"To lose what we
never owned
might seem an
eccentric Bereavement
but Presumption
has its Affliction
as actually as
Claim--"
-Emily Dickinson in a letter to Sue, mid-1870s
Rereading Open Me Carefully for my entry on Dickinson...
Showing posts with label letters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letters. Show all posts
Saturday, July 30, 2022
Monday, August 3, 2020
Some good (admittedly a bit boring) things from today...
1) A committee I've been on turned in some major documents today and we can see the light at the end of a tunnel that has taken up way too much of our time this summer. I don't feel elated--too resentful of how much time it took--but I do feel pretty good and quite relieved.
2) I finished a pretty decent draft of the Dorothy Allison paper I am presenting at SAMLA (to be held online) in November. I gave myself an August 12 deadline for this, so I am early and that feels pretty darn good.
3) I think I just wrote a pretty darn good recommendation for a colleague's P&T application. This is so minor--very little rests on what I say--but I sometimes really love writing these for those moments when I remember a specific anecdote that illustrates how awesome I think the person is. It is such a pleasure to write those little stories and make the "facts" personal and clear. They make the letter more lively and real and I love being able to do that.
So: three good (if boring) things. Here's hoping for a few more for tomorrow. It's helps with the pushing through...
Monday, June 24, 2019
My kind of list...
24 June 2019: This weird piece of paper won't mean anything to anyone else. Just lines of crossed-out text. But at the beginning of the semester break, these thirteen lines listed thirteen deadlines of all sorts: for letters of recommendation, for reports, etc. The last one--June 30--was for a conference abstract. Got that done and submitted today.
Still lots to get done this summer, including a research trip up to Massachusetts and two more syllabi to write and revise, but right now? Feeling pretty good.
Still lots to get done this summer, including a research trip up to Massachusetts and two more syllabi to write and revise, but right now? Feeling pretty good.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Thank you notes...
11 October 2018: Year after year, my niece’s thank-you notes delight me. And if you are taking notes as you plan your own parties, note her closing line and adjust your guest lists accordingly: If I had been there, her fiesta would have been a DANCE PARTY. That's what I offer, my friends.
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Thinking about Dickinson...
1 May 2018: "A love so big it scares her, rushing among her small heart — pushing aside her blood — and leaving her all faint and white..." --Emily Dickinson, Second "Master" Letter
I suppose that as National Poetry Month ends and we turn to May it makes sense that my Dickinson thoughts also turn away from her poetry and towards her poetic prose... You don't need a PhD to understand how stunning these pieces are. Look at those lines and what she is up to there. Amazing.
I suppose that as National Poetry Month ends and we turn to May it makes sense that my Dickinson thoughts also turn away from her poetry and towards her poetic prose... You don't need a PhD to understand how stunning these pieces are. Look at those lines and what she is up to there. Amazing.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
"Dear Little Daughter"
16 March 2014: It's been a while since I checked in on the "Letters of Note" blog. Today I saw the latest entry, a 1914 letter from W.E.B. DuBois to his daughter. In an independent study I'm doing with one of our graduate students this semester, we read some selections from DuBois. I'm always struck by his poignant, elegant writing, his clear sense of what needs to be done for African Americans to succeed. His advice to his little girl in this letter--to a 14 year-old across the sea, studying in England--is just lovely and sweet and kind of perfect. Give it a read. I am glad that I did.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Constance Fenimore Woolson
Yes, I know that most people have no idea who Constance Fenimore Woolson is, but she's kind of a big deal in 19th-century women's writing. As I mentioned below, I am hard at work on my paper about her poetry, which I'll present at SSAWW's conference in late October. I've been going through all my research notes and found some great quotations from her worth sharing.
Woolson, who had a difficult life as a woman writing in the nineteenth century, wrote to Edmund Clarence Stedman in 1876: "'Why do literary women break down so...It almost seems as though only the unhappy women took to writing. The happiest women I have known have belonged to two classes; the devoted wives and mothers, and the successful flirts, whether married or single; such women never write'" (qtd. in Torsney 19). What a powerfully sad observation--and one often repeated by other women artists. I am reminded of that troubling section in Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall where the main character tells her daughter that she prays the child never ends up like her mother--a successful writer. "No happy woman ever writes," she thinks to herself.
Woolson's writing is full of such observations as again and again she acknowledges her own desire to write and be respected yet also notes how this separates her from other women--how it marks her as different. Torsney's Constance Fenimore Woolson: The Grief of Aristry covers this idea quite well and it worth a read if you are at all interested in Woolson.
Additionally, she writes again and again about the limitations she feels imposed on her--about what a woman should write about and just how she should handle her subject. For the most part, even if such choices kept down her sales figures, she wrote what she felt she had to, a courageous choice for a woman who was more or less financially dependent on selling her writing. Here's a heck of a passage from another letter: “‘I had rather be strong than beautiful, or even good, provided the good must be dull’” (qtd. in Pattee 132).
But it's not all sadness and gloom in Woolson's letters: check out this gem from a letter to Henry James, her good friend, written in February, 1882, in response to his Portrait of a Lady:
“How did you ever dare write a portrait of a lady? Fancy any woman’s attempting a portrait of a gentleman! Wouldn’t there be a storm of ridicule…For my own part, in my small writings, I never dare put down what men are thinking, but confine myself simply to what they do and say. For, long experience has taught me that whatever I suppose them to be thinking at any especial time, that is sure to be exactly what they are not thinking. What they are thinking, however, nobody but a ghost could know” (qtd. in Torsney 39).
I love this passage because it's both funny and biting, playful and serious, marks of the best kind of humor.
And one more--just because it gives me funny mental images--an excerpt from an 1875 letter: "'I hate Wordsworth. Yes, I really think I hate him. And the reason is because people keep flinging him at your head all the time'" (qtd. in Hubbell 725). Don't tell anyone, but that's kind of how I feel about Wallace Stevens (in part because I don't get him!).
Works Cited
Woolson, who had a difficult life as a woman writing in the nineteenth century, wrote to Edmund Clarence Stedman in 1876: "'Why do literary women break down so...It almost seems as though only the unhappy women took to writing. The happiest women I have known have belonged to two classes; the devoted wives and mothers, and the successful flirts, whether married or single; such women never write'" (qtd. in Torsney 19). What a powerfully sad observation--and one often repeated by other women artists. I am reminded of that troubling section in Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall where the main character tells her daughter that she prays the child never ends up like her mother--a successful writer. "No happy woman ever writes," she thinks to herself.
Woolson's writing is full of such observations as again and again she acknowledges her own desire to write and be respected yet also notes how this separates her from other women--how it marks her as different. Torsney's Constance Fenimore Woolson: The Grief of Aristry covers this idea quite well and it worth a read if you are at all interested in Woolson.
Additionally, she writes again and again about the limitations she feels imposed on her--about what a woman should write about and just how she should handle her subject. For the most part, even if such choices kept down her sales figures, she wrote what she felt she had to, a courageous choice for a woman who was more or less financially dependent on selling her writing. Here's a heck of a passage from another letter: “‘I had rather be strong than beautiful, or even good, provided the good must be dull’” (qtd. in Pattee 132).
But it's not all sadness and gloom in Woolson's letters: check out this gem from a letter to Henry James, her good friend, written in February, 1882, in response to his Portrait of a Lady:
“How did you ever dare write a portrait of a lady? Fancy any woman’s attempting a portrait of a gentleman! Wouldn’t there be a storm of ridicule…For my own part, in my small writings, I never dare put down what men are thinking, but confine myself simply to what they do and say. For, long experience has taught me that whatever I suppose them to be thinking at any especial time, that is sure to be exactly what they are not thinking. What they are thinking, however, nobody but a ghost could know” (qtd. in Torsney 39).
I love this passage because it's both funny and biting, playful and serious, marks of the best kind of humor.
And one more--just because it gives me funny mental images--an excerpt from an 1875 letter: "'I hate Wordsworth. Yes, I really think I hate him. And the reason is because people keep flinging him at your head all the time'" (qtd. in Hubbell 725). Don't tell anyone, but that's kind of how I feel about Wallace Stevens (in part because I don't get him!).
Works Cited
Hubbell, Jay B. “Some New Letters of Constance Fenimore Woolson.” The
Pattee, Fred L. “Constance Fenimore Woolson and the South.”
Torsney, Cheryl B. Constance Fenimore Woolson: The Grief of Artistry.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Couple of quick links...
...from The Daily Dish, which has been overflowing with good stuff today.
1) A great new (to me) blog called "Letters of Note." Check out this one and try not to get choked up a bit. There are also lots of more famous notes, like this one.
2) Amazing video footage of a skier trapped in an avalanche and then rescued. Seriously--it's amazingly intense and, in the words of the person who posted it, "I don't think that you could've paid a Hollywood crew to stage something better. The fact that he could've been facing any 360 direction and yet he's looking right up into the sun-filled blue sky with that first full scoop away of the shovel is borderline spiritual."
1) A great new (to me) blog called "Letters of Note." Check out this one and try not to get choked up a bit. There are also lots of more famous notes, like this one.
2) Amazing video footage of a skier trapped in an avalanche and then rescued. Seriously--it's amazingly intense and, in the words of the person who posted it, "I don't think that you could've paid a Hollywood crew to stage something better. The fact that he could've been facing any 360 direction and yet he's looking right up into the sun-filled blue sky with that first full scoop away of the shovel is borderline spiritual."
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