The second section of this presentation is more difficult to execute than the first. I suspect this is true because research has yet to be done on the patterns of themes, images, and schools of spirituality to be found in the body of Jessica Powers' poetry. I propose to offer only speculations, suggestions for further scholarship and research, and tentative explorations into topics and concerns that I find relevant. My musings are merely that: musings that tickle my mind. I begin with a series of questions: Was Jessica Powers more influenced by the poetry of meditation than the Carmelite tradition? Her ability to spin out an image to its finest thread certainly reflects the following statements from Louis Martz' "The Poetry of Meditation":
...intense, imaginative meditation that brings together the senses, the emotions,and the intellectual faculties of man; brings them together
in a moment of dramatic, creative experience...
Meditative style, then, is 'current language heightened,' molded to express the unique beingof an individual who has learned by intense mental discipline, to live his life in the presence of divinity.
In the January 2,1986, issue of Times Review, "Jessica Powers, an Emily Dickinson from Juneau County," Father McGarty, editor of the LaCrosse diocesan newspaper, hints at comparisons between Emily Dickinson and Jessica Powers, noting that "Dickinson and Jessica Powers use simple verse tech-niques for profound observations." It might prove fruitful for some scholars to explore the possible comparisons between Emily Dickinson and Jessica Powers. I see similarities in their love of solitude, their uncanny ability to cover thoroughly and well their inner life and at the same time, write on a universal level.
Their feminine ability to us household and housekeeping images and their love for birds and flowers indicate kindred spirits. How ever, rather than attempt to begin to explore those ideas here. I would like to suggest that Jessica Powers, in addition to keeping company with the best of religious poets, also walks the same path as our American nature poets, beginning with Philip Freneau (1752-1832), William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Walt Whitman (1819-1892), and Robert Frost (1874-1963), All of these poets have used nature as metaphor to explore human interactions, human interactions, human/divine relationships, and inner/outer landscapes. For example, Jessica Powers can handle the image of waterfowl in a more sophisticated, less didactic manner in her poem "Decoys" than Bryant does in "To a Waterfowl." Nature and human relationships. for Jessica Powers, are some of the media through which she finds words to express her images of God.
Ultimately, Jessica Powers may indeed prove to be the Emily Dickinson of Juneau County. as Father McGarty indicated. Time and further research are needed to demonstrate that possibility. It is yet too soon to draw any definitive conclusions. I think that, at her best, each poet is a match for the other. The key qualifier is at her best. Emily Dickinson certainly has a more original, bold, and playful command of the language than Jessica Powers. Emily Dickinson's total poetic out-put is 1,775 poems; Jessica Powers is 450, at the most. Emily Dickinson explores a broader range of human relationships and emotions than does Jessica Powers. Emily Dickinson's poetry is con-sistently more even in quality than is Jessica Powers. But a comparison of two of their poems, will, I think, begin to unfold their deep sense of the divine, an area where Jessica Powers may ultimately prove to be more at home, more profound. and more sure of herself than Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson's poem 419 uses the image of walking into the darkness as metaphor for walking into inner darkness, ultimately into the darkness of faith. She writes:
The first two stanzas of this poem set the scene. The "Neighbor" in the poem stands in the doorway holding the lamp as the speaker walks away. The speaker steps out into the night, grows accustomed to the dark, begins for "a moment" to walk with "uncertain step/for newness of the night" and then fits her "vision to the dark/and meets the Road-erect."
The next stanza immediately elevates the literal description of the first two stanzas to the metaphorical level:
And so of larger Darknesses-
Those Evenings of the Brain-
When not a Moon disclose a sign-
Or star-come out-within-
Note the subtle shift of pronouns from "we" to "her" to "they," whose antecedent is "the Bravest." The bravest continue to walk in the darkness, to include the "we" of those who adjust to Midnight. It is commonplace in the Christian mystical tradition to speak of the dark night of the soul. Indeed, Carmelites are the mentors for us in this school of spirituality. Is Emily Dickinson describing the "dark night" for us? Probably not deliberately so. Nevertheless, the poem lends itself to a reading and interpretation of that kind as well as one that is more literal. Those "larger Darknesses" can indeed include the dark night that John of the Cross eloquently describes. Emily Dickinson leaves her speaker in the dark, learning to avoid the trees. Jessica Powers, using the same image, leads her mystic to the light in "Track of the Mystic"