Dreams — are well — but Waking's better

Dreams — are well — but Waking's better,
If One wake at morn —
If One wake at Midnight — better —
Dreaming — of the Dawn —

Sweeter — the Surmising Robins —
Never gladdened Tree —
Than a Solid Dawn — confronting —
Leading to no Day —
                                                                           F449 (1862)  J450

This rather maddening poem contrasts dark and dawn, waking and dreaming, life and death, and heaven and hell. I find the poem“maddening” because Dickinson’s grammar is so sketchy. Words are left out with abandon and it sometimes isn’t clear to me which clause goes with which other clause.
         The first line begins clearly enough and then the poem slowly slides into the ambiguities and mysteries of the second stanza. It’s tempting to feel that if missing words could be supplied, if grammar could be regularized, then the poem would make complete sense. But I’m pretty sure Dickinson wanted this poem to be suggestive rather than descriptive.
         First stanza: It’s good to dream but waking up is better – as long as you wake up in the morning. If you wake up at midnight, on the other hand, you’d be better dreaming of dawn. After this, I am conjecturing: such dreams would be much sweeter than being confronted by a “Solid Dawn” that doesn’t lead to any day. The dream sweetness would better than even the dreaming, “Surmising Robins” who wake up and gladden the trees with song.
        What is the “Solid Dawn” that leads to “no Day”? While “dawn” suggests a new and heavenly or eternal life, its opposite, “Midnight,” suggests the blackness of torment, the grave, or hell. Dreaming of dawn would be sweeter indeed in comparison. With that in mind, Midnight itself is the “Solid Dawn”: the dark, black of the grave. Waking at the blackness of midnight (remembering that Dickinson would never have experienced the light pollution we currently ‘enjoy’) presages waking into that eternal night. There’s a resulting terror in the last line of the poem, warning that no day will every follow that black dawn.

Dickinson uses a few word sound groups to emphasize her images. The poem is sprinkled with the “d” sounds that remind us of “death,” but here go with “Dreams, Dreaming, Dawn, Dawn, and Day – all of which take on a darker meaning as the poem progresses. The breathy “W” sounds of “Waking,” and the repeated “One wake” provide a hushed and mysterious mood. The one bit of lightness comes from the “S” sounds of “Sweeter – the Surmising Robins.”
   

I died for beauty — but was scarce

I died for beauty — but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room — 

He questioned softly “Why I failed?”
"For Beauty," I replied —
"And I — for Truth — Themselves are One —
We Brethren, are," He said —

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night —
We talked between the Rooms —
Until the Moss had reached our lips —
And covered up — Our names —
                                                                                   F448 (1862)  J449

The setting: a mausoleum with separate rooms. The narrator lies in one room, recently dead, but long enough so to have “Adjusted” herself when another body is laid in the next room. The recent arrival strikes up what is to be a very long conversation by provocatively asking his neighbor why she “failed.”
         Helen Vendler claims “failed” is used in the sense of “weaken and die,” as if the pursuits of beauty and truth compelled the seekers to efforts beyond their strength. One thinks of the poet or philosopher burning the midnight oil, scarcely eating, taking no heed for their personal wellbeing until their health failed. But now they have seemingly endless time to contemplate and discuss their two pursuits.
         The dialog between Truth and Beauty is meant to recall two poems from two of Dickinson’s favorite poets: John Keats and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. From the ending of Keats’ “On a Grecian Urn”:

 Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Keats, according to Helen Vendler, in thinking about beauty would be considering “aesthetic creation and its product.” Truth would be “both philosophical and representational.” The Truth seeker, like Keats, comments that Truth and Beauty are “One.”
Browning takes a slightly different angle in “A Vision of Poets” where a poet is led by a Muse through trial and terror to a vision of great poets of the past whose foreheads were “royal with the truth”:

These were poets true,
Who died for Beauty, as martyrs do
For Truth — the ends being scarcely two.

A moss-covered family mausoleum

So while Keats says that truth and beauty are the same, Browning says it is the people, that the lives and deaths of poets and martyrs for truth are very similar. Both give up their lives. One remembers that Dickinson herself gave up her life, her potentially ‘normal’ life, that is, for poetry.

Dickinson’s Truth seeker takes both Keats and Browning’s positions: Truth and beauty are the same; consequently, the two of them, the two souls in the mausoleum, are “Brethren.” Beauty, note, makes no comment except that “as Kinsmen” they spoke together until the moss covered their names. Their “lips” would be, as in F210, the granite grave markers. Their conversation would have lasted at least a hundred years – probably much more!
        The two have an idealized and Platonic relationship, satisfying and comfortable unlike the frustrating relationships Dickinson experienced with many of the people she loved in her lifetime. Nonetheless, a wall separates the two. There will be no physical union or consummation here. Can Truth, one is led to ask, never completely be joined with Beauty?
        Perhaps, but Dickinson sets her scene in a mausoleum, typically a structure to contain the graves of family members. Although she may have simply meant that there were two graves side by side, I think it more likely that she is reinforcing the close kinship between the two. They share the same DNA.

The quiet end is terrible in a way despite its gentle peacefulness. As the moss spreads over bones and stones, it obliterates the separate identities through which the two souls communicated. It is a second death. Nothing fearful about it. The consciousness of the Beauty narrator continues to exist but it is in a diffused state. There is some sort of deep irony about the poem being a communication from that distant state. Perhaps it is a Truth about Beauty.

Another stanza from Browning’s poem also depicts the death of Poet/Beauty as peaceful:

Since sweet the death-clothes and the knell
Of him who having lived, dies well;
And wholly sweet the asphodel

In falling Timbers buried —

In falling Timbers buried —
There breathed a Man —
Outside — the spades — were plying —
The Lungs — within —

Could He — know — they sought Him —
Could They — know — He breathed —
Horrid Sand Partition —
Neither — could be heard —

Never slacked the Diggers —
But when Spades had done —
Oh, Reward of Anguish,
It was dying — Then —

Many Things — are fruitless —
'Tis a Baffling Earth —
But there is no Gratitude
Like the Grace — of Death —
                                                                     F447 (1862)  J614

I was going to dismiss this poem about how the diggers fight their way through rubble only to find the man just a moment too late. I was going to say the last line was a bit morbid: the would-be rescuers would find no gratitude from a dead man –  or his kin. Their one comfort would be the thought that the trapped man was now dead and out of the reach of suffering.
        But then I thought of Bangladesh, the collapsed factory trapping and killing many women and girls. The death toll has passed 1100 as I write. The diggers there are now, with the amazing exception of a 19-year-old who survived 17 days beneath the rubble, pulling out only dead and decomposing bodies.
      

Thinking on these rescuers, then, Dickinson’s poem takes on a new relevance. No, the diggers in Bangladesh will find little gratitude although no doubt many people appreciate their efforts. But what they must be confronting over and over, are the dead. How else could they cope with this horrific event if they could not reassure themselves that “there is no Gratitude / Like the Grace — of Death”?
       The last stanza bears some unpacking. “Things,” Dickinson rather vaguely points out, are often “fruitless” and this word carries the twin meanings of “barren” and “pointless.” The unspoken question of “why” points to the poets shrugging dismissal: “’Tis a Baffling Earth.” Our sense of justice and happy endings will be constantly thwarted. The rescuers won’t be in time. But (and that transition is key: note that Dickinson does not use “therefore” or “consequently”) death will come. Lovely easeful death – “the Grace – of Death.”
         “Grace” is one of those rich words, blessed with many meanings. Here it suggests the grace of God – his free and unearned favour; eternal life; privilege; mercifulness; graciousness and beauty; and, finally, a prayer of thanks. Grace doesn’t just apply to the awful death of those trapped in rubble and fallen timber. It applies to all of us and it is with that hope that both the buried and the diggers can bear this baffling life.

This was a Poet –

This was a Poet –
It is That
Distills amazing sense
From Ordinary Meanings –
And Attar so immense 

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door –
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it — before — 

Of Pictures, the Discloser –
The Poet — it is He –
Entitles Us — by Contrast –
To ceaseless Poverty — 

Of portion — so unconscious –
The Robbing — could not harm –
Himself — to Him — a Fortune –
Exterior — to Time –
                                                                    F446 (1862)  J448

In this paean to poets – amid whom Dickinson was in the process of assigning herself a place – Dickinson begins with a rhetorical device: “This was a Poet” – an address directly to the reader as if she were an orator with the body laid out before him on a slab of marble. And then she describes the poet. The “He” is probably a universal “he” and would include any women poet as well (such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning whom Dickinson admired – as she did Robert Browning).
    The true poet can distill “amazing sense / From Ordinary meanings.” Yes, a very good depiction of the poet, at least in some critical circles. The essential oil of life, the “attar,” that the poet wrings from life is orders of magnitude better than anything the we might have expected common door-side roses to produce. The “immense” is a bit surprising, as one expects the poet’s attar might be “intense.” I suppose the oil is so fragrant it fills the air. The poet’s perceptive insights fill readers up, too, until we wonder how we’d never seen things quite that way before.

Painters, such as Matisse, can also make us see those
common doorway flowers in a new way

    The poet tells us what the pictures are, shows us their meanings. So gifted is he/she that the rest of us in contrast are in “ceaseless Poverty.” His good fortune is so great that we could rob him of a bit of it and it would not hurt him. The poet, caught up in his (her) art is “unconscious” of being copied or even plagiarized. Poets like Shakespeare are not bound by time. Indeed, he stands outside of the flux that shapes and propels the rest of us. Perhaps he even contributes to the flux.

Helen Vendler notes that Dickinson in this poem is speaking as a reader and not a poet. If so, Dickinson would be hearkening to Shakespeare, Browning, or Keats, for example, and musing about the power they hold.

Although I like the poem, I don’t think the imagery or ideas are among Dickinson’s most powerful or creative. 

   

They shut me up in Prose —

They shut me up in Prose —
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet —
Because they liked me "still" —

Still! Could themself have peeped —
And seen my Brain — go round —
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason — in the Pound —

Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Abolish his Captivity —
And laugh — No more have I —
                                                                         F445 (1862)  J613

There is quite a bit of power in this poem as Dickinson likens being shut up in “Prose” to being stuck in a closet for not being quiet enough as a girl. It’s a critique on art, gender, and freedom in general.
       Two narratives emerge: the present and ongoing conflict where “They” inflict Prose on the poet, and the past where “They” restricted her freedom in her childhood. One narrative illuminates and informs the other as in both cases the poet’s irrepressible drive to express herself is under attack. In both cases the poet survives to scoff at the would-be prose/quiet enforcers.

The first line is ironic: clearly no one ever really shut Emily Dickinson up in prose. But what she may be saying is that she feels as if she were in a prose (dull, commonplace, uninspired) prison. Her letters reveal a shallow mother, a ponderously lawyerly father, and interminable sermons at Amherst’s First Church of Christ, (to say nothing of school lectures). Dickinson’s quick and startling wit, her fierce and original passions, and her nonconformity (even, perhaps, her self-mythologizing) would indeed have been under societal and family pressure. Except for her beloved sister-in-law Sue, with whom she had a very troubled relationship, and maybe the mysterious “Master,” Dickinson would have been pressured or cajoled on all sides, even by her chosen poetry Preceptor, Thomas Higginson, to rein herself in.
        Part of this reining in involved gender expectations. A little girl should be quiet. A young lady should be proper and aiming to marry. A grown woman should be self sacrificing. Another reining-in involves art. Dickinson’s poetry was ahead of its time, difficult to understand, often shocking in implication. Other poets of her day (excepting Whitman) were extolling flowers, spring, and death in much more conventional terms and in much more conventional poetic and metrical form.

Pounds: sad for puppies,
laughablefor birds

        But perhaps more fundamentally, the poem has to do with freedom. Dickinson identifies here with the bird, a familiar image for her, representing spirit, hope, and freedom. She, like the wayward bird, has been confined in the pound, an enclosure to confine stray creatures. But then the poet scoffs at the idea. What, you think that shutting me up can keep me still? My body, yes, certainly you can restrain that. But you can no more quiet my brain than you can impound a bird for treason. All it has to do is fly away, over the fences or through the bars, laughing at its erstwhile jailors. It would be as “easy as a Star” for it to escape – it only has to “will” it.
     Interestingly, her bird is impounded for “Treason” – a laughable thought, but I doubt that the poet tossed that charge in randomly. She, too, must have been made to feel that, like a traitor, she was in some way betraying her community and culture.

When I read this poem I envision a swan in a family of ducks. Perhaps I fixated too early on “The Ugly Duckling”.  But unlike that fable, in this poem Dickinson makes it quite clear that she knows she is the swan. She is not repentant, not subdued. As she famously said to her niece as she closed her bedroom door behind them and pantomimed turning a key, “It’s just a turn – and freedom, Matty!” Irony again. Confining herself to her room, to her father’s grounds, was to Dickinson her greatest freedom.

Modern readers might also think of Maya Angelou's powerful poem, although it comes from a place of greater oppression:

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and is tune is heard
on the distant hillfor the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze
an the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

It would have starved a Gnat —

It would have starved a Gnat —
To live so small as I —
And yet I was a living Child —
With Food's necessity

Upon me — like a Claw —
I could no more remove
Than I could coax a Leech away —
Or make a Dragon — move —

Not like the Gnat — had I —
The privilege to fly
And seek a Dinner for myself —
How mightier He — than I —

Nor like Himself — the Art
Upon the Window Pane
To gad my little Being out —
And not begin — again —

                                                            F444 (1862)  J612

Dickinson uses food as a metaphor for the existential deprivation she felt from her childhood years. A master of first lines, the poet begins dramatically: “It would have starved a Gnat – / To live so small as I.” It would be hard to find a tinier and more insignificant creature than a gnat. Why would the poet, as a “living Child,” have been so starved that a gnat dined better than she, that hunger fastened her in its grip like a giant claw?

            The claw, like true hunger, is impossible to dismiss. It would be easier for her, she writes, to coax a leech from sucking her blood or to move a dragon.

            The gnat is also better off, “mightier,” than the poet because at least it can fly about and search out its dinner. The child – or at least upper middle-class children such as Emily Dickinson – must be given food. They couldn’t just run about town and hustle a bit of dinner for themselves. But the child poet was given precious little nourishment.

Dickinson saves the greatest  bitterness for the last stanza: The gnat has the “Art” of gadding his “little Being out” by crashing into the window. That’s enough to kill a gnat, but such a death is not possible for the starved child. It’s really a powerful image: the gnat is lured by the outdoors. It gathers itself and flies pell mell for freedom, only to be dashed against clear glass. The child doesn’t have even an illusion to lure her to an accidental – and easy – death. The gnat doesn’t have to “begin – again” either. Should the child die, she may very well have to start over in an afterlife.

The poem reads as a bitter indictment of her culture, schooling, and family.  Her mother was weak and unable to provide emotional nourishment, requiring it instead from her children. Her father was austere and undemonstrative. The church was strict, the cultural mores conventional, the opportunities for a woman who danced to the music of a different dervish slim.

            It’s achingly sad to think of the child. Yet the poet sprang from the child. She did not resign herself, did not take false sustenance, ever and always told the truth – but told it “slant.”

Could — I do more — for Thee —

Could — I do more — for Thee —
Wert Thou a Bumble Bee —
Since for the Queen, have I —
Nought but Bouquet?
                                                           F443 (1862)  J447

Ah, if only you were a bumble bee I might be able to make you happy. I don’t have much, but at least I have a bouquet of flowers. That should make a bee buzz! There’s a bit of a sexy tease here. Dickinson wrote several poems where the bee is a lover seeking the nectar of his flower (e.g., F205). The dashes give the poem, particularly the first line, a rather breathy quality.
         Even the word “Bouquet” has a coquettishness to it. There is the bridal bouquet, of course, but also the second meaning of the word – that of fragrance. The would-be-lover poet is presenting herself as alluring, enticing the bee with her fragrant nectar.

I do read this poem, however, as a cover note for flowers intended for a man’s wife. Let’s say that she sent this to Samuel Bowle’s along with a bouquet intended for his wife Mary. Dickinson did in fact write over fifty letters to Mary although her heart was all for Samuel. I doubt if he missed the message. I doubt if Mary did, if she read it.

I see thee better — in the Dark —

I see thee better — in the Dark —
I do not need a Light —
The Love of Thee — a Prism be —
Excelling Violet —

I see thee better for the Years
That hunch themselves between —
The Miner's Lamp — sufficient be —
To nullify the Mine —

And in the Grave — I see Thee best —
Its little Panels be
Aglow — All ruddy — with the Light
I held so high, for Thee —

What need of Day —
To Those whose Dark — hath so — surpassing Sun —
It deem it be — Continually —
At the Meridian?
                                                                         F442 (1862)  J611

   
In this simple love poem, Dickinson takes three scenarios of separation to show that her deep love for her beloved will never dim. Threading the poem are images of dark versus light, for love does not need light – or vision – to thrive.

          In fact, love does better in the dark. The first stanza tells us that love is a prism that excels “Violet.” Here, “violet” stands for the spectrum of visible light. The poet’s love is so much better than visible light that she can see her beloved better in the dark than with an artificial light – or even day. She “sees” him or her in a deeper and more complete way than just the physical form we see from the play of light and shadow in ordinary light.
         The second stanza takes us deep into the darkness of the mine, its long, dark tunnels representing the stretch of long separation. But this separation does not dim the poet’s memory of the beloved. Just as the “Miner’s Lamp” illuminates the darkest mine, so her love can see across the years. I love the way these years “hunch themselves between” the two lovers as if they had a physical contour that blocked sight. But again, Dickinson claims that even these hunching years help her to see her loved one better than if she were seeing him every day.
        The poet’s love is so powerfully illuminating that it lights up even the grave. She has held her love for him or her “so high” that it lights up even the cold marble tomb.  It seems odd that the poet sees her beloved best once he or she is dead, but perhaps that is because there are no more obstacles to obfuscate his or her true nature. Even people we love can give us mixed messages in their glances or in what they say or write or do. After death, to the clear light of true love, only the truth remains. Or so Dickinson would like us to think.
        She ends the poem by saying, rather unnecessarily I think, that if your love light is strong enough – so strong that it is always noon time – you don’t need day at all.

The poem is written in standard hymn or ballad form.

You'll find — it when you try to die

You'll find — it when you try to die —
The easier to let go —
For recollecting such as went —
You could not spare — you know.

And though their places somewhat filled —
As did their Marble names
With Moss — they never grew so full —
You chose the newer names —

And when this World — sets further back —
As Dying — say it does —
The former love — distincter grows —
And supersedes the fresh —

And Thought of them — so fair invites —
It looks too tawdry Grace
To stay behind — with just the Toys
We bought — to ease their place —
                                                                F441 (1862)  J610

In this rather conventional poem, Dickinson suggests that thinking about joining our dear departed loved ones will make it “easier to let go.” She drops a few words that would give the poem grammatical correctness (and accessibility), but this can add some interesting ambiguity and double takes.

I love it when the names get mossy

         In the first stanza, for example, we read “You’ll find –  it when you try to die.” I immediately begin to wonder what it is and under what circumstances I would “try to die.” Greater literal clarity might be accomplished with “You’ll find, when you are ready to die, that it is easier to let go …” But the initial impression is more interesting and more powerful. The “try” is useful, too, for the tension it introduces. The subject both doesn’t want to die (hence the tip to  make it easier) and does want to (hence the trying to die).  
         There’s a nostalgic feel to the poem – if not an overly sentimental one. The friends who died are preferred over newer ones: we don’t choose “the newer names” over the old. New friends are also superseded by the “former” loves. In fact, just thinking about those dead loved ones makes it seem tacky to hang around in the land of the living.  We are but children in this life, lacking understanding and clinging to things that in the end are no more than playthings to keep away the tears and fears.