Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 18
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Popular Culture Review
"Looking at Death, is Dying—" (129). Dickinson's suave Mr. Morte
may come calling in the elegant and popular mode of transportation of
the day, a "Carriage"/hearse; but the leisurely ride or journey is to be
one of chilling and endless sightseeing:
We passes the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—. (350, emphasis added).
In fact, we should note here that almost all of Dickinson's usage
of the symbols of popular culture and the entertainment business
would reinforce this hypervisualization of her world, from
"Mermaids in the Basement" who "Came out to look at me" (254); to
the little "Debauchee" at the heavenly singles "Bar" making a
spectacle of herself, as "Saints to windows run—/To see the little
Tippler" (99); to the poet qua burlesque dancer, scantily clad and
"hopping to Audiences/One Claw upon the Air? (155).
No doubt without such popular materials as these informing
Dickinson's work, the verses would lose much of their color and
domestic charm, retracting into an abstractionism bordering on vapid
philosophizing or bloodless paradox and cliche. Fortunately,
Dickinson rejects the time-worn and ancient dogmas of her people for
the New-World passion of commonplace observation:
Not "Revelation"—'tis—that waits.
But our unfurnished eyes (339).
At this point, the other important question 1 wish to ask vis-^-vis
EMckinson and American popular culture relates to the current crisis
over gender roles and sexslifferences. Given the poet's creative
confrontation with ocularity, we need to ask what has been her own
resolution of the dichotomy and dilemma of masculine voyeurism and
feminine exhibitionism. Does she accept this differentiation as
somehow productive and necessary for American culture? Here,
perhaps such a difficult question has led Dickinson—and others like
Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath—to recognize they exist in an exciting
but troublesome "very Lunacy of Light" (291).