From: LouisFors <LouisFors@aol.com>
Message-Id: <11f8b61e.350fe313@aol.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 10:06:57 EST
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Subject: Re: Higginson
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In a message dated 98-03-18 07:37:26 EST, Marcy wrote:

> Subj:	 Re: Higginson
>  Date:	98-03-18 07:37:26 EST
>  From:	tanter@econs.umass.edu (tanter)
>  Sender:	owner-emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
>  Reply-to:	emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
>  To:	emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
>  
>  At 11:29 PM 3/17/98 -0500, Louis wrote:
>  ife--in those social rounds?  It is clear from correspondence that even
>  >Higginson, a respected critic, couldn't respond in challenging ways to her
>  >work. (ED seems to toy with him her letters, nicely, of course, but toy
>  >nevertheless.) 

Marcy replied, in part:
>  Louis, you're being too kind here!  Not only does she outright lie to
>  Higginson, she virtually throws his words back at him and he probably never
>  realized it!  Without having his replies to her it's hard to really see the
>  extent of their "conversations," but ED does lie to him in lots of small
>  ways-- for example, she says she has no one to share her poems with, she
>  says she just started to write poetry, she asks him to be her Preceptor yet
>  she has no intention of taking his advice (did she ever revise a single
>  poem based on what he said to her?  if so, I don't know about it), etc.  
>  
>  I just spent time with 2 different classes talking about this very thing
>  and of course they asked "so why then did she bother to write to him?" and
>  I said this:  I see her as a career poet.  She spent her entire adult life
>  writing and she never felt she was as good as the poets she read so she
>  never tried to enter the literary world.  She had one person who editing
>  skills she trusted (Sue) and no one else ever knew how much she (ED) wrote
>  until after she died.  She read the Atlantic from the month of its birth
>  (the family subscribed to it) and she saw Higginson's article.  Despite the
>  fact that she wrote many poems and she had an editor she trusted, as
>  someone who wanted to be a poet, it might be nice to have some validation
>  that she _is_ a poet.  So she sends off some poems to Higginson because she
>  knows him because he's famous and because this article is encouraging and
>  she knows he supports female writers.  Higginson could do two things:
>  ignore her or write back.  If he writes back, he can politely tell her her
>  work is rubbish or he can say it's wonderful or he can make gentle
>  suggestions.  The latter seems to have been the case.
<big snip>

Marcy:

Your explanation about ED's correspondence with Higginson seems right on the
money.  I confess surprise at your comment that ED "never felt as good as the
poets she read so she never tried to enter the literary world."  I'm surprised
because of my ignorance of details of her biography (I'm trying, I'm trying)
and I don't yet have the letters (which are due today or tomorrow).  I can
understand why she may have felt inferior to those legends she admired, but I
had built a notion that she was so tough-minded in approaching her own poetry
that she was bullet proof.  That makes Sue even stronger in this picture,
doesn't it?  Not that she needs to be much stronger with the growing evidence
of her profound role. 

And, amen to your final remark in that post, not included above: "I just think
her poetry (in general terms-I'm sure some poems he did get) was beyond him
[Higginson].  Hell, it's beyond many really smart people!(me included a lot of
the time!)"  Yup, it's doesn't take long on this list to feel mighty humble
when faced with her work!

Louis Forsdale