"The Eyes accost -- and Sunder:" Unveiling Emily Dickinson's Poetics

Harper, Lisa

doi:10.1353/edj.2000.0003

Cited by 6 publications

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“…Indeed, Lisa Harper refers to what she terms Dickinson's ''stalemate'' poems, where a metaphor's stationary crust (its tenor) and rising, vehicular crumb (its vehicle) are one. 30 A loaf of bread increases (in number) by being sliced or divided (in size)-Dickinson's Crumb is one of her ''Hesitating Fractions'' reluctant to become a ''Whole,'' playing on the ''hole'' (as gap) contained in ''Whole'' (as entirety). Michael West makes much of Dickinson as a poet keenly alert to the morpheme ''all'' housed ironically inside of ''small,'' 31 and indeed in Dickinson's private rites, what is most overlooked (in the internal home and external nature) is granted a visionary power to contemplate the Infinite.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Word Made Flesh Writ Edible: Emily Dickinson’s Micro-Eucharist of Crumb and Berry

Reder

2017

Christianity & Literature

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Emily Dickinson, as the enigmatic anti-Madonna of American verse, presides over a Eucharistic micro-drama by suggesting that Words-as-spoken are a sacramental Food. Her repeated tokens of Crumb and Berry are the ritual components of Bread and Wine compressed into nubs, exiles from a collective Loaf and Vine. Dickinson never “took” the public rite of Communion, but performs her own private counter-version via her poems, where “famishing” is used as a progressive verb and “Starvation” is treated as an honorific state. Dickinson’s speaker nibbles at a non-communal crouton in several poems, favoring the nub of a crumb to the risen, levitated Loaf.

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confidence: 99%