A series of large-scale embroidered quilts, The Dickinson Composites depict the poet Emily Dickinson’s variant marks in her manuscripts that have been omitted in print. The subtext for Bervin’s series is Emily Dickinson’s textual practice, one obscured by a century of editorial interventions.
Similar to hypertext—Dickinson’s experiments with the variants—the + signs that direct readers to other possible words or phrases in her poetry manuscripts—surface and grow into a complex, almost infinite system she uses throughout her life. Despite their obvious presence in the manuscripts, the variant marks and words, so integral to Dickinson’s poetics, are omitted in reading editions, which also override her line breaks. These works are based on layered composites Bervin made of Dickinson’s marks on the recto and verso in six fascicles, respectively: 16, 19, 28, 34, 38, and 40. (Fascicles refer to Dickinson’s practice of grouping handwritten poems composed on stationery folios in stab-bound packets between 1858 and 1864).
Bervin writes, “the enigmatic red crosses and dashes are mends of omissions, samplers of ‘a system of Aesthetics – / Far superior to mine.’ Choosing to circumvent what seemed like an intractable editorial situation, I tried to make something as forceful, abstract, and generously beautiful as Dickinson’s work is to me.” Bervin’s works are aligned with mending omissions, to restitution, and the deeper gesture that Dickinson’s poems and variant marks make.