I Told My Soul to Sing: Finding God with Emily Dickinson.

Pietka, Rachel

I Told My Soul to Sing: Finding God with Emily Dickinson. By Kristin LeMay. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-61261-163-1. Pp. 291. $17.99.

Emily Dickinson is a writer who prompts personal responses from her readers, even from scholars. Susan Howe's widely read My Emily Dickinson (1985) blends scholarly inquiry with a dash of first-person pronouns, and Wider Than the Sky: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily Dickinson (2007), edited by Cindy Mackenzie and Barbara Dana, overtly calls for personal responses to Dickinson's work. More recently, Susan VanZanten published Mending a Tattered Faith: Devotions with Dickinson (2011), which provides close readings of twenty-nine poems for the purpose of devotional exercise.

Kristin LeMay's I Told My Soul to Sing: Finding God with Emily Dickinson takes its place among these projects, with an emphasis on the ways in which Dickinson's poetry has impacted the author's own spiritual journey. LeMay calls Dickinson "Saint Emily, patron of all who wrestle with God" and explains, "For over ten years, I have turned to her poems as others have to Scripture," adding, "I've read her poetry the way others go to Bible study, in order to challenge what I know and to know better what challenges me" (3, 11). Although this book is marketed as a spiritual autobiography, the author's knowledge and use of Dickinsons life and work is both extensive and responsible. LeMay's reading of the poems is thorough, insightful, and likely to be of use to scholars.

Throughout five chapters, LeMay examines twenty-five Dickinson poems alongside her own search for God. She intentionally selects lesser-known poems that address religious subjects, avoiding those much-discussed titles like "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church" in order to provide fresh insights into Dickinsons spiritual life coupled with a new mode of analysis. Though LeMay's exploration of twenty-five poems is rooted in close readings, she combines careful textual analysis with theological and historical contexts, with Dickinson's letters and biographies, and with the impact of the poems on the author's own life. LeMay hopes her book will guide readers to Dickinson, help them encounter the richness of her poetry, and finally, gain the "kindlier" and "jauntier view of God" that she has found in the poems after years of diligent reading (14).

The first chapter, "Belief," starts with the season of revivals in New England during Dickinson's life and with the story of her refusal to convert to Christianity while a student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. In this chapter, LeMay explores the extent to which Dickinson considered conversion a sign of giving up or resignation. She states that Dickinson's own experience with conversion counters her contemporaries' beliefs: for the poet, it was an ongoing process, not a one-time, dramatic experience. In her discussion of doubt, belief, and proof, LeMay asserts that Dickinson did not view doubt and belief as mutually exclusive, but as complementary states that keep faith healthy. Similarly, LeMay unpacks Dickinson's thoughts on proof and concludes that proof is the enemy of belief rather than doubt. This chapter includes references to Blaise Pascal and St. Augustine, as well as to the author's trips to the Homestead in Amherst to see the poet's desk and to Notre-Dame de Paris to see relics from the Passion.

In the second chapter, "Prayer," LeMay identifies with Dickinson's disinclination toward prayer, expressed most directly in her 1863 letter to Louisa and Frances Norcross, in which she writes, "Let Emily sing for you because she cannot pray." LeMay, thus, provides a thorough examination of Dickinson's substitutes for prayer: songs and poems. Through a discussion of hymnody, featuring Isaac Watts, LeMay describes and illustrates the great impact of hymns on Dickinson's poetry. She also juxtaposes George Herbert's stance toward prayer with Dickinson's, finding both similarities and differences in these writers' verse. Although LeMay extensively describes Dickinson's aversion to prayer in this chapter, she does, however, in the section titled "Jesus," provide an incredibly compelling close reading of a poem that includes a prayer to the crucified Christ. The poem, "Jesus! thy Crucifix," implores him to remember humankind by the marks of humanity written on his resurrected face.

"Mortality," the third chapter, is organized around the topics of incarnation, learning to die, mortality, crucifixion, and Easter. LeMay first establishes that Dickinsons understanding of incarnation denotes "stooping" which she viewed as "a fundamental aspect of God's nature" (131). While not denying that Dickinson was indeed obsessed with death, LeMay tries to show that Dickinson was not a morbid person, but that many of her poems about death are motivated by her preoccupation with life and immortality, of which death is a central part. In the sections on mortality, crucifixion, and Easter, LeMay provides personal reflections on how Dickinsons life and poetry have helped her understand these phenomena.

The fourth chapter, "Immortality," follows from the previous. LeMay starts with a discussion of Dickinsons life as a recluse while making clear that the label "hermit" is better suited to describe the poets need to "step away from the world in order to engage its mystery more deeply" (173). LeMay then affirms Dickinsons belief in the afterlife while speaking directly to readers, imploring them to remember Dickinson when they are burdened with the seeming emptiness of death. In a section on silence, LeMay writes about Dickinsons admiration for George Eliot and her tendency to defend Eliots lack of piety to her friends. Because Dickinson defended Flint's silence on matters of belief, LeMay extends Dickinson's argument to the poet herself: "How many have loved the Lord and never shouted it from the rooftops?" (195). With this question, LeMay suggests that Dickinson felt it was short-sighted of people to assume that silence means unbelief, both in her own case and in Eliot's. LeMay closes chapter four with a close reading of "I live with Him--I see His face." She discusses Dickinson's struggle with feeling as if she must choose between loved ones and immorality. If a loved one were destined for hell, Dickinson's impulse is to follow the beloved to hell rather than go to heaven alone. LeMay concludes that Dickinson's embrace of immortality as a reality was a consequence of her own encounters with death. The loss of loved ones gave Dickinson hope of an afterlife, an experience LeMay shares with the poet.

In the final chapter, "Beauty," LeMay starts with a poem Dickinson wrote at the end of her life in 1885, "Take all away from me, but leave me Ecstasy." Detailing the many losses Dickinson had experienced at this point in her life, LeMay reflects on Dickinson's capacity not just for resilience, but ecstasy, in the face of death and suffering. In a section on portrait, LeMay discusses the most common "portraits" of Dickinson in contemporary culture: her reclusiveness; her soft, breathless voice; and her white dress. As a response to these portraits, LeMay shows Dickinson's sense of humor in religious matters through "The Bobolink is gone--the Rowdy of the Meadow--". Meditating on "grasped by God," a phrase Dickinson wrote on a scrap of paper, LeMay then recounts her own experiences of being grasped by God. In the final section, LeMay writes about her time at the Homestead, specifically her sublime experience listening to a robin which she links to the book's title, "I told my Soul to sing--". As LeMay closes, she encourages her readers, as she does in the introduction, to read Dickinson's work. "Eighteen hundred poems await you," she writes, "and over a thousand letters" (254).

I Told My Soul to Sing: Finding God with Emily Dickinson predominantly contains close readings of Dickinson's poetry interspersed with relevant insights into the poet's life as well as her historical and theological context. Although the title suggests something more personal, the book favors discussions of Dickinsons poetry that sound more like academic discourse than book club conversation. Those looking for intimate confessions on LeMay's part or extensive comparisons between her life and Dickinson's will be disappointed. LeMay prioritizes her readings of Dickinsons work; reflections on her own life are brief vignettes. Furthermore, the writing itself is strongest when the author focuses on Dickinson. LeMay's brief attempts to befriend the reader result in prose that is somewhat strained.

The organization of the book will present some challenges to scholars, given the wealth of insights LeMay provides to readers of Dickinson, especially regarding the lesser-known poems she includes. LeMay provides notes to each chapter in the latter pages of the book, but there is no index by which to look up poems alphabetically. Furthermore, the chapter titles and sections indicate that the book is organized by topic, but many of the issues treated in the chapters overlap. For example, one section of chapter three is titled "Learning to Die," but the first section of chapter five also deals extensively with death. Without an index and systematic chapters on designated topics, the organization of the book requires that one read from beginning to end in order to avoid missing the references to certain poems, letters, and events for which one might be looking.

Nevertheless, reading this book is a pleasant experience. It is substantial without the burden of discipline-specific jargon. It includes images of Dickinson's poems and of a crucifix the author encountered one year during Holy Week. It also includes interesting charts that represent Dickinson's tumultuous relationship with Christianity, one of which lists doctrines of the Christian church under the headings, "Believe It" and "Doubt It." The greatest strength of this book, however, lies in its love for and delight in Dickinson's poetry and in the timelessness of her Jacob-like struggle with God. I Told My Soul to Sing is bound to entice readers, especially scholars, to read Dickinson closely and perhaps to view her, along with LeMay, as "Saint Emily."

Rachel Pietka

Baylor University