Back to Agoraphobia

By the way, Howe is mainly discussing Dickinson's poem, "My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun."

The poem narrates the poet imagining herself as a gun, out in the "Sovreign woods," the great, all-powerful outdoors, killing but unable to be killed, controlled but deadly, in short, an insane poet. But let's say that there are two kinds of poets: again, the agoraphobes and the claustrophobes. Dickinson is the agoraphobic type. The claustrophobic type is, say, T.S. Eliot, who is oppressed by rooms and narrow streets. Eliot, too, is insane, but has a controlled insanity.

Can there be a healthy poet? Maybe William Carlos Williams, who dealt with illness yet wrote about the power of words and things--and words as things: "This is just to say."

And my interest in Baroque music? The claustrophobes of composition, especially with their mathematical precision. Order relieves the pressure of oppressive rooms and narrow streets, yet it's a fool's paradise. Order is an illusion.