Tea at Trianon: Jane Satterfield on “Letter to Emily Brontë”

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, October 10, 2022

Jane Satterfield on “Letter to Emily Brontë”

From The Common:

Jane Satterfield speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her poem “Letter to Emily Brontë,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. Jane talks about her longstanding interest in the Brontë sisters, and why this pandemic poem is directed to Emily in particular. She also discusses letter-writing as a structure for poetry, and reads another poem published in The Common, “Totem,” which reflects on a childhood memory through more adult understanding.
On writing in the form of a letter to Emily Brontë:

“I think of letters as a form that allows you to have a kind of chatty domestic conversation that also launches out toward larger public issues. It’s a form that allows the writer to almost fall into secrets that they can reveal. It’s interesting in that way; it’s both relaxed and urgent.”

On working within a poetic form:

“I like a poem that moves back and forth between registers and timeframes. The great thing about the form of a poem is that when you’re working in the space of a lyric, or you’re working in the space of a letter, or a dramatic monologue, you can do that. It’s much more challenging in terms of essay writing, where you’re setting up a narrative chronology, and the reader can get lost when you make so many leaps. I do have other poems that I’m working on in this book that stay in the historical moment, and in Emily Brontë’s voice.”

On revision:

“I don’t usually have poems that emerge in a single draft. They usually go through an extensive revision stage. Often I revise on the basis of making sure that the language matches the opening music that I’ve set, and the narrative or lyrical expectations from the opening of the poem. Sometimes that means cutting a lot of beautiful language that sets up exposition, or parts when description runs away.” (Read more.)