Colonel Higginson as Mentor

Abstract

Dickinson’s poems as well as some of her letters help to graph the patterns of her health, her poetics, and her awareness of the horrors of war. For instance, in March 1860 she writes to her cousin Lou, “I’ve had a curious winter, very swift, sometimes sober, for I haven’t felt well, much, and March amazes me!” (LII 360). Her later letters show that, despite Vinnie’s being in Boston to care for Aunt Lavinia (Lou’s and Fanny’s mother), the poet did not expect her beloved aunt to die. As we have seen, Dickinson wrote a number of poems about that loss. But intermingled with those poems are others that seem to illustrate concerns about her own health. Some are based on “recovery”—of health? Of consciousness? Of goodness?—as in “Just lost, when I was saved!” and “‘Tis so much joy! ’Tis so much joy!” works which seem simpler than a poem from the same period like “To learn the transport thro’ the pain” (Poems #132, #170, and #178 Fr173, 205–6, and 212). Other poems seem to describe a person’s wounded physical body, as in “A wounded deer—leaps highest” with its imagery of both bleeding and a “hectic” cheek, a clear tubercular symptom, and particularly the lament “Dying! Dying in the night!” a poem in which “Dollie” (Dickinson’s name for Susan Gilbert) is able to give the speaker comfort that no heavenly messenger can bring (Poems #181 and #222 Fr 215 and 249).