FIELD CONTEMPORARY POETRY AND POETICS NUMBER 55 FALL 1996 OBERLIN COLLEGE PRESS EDITORS Stuart Friebert Alberta Turner David Walker David Young BUSINESS Dolorus Nevels MANAGER ASSISTANT Heather Smith BUSINESS MANAGER FIELD gratefully acknowledges support from the Ohio Arts Council. Published twice yearly by Oberlin College. Subscriptions and manuscripts should be sent to FIELD, Rice Hall, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio 44074. Manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope. Subscriptions $14.00 a year / $24.00 for two years / single issues $7.00 postpaid. Back issues 1, 4, 7, 15-53: $12.00 each. Issues 2-3, 5-6, 8-14 are out of print. Copyright © 1996 by Oberlin College. ISSN: 0015-0657 CONTENTS 7 Emily Dickinson: A Symposium Nancy Willard 8 "Will there really be a 'Morning'?" Questioning the Pilgrim Charles Simic 12 Ambiguity's Wedding David Walker 13 "I tie my hat — I crease my Shawl": Stinging Work Stanley Plumly 19 "I cannot live with You": Doors Ajar Martha Collins 27 "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain": The Outer from the Inner Franz Wright 31 "If I shouldn't be alive": Homages: Emily Dickinson David Young 39 "There came a Wind like a Bugle": Electric Moccasins * * * Marianne Boruch 48 Home Videos of the Hurricane 49 Fasting 50 Nest 51 Fish 52 The Exterminator Dzvinia Orlovsky 53 Good Will 55 Eight Glasses of Water a Day Ralph Burns 57 Lamentations Michele Glazer 58 Ode to the Room of the Dead Fish & to the Dead Fish 60 Letter Miroslav Holub 62 The Slaughterhouse 63 Anatomy of September 64 Anatomy of Dedember 65 A Moravian Castle 66 Resurrecting Elizabeth Trotter 68 Questions 69 Bala, Kansas—1979 Sandra McPherson 72 To a Penny Postcard, © 1911 73 Four Anonymous Women with Bright Sad Mouths Franz Wright 77 Have You Seen This Child 79 Sunday Afternoon Tao Yuanming 80 My Great Happiness Timothy Kelly 81 Rise vs. Run 82 Urgency 84 Stronger 85 Acolytes: Serving 6:30 Mass Betsy Sholl 87 Mysterioso 89 Monkey House 91 Redbud George Bilgere 93 Hide&Seek 95 Summer: Santa Cruz: Reading Updike 97 Riding Westward Linda Bierds 99 Yellow Vision 101 Altamira: What She Remembered 102 The Suicide of Clover Adams: 1885 104 Contributors EMILY DICKINSON A FIELD SYMPOSIUM EMILY DICKINSON: A FIELD SYMPOSIUM If you are a working American poet, or in close touch with the current state of American letters, you do not have to be told how fully and variously Emily Dickinson is with us, among us, informing our understanding of our language, our culture, our possibilities of poetic expression and poetic form. It would be naive to explain such obvious facts here. Better to let the seven participants, by means of their six essays and one poem — we al¬ lowed Charles Simic the heresy of a response that departs from our standard format, just this once — try to allow the poet to speak for herself, through them, to the issue of the many ways in which she moves among us and gives us a subtler and more acute understanding of who we are and where we are and what some of it might mean. 7 101 Will there really be a "Morning"? Is there such a thing as "Day"? Could I see it from the mountains If I were as tall as they? Has it feet like Water lilies? Has it feathers like a Bird? Is it brought from famous countries Of which I have never heard? Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor! Oh some Wise Man from the skies! Please to tell a little Pilgrim Where the place called "Morning" lies! 8