An escape

The problem with taking a day or two off from writing, sick or headaches aside, is that it's so hard to get back into the discipline once it's been broken...

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.
-Emily Dickinson

I found that quote while searching for Dickinson articles and coming across a page of quotations. I wish I knew the source, but more than that-- I wish I could get more of a context for this quote or, better yet, an explanation of it from Dickinson herself.

It reminds me of what Madeleine L'Engle wrote in her book Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. In one oarticular chapter, L'Engle writes about the discipline of writing and how one can reach the point where he or she moves beyond the acts of writing and the words and steps aside, letting the writing take over and become more than the writer could have ever meant for it to be. Instead of bringing the words to the page, the writer enters into the words as they develop and falls sort of "through the looking glass" into whatever else could be-- things that could not be plotted or planned or contrived.

I believe that there are moments in writing where, as a writer, it is possible to move beyond the here and now, beyond emotions and personality. Yes, some of the writer's personality is inherent and will possibly always be found in traces in the work. But the conscious and deliberate aspects of writing fall away in these moments, and the inner truths and beauty of the writing come out and develop whole new lives of their own.

Luck is not chance

Luck is not chance--
It's Toil--
Fourtune's expensive smile
Is earned--
The Father of the Mine
Is that old fashioned Coin
We spurned--
(F 1360)

I don't think it's coincidence that Dickinson wrote this poem in the time period that she wrote it. It speaks volumes of the Puritan work ethic, bastioned by the "self made, up-by-the-bootstraps" echos of Benjamin Franklin and the more obvious example of Dickinson's father, Edward who labored fiercely to secure his family financially in ways his father had failed.

It might seem strange to think of Dickinson writing these words when one considers that she was a woman of leisure in her own right. The only chores she performed are the ones she enjoyed, namely baking and tending to the flowers in the hothouse. Dickinsons were the cornerstone of Amherst, and while there were some financial struggles early in her parents' marriage, by the time she grew old enough to fully realize what was going on, the Dickinson's financial situation was resolved. It semes she was granted all of the priviledges of her class to indulge in her own pursuits, and she was given the privacy and space in which to create her art.

Though she might know little of any physical toil, clearly she does not take anything for granted. Despite the genius displayed in her writing, it was developed painstakingly, poem by poem. Over time her very distinct style emerges and lodges firmly on page. I sincerely believe that even if she had been published openly in her lifetime, Dickinson would have maintained that her abilities were as much (if not far more) because of persistence and practice than from sheer gifting alone. She crafted her gift, cultivated it as lovingly as she did her dear flowers, feeding and pruning as the years passed.