{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"167: Emily Dickinson: Poem 372, "After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes"","description":"This week on StoryWeb: Emily Dickinson\u2019s Poem 372, \u201cAfter great pain, a formal feeling comes \u2013\u201d For Patricia and our students Emily Dickinson\u2019s Poem 372 is not \u2013 technically speaking \u2013 a story. And Dickinson is not a storyteller per se. But her nearly 1,800 poems speak deeply and powerfully to the human condition. They give a still unparalleled account of what it is to be human. Poem 372 does have some elements of storytelling. Instead of \u201conce upon a time,\u201d we get \u201cafter this, then this.\u201d And then Dickinson describes the numbing, the freezing, the letting go \u2013 perhaps the dying that follows loss, pain, trauma. Was she writing of a disappointment with her sister-in-law, Sue, believed by many to have been her lover? Was it a loss of a different kind? We will never know that part of the story \u2013 the who, what, when, where, perhaps not even the why. But we do very much know the how \u2013 how the loss affected her, how it feels as a human being to grieve, to feel pain. Without a doubt, this poem makes me think of my dear friend Patricia Dwyer. When she was in high school, Patricia listened as her English teacher \u2013 a Catholic nun \u2013 recited this particular Dickinson poem. Patricia was so moved that she thought, \u201cThis is what I want to do. I want to do what Sister Helen Anthony has just done.\u201d Patricia went on to become a nun herself for twenty years, and in that time, she became a junior high and high school English teacher and ultimately a university English professor. The power of this poem came to me fully in 2002, when Patricia and I were team-teaching a course on American Transcendentalism. On our week-long field trip to New England, we went to Dickinson\u2019s hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. Though many scholars don\u2019t see Dickinson as a Transcendentalist, Patricia and I share a strong belief that she was influenced by and largely in sync with the leading literary and philosophical movement of the time. After we toured the home Dickinson shared with her parents and the house next door where her brother, Austin, lived with his wife, Sue, we went to Dickinson\u2019s gravesite at West Cemetery. There, we stood at the Dickinson family plot, bounded by a wrought-iron fence. It was a snowy March day, gray, heavy, damp. Together, we and our students stood silently, paying homage to the great poet. Out of the snowy silence, Patricia began to recite the poem. \u201cAfter great pain, a formal feeling comes,\u201d she began, as Sister Helen Anthony had so many years ago. She concluded: This is the Hour of Lead \u2013 Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow \u2013 First \u2013 Chill \u2013 then Stupor \u2013 then the letting go \u2013 The silence grew deeper, and without a dry eye in the bunch, we quietly walked out of the cemetery. To learn more about our journey to Amherst, visit the American Transcendentalism website we and our students created \u2013 and be sure to read Patricia\u2019s journal reflections about reciting the poem at Dickinson\u2019s gravesite. A good overview of Dickinson and her work can be found at the Poetry Foundation website. The definitive collection of her poems was edited by Thomas H. Johnson; it\u2019s a volume that every poetry lover will want to own. As New England once again experiences a deep chill and heavy snow, I remember Emily Dickinson. For links to all these resources and to see photographs from our visit to Dickinson\u2019s gravesite, visit thestoryweb.com\/Dickinson. Listen now as I read Emily Dickinson\u2019s Poem 372.   After great pain, a formal feeling comes \u2013 The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs \u2013 The stiff Heart questions \u2018was it He, that bore,\u2019 And \u2018Yesterday, or Centuries before\u2019?   The Feet, mechanical, go round \u2013 A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought \u2013 Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone \u2013   This is the Hour of Lead \u2013 Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow \u2013 First \u2013 Chill \u2013 then Stupor \u2013 then the letting go \u2013     ","author_name":"StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups","author_url":"http:\/\/storyweb.libsyn.com\/webpage","html":"