Last month, I expressed my affinity for a poem by Emily Dickinson that begins “Publication—is the auction of the mind of man” and goes on to associate publishing with the soul-tarnishing debasement of commerce, “so foul a thing.” While it’s easy for the publishing skeptic to agree with the poem’s sentiment, it’s also important to consider its context. I’ve read it many times, and I’m a bit ashamed to admit it only recently occurred to me that, had she ever left the house, Emily Dickinson could have travelled to the very real auction of human beings. What does it mean, in that context, for a poem to equate publishing to “the auction of the mind of man” when real men, women, and children were themselves on auction, and what lesson might it have for us as writers today? For Dickinson scholars, the context raises the question of the poet’s own views on race, slavery, and abolition, and many of them have ably demonstrated how this poem’s evocation of the “auction” fits into a larger pattern of the poet’s “condemning abolition in abolition’s own terms.”[i] Even with its problems, for writers today, it should also serve as an important reminder to consider the character and associations of actors in the literary marketplace before submitting our work for publication.
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