Finding "a Fortune - / Exterior - to Time -": engaging with Emily Dickinson's poetry as a form of poetry journal

By focusing on Emily Dickinson’s poetry from the fascicles to the unbound sheets to the paper fragments as a form of poetry journal, this thesis proposes connections between the poems and what is known about the chronology of events in her life. The process has relied principally on Ralph Franklin’s three-volume Variorum Edition of Dickinson’s poetry, published in 1998, which provides a reliable chronology of the poems, and the variants, for the first time since Dickinson’s death in 1886. I identify three substantial poem sequences, which are distinct yet intersect in some poems, and I argue that these poem sequences constitute what can be read as a poetry journal. The first concerns Dickinson’s treasured affectionate friendship with Otis Phillips Lord, revealed in the crisis of the Master Letters, and explored across the poetry journal in a variety of poetic forms, tropes, and dramatic voices. The second deals with what appears to be a recurrent, unpredictable neurological disturbance of Dickinson’s consciousness. This has resulted in an innovative form of “inner” poems, whose imagery matches research findings of ‘auras’ by contemporary neurologists. The third poem sequence involves Dickinson’s awareness of language as an originating construct of the human mind, especially in poetry, through which we shape the meanings of experience. This has resulted in explorations of the nature of imagination, the meaning of Time, and the epistemology of concepts, such as, Love, Mind, Infinity, and Death. Dickinson’s sojourn of seven months in Boston during consecutive years, 1864 and 1865, has been speculatively related to her neurological condition, and the three identified poem sequences often entwine in the compositions of this period, especially in the absence of resolutions to her complex issues. The thesis suggests that the openness of Dickinson’s life in Boston, especially in 1865, may have inspired the move in the poetry journal to unbound sheets, contrasting with the stitched fascicles in the domestic life of Amherst. The realisation of openly shared love from 1878 enabled Dickinson to experiment with and share the retrieval of much earlier poems with her now beloved companion, Lord. The concept of the poetry journal has provided insights into all three profoundly significant sequences of poems by linking them to the progression of events in Dickinson’s life.