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

Abstract

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.