Carlo

When I was in high school I know I thought Emily Dickinson was a cat person. She just seemed like the type, spinsterish reclusive, one of those old ladies you find hoarding cats in some New England town from time to time. I could hear her pen scritch-scratching across the page like cat's claws, torturing me with her enigmas, kneading her sharp little symbols into my brain while I tried to sleep, just like my cat did. But most of what I thought I knew in high school turned out to be wrong, and this is no exception.

I don't really have anything against cats (except one in particular who used to pee on the burners of our stove at night!). I've had them as pets, loved them, don't want them anymore. But I did have something against Dickinson at one time, that model of the woman poet without a life, pining for love, writing furious poems to no one.  But I was wrong.  She knew love.  She had Carlo.

Carlo was a dog "as big as myself," as she put it, a Newfoundland that her father gave her. She named him after the dog in Jane Eyre and spent 18 years with this bear of a dog, walking around town with him, writing while he filled up most of the empty floor space in her room. This was a revelation to me. It would be one thing for Dickinson to have a dog and not a cat, but a Newfie, a big, human sized dog? And here I'm showing some of my prejudice (which I've also had to modify lately - but more on that later) because I am a "big dog" person. I grew up with Saint Bernards and always thought that dog people were either "big dog" or "small dog" types. And I would have bet that, absent cats, Dickinson would go for the tiny, yappy type. So I had to look at her poems again in light of this revelation.

Having a really big dog is a certain kind of challenge.  You have to be able to communicate with and command the dog. A misbehaving Chihuahua is an annoyance (ask me how I know!), but a misbehaving 125lb Newfie or Saint is a menace. They have to respect you and know you mean business.  You can't just be pliant and accommodating. You can't be a "That's ok, I'll just sit in my room and write" wimp. So knowing about Carlo made me look at Dickinson's personality again.


And when I looked again, I saw her irony ("Thanks for the surgery," she says to Higginson when he doesn't understand her poems.) and her passion. I saw the strength it took to choose to write, her fearlessness in the face of our biggest fears: loss, abandonment, death, loneliness. I could see the sensuality in the poems when I thought of her sitting down beside this big, black dog stroking his fur. I could see the power I had overlooked in her willingness to make direct statements ("Renunciation is a piercing virtue-") as well as enigmatic images.

And Carlo shows up directly in the poems sometimes.  One of my favorites is "I started Early - Took my Dog-" (#656 Franklin, #520 Johnson):

I started Early - Took my Dog -
And visited the Sea -
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me -


And Frigates - in the Upper Floor

Extended Hempen Hands -
P
resuming Me to be a Mouse -

Aground - upon the Sands -


But no Man moved Me - till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe -

And past my Apron - and my Belt

And past my Bodice - too -

And made as He would eat me up -

As wholly as a Dew
Upon a Dandelion's Sleeve -

And then - I started - too -

And He - He followed - close behind -
I felt His Silver Heel

Upon my Ankle - Then my Shoes

Would overflow with Pearl -

Until We met the Solid Town -
No One He seemed to know

And bowing - with a Mighty look -
At me - The Sea withdrew -


Although Carlo only appears in the first line, he is a presence in the poem.  There's a sly nod to him in the line "But no Man moved Me." Carlo is male but not a "Man." And Carlo hovers in the background, in danger of being  abandoned if she accepts the sea's caresses. He complicates the poem.

There's a good discussion of the poem itself here:
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/dog.html

Of course, as I write this, I have on my lap my 5lb Chihuahua, Ancho.  But more about that another time!
svf
How does Carlo affect your reading of Dickinson?