Mark Traphagen | September 21, 2010
A song for the first day of fall (“Curse Your Branches” by David Bazan) red and orange or red and yellow in which of these do you believe if you’re not sure right now please take a moment i need your signature before you leave when i sleep i’m usually dreaming though more and more [...]
Mark Traphagen | September 14, 2010
In “Holyoke,” the first section of The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, we saw Emily taking the first steps outside the tight confines of Squire Dickinson’s West Street home. There she does things she never would have dared to attempt while under her Father’s ever-vigilant eye, including the pursuit of a forbidden man, her “burglar” Tom. She also has an up-close-and-personal encounter with the revivalist religion of her day, and says, “No, thank you.”
In this second section, Emily comes home, but she will never again be satisfied with just being her Father’s “sweet Dolly.” She begins to explore the wilder side of the Amherst beyond her dooryard, and we are increasingly unsure how much of this happens in “reality” and how much in her fantasies and dreams.
Mark Traphagen | September 13, 2010
It is odd and slightly ironic that one of the most frequent criticisms leveled at The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson (hereinafter The Secret Life) was that it suffered from a lack of citing Miss Dickinson’s poetry. While it may be true that there are very few quotations of her poems in the book, from the very first words, we are fully in the realm of poetry, in her own voice (as author Jerome Charyn imagines it):
“Tom the handyman is wading in the snow outside my window in boots a burglar might wear” (17).
It is imagery true to the Emily we know through her poetry.
Moreover, it introduces one of the central characters (and primary resident of Emily’s dreams), the fictitious Tom Harkin (or Tom the Handyman). Tom is an orphan rescued by the headmistress of Holyoke Female Seminary and taken in to be the school’s handyman. He is forbidden any contact with the female students, thus (along with his shock of blond hair) making him instantly the object of Emily’s desire.
Mark Traphagen | September 11, 2010
This entry is part of a series, Secret Life of The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson» Image via Wikipedia After The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson author Jerome Charyn came upon my review of his novel, he wrote to me on Twitter that “it really is about Emily’s dream life and you’re the first one [...]
Mark Traphagen (aka Foolish Sage) is a lover of dark beers and darker music, of things that are but are not as they seem, of contexts taken out of context to become new contexts, of stories that point to a bigger Story. Mark lives in Durham, NC, with his wife and pet Macbook Pro. He has two married daughters and six grandchildren, and works by day for Virante, an Internet Marketing firm.Proudly Powered by WordPress | Theme by The Cloisters | Entries RSS Comments RSS
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