It's probally the latter, huh? Yeah the brain. "The brain generally within its
groove runs evenly and true". I believe. It's Ann Maris who has "groove". -Mm-hm. -Are
you groovy? -I'm groovy. -Are you? Is that a connotation that's relevant here?
-No, not at all. In fact., quite the opposite. -Ann Maris, guys, is not groovy as can be.
-This has much more of a linear connotation. I have an image in my head of
the brain being cradled within this normal or natural line of reasoning, following its
tendencies. -So, it's not a reference to the physical brain in the cranium that's in a
groove. Although my brain in the head is in the groove of my neck and collar bone,
that's true. Sits there on top of the spine. She's not referring to that. What's
she referring to? -Thought process? -Thought process! So, it's not the brain as a
physical object. It's the brain that creates thought. And thought in a groove
is like what? -Well, if we're following the image it could be referencing. -If you're
following her conceit, the metaphor she's getting to. Let's not go there yet. -Mm-hm.
Okay. I would say. -If I were gonna say that your thought is. -Following assumptions, prejudices, anything that the brain is
sort of surrounded by, or armed with, to attack an unknown issue. -Okay. -Stuck in,
if you wanted to go there. -Stuck in. If my brain is in a groove, it's either a
positive connotation, I'm doing well thinking on... on a train of thought. Ah! Train
of thought, right? Groove. What's the negative connotation? -Well, if you're stuck
in one particular line of thinking, it could close you off to others. -So, a synonym
for groove in that sense would be "rut", yeah? -Rut, yeah. -Okay, the brain within the... We don't know yet if this...
...Dickinson poem is going to create a negative connotation for the brain in it's groove.
We don't know yet. But that seems to. Anything to add to that, Ann Maris? "The brain within it's groove". -Hmm. -So,
it's definitely not "groove" as in Michael Jackson when he's just hit that song and
who knows how he pulled that off. Or to another Michael, Michael Jordan, when he's
figured out how to improvise his way around four guys who are taller than he is
and he [gestures]... I don't know how he does that. They say he is playing out of
his head. Is that what we say, or? -Out of his mind... -He's... that is... the thought has
been supplanted by something else. That's kind of "groovy", but that's not what is
meant here apparently. -Yeah. -Okay. "The brain within it's groove, runs evenly and true".
Is that Molly? -It is. and I think of "true" as being very, very straight. And "evenly" as
being in this very smooth regular tempo. So, it's just this very [gesture]... -Can you
think of something in our lives that runs evenly? Using those, that idiom, runs
evenly? -Some type of machine I guess. -A machine! -Or a wheel? -A machine, sure. When
an engine... We say the engine of a car runs evenly. And when it runs not evenly,
what's wrong? -You're car is breaking down? -You need to go get it repaired. And
the guy at the... or gal at the fix-it station (or whatever you call it these
days) is going to say, "Well, we need your car to run evenly, because you don't
want it to run unevenly". And when... and "evenly" refers probably to the pistons
and the mechanisms. You know... the armature of the motion... You don't want it
to be shaking. Okay, the word "true" is loaded. When Emily Dickinson uses the word
"true" or "truth", she's... You're supposed to underline it or highlight in yellow or
something. So, it's not just true as you mentioned it, it gives us the
larger sense of true. -Well, not false, I mean true in the sense of, of being
factual, being real and being right. So if Ann Maris is hinting at a
negative connotation for "groove", "rut", and Anna, the use of "true" is gonna to be a
real challenge, because that would mean that being in a groove is false, is
negative. So this is a... She's really loading up the problem here. "The brain
within its groove runs evenly and true". There seems to be a 19th century
metaphor about something that goes down a groove. And it's not an automobile,
which wouldn't have existed when this poem was written. Something is
running evenly down a groove. Any idea? -A train? -A train, a train... And "train" works
very nicely, because the poem seems to be about the train of thought. So, a train has
no choice but to run down the groove. So, when the brain is running like a train
(that it seems to say), something is true. And does anybody have a bicycle? Dave,
what is true in a bike? This is the last remnant connotation of this word in our
language. -It's what you do with a wheel to make sure it runs completely evenly. It's
not off to the side. -In fact when you, when you, fix a bike wheel, you actually use the
verb "true". I've trued this wheel. It's also an adjective to describe the wheel. So, this
is probably a wheel, it's running evenly and true. "But"... I need not assign "but", but
Allie, you take the word "but". "The brain within this groove runs evenly and true...
but..." What is she signaling? Works logically. -Well, she's kinda saying, "But
wait, hold up". -But wait. So really, Ann Maris' intuition that we are going
to organize this brain running evenl is right. When you see "but", you know something
else is going to change. All right, now who has got the splinter swerve? This is
really hard. I think the two of you. Okay, Alley, give us a start on this: "But let me
splinter swerve". What's going on? First of all, the metaphor's now inconsistent because
there's no splinter swerving a train. -Well I mean... Well, I mean there
could be, because train tracks are partly wood, often... And, you know, wood is the
material that splinters. -Yeah, if you put a giant splinter on a train track, the train
will go off the track although I'm not sure "swerve" would ever be the word we'd use
because trains can't swerve. But I respect the point. You're...
...we're also dealing with someone who likes to slightly shift the metaphor
when she gets comfortable with it. Okay, go ahead... Is there anything else you wanted to
say about this? It's not your... Not moving. Okay. Dave? -So, if she's
splintering the metaphor, making it go off on a different term. -So, you're doing a
metapoetic reading. Well, all Dickinson poems have been read metapoetically at
some point. -Allie? Well also, a splinter is an accident. It's unexpected. It's kind
of a nuisance like kind of unpleasant at the point of impact. -Good. So, we have
something that's interrupting the train of thought. That's really what it is. Right?
And Ann Maris, just, just personal, your own personal experience... When you have to do A,
you've been assigned to do A, you got to get A+ in A. You've set aside 3 hours
to do A. You sit down and do A. You have been thinking about A. You're getting good
at thinking about A. And B shows up. -Extremely unsettling . -It's very
unsettling. -And what's...? What do you think Emily is saying about... B? -It's a
good thing. -It's a good thing. -Yeah, the unpredictable. -If A is sort of boring
without B. -Exactly. -Yeah, she's really wanting to move around. And
so far she's allowing this metaphor never to quite settle. She wants to move around
in that way too. Alright, Emily. -Mm hm. -Before we take a break, you tell them, you tell
us what we're going to do with this next metaphor, which seems not to be about
trains anymore. What is it? What's going on? "Let a splinter swerve" to be easier for
you to put a current back. Current. Like a circuit current when floods have slipped
the hills. What's going on? -Well, first she abandoned the two previous conceits,
which fits in with the whole idea that thought is sort of irrepressible and
uncontrollable. By the way, why would anybody start a poem this short and then
abandon already, two conceits, in the first four lines? What's wrong with her?
-Well, some-way of content I suppose. -Say that again? -I said It complemented her content somehow. It's
making a point. -So, form and content for Emily Dickinson. That can be. -Yeah. Yeah. But
it's just, though... I just think that she does this because if we think about where
we just were with Emily, which is, you know, she's got people closed off. She's a
very... like... "impregnable heights". "I dwell in possibility". Dwelling in possibility. You
know, it's almost hard to kind of reconcile these two poems because...
...the first one is about how you need to have a certain mentality or ability...
...to dwell in possibility. But then, this one's kind of all about, like, letting
your mind just take you where your mind is going to go. -Well, this poem seems to be an
instantiation of the "everlasting roof". The sky's the limit. So, in a way. -Some of
that. -In that, in that well built house, you've got this limitless, limitlessness.
And this seems to be playing that out. But you're, you're also right. Okay,
we'll have to come back to that. You're, you're also right in suggesting that this
is probably a higher level Dickinson poem than the other one. The other is a real
intro poem where things are relatively consistent by conceit. And this one, as
Emily's reminding us, is a situation where the thing must move in order for its
A-ness to be complemented by its B-ness in the example we're talking about. So, it's
going to get to a C and a D. All right, so what is the metaphor now that seems to
be emerging. A current floods. What's happening there? Well, the metaphor
is about water, that sort of uncontrollable floods. In general, water is
incredibly like... irresistible force. It's hard to control once it is out of
control. We have natural disasters to teach us that. But, so we're launching this
current explode, and sort of, do an incredible amount of destruction. The idea
is that it can't really be brought back to the same types of controlled structures as
it was before. -So, we've gone from a technology that sends the brain as a
metaphor down a certain path. There is no way for the train to find any other route
to the station. We've gone from that to something getting in its way, a splinter
which is from a whole another vocabulary. Not typically, although Allie reminded us
that there's a way in which, the wooden nature of a train track can, can cause us
to imagine a diversion. But really splinter comes from somewhere else. Then
we've got a swerve, which is not train-like, and now we have a body of
water, probably a river. We've got "current" and we've got "floods". So, how is "groovy"
doing now? -Well, there is no groove that is visible any more, I mean, actually to
disagree originally with Anna. -You're disagreeing? Wow. -I am. I would say we're
now flooded with possibilities. So, all those windows and perspectives that Emily was
talking about in "I Dwell in Possibility" are now available to both herself and us,
the readers. And she isn't, I don't think, shutting anyone out. It's rather
self-enclosure for protection from the eye that would judge or place us back within
that group of prejudice. -And this is the situation. This is a better poem in my
opinion, or at least a more complicated one, because the form must follow its own
course like the water and like the brain. Whereas in the other poem you really have
to get all the way to the end to the narrow hands, the little Dickensonian
modest hands, gathering, paradising, which is enormous. So, you get this paradox of
small, small wee housebound me gathering in enormity where as here you're,
you're all over the place. You're all over the place.
Al FilreisKelly Professor, Dir. Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Faculty Dir. Kelly Writers House
