of language stand out: it is highly compressed and highly disjunctive’

51 ‘These dashes correspond to pauses for breath or deliberation, or to signs of an impatient eagerness that cannot be bothered with the formalities of standard punctuation. Dickinson’s dashes operate rhetorically more than syntactically [...] As the reader of Dickinson further knows, they are also infectious. To spend much time with a mind that allows itself such fascinating stops and shifts is to fall into the habit of allowing oneself to move more freely between topics and thoughts.’

180 ‘However one solves the puzzle of her work, pieces will remain.’

184 ‘In this study I propose various explanations for why Dickinson writes as she does. She writes antagonistically, that is, in opposition to an existing order that attempts to repress her voice or undermine her seriousness. The disruptions of her style, from this perspective, mark her rejection of the conditions of thought and action in which she has been raised; her language is a nineteenth-century anticipation of possibilities for an ecriture feminine. Or, in an indirect acknowledgment that she indeed possesses some force and control, Dickinson writes protectively, “slanting” language to shield her audience from the too-bright lightning of Truth, from the volcanic power of her speech and understanding. Or she writes defensively, to protect herself from a world that she desires too much and is too much affected by; she can continue her writing, that is, her life as she has chosen it, only by keeping it at a physical and metaphorical distance, both represented and maintained in the ellipses of her language. Or Dickinson uses ungrammatical, compressed, densely metaphorical language because there is no other way for her to express her meaning; she cannot say what she sees or experiences using legitimate or conventional means because they could not express it. This last—that Dickinson writes as she does because it is the only way for her to speak adequately—is the explanation I would choose if I could take only one. But it stems, I believe, from the dynamics of the others.’

[Scout Adams]

I liked this a lot; I know that when it comes to separating the speaker of a poem from the poet, some critics don’t want them to overlap too much, but I appreciate that Miller kind of leans into Dickinson’s predicament as a poet and dedicates a good amount of the book to discussing her style and her work as it is directly informed by her and her influences. I think that’s a fair reading of her style, especially as it applies to aspects of her being that are not in question, like her puritanical upbringing and her existence as a woman writer working from mostly male influences.

[chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 a pretty solid general guide :)