So, now we have Emily Dickinson's poem 556 The Brain Within It's Groove. It's a very difficult poem. We're going to spend a lot of time with it. So, I want us to do a close reading together. So, Max, you have "The brain". All right. Ann Maris, you have "groove". Okay, Molly runs "evenly and true". So you have that whole line there. Okay. All right. And, Anna, will you help her with that? -Mm-hm. -All right. Allie, you and Dave have this very difficult idea of "the splinter swerving". And Emily, you have this whole thing about the "current", the "flood", all that stuff. Very, very difficult stuff. And you can, you can, you also have the "turnpike", you have all that stuff. Excellent. Okay? Ann Maris, you have the word "trodden". And Max, we'll be back to you for "middles". Okay. Okay? All right. "The brain within it's groove". Max, tell us about the brain. -The brain is the seat of all of our thought and maybe also our consciousness, like I said it would be debatable. It's typically thought of in opposition to the heart. -Okay, so, thinking with a slight connotation of passionless that is it's intellection, intellection.. -Yes, that it's, it's rational, we think of it as, as rational. -Okay and you don't... you don't really know which connotation works here cause we haven't really been through the poem, but your guess, your guess as to what she means here. -Which connotation of the brain? -Yeah, you've only given us a couple. Can you give us a couple more connotations of "the" brain? Anna will help you. Anna, what's another context for the brain? If I ever use the word brain what do I mean? -We could talk about brain, or brains versus brawn, as kind of like a, the brain is like in opposition. -Okay, another version of the brain-heart. Completely different context, anybody? Brain? The physical thing that's residing in the head... Why, Max, "the" brain? Why "the" brain, as opposed to "brains" or "a" brain? -She's talking about the brain in general, I guess. Human brains or anyone's brain the common brain. -It's funny how the article "the" is put in front of something that could be thought of as I don't want to say abstract, but "generalizeable", it becomes more general, a brain. -Yeah, absolutely. -So, this brain, or the particular brain, the brain that is in your head, Max is specific. "A" brain is a little more general, and then "the" brain can be [specific as in]: "Folks, we are now today going to talk about the brain", says the anatomy teacher. Okay. Which [of both] do you think it is? 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.
