Creeley on Dickinson

Image of Creeley courtesy Francesco Clemente (from a 2002 oil painting); image of Dickinson courtesy Penelope Dullaghan (from a poster she created for the Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA).

In late September of 1985, Robert Creeley visited New College. He gave three lectures on Emily Dickinson (one each on September 20, 23 and 25) and a reading (September 23), introduced by Aaron Shurin and Duncan McNaughton. We at PennSound have now segmented the first of the three talks by topic. Many thanks to Anna Zalokostas for her superb editorial work. The recordings came to PennSound courtesy of David Levi Strauss. So here are the segments of the first lecture on Dickinson:

  1. challenging the image of Emily Dickinson as eccentric, reactive, and fragile (11:06): MP3
  2. on the comings and goings of the Amherst town and church, her secondary school education, and her daily interactions (10:39): MP3
  3. on her family life (3:34): MP3
  4. reading from Emily Dickinson's letters (8:28): MP3
  5. on the patterns of her friends and family (13:47): MP3
  6. reading from Emily Dickinson's letters (3:19): MP3
  7. on her productivity during 1862 (2:39): MP3
  8. on Williams and Dickinson, and not providing explanations (4:55): MP3
  9. death and the Civil War in relation to her poetry (10:57): MP3
  10. reading "Success is counted sweetest" (0:32): MP3
  11. reading "Ambition cannot find him" (0:17): MP3
  12. her influences and reading interests (8:05): MP3
  13. dilemmas of the anthology presentation, rhythmic shifts, metric variations, and her use of the dash (3:23): MP3
  14. on the notions of place and home (14:47): MP3