820.1864.The Only News I know

820.1864.The Only News I know

The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.

The Only Shows I see—
Tomorrow and Today—
Perchance Eternity—

The Only One I meet
Is God—The Only Street—
Existence—This traversed

If Other News there be—
Or Admirable Show—
I’ll tell it You—

My interpretation of F820, ‘The Only News I know’:

The only gossip I get is Inspirations all day from Heaven.
The only scenes I see, day after day, are Eternity.
The only one I meet is God, the only street I walk is Life — I’ve done those now.
If there is any other news or an admirable show, I’ll let you know.

Stanzas 1-2 each begin with understatement, but end with a Bang. Stanza 3 does a double Bang. Stanza 4 pretends that inspirations from Heaven, scenes of Eternity, meeting with God, and strolling through Existence are just ordinary events that happen every day. ED has “traversed” those now, but if anything worth mentioning happens in Amherst, “I’ll let you know”.

For me, ‘The Only News I know’ is a tongue-in-cheek, understated joke about Inspiration, Eternity, God, and Existence in a poet’s daily life.

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After commenting on Poems 1-763 (Franklin) on The Prowling Bee’, I am convinced that (virtually) all of Emily Dickinson’s (ED’s) poems have a factual historical level in addition to their various poetic levels of meaning. The reason for her instant and continuing public adulation (1890 - present) was and is, by far, poetic. She is one of the "Greats" that she always dreamed to be, despite her lifelong refusal to publish. That refusal freed her from criticism and allowed her to explore the outer boundaries of poetic power.

More than a century of scholarly research has resulted in somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 books and published academic papers about ED. A large majority of these publications focus only on the “poetic levels” of one or more of ED’s poems. Publications that consider both the “historic level” and “poetic levels” comprise a small minority. Publications that focus only on the factual history of her life probably number less than 100. (All numbers in this paragraph are my estimates.)

Unfortunately for ED’s universe of readers, these two basic levels (historical and poetic) cannot be separated into two ivory towers. Every history-level publication that I know of includes at least some discussion of the poetic level(s).

The reverse is not true. In fact, authors of the “poetry-level” school seem to avoid commenting on the historical level, sometimes admonishing that a poem must stand on its own, without concern for its historical roots. To my knowledge, there are (virtually) no published “history-level” books or articles that totally ignore ED’s poems and their poetic levels.

Of course, ED’s refusal to publish her poems was only possible because of lifelong financial and daily social/housekeeping support by her family, especially her father and sister, respectively. In addition, throughout her life, the Dickinsons hired servants, first Negro and later Irish, some of whom became much more than housekeepers for ED.

My point is that our appreciation of ED's poems can be enhanced by understanding both poetic and historical levels of her sound and sense. We impoverish ourselves if we ignore their historical base.