Who Court obtain within Himself Sees every Man a King— And Poverty of Monarchy Is an interior thing—
No Man depose Whom Fate Ordain— And Who can add a Crown To Him who doth continual Conspire against His Own
-Fr859, J803, Fascicle 38, 1864
The language of royalty litters Emily Dickinson's poems. Words like "King," "Monarchy" and "Crown" show up dozens and dozens of times.
One of Dickinson’s aims seems to be to depose our idea of King and replace it with something more worthwhile. She inverts the norm and shows us in poem after poem how true royalty is something earned.
This poem explores inner sovereignty, the idea that true wealth comes from self-mastery. Someone who has “court within Himself” is a king regardless of poverty. Conversely, someone who works “against his own” inner self cannot be given a crown and no external wealth can compensate.
Who Court obtain within Himself / Sees every Man a King—
If someone possesses their own inner royal court, which I personally take to mean cultivating both Truth (integrity) and Beauty (inner richness), then it follows that they will be able to recognize the inherent nobility in all people. Equality is rooted in inner worth, not external hierarchy.
Being able to see every man (and woman) as King is a beautifully democratic ideal.
And Poverty of Monarchy / Is an interior thing—
A King may be poor inside, with an impoverished inner world and a lack of self-government. True monarchy is psychological, not material.
I think about this often. It has become apparent to me that people who have exterior wealth are often living in inner poverty, and vice versa. In my travels I've noticed there is so much more laughter and dancing in the poorer countries that I’ve been to than there are the rich ones. If you are looking beneath the surface, then the meek do, indeed, inherit the earth.
No Man depose / Whom Fate Ordain—
Your deepest Self, your inherent nature, your “Fate,” has made you sovereign. If you are rooted in this Self, then no external force can take that away. It’s the idea that inner authority is “ordained” by who you fundamentally are, not by what society grants you. No one can “depose” you then, because this kind of power is not external in the first place.
And Who can add a Crown To Him who doth continual Conspire against His Own
If a person constantly undermines themselves, through self-doubt, self-sabotage, guilt, shame, etc, then no “crown” can fix it. A crown (any external validation) is meaningless for someone at war with their own mind.
Dickinson’s poems comprise a masterclass of lessons in living a meaningful life. Keep court within, not without. If you don't conspire against your own mind then you will find that you won't conspire against anyone else's mind either. You will see everybody as divinely appointed.
One great thing about this poem is that it begins and ends with an echo of the sound of the word CROWN. You see it in the opening of the poem in the phrase “Court obtain,” and then the poem ends with “Conspire against his own” which is a drawing out of the sound of "Crown," as if hidden with the sound of the word "CROWN" is the idea: “ConspiRe against His OWN.”
Time feels so vast that were it not For an Eternity— I fear me this Circumference Engross my Finity—
To His exclusion, who prepare By Processes of Size For the Stupendous Vision Of his diameters—
-Fr858, J802, Fascicle 38, 1864
In order to understand the scope of this poem I think it helps to first get in touch with a visceral feeling of awe for Eternity. You know, you are a little kid and you are looking up at the stars and trying to understand infinity, and you realize, intuitively, that you cannot, that there are limits to your understanding. We think in terms of cause and effect. Which came first the chicken or the egg? Therefore, how could there be no beginning? No end? How are we even alive in all of that beginninglessness and endlessness?
Does the limit of existence reveal something, or does it swallow us?
I'm thinking of Whitman's line, "The clock indicates the moment... but what does Eternity indicate?"
I can feel a tension in this poem between the poet wanting life to end because the pain of it "feels" so vast, and, simultaneously, wanting it to go on. I think we all feel that tension in our lives don't we? This poem, through the idea of Eternity, gives us relief from both our pains and our fears. The pains have an end, but they also have an end goal, as they are somehow part of the processes of a larger design. This larger design, itself, the circles that subsume our circle, gives our finite lives meaning.
Let’s take it line by line here.
Time feels so vast that were it not For an Eternity—
This opening puts immediately into an immense philosophical idea. Time feels vast, which might be a problem, something that would swallow us up, if it wasn’t for something far greater than time, Eternity.
The verb “feels” adds subjectivity. This is not a cosmic statement, but the poet's inner experience.
I fear me this Circumference Engross my Finity—
Circumference is a whole thing with Dickinson. Like the word Eternity, Circumference is one she uses over and over in her poems and that, itself, has an ever-expanding circumference of meaning. In one of her letters she tells T.W. Higginson, “My business is circumference.” In this case she seems to be using it to mean not just a limit of understanding, but that of time itself, which surrounds her very existence. She says she fears that this circumference would engross her finite life. This refers back to time. So the circumference of time would swallow her up, if it wasn’t for that thing beyond the circumference of time, Eternity.
To His exclusion, who prepare By Processes of Size
The first stanza sets up the second. I fear I would be swallowed by time, but this would be to exclude Him (Eternity), who prepares by processes of size. Our time is a circle in service to a larger circle, which is in turn in service to a larger circle, ad infinitum. Without Eternity’s presence, He would be excluded, or at least inaccessible, because the only “space” is the closed-in temporal circle.
But He is preparing something using “processes of size," meaning He works on a scale beyond ordinary human measures. We might well ask, preparing what? But here, perhaps, is where faith comes in that these processes are not small nor simple. They’re dynamic and ever expansive.
For the Stupendous Vision Of his diameters—
The poet intuits that whatever is being prepared for is “Stupendous.”
“Diameters” suggests lines crossing through circles, measuring their full span. If circumference is the outer boundary, diameter is a way to penetrate or bridge across circles. So His vision is not confined by the boundary of time. He spans it, sees through it, connects across it.
Dickinson recognizes her own finitude, but rather than surrendering to despair, she takes comfort in Eternity. God is not a distant or remote figure here. He actively prepares the cosmos. But His preparation is not small-scale. It happens “by Processes of Size.” His “vision” spans much more than temporal bounds, traversing them through “diameters.”
This is not simplistic consolation. It's a metaphysical model. Her finite self is preserved by positing a divine order so vast and geometrically coherent that it encompasses even the circumference of time itself. This is a metaphysical prayer, a vision of how divinity secures our finiteness. The poem builds a bridge, through “diameters,” between a limited human existence and a boundless divine reality.
Many Dickinson poems seem to be written to survive the thought and this is one of them.
I’m reminded of this line from Rilke, “To all the unsayable sums, joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.”
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S. In researching this poem I came across a charming and insightful doctoral thesis on the use of Circumference in Dickinson’s poetry by a CK Mathew. It is very warm and insightful. From the preface:
In my mind Emily Dickinson has always been the woman in white: an enigmatic and ghostly figure who wafted through my imagination with no let or hindrance, taking my breath away each time she appeared. I must have been a young lad entering his teens when I came across her poems, and though much of what she wrote was incomprehensible to me in those early days, she fascinated me for no clearly identifiable reason. The power of her words to stun me, to make me start and shiver, to set me off into a reverie, was obvious from the start. As I grew, I learned to seek for her hidden meanings, for her new insights, the unmatched compression and concentration of her lexicon, and the quaint strangeness of the manner of her expression. Throughout the busy schedule of my decades in the civil service, she used to wander in and out of my life, in the form of a collection of poems someone had left behind.
As superannuation neared, and the prospect of doing nothing loomed large, Emily called out to me again. It was time to finally get to know this mystery woman better, to understand her through dogged research and study and to finally try to make some sense of who and what she really was. I registered myself as a Ph.D research scholar and proposed a detailed examination of the philosophical meaning of ‘circumference’ in her poems. Over four years I scoured through the libraries at the University at Jaipur, the USIS at New Delhi and the American Studies Research Centre at Hyderabad.
Doing this along with the onerous official duties was difficult, but Emily often proved to be the escape I longed for, from files and meetings and the daily political machinations that had become a part of my official life. What bliss, what joy as she beckoned me into her world.
And thus I obtained for myself the honour of adding the honorific of ‘Doctor’ to my name. Friends and colleagues wondered why I was overjoyed in acquiring this new title on a subject which has no practical use in the real world. But then Emily had taught me that the real world was within. It was the culmination of a life-long fascination with the poetess who, without warning or notice, used to walk though my imagination.
She rose to His Requirement – dropt The Playthings of Her Life To take the honorable Work Of Woman, and of Wife –
If ought She missed in Her new Day, Of Amplitude, or Awe – Or first Prospective – or the Gold In using, wear away,
It lay unmentioned – as the Sea Develope Pearl, and Weed, But only to Himself – be known The Fathoms they abide –
-Fr857, J732, Fascicle 38, 1864
This poem seems to tell the story of a woman who rose to the requirements of her husband. She dropped all of the playthings of life so she could get down to the honorable work of being a wife. This she does without mentioning it. This leads to a major loss of prospects for gold and awe for the woman, but also to a gain in pearl, and weeds, which is shared only with the husband, since only he can truly fathom his wife.
This poem may be read as a justification of this difficult rising up to requirement, or as a condemnation of it, depending on how you look at it. And honestly, after reading it several times, I'm not 100% sure which way it leans most, toward gratitude or bitterness.
Let's say that if this poem was written from the perspective of a wife subjugating herself and her talents for the sake of a man, then it may be read as damning. This tracks with Dickinson who did famously stay single.
But the poem can also be read as accepting and admiring of the woman who puts her own desires aside and rises to the difficult occasion of marriage. This woman not only meets the requirements of being a good mate, but in the difficulty of doing so, in trading the loss of all that prospective gold, she gains pearls, which she lovingly shares with her beloved.
How can this poem be seen as so pro-marriage and against at the same time?
My own take is that Dickinson did position herself, in a way, between the two perspectives. She somehow held off traditional marriage like Penelope at the loom holding off suitors, but at the same time she appears to have married Someone; Christ, or Poetry, or Sue, or Charles Wadsworth, or (your guess here), in her heart. And she appears to have taken those vows very seriously. Consider the white dress she exclusively wore the last few years of her life.
This poem makes me think about gender, and my own role as a husband, but really, I feel far more sympathy for the wife in this poem than the husband. We all do, don't we? As Bob Dylan says, "You gotta serve somebody." We all drop the playthings of our life, a little at least, when we are wed, and then even further when we become a mother or father. We rise, in some way or other, to the requirements of the Other.
Is there bitterness in this? It depends on the circumstances. That word "requirement" is suspect, though, is it not? It sends me back to critique. A man, back then especially, might require his wife’s obedience by might. "Require" carries a hint of violence. Do this or else! If this poem is one about an enforced requirement, that makes it dark from the get-go.
If ought She missed in Her new Day, Of Amplitude, or Awe – Or first Prospective – or the Gold In using, wear away,
What do we miss of Amplitude and Awe, or of "first prospective" during our work days? What would the prospects of your day be if left to your devices? The first "prospective" of the day is the richest too because that is where our fullest energy is.
We use our gold up for others, which can lead to bitterness. But in exchange we find pearls, which is a joy.
Are these pearls a consolation prize, or is it where the truer value lies?
Although Dickinson never did get married, you might say that she did rise to her father’s requirements. These are things to keep in mind when considering the psychological roots of this poem. It is also worth remembering that she seems to have risen, during the last 15-20 years of her life, to some more esoteric requirements of her own choosing. The difference between those two kinds of marriage is part of the tension of this poem.
It lay unmentioned – as the Sea Develope Pearl, and Weed,
The repression of awe creates a compression, as if a pearl were being formed fathoms deep. I think that the "weed" is apt in this poem, the way it becomes a setting for that pearl. Imagine them together and you have, in two words, a world of visual splendor.
Weed could be read as a kind of treasure in itself, or it could be read as a symbol of disuse. Like, maybe a pearl or two was formed, but what about all that other potential? It's all gone to weed.
But only to Himself – be known The Fathoms they abide –
The He in this poem, then, could be A. Lover, B. Father, C. God, D. Poetry, F. all of the above. It’s very hard to know. That’s why you have to see how you fit into the poem yourself. If we can agree that we are all the She, then what is the He for you? The He in the poem for which I rise is my wife, my children, my students, my family, my friends, the downtrodden in the world, and finally myself too.
But as I rise to these requirements, my singing self, from deep within my own fortress of solitude, is, perhaps, richer for having withdrawn to such inner depths. The Himself that knows and recognizes the "Fathoms" that "abide" within me is, for lack of better word, God.
That resonates with me.
But what if I try to take on the Husband side of this poem? As a husband myself, does this resonate with me too? Well, I don’t require anything of my wife. I make requests yes, but not requirements. However I do require certain behaviors from my daughters, so perhaps that is where I should focus my own attention here when looking at the man's side of this poem. Perhaps I need stop requiring anything from my daughters?
I want to make sure I don't tamp down any of their Amplitude or Awe, nor squelch their Prospects for Gold, due to adherence to my requirements.
One more thing I want to mention is that line about how all those fathoms “lay unmentioned." The poem seems to be saying that the woman humbly does the work and doesn't mention the pains. But then this poem does a curious thing and goes ahead and mentions it anyway. And therein is another crux. Is it good not to mention it? or should it absolutely be mentioned?
Either way, bitter and/or proud, the result of all this work is the pearl, which I take to be the poem itself.
That last word, “Abide,” is so beautiful here. These poems, these pearls, amidst all of the weeds, abide for us.
Dickinson, I like to believe, rose to her own requirements. And though it appears to have been hard on her, the pressure left us with a strand of nearly 2000 pearls. “The fathoms they abide.”
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S. I'm looking again at the first line, She rose to His Requirement – dropt
How about the tension between "rose" and "dropt" here? It is a prime example of the way Dickinson reaches toward the parodoxically contradictory nature of Truth in her poetry, and here she does it in just one line. It's as if ballast was being dropped from a balloon rising up to sky.
This itself is in contrast to the fathoms of the ocean that ends the poem.
I play at Riches—to appease The Clamoring for Gold— It kept me from a Thief, I think, For often, overbold
With Want, and Opportunity— I could have done a Sin And been Myself that easy Thing An independent Man—
But often as my lot displays Too hungry to be borne I deem Myself what I would be— And novel Comforting
My Poverty and I derive— We question if the Man— Who own—Esteem the Opulence— As We—Who never Can—
Should ever these exploring Hands Chance Sovereign on a Mine— Or in the long—uneven term To win, become their turn—
How fitter they will be—for Want— Enlightening so well— I know not which, Desire, or Grant— Be wholly beautiful—
-Fr856, J801, Fascicle 38, 1864
A recurring theme of Emily Dickinson’s poetry is that true wealth may best be found in poverty.
In this one she adds a wrinkle and admits to playing at riches. I play at Riches—to appease The Clamoring for Gold—
Playing at riches is like the woman on welfare who spends precious food money to play the lottery. She loses, of course, but the fantasy of winning is enough to keep her honest. It quells the clamoring for gold.
There are so many ways to play at riches. I do it, for example, when I go to the theater to see a big blockbuster. Recently I played at riches when I luxuriated in the lavish decor of Nia DaCosta’s film adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, a scandalous update on Ibsen’s scandalous play. (I wonder if Emily saw or read any of Ibsen’s plays? They were contemporaries. He was 2 years older than she was, but outlasted her by several. “Hedda Gabler” was written after she died, but she might have read “A Doll’s House” or any of a dozen others.)
“Mothers of America/ Let your kids go to the movies!” wrote Frank O’hara in one of his best poems, Ave Maria. “They may even be grateful to you/ for their first sexual experience/ which only cost you a quarter/ and didn’t upset the peaceful home.”
Fantasies fulfill us enough to keep us away from the kind of overwhelming deprivation that leads one to theft.
The poem continues,
It kept me from a Thief, I think, For often, overbold With Want, and Opportunity— I could have done a Sin
And been Myself that easy Thing An independent Man—
If you were to actually pursue the object of your fantasies, you have to steal it, no matter how subtle and self-justifying the means.
It is worth noting that Emily’s father was a land speculator. He was driven to do this in part to make up for the debts of his father. But it is also worth noting that Emily’s Grandfather went into debt for the sake of a cause, Amherst College, which he practically financed and built himself. Emily takes after her grandfather.
The idea here is that if you can allow yourself to fantasize and “play at riches,” then temptation will no longer be too great to resist. You have relieved the pressure enough to get through the greater temptation.
There’s another poem by Dickinson with a similar idea, Fr784, in which she says, "a Quick…Anonymous Delight…Consoles a Wo so monstrous/ That did it tear all Day,/ Without an instant’s Respite –/ “Twould look too far – to Die –” However, in that poem, unlike this one, there follows a stern warning about the dangers of becoming sated and falling asleep at the wheel.
The speaker of this poem is male, which ties this poem to the male gaze. If you want to “steal” the girl, which might mean anything from paying for her to something more sinister, that would be “easy.” That would be the domain of the “independent man.”
With the word “independent” we have a crux in this poem, the conflict the poem hinges on. To have the love of a woman (or man) it takes a certain kind of dependence. In other words, it takes being dependable, which in turn takes integrity. Integrity, as opposed to theft, is hard.
But often as my lot displays Too hungry to be borne
I don't think Dickinson was speaking of actual hunger here, as she was never physically hungry for food as far as I know, but rather, lack of love.
A lack of love (“too hungry”) is something so difficult that it can’t easily be “borne,” or carried. You feel wildly tempted to fulfill the hunger for love through ignoble means. Therefore,
I deem Myself what I would be— And novel Comforting
My Poverty and I derive—
What can you do instead of thieving? You pretend, and “deem” yourself what you would be if you had the wealth you so desire. In some “novel” (new) way, you, with the help of your poverty, figure out some way to be comforted, (“My poverty and I derive”). That “novel Comforting” may be found in the sublimated fantasy.
The word “novel” here is especially good because reading a novel, like watching a Hollywood film, makes for a potent fantasy. Have I ever luxuriated in absurd wealth of language and society more than when I was reading Proust? Or how about "Middlemarch," which was Emily’s favorite novel?
We question if the Man Who own Esteem the Opulence As We Who never Can
Can the man who “owns” ever appreciate wealth as one can who lacks it? True appreciation comes from want. Ownership, and therefore possession itself, is here called into question.
Should ever these exploring Hands Chance Sovereign on a Mine
I love how the hands of the impoverished poet are ever exploring here. That’s part of the play of fantasy, no? You are feeling the world. It might come to pass that these hands just so happen upon a mine. “Mine” has a double valence here, meaning both a “mine” of precious gems and minerals, and “mine” as in ownership. But notice that the hands here did not steal. Rather they “chance sovereign.” Macbeth could have waited for his chance to become king after the witches predicted he would be one, could have “chanced sovereign," but because of his ambition, he killed the good king and stole the crown. He turned thief and, consequently, paid dearly.
Or in the long uneven term To win, become their turn
“The long uneven term” is the term of life itself. In this long uneven term you win some and you lose some, as my father was fond of saying. Sometimes it is your turn to win. When that happens, if it happens of its own accord, you will fully appreciate it because of your poverty. That it’s why fasting is such a powerful practice. Hunger is the best spice, as they say.
How fitter they will be for Want
If you fully inhabit your lack, then when it is your time to have plenty you won’t be jaded. It is only the thief that has everything who becomes jaded.
In preparation for Emerald Fennell’s upcoming film, “Wuthering Heights,” I went back and watched her film “Saltburn.” I enjoyed the fantasy in it, playing at riches, but it also sickingly portrays how terribly meaningless great wealth becomes to the jaded rich.
Or how about Joyce Carol Oates’ recent tweet about Elon Musk?
"So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates— scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book; pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the most wealthy person in the world."
Perhaps that is a little overly judgmental, but it makes a point. The poorest persons in the world may well be richer than than the richest man.
(By the way Joyce Carol Oates has her own Emily Dickinson selected on the market. I sat in a bookstore in an airport once and read the entire introduction. It was terrific.)
The poem goes on stating that our deprivation…
Enlightening so well I know not which, Desire, or Grant Be wholly beautiful
Desire and grant are so inextricably tied to one another it is hard to say which of the two is wholly beautiful. The idea here is, I think, that they are only whole, wholly beautiful, together. Granting relieves want, but wanting makes the granting more meaningful.
Two—were immortal twice— The privilege of few— Eternity—obtained—in Time— Reversed Divinity—
That our ignoble Eyes The quality conceive Of Paradise superlative— Through their Comparative.
Fr855, J800, Fascicle 38, 1864
After a lot of working-out of the meaning of this poem, which you can read about below, I've come to understand it, in the most simple terms, as saying that there are a special two that were immortal twice, once before death, in love, and once again, after death. It is through the first state, in that rare, but ignoble, privilege of being in immortal love that we get a glimpse of the second state, that superlative Paradise of Immortality to come. Either that, or you could read it in the reverse, with the immortality of being in love, however ignobly, being superlative to the immortality to come. The syntax allows for both. How you read it depends on your belief of which Immortality is superlative, the one felt now or the one that comes later. Perhaps the vanishing point can be found in the vector effected by the opposing viewpoints.
Figuring out this poem was a bit like learning complex algebra, where you have to do a lot of work to get to the sum. The following is the story behind that work. My original take on the poem was very different than it is now. (And I'm aware that it is still evolving.)
This summer I was looking online at the original MS of this poem and noticed that it was owned by the Morgan Library in NYC. I wondered if it would be possible to look at the original, so I wrote the museum. They got back to me and informed me I had to fill out an application and make an appointment, which I duly did, and few weeks later, on June 13, I went with my friend Tyler Burba to see the poem.
When we arrived at the museum we were told that there was something wrong with the temperature control in the rare manuscript room and we would have to wait for the temperature to come down a few degrees before we could go in. This gave us an hour to walk around and see the two current exhibits, which happened to be on Jane Austen and the photographer Julia Cameron Mitchell. Mitchell, who was a contemporary of Dickinson's, was a revelation. Among many beautiful photographs there was one of the astronomer, Frederick Herschel. I had never heard of Herschel, but it's a name I would soon come across again when I was writing about Fr803. He shows up in that poem. It turns out Whitman and Keats were fans of Herschel's too. I wrote about all these connections here on Prowling Bee. So it was fortuitous, I would say, that we had to wait to see the poem. (What actually happened to the temperature system? Was it the long white fingers of Dickinson that tampered with it?)
When we were finally able to sit with the poem it was as electrifying as I imagined it would be. The piece of paper the poem was on was dainty, a little note. It was protected by vellum, but still, to be able to hold it, and pretend, for a moment, to be Sue, who was the original recipient of the poem, was a thrill. It was instructive to be able to study it closely. The following is a transcription of the conversation Tyler and I had about the poem as we were looking at it. We get pretty deep into the minutia. The conversation winds all over the place, but since it all stems out of the poem, I will include it. It gives a good sense of both the difficulties of the syntax of this poem, and the possibilities of it.
***
Adam: Tyler Burba and I are here having breakfast in the New York Diner on Northern Boulevard in Astoria Queens. After breakfast we are going to hop on an R train to the Morgan Library in Manhattan to see the original handwritten poem that Emily Dickinson sent to or gave to her sister-in-law/ soulmate Sue Gilbert Dickinson. It’s a difficult poem to understand. It starts off with the lines, “Two were immortal twice.”
Tyler: Two were mortal twice, the privilege of few, eternity obtained in time, Reversed Divinity.
Adam: Reversed Divinity. That to me is the mind blowing part, Reversed Divinity.
Tyler: Well, I don’t know, maybe it’s just my cloudiness right now, but I read that as the sublime or the eternal felt through the corporeal mundane.
Adam: But how? Why is Divinity reversed?
Tyler” Because maybe instead of Divinity coming from the outside, from above or something…
Adam: Mm-hmm.
Tyler: It’s emitting from itself, so it’s in a reverse direction. So instead of God giving us divinity, it’s coming from us. We’re viewing the world with divinity, from our Love-state of mind.
Adam: Reversed Divinity.
Tyler: If you read that as about being in love or having a connection with someone...
Adam: Yeah.
Tyler: "That our ignoble eyes the quality conceive of paradise superlative." It’s really not giving us much. There are no lifesavers in this one.
Adam: It seems like Emily Dickinson had two different modes of poems. She had ones that were for the general reader, I mean, I think all of them are meant at some level for a general reader, a very special general reader because it takes a lot of work, but obviously she’s got legions of fans, so not that rare, but still pretty special. Yeah. Maybe one out of 1,000 are willing to do that work.
Tyler: I think also, because she writes short poems. And people like that.
Adam: Yep.
Tyler: That makes her more accessible.
Adam: That's a good point. There’s a riddle-like quality too and I think people like puzzles. Some people enjoy trying to work it out, trying to figure it out.
Tyler: I’ve got a children’s book about an Emily Dickinson poem and at the bottom it says, “Can you figure out what animal she’s talking about here?” So yea, it’s all that. Basically every poem is presented as a riddle.
Adam: Yeah. Which is why that one poem about the snake, when they put the title on it, when they published it in The Springfield Republican and put a title on it, Emily Dickinson was like, no, no.
Tyler: Yeah. You don’t give it away.
[Little did we know at the time that the Morgan ALSO has the snake poem.]
Tyler: Speaking of that poem, I think the title of my new album is going to be Zero at the Bone.
Adam: Nice! I had a conversation with Truck Darling about that line recently. I use that phrase sometimes, but I think I mean something different by it than Emily did. What I mean by it is something closer to just getting down to rawness, down to the pure, just the bone, right? Just like letting go of everything except for life, like absolute being. But I think Dickinson meant it differently, right? She’s talking about fear.
Tyler: I think it’s both, right? It’s like when you have those encounters… it’s just like jumping into really cold water…It’s like all thought vanishes, and you’re at this kind of zero level.
Adam: Yeah.
Tyler: Where you’re like confronted with reality, but in a way, without any conceptual framework where you’re just like full of shit.
Adam: Fear is one way into that, I guess.
Tyler: Yeah. There "notice sudden is," you know.
Adam: Right.
Tyler: And then like, it’s just like, uh, wake up. I think it works like that too.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. It brings you back to that zero, meaning, in Dickinson’s conception, freezing. The freezing point.
Tyler: Yep. Right.
Adam: But it could also just be emptiness. Zero.
Tyler: Yeah. I think it works in both ways. That’s why it’s it’s such a good choice.
Adam: Yeah.
Tyler: As opposed to first chill then stupor, then the letting go. You know, she could have used the word chill like she uses in other poems.
Adam: Great Title. Zero at the Bone.
Tyler: Are you still doing those Dickinson essays?
Adam: Mm-hmm.
Tyler: That’s a great project. It’s a good slow read of Dickinson. She deserves that.
Adam: She does deserve it. So some poems, it seems to me, like this one, she is making a general statement, but she’s also doing it in this very private language that she shared with Sue. And the thing about Sue is that she was, if it’s even possible, an intellectual equal with Emily.
Tyler: I don’t know much about Sue. Is she a poet as well?
Adam: She did write poems, and she was often the first and only reader of Emily’s poems. We even have evidence of Sue offering Emily editing advice. There’s a letter where Emily says that the only person she’s ever learned more from than Sue is Shakespeare. That’s the only company she puts Sue in. And Sue is a mathematician, you know? So a lot of the poems to Sue will have Mathematical language in it, like this poem does with it’s doubling of doubles, “Two were immortal twice.” The other thing about Sue is that she was married to Emily’s brother. She was a believer. She was a professed Christian. So you get tons of poems that deal with this, like Emily saying to her, basically to effect, this [earthly sphere] is what we know, this is what we have. This is it. She says in one poem that her conception of heaven is that it would be boring like Sunday-school and so what’s the point of eternity? That kind of eternity is kind of horrifying.
Tyler: Sure. Just basking in the glory of God for eternity.
Adam: So for her it’s like, don’t miss this. You know, this, THIS. So one of my favorite poems of hers goes something like, “The life we have is very great. The life that we shall see surpasses it, we know, because it is infinity, but when all of space has been beheld, and all dominion has been seen, the smallest human heart’s extent reduces it to none.” You know, so this, right here, between us, is greater than all of eternity could be. Right? Which is a powerful way of putting it. So there are a lot of poems where I think she’s trying to convince Sue of this truth.
[voice memo paused]
Adam: All right, now we are walking to the Morgan Library from the R train and just thinking about how one of the things that’s special about this poem is that it was transactional. Actually, that’s really the wrong word to use because one of the recent blog posts on Prowling Bee [Fr799] is about Emily saying to Sue that relationships aren’t transactional. I mean, it’s not about being economical. You could give me the world but still hold back a star. But you’re holding back the star, right? I want the entire you, I don’t want a transaction. Why are you holding on?
Tyler: Yeah. Give it, give it all, uh, how dare you pay for breakfast and say, "You got it last time," God dammit.
Adam: Haha. Yeah, exactly. There’s another one where she’s talking about economy too [Fr687]. It’s a very similar poem, but she’s talking to the Mighty Merchant and the Merchant is like, can I interest you in Brazil? And she’s like, no, I don’t want Brazil. I want the world. So then in the later poem, she’s like, no, I don’t just want the world, I want the star too. I want the whole universe of you. Both of them were about economy and merchandise and I think Emily’s about this idea of all or nothing, where I think for Sue it was a little bit more necessary to think about finances. I mean, Sue had to marry for money, probably. I imagine one reason she married Austin is partly because he gave her financial security. I’m sure she loved him probably because it was Emily’s brother too. Like she probably...
Tyler: Did she know Emily well before she knew Austin?
Adam: Yes. They were school friends and very close.
Tyler: Okay, so it was like marrying the closest thing to Emily, the closest thing that was possible at that time was marrying her brother.
Adam: Exactly. And she got to live next door to her for her whole life. If she hadn’t married Austin, their intimate friendship probably would’ve split apart.
Tyler: Right.
Adam: So in a way it was a way for them to maintain their relationship.
Tyler: Yeah. Pretty brilliant solution.
Adam: Unusual, right?
Tyler: Very. Yep. Living in the house next door, getting to secretly carry on this deep relationship.
Adam: Poetry. And what’s amazing is at the end, Sue made Emily’s funeral shroud, you know, and arranged her in the grave and even put certain flowers on the body that meant certain things, like loyalty, etcetera. So in a way Emily got the world as well as the star.
Tyler: Um, incredible.
Adam: But anyway, the transactional aspect of it is that Sue's family was gone, and she didn’t have a way of existing in the world financially.
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: Emily did. She lived in her father’s house her whole life.
Tyler: Yeah.
Adam: You know, she never had to worry about money. I mean, that’s a beautiful thing. I don’t think Emily ever made any money. She has that poem that goes, "Publication is the auction of the mind of man," so there's a certain beauty in the fact that she never sold a poem, never auctioned her mind. And the crazy part is that we all have access to all of them now for free right? On the other hand, in the mentality of the modern world, this seems wrong. What? She never got paid. Really? Her poems are priceless.
Tyler: Yeah.
Adam: What’s that? Oh wait, we’re supposed to go in on 37th street.
Tyler: let’s go to the next block. Yeah, there’s a service entrance. I know that Robert Duncan also distanced himself from publishing. He said, I’m not publishing anything for 15 years, just to like change the mindset, you know, to actually become free to say whatever you want to say and do whatever you want. Be really experimental or not, and not have the audience in the back of your mind. It’s probably not wise to do that, but think it’s nice that you can, and that’s one of the pieces of advice I give in my videos is like, if you don’t show it to anybody, you can say whatever you want.
Adam: Yeah.
Tyler: It can be as embarrassing as you want to be because you’re not gonna show it to anybody. And then of course, that’s the good stuff.
Adam: That’s the good stuff. Yeah, that’s insightful.
Tyler: Once you do it and then you are like, oh, okay, I guess I can show this to people, but you gotta kind of get in that mindset bucket. I’m gonna be totally naked here and be vulnerable.
Adam: Because I’m not gonna show it to anybody. Yeah. These students of mine sent me a song the other day they recorded. They did that Moldy Peaches song, "Anyone Else But You." In their rendering they mess up a couple times, which cracks them up and they giggle. And as I’m watching the video, I’m thinking, that’s the best part, just them laughing.
Tyler: That's also what's nice about the recording we did last spring in Boulder, like the mistakes are there. You’re not like this Frankenstein monster of all these different parts, where you get rid of all the mistakes.
Adam: Is this it?
Tyler: What's the number?
Adam: 24. 24 East 37th. Must be it.
Morgan employee: How can I help you?
Adam: We have an appointment to see a poem.
Morgan Employee: What’s the name?
Adam: It’s Tyler and Adam, here for Prowling Bee.
Employee: Okay, follow me.
[Voice memo pause]
Adam: [In a whisper] Here we are in the special reading room of The Morgan. There are 4 or five people in here looking at manuscripts. We have the poem in front of us.
Tyler: Tell me about that "Eternity."
Adam: That "Eternity." Well, in Emily's handwriting there's always that magisterial E. And then the T is crossed and swoops down through the duration of the word.
Tyler: Which is broken in the middle.
Adam: Which is broken in the middle, like Eternity itself. I mean, that looks like a pretty deliberate break, right, between the r and the n. Like, why would you?
Tyler: “Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell." Eternity is parting there. The two are split.
Adam: Like if you're not thinking metaphorically about that split, but just for practical handwriting reasons, why would it be there? I mean, can you think of a reason to split the word like that?
Tyler: The practical reason would be, in cursive, to make sure that the r and the n don't form an m together is the only reason I could think of.
Adam: Ahhh, Right. That make sense. That's a big gap she leaves though.
Tyler: I imagined her dashes, since the dashes are such a prominent part of her work, would be much larger. They're teeny tiny dashes here.
Adam: Well, some of them. Her dashes seem to have different lengths and weights.
Tyler: So reversed -dash- divinity?
Adam: Reversed -dash- divinity, yeah. Reversed -dash- divinity? I don't think there was a dash between Reversed and Divinity in the online version was there?
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: So this can read differently, right? This could read time -dash- reversed." The Reversed could be qualifying Time.
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: Yeah, that changes things.
Tyler: Yeah, I wonder why they did that?
Adam: If you have the reversed coming after time and then "divinity that our noble eyes the quality perceive," It's a different thing. Yeah, the online version is different. That’s a very clear dash between reversed and divinity there.
[Long pause]
Adam: Eternity obtained in time reversed. I think you can read it as Eternity being reversed. Since we are are alive, and subject to time, we are the reverse of Eternity, which is beyond any measure of time. We are an inversion of Eternity, which is Divinity. It's the opposite of how you normally see Divinity. So Divinity has been reversed too I guess.
[Long pause]
Tyler: An interesting editorial decision too. Look at “through” on the last line.
Adam: Oh, where it’s just “thro'”
Tyler: And in the online version it is “THROUGH.”
Adam: Yeah, see, come on!
Tyler: Because "thro'" can be read a couple different ways. It can be read as “throw.”
Adam: "Throw their comparative." Yeah, throw it away! I think it is meant to be "through," but I still think you should leave her spellings alone. Like she often spells "upon" as "opon."
[Long pause]
Adam: I just love those Ys on Eternity and Divinity.
Tyler: Yeah. Looking at this now, I see this is not a formal gift, like I’ve written you this formal poem. This is more like, I’m passing you a note.
Adam: Yeah,
Tyler: I mean, if you were gonna make this into a gift for somebody, you would rewrite it and you wouldn’t, like, you would not let the space run at the end right there. This is just like, I’m gonna pass her a note today.
Adam: And yet it is incredibly tightly written, metrically. Like, no, you’re not just dashing this off. This has been composed, right, down to the dashes.
Tyler: But it shows this is a first draft, as opposed to something that she labored over, and then wrote out a good draft to pass on.
Adam: Right. The ending is a bit squished onto the page here, so maybe the presentation wasn't essential. But I bet there were drafts. Maybe it was worked out in her head first. Or maybe it’s like Chinese calligraphy.
Burba: mm-hmm.
Adam: Where it’s just like they do it very quickly, but they’ve been working at it for years, so they can capture nuances quickly you know?
Tyler: I see. All these other little dashes, are they just pen mistakes, like between reversed and divinity?
Adam: They could be.
Tyler: You also have that little mark right there, but then you have these other little dashes throughout. Like look between there and comparative.
Adam: Yeah.Yeah. I think that’s meant to be there.
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: But it’s a strange place to put a dash; "through their -dash- comparative."
Tyler: Mm-hmm. It's almost like sometimes they're not meant so much as syntax, but as a place to pause, take a breath or something like that, "through their -pause- comparative." But it changes the meaning though, right? "Though their Comparative" versus "through their - Comparative."
Adam: It does change it. And it makes it even more difficult to make sense of them poem.
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
A: It's already a syntactically difficult poem. But I think Sue was just so adept at being able to get the nuances of Emily’s poems.
[Long pause]
Tyler: So who was the main editor that took all these formulated and put them in the line breaks where they are.
Adam: Well, this is a long history. The first woman was Mabel Loomis Todd. She was Austin's lover. She was kind of Sue's rival in a way, right? Although I think part of the reason Austin didn’t stick with Sue is possibly because Sue was really in love with Emily. He complained about her being frigid. By the way, Sue was also known as being like this amazing hostess. Like you know, Emerson would come by her salon, and Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote "The Secret Garden." All these amazing writers and artists would come by, and they all talked about what an amazing hostess Sue was. So anyway, she was someone on Emily’s level, you know.
So this women Mabel Loomis Todd, that's her name, she came into town, young and beautiful. Emily's nephew was in madly love with her, but she herself fell in love with Emily's brother, and Sue's huband, the much older Austin. So her and Austin had this long affair, but she herself was obsessed with Emily. She never got to see her in person because Emily was so reclusive, but one time she was playing piano in the Dickinson library and Emily was in her room and, reportedly, Emily sent her a glass of sherry as a way of saying thank you for the music.
So then after Emily dies, Mabel devoted her life to her getting her published. I mean without her it's possible that we wouldn't have Emily's poems today, so it’s a great wrinkle to this whole thing that Austin’s lover becomes obsessed with Emily and ends up being his wife's lover's literary executor.
Tyler: She could never get out of her shadow!
Adam: Yeah. And then ends up devoting her life to her. It's a wild wrinkle to the whole thing. So, yeah, she reformatted a lot of the poems to help them get published.. And she partnered with this guy, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who is an amazing writer in his own right, an abolitionist and feminist. A lot of Emily's most famous letters are to him. So he helped Mabel Loomis Todd with this project of getting her published. And, you know, he also changed some of the poems and regularized, normalized, the poems.
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: But strangely, to truly read them, you almost have to see them handwritten. And it helps to hold them in your hands!
Pretending to be Sue
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: You know, it changes them, as we see here. Like, at least for me, there is a suggestion because of that dash there, that it's time that's reversed.
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: And then it could be read as "Divinity that our ignoble eyes the quality perceive," right?
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: But also, again, it goes back to this idea, at least my theory is, that these were composed to a melody. So that plays into it too, right? Like if you're thinking melodically, "reverse divinity" is one melodic unit. It's not "time reversed" you know?
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: I'm looking back at the beginning of the poem. There's something about that doubling of the double. There’s almost like a sense of the way that Shakespeare uses it in Macbeth, where there's a constant use of the word double, where doubling is always being doubled. It's signalling that there's a proliferation unto eternity. And remember the thing I said about Sue being a mathematician?
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: Like two becomes four, becomes eight, becomes, you know what I mean? There's a proliferation in the first two lines of two becoming more, two doubling, then the next line, "the privilege of few," brings it back down to rarity. So it's like a proliferation and then a slimming back down. It's math.
Tyler: Right.
Adam: She's got that poem "Forever is composed of nows." [Fr690] So that idea too, of eternity, you know, like the moment being eternal, having an eternal quality, proliferating infinitely.
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: I think you see that in the line here, “Eternity obtained in Time.” Forever is composed of Nows.
Tyler: It makes sense with Reversed Divinity, experience the eternal in the ephemera of the now.
Adam: Yeah.
Tyler: Which should be the opposite of the eternal because it's ephemeral.
Adam: Yeah, but if forever is composed of nows, then now is the real, like you're touching, you're constantly touching Eternity.
Tyler: mm-hmm.
Adam: You know, somehow it's got that mystical quality of tying you into the preciousness of the moment. And then again, "the smallest human heart's extent" reduces eternity to nothing. You know it's THAT precious. What a love letter!
Tyler: Incredible. The fact that there was a dash between reverse and divinity, I think is something that, uh, changes it as well.
Adam: Yeah. Reversed.
Tyler: So when there's no dash there, you see it as one unit. "Reversed divinity" becomes a unit, but when there's a dash there, they become independent of each other.
Adam: Yeah.
Tyler: So reverse could be dealing with time.
Adam: It could definitely be qualifying time.
Tyler: It could be qualifying the following line, Divinity that our ignoble eyes the quality perceive.
Adam: Because then to see divinity in each other is ignoble.
Tyler: Mm-hmm. Right.
Adam: Because it's not godly.
Tyler: It's heresy. Yeah. But it's a very romantic troubadour way of looking at Divinity.
Adam: Yeah, that's crazy that that dash gets taken out. I think even in the official version that I have, like most current one, which is called "Her poems preserved," I'm pretty sure they took the dash outta that one too. I think you gotta keep that dash in.
Tyler: I think so too. Because it allows the ambiguity or the, what's the word?
Adam: The syntactic ambiguity, you mean?
Tyler: Yeah, well that, but where you can go either way. I can't think the word. I'll think of it in a second, when it is too late.
Adam: Um, ambivalence?
Tyler: Ambivalence is not the right word. Well, taking out the dash pins down the syntax. So it's saying this should be read this way, as opposed to with having that dash there, the reverse could refer to time or it could reverse to divinity or both. There's much more play when you have the dash there.
Adam: Yeah.
Tyler: Because it's like you have these two entities, these two meanings that are gonna shoot sparks at each other, as opposed to being one entity, "Reversed Divinity," which is already a very interesting concept.
Adam: Sometimes I call it a sliding modifier.
Tyler: Hmm. There's also that dash at the end, which is also taken out. We already talked about that though, between there and comparative.
Adam: Oh, yeah. That's a clear dash. I mean, I'm sorry, but I don't think that's a pen mark.
[long pause]
And in that version, was there a dash after Immortal? Was it "two -dash- were immortal -dash- twice"?
Tyler: No, that one's taken out too.
Adam: That's an important one too.
Tyler: So you compare the two. You have "Two were Immortal twice" versus "Two were Immortal (pause) twice."
Adam: Yeah, in the second one you get a stronger emphasis on the Immortality, and the word "twice" too.
Tyler: Yeah. And look, they include the dash that's after "few" in this one, but they don't after the "immortal."
Adam: Well, the other thing that I should mention is that there are two versions of this poem. The online version is transcribed from the poem that is in the fascicle. We don't have access to that version to see what they were working with.
Tyler: Mm.
Adam: So there's a version online, and in "Her Poems Preserved," which is the one in the fascicle, and then there's this version which gave to Sue. So it's like she kept a copy for herself.
Tyler: Mm-hmm. Sort of, and she gave copy to, she gave them to other people.
Adam; But, since this is a poem to Sue, I think focusing on the extra dashes is worthwhile. I think she probably cared about Sue more as a reader than she did future unknown readers.
Tyler: Yeah. Especially as this is kind of an inside -not joke- but an inside language.
Adam: So, yeah, when I read this one, I just wanna stop for a second after "Two were Immortal," right?
Tyler: Yeah.
Adam: Whereas "two were immortal twice" just makes me think about the weirdness of the two being immortal twice. But here I just stop at two were immortal.
Tyler: and it makes more sense for twice to be referring to the next line, the privilege of few, twice the privilege of few, eternity obtained.
Adam: Why? How does that make sense?
Tyler: Well, I just mean that instead of twice being describing how many times they were immortal, it's talking about two instances.
Adam: Ah.
Tyler: this could definitely be fodder for your essay, those two readings of this. Or there's already 20,000 readings of this, but especially if there's a different reading that you can glean from if you put these dashes back in.
Adam: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if the twice is referring to two being immortal together, as in were immortal together in life, and then we'll be immortal again later after we die, or if the twice is that it's happening once for you and once for me now. You know what I'm saying? I can't quite get in her mind as much as I would like to.
I'm just imagining like, okay, you're Sue and you're reading this right. Um, I mean the two and few could even be riffing off the name Sue a little bit.
Tyler: Mm hmm
Adam: Twice is like a, a doubling of the two of them, the privilege of few. We're privileged in what we have. We've obtained eternity, in time reversed. We've reversed time. You could read it that way.
Tyler: mm-hmm.
Adam: We've reversed the effects of time and just stopped it. Reversed it.
[long pause]
Tyler: What do you make of Paradise Superlative?
Adam: Well, on one hand it's the privilege of few, like we share a paradise that's superlative to others. But I also think she's talking about effect of the ignoble; she's talking about this paradise being superlative to the idea of the paradise that everybody else has, like this is a better paradise. And again, that comes from looking at other poems of hers where she has that same idea. In another poem, she actually uses the word sordid to qualify Paradise. Because like, if our desire is ignoble, there's something sordid about our paradise, but I don't want a paradise that you're not in, that I'm not here with you. Let me find it. Here it is, Fr706,
Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes For sordid excellence As Paradise
So there she's saying, I don't have eyes for that kind of Paradise. It's excellent, but it's sordid. Right?
Tyler: Because Sue saturated her sight.
Adam: It continues,
And were You lost, I would be – Though My Name Rang loudest On the Heavenly fame –
So that gives a new quality to this, that paradise is superlative, but it's ignoble, right? Instead of looking at what we have is as ignoble, the heavenly Paradise is ignoble.
Tyler: You're reversing divinity, Adam. Careful. You get kicked out of your Catholic school for that.
Adam: Ruh roh. The quality perceived of paradise superlative through their comparative. I think she's comparing the two paradises, but how she's doing it is a little hard to figure out.
Tyler: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? You're more lovely and more temperate.
Adam: Yeah. Another comparison.
Tyler: I think that's a good reading.
Adam: Yeah. I don't know that I have clarity on it. I mean my original take on it, which I thought was beautiful, but now I think is totally wrong, was that comparison is what's ignoble. You know, because she has other poems that eschew the idea of comparison.
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: Like once you start comparing, you've lost the thread, you know? So I don't know if that rings completely wrong here, that it's ignoble to compare, but I think it's probably wrong looking at how the syntax works. But maybe the idea's in there.
Tyler: I'm reading it as that's how they are reversing divinity, right, is through the flesh and bones, and it's through these fallen bodies. Yeah. In the fallen state. That's what make the eyes ignoble. That's how it's reversed divinity. because they've reentered the Garden of Eden without the permission of God.
Adam: It's like she trafficked in the heretical. You know, they're very bold poems because she is reversing divinity often. I mean, it's almost part of her project. It's so fascinating because I think she has a real feel of the Christ idea.
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Adam: And at one point, in a couple poems, she's like, "Christ is now and here, like I am, you know? She's got a bunch of interesting poems about that Christ, inferring that he didn't just live then, it's a current thing in each of us. She identifies with it, you know, she has a poem about the Martyr poets for instance [Fr665]. She identifies with this idea of sacrifice of self, and yet she seemed to have no real love for God the father.
Tyler: Burglar banker father.
Adam: Right!
Tyler: Yeah. Or the little tippler. I don't know if that little tippler is supposed to be God or some other type of angel.
Adam: I always thought Dickinson was talking about herself.
Tyler: But it's also being like the paradise of nature. So God's kingdom is on earth. Men do not see it. You know, that old thing, just like that mystical union, that there's eternity and paradise is not out there or up there. It's right here, which is the reversal of the doctrine
Adam: Reversed Divinity.
[Here the voice memo ends]
So that's the deep dive into this poem Tyler and I took while holding the original poem in our hands. You can check out Tyler Burba's new album (which he did not, after all, title Zero At The Bone) here. It's amazing. You can also find his other albums here. All incredible.
Despair’s advantage is achieved By suffering - Despair - To be assisted of Reverse One must Reverse have bore -
The Worthiness of Suffering like The Worthiness of Death Is ascertained by tasting - As can no other Mouth
Of Savors - make me conscious -
As did ourselves partake - Affliction feels impalpable Until Ourselves are struck -
-Fr854, J799, Fascicle 38, 1864
Here is the last of the four commentaries for Prowling Bee written by Anthony Madrid. Anthony is a poet and critic and wrote the introduction for Face to Face, by Martha Dickinson, which is an account of Martha (Mattie) Dickinson growing up with her favorite Aunt, Emily.
•
The meaning is: You cannot benefit from another person’s death or despair. Those things have to be yours, if you’re to learn from them or whatever. If you’re to get their benefit.
Part of Emily Elizabeth’s strength is she thinks that suffering and despair and death are all worthy. To be “struck” is not entirely bad. She compares it to a good flavor.
The philosopher David Hume liked to use the taste of pineapple as an example of something one must know for oneself. He says, in the Treatise on Human Nature, that no amount of verbal description will get you anywhere near the sensation of pineapple. If you wanna know, you have to taste. — And, of course, he’s saying many, many things are like this.
Not saying Dickinson had read Hume. She never gave a damn about 18th-century literature; her thing was Shakespeare. And Shakespeare loves to have his characters say “Don’t try to advise me, unless you’ve been there.” That’s not the same concept as the Dickinson, but it’s related.
She staked Her Feathers - Gained an Arc - Debated - Rose again - This time - beyond the estimate Of Envy, or of Men -
And now, among Circumference - Her steady Boat be seen - At home - among the Billows - As The Bough where she was born -
-Fr853, J798, Fascicle 38, 1864
By way of a quick introduction: my name is Tom Clyde. Over the last year I have commented frequently on the Prowling Bee (as I have made my way through the poems chronologically), so some readers may have become acquainted with me already as “Tom C.” I live in Berkeley, California. I’m married to a painter and ceramicist named Claudia Morales, and together we have four kids, ages 28, 21, 20 and 18.
When Adam asked if I would like to “guest post” on the Prowling Bee I was very honored. To my mind, this blog is the best thing the internet has going! Beats A.I. any day.
I look forward each week to meditating on a new poem, with Adam’s commentary leading the way. I cherish the poems, but also this invisible community of readers from all over the globe, pondering and questioning and commenting together.
One thing I have admired very much in Susan and Adam’s posts has been the consistently curious, open-minded and unpretentious tone of their writing. They may delve deeply into the sound and sense of a poem; they may tackle a particularly abstruse philosophical question raised in a particular line, or pause to consider the spiritual reverberations from a single word. But what the Prowling Bee never does is trap us inside a fixed interpretative frame.
Over so many years and so many poems, Susan and Adam have managed to give their readers the space — the air — to wander through the poems, down our own winding paths.
I don’t know about you, but this is how I usually do it. I read the poem, read the commentaries and readers’ comments and then go back in again, my mind now full of strange ideas, beating to rhythms not natural to it. And to my surprise, when I start the poem all over again — as I swing open that squeaky gate at the top of the post — I find the garden still fresh, the dew still in the buds.
Remember how Marianne Moore once described poetry? “Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.” That’s the feeling alright. Add a bee.
And that’s the magic of the approach that Susan inaugurated in 2012. It’s one that Adam has sustained so strongly. Can you believe that the two of them together, by October 2025, are approaching nearly nine hundred insightful, quizzical, provocative, emotionally vulnerable essays on Emily Dickinson’s collected poems? It’s an astonishing feat.
So that will be my humble intention too, as I set out to “guest post” on this poem, Fr853. I would like the poem to remain as fresh for you after my commentary as it was at the beginning.
Okay, introduction done. Here we go.
*
This poem, we may safely say, is a bird poem. (I wonder if any of you do this: I scrawl words in pencil next to the poems in my volume of Franklin — “Art,” “Love,” “Missing,” “Death,” “Seasons,” “Eternity,” etc. for quick reference. This one was an easy call: “Bird.”)
Read literally, this poem is about a bird taking flight.
She staked Her Feathers - Gained an Arc - Debated - Rose again -
We recognize right away that the “she” of the opening line is a bird because she has “Feathers” and gains an “Arc.” Immediately, we see a bird trying to lift off the ground.
The first curious word of the poem, however, is “staked.” Think of the expression of “having a stake” in something. This verb choice conjures up risk-taking, perhaps even gambling. But really it’s true, when you think about it: taking flight is a kind of gamble. Will the resistance of the air create enough lift? Will “She” make it? The dash that ends the first line leaves us in suspense.
She staked Her Feathers - Gained an Arc -
By the second line, though, we have landed back on earth. We learn that the results of that first gamble were ambiguous at best. Our bird is back on the ground, debating what to do next.
It’s interesting to take a moment to think about the physics of flight, and how this action always involves a kind of gamble, a step into the unknown. After all, a wing (also, by the way, a sail on a sailboat) does not work in the way that most people assume — that is, by pushing. Rather, a wing is actually lifting the body of the bird (just as a sail is pulling a boat forward) due to a vacuum resulting from its unique shape. The air molecules moving across the upper side of a wing — the convex side — are moving faster than those that are underneath. Those air molecules along the top are rushing to reach the end of the wing and meet up with the air molecules moving more slowly below it. This discrepancy in speed creates fewer air molecules above, and hence the vacuum which lifts the wing! So a bird, when it presses against the air, exerting its muscles, expending its hard-earned calories (thank you, worm), actually has to rely on the physics of a vacuum… an absence of air molecules… to give it lift.
Doesn’t that sound like a gamble? To trust a vacuum?
But back to the bird’s lived experience. The phrase “Gained an Arc -“ in the first line suggests only a modest pay-off for the bird’s effort. Not bad, but maybe less than was intended?
I picture that “Arc” as a mighty hop, covering two or three feet. We have all seen birds do it thousands of times in our lives and hardly noted it. (Emily is so accurate in her observations of nature that she allows us to see these daily occurrences anew.)
In the second line, however, our bird “debates” whether to go for it again. Debated - Rose again -
Will it be worth the risk? Worth the energy expended? Apparently this debate resolves in the decision to raise the stakes on the second go. For this time she “Rose again,” but with a difference: no arc, just rising.
She is off.
This is perhaps as good a time as any to note that the meter of this poem, reflected in both stanzas, is alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, that is, 8-6-8-6 syllables per line. Dickinson uses a classic meter found in children’s rhymes and hymns, and both stanzas, of four lines each, row along in steady iambic meter. That is, every two lines read, rhythmically:
It is a very regular and singsongy meter. Fitting for a poem about a bird.
Yet Dickinson’s sophisticated sense of sound, the play of the consonants and vowels inside those syllables, tells a more complicated story that weaves through and around this regular meter.
The hard ā in “staked” and “gained” and “debated,” for example, keeps grounding us in the lived experience of the subject; those repeated hard ā sounds are, to my ear, an auditory clue that we are back in the mind of the bird. They sound a little strained, don’t they?
Staked his feathers Gained an arc (…but came back down) Debated (whether to go for it again)
Poor little thing.
Interlaced with these hard ā sounds, however, we also hear the “eh” sound in “Feathers,” the generous “ah” sound of “Arc” and then the definitive openness of the “oh” in “Rose.” These softer vowel sounds constitute a counterpoint, I think, which suggests that our bird is gaining more and more as she goes for it: from eh to ah to… oh! Two things are happening simultaneously, then, in this first stanza: the ā of effort and the eh-ah-oh progression of results.
Additionally, doesn’t “Rose again” suggest, subliminally, a kind of blooming, the unseen presence of flowers, maybe even a rose? The fluidity of these two words, “Rose” and “again” together (roseagain, James Joyce would have written it) conveys a sense of ease and triumph at the end of that second line.
This triumph of taking flight, this “Rose again,” brings to my mind the turnaround at the end of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29.
There, the poet is wracked with shame and self-pity. We might say he can hardly even manage a hop: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate…
But after nearly succumbing to despair, the poet’s thoughts lift like a bird:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate…
“Heaven’s gate.” In Emily’s language might not this be translated as “Circumference”?
And there’s even another reference Emily tucks into these words “Rose again.” Of course there is the association with the resurrection of Christ.
Nothing in Dickinson’s poetry is accidental, and I believe that choosing these specific words here she is deftly merging the flight of the single bird with the possible redemption of a human life. In other words, the bird may be more than a bird here. And the rising may be more than merely resisting gravity.
All this puts us in an elevated state, one might even say a state of grace, and we are only two lines in!
Let’s see where Dickinson takes us from here:
She staked Her Feathers - Gained an Arc - Debated - Rose again - This time - beyond the estimate Of Envy, or of Men -
We notice right away, reading the stanza as whole, that we have a rhyme of “again” with “men.” But we have more than that. We also have a return of the “eh” sound in “estimate,” “Envy,” and “Men.”
So there is another musical and rhythmic through-line in this opening stanza: f(ea)thers… ag(ai)n… (e)timate… (en)vy… m(e)n. Even after our bird has taken a risk and achieved flight, we continue to hear the pulse of this “eh” sound. Is this to suggest the steady pulse in the little bird’s blood? Or does this “eh”possibly indicate the continuity of consciousness — that resilient animal consciousness that lies behind the hard ā staking and debating part of the bird?
Now let’s try to make sense of the last two lines of the first stanza:
This time - beyond the estimate Of Envy, or of Men -
Our bird, our subject, has moved, with this latest gamble, quite beyond the estimate of “Envy, or of Men.” I read these lines to suggest that taking flight is so extraordinary, so outside of our common experience, that the usual responses we might have to it — of comparison and competition (“of Envy”), or even of sympathy and identification (“of Men”) are simply not available to us. The bird is most decidedly not where — or even what — she once was. She is transformed. She may be outside of our powers of description even.
That is the challenge of the rest of the poem.
So this first stanza feels liberating and exhilarating to me. It is certainly action-packed. We started with something very earthbound: feathers. Greasy, fragrant, inescapably particular. Our bird “staked” them, twice actually, and now she is… already… “beyond the estimate”!
Dickinson has a wonderful early poem, F68, which hints at the scale of her youthful ambition as a poet. The final stanza reads:
There are that resting, rise. Can I expound the skies? How still the Riddle lies.
Now in this seemingly innocuous bird poem (nearly 800 poems later), Dickinson seems to be doing exactly what she aspired to do as a young poet. She is expounding the skies. What is resting, we see rise.
So let’s go to the next and final stanza.
And now, among Circumference - Her steady Boat be seen - At home - among the Billows - As The Bough where she was born -
Ah, that cosmos-facing word, “Circumference”!
Dickinson uses it in many different ways, as elucidated in this essay on the blog, White Heat: Emily Dickinson in 1862 (July 16-22, 1862: Poems on Circumference – White Heat).
But one of the ways she uses this word, circumference, is to indicate those places where she reaches the very limits of intelligible language and comprehension. In one poem (F633) she describes herself, the poet, as venturing “out upon Circumference”. The final stanza of that poem reads:
I touched the Universe — And back it slid - and I alone - A Speck upon a Ball - Went out upon Circumference - Beyond the Dip of Bell -
In other words, the circumference lies beyond the dip of wedding bells, funeral bells, organized religion, conventional modes of experience, at the very edges of meaning.
Our bird, also a female like the poet, has staked, and debated, and finally taken flight. Note that when she takes flight in this second stanza of the poem she moves into present tense.
And now, among Circumference -
“And now,” it begins.
The bird/poet has flown, is flying, outside of estimate, sure. More than that, though, she is flying at the very farthest ring of comprehension.
Yet her steady body, her vessel, her “Boat,” can be seen (by whom?) very much in its element, “home” in fact, even in this liminal place.
This, then, is a true adventure into the unknown. It reminds me of the tales of classical heroes like Odysseus and Aeneas visiting the Underworld.
So they wander over the endless fields of air, Gazing at every region, viewing realm by realm.
— The Aeneid, Book VI, p. 211 Robert Fagles translation (Penguin Classics, 2006)
There is no safety here. Everything is distorted as if in a dream.
How still the Riddle lies.
And yet the hero in these epic tales retains his body — still mortal, intact — despite his journey to an unknown, even unknowable realm. So does the bird in this poem retain her identity, even if “beyond the estimate / Of Envy, or of Men.”
Her steady Boat be seen - At home - among the Billows - As The Bough where she was born -
Somehow, Dickinson has it, the adventurer — bird, poet, or… reader? — is at home among the tremulous “Billows.” She is just as at home as she was on the “Bough,” that is, in the nest where she was born. This is a high achievement.
It is an epic adventure, but also Dickinson shows us, an everyday occurrence. We see this achievement, remarkably — Emily directs our attention to it — whenever we witness a bird taking flight and vanishing into the clouds. The elegance of its wings moving through the air indicates that it is still “at home” even now. Grown, independent, but at home as much as when it was a baby.
So we see how this poem begins to reveal its non-literal meaning. It presents a metaphor for the grown artist that Emily has become.
I would suggest that it also works as metaphor for each of us, her future readers. For in our lives we too “stake” our feathers (our inimitable personalities, our talents, our efforts) every day. Many times we merely gain an arc. And then we have a decision to make: keep trying?
When we did keep trying, sometimes, we discover that we rise again and stay aloft, just like this bird. Perhaps an internship becomes a full-time job. Or an on-again, off-again relationship grows into a loving and committed marriage. Or a break from a judgmental parent forges a new and lasting identity. Whatever the form of flight, we feel as at home in this new present-tense experience as we did long ago in the nest.
The last feature of this poem that I want to mention before I close is perhaps my favorite. It strikes me as pure Emily, and emblematic of her genius. That is the repeated “b—“ sound in this final stanza.
Do these “b”s not suggest the beating of wings? They do to me. Read the stanza as a whole and hear it.
Her steady Boat be seen - At home - among the Billows - As The Bough where she was born -
Wow. Wings or not, they certainly add a feeling of quickening to the iambic meter. They hit on the 4th beat of one line, the 6th of the next, then the 2nd and the 6th again in the final line, as if gathering speed.
So, yes, this poem is a bird poem. It is also about life and chances. About high stakes and growing up and the edges of the possible. In other words, it seems to me, it is about what it feels like to be alive.
It turns out I could have scrawled all those other words next to it in my Franklin edition too — “Art,” “Love,” “Missing,” “Death,” “Seasons,” “Eternity”… We can stick with “Bird” for easy reference. But it’s amazing to know how much Dickinson discovers inside that little feathered body!
A snowy egret staking its feathers on October 23, 2025,
at Abbotts Lagoon in the Point Reyes National Seashore.
It was a Grave, yet bore no Stone Enclosed ’twas not of Rail A Consciousness it’s Acre, and It held a Human Soul -
Entombed by whom, for what offense If Home or Foreign born - Had I the curiosity ’Twere not appeased of men
Till Resurrection, I must guess Denied the small desire A Rose upon it’s Ridge to sow Or take away a Briar -
-Fr852, J876, Fascicle 38, 1864
Here follows the 3rd of Anthony Madrid's four commentaries for Prowling Bee:
This one’s riddling. She’s talking about her body. Paraphrase:
It could be considered a grave, though there was no tombstone nor surrounding railing. This grave’s border was the edge of consciousness and sensation. Its tenant was my soul.
Who entombed this soul in this body, and as punishment for what crime (committed on earth or elsewhere)—nobody knows. If I were to ask around, no one could tell me.
I’ll just have to guess, ’til Resurrection, when all questions will be answered. Meantime I’m denied the desire to improve this “gravesite,” either by adornment or by getting rid of bad parts. I’m stuck with it. (Which is the real reason I’m calling it a grave.)
She doesn’t say anything about changing her sex, but the poem easily bears that reading. It could just as easily mean she wanted to grow wings or a tail but couldn’t.
At any rate: Dissatisfaction with the body.
Thank you Anthony. That angle is insightful. Dissatisfaction with the body is something most of us can relate to in one way or another. Perhaps in Dickinson's case it was tied in with her physical well-being. I know she was "sickly" through long bouts of her life.
It leaves me with a question though. If the body is the encapsulating "it" of this poem, then why wouldn't the poet be able to adorn it with roses, or soften the sting of the briars with salves?
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