I tend to bristle at scientific reductionism. For example Richard Dawkins, despite all his effusive claims to appreciate beauty, still argues that all our thoughts, all our feelings can be understood on mechanical grounds. This psychological study (Emily Dickinson Revisited: A Study of Periodicity in Her Work) interests me nonetheless because it leans toward expanding our appreciation rather than narrowing it. And while the stated conclusion is that the data suggests “a bipolar pattern previously described in creative artists,” the author takes a further step toward illuminating some specific poetic imagery on the basis of the analysis — creative critical analysis, or, as Harold Bloom would put it “strong misreading” (a plus for Bloom if you are unfamiliar with his work).
Of particular note is this passage: ‘There is no question that Emily Dickinson suffered painful losses, the deaths of family and friends whom she mourned in letter and verse. But her periods of grief appear prolonged and seasonally weighted toward the winter months. For example, a November 1858 letter to a friend stated, “I thought perhaps that you were dead.…Who is alive? The woods are dead” (12, L195). Even the end of summer marked the anticipation of winter—and of death as well. A September 1859 letter noted: “Indeed, this world is short, and I wish, until I tremble, to touch the ones I love before the hills are red—are grey—are white…”’
And he both wisely and generously give the poet the final word: ‘Perhaps Emily Dickinson had some insight into the secret of her own creative genius when she
penned the lines beginning
The Brain—is wider than the Sky…
Jedediah Smith 