Perhaps
I asked too large—
I
take—no less than skies—
For
Earths, grow thick as
Berries,
in my native town—
My
Basket holds—just—Firmaments—
Those—dangle
easy—on my arm,
But
smaller bundles—Cram.
F358 (1862) 352
It’s poems like
this that makes one want to stand up and cheer for Dickinson. Her life was in
many ways imaginary: she didn’t go out on the ocean or even travel to the
beach. Unless she’s writing about robins and flowers and village people she is
writing from imagination. In 1862 she was withdrawing more and more from the
world, rarely leaving her own property. Her room became her private fantasy
world where she sat at a very tiny desk and wrote what she saw, felt, and
imagined.
This poem has a heroic feel: the
poet, writing from some vasty cosmic vantage point, moseys about with a basket
of starry skies. In fact, skies are the minimum unit she’s interested in: “I
take—no less than skies,” she informs us. After all, earth is common—they’re
like berries on a bush back where she comes from.
 |
| Dickinson would have loved these images of earth from space. It's just like a jewel. |
And where is that? Why in the brain.
In several of the last batch of poems I’ve commented on the detached and
observing “I” that is the speaker. This “I” stands outside body and soul and
although part of the self, is detached. This large world of the brain is seen
in a later poem “The brain is wider than the sky,” where in addition to the
wideness of the brain it is also “deeper than the sea” and as weighty as God.
That’s a big claim for the brain, but it bears thinking over.
There is a note of sarcasm in the
poem, I think, introduced in the first line: “Perhaps I asked too large.” The
poet isn’t really suggesting that she was being too grand; she’s really quite
pleased about it.
The implication is that lesser beings carry “smaller bundles” than Firmaments. That may be fine for them, but for a deep thinker and creative type like the poet, such bundles “Cram.” All those cares about shopping lists and the kids’ doctors’ appointments, and what the next concert in town will be are all just petty concerns that cram your head and get in the way.
The implication is that lesser beings carry “smaller bundles” than Firmaments. That may be fine for them, but for a deep thinker and creative type like the poet, such bundles “Cram.” All those cares about shopping lists and the kids’ doctors’ appointments, and what the next concert in town will be are all just petty concerns that cram your head and get in the way.
I just like the image of bonneted
Dickinson out and about in her woods with a basket of stars over her arm.
Once one experiences the boundless skylike nature of our minds unclouded by thought the body in ordinary consciousness can feel immensely dense. I get a sense Em is describing that disparity, beautifully rendered in the word Cram. As usual I read her poems as mystic blueprints, esoteric instructions in how to perceive this miracle of unbounded vision taking place inside a fenced frame or My Basket.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your insightful commentaries and providing a forum for readers' own interpretations. I have embarked on reading Em from 1 to 1789 and keep you close as my guide.
Thank you. Re-reading the poem I realize I should have paid more attention to that last word, "cram". It stands out both for diction contrast and for the irony. I'm glad you elaborated on it.
DeleteI just recently purchased Emily Dickson's entire collection of poems and have enjoyed reading your blog alongside it. It's fun and interesting to read your interpretation of the poems, especially since I don't have classmates to do with anymore. I truly love this poem and the magnitude of her vantage point. Whenever I'm doubting myself, I will surely remind myself to "take no less than skies!"
ReplyDeleteJust 18 poems ago (F336) ED wrote,
ReplyDelete“∙ ∙ ∙ were it told to me, Today,
That I might have the Sky
For mine, I tell you that my Heart
Would split, for size of me—
The Motions of the Dipping Birds—
The Morning’s Amber Road—
For mine—to look at when I liked,
The news would strike me dead—
So safer—guess—with just my soul
Upon the window pane”
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
Now (F358) she says,
“I take—no less than skies,
For Earths, grow thick as
Berries, in my native town—
My Basket holds—just—Firmaments—
Those—dangle easy—on my arm ∙ ∙ ∙”
Eighteen poems ago, if she were told she had the sky, dipping birds, or amber roads for hers, the news would strike her dead.
Now, she “takes no less than skies (firmaments) in her basket, for Earths (are common) as berries in her native town.”
What changed?
Susan K tells us, “In 1862 she was withdrawing more and more from the world, rarely leaving her own property. Her room became her private fantasy world where she sat at a very tiny desk and wrote what she saw, felt, and imagined.”
Eighteen poems ago, hauling common things of this Earth (skies, birds, roads) would cram her basket; now, in her room, like Thoreau in his cabin in the woods, she wants to focus on spiritual firmaments:
“I went to the woods [in 1845] because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.” (Walden, 1854)
There was a strong smell of transcendentalism in that 19th century Massachusetts air.
Thoreau's first "excursion" was 'A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers', published 1849, a narration of an 1839 float trip with his brother, John, who died of tetanus in 1842.
ReplyDeleteHenry Thoreau died of tuberculosis on May 6, 1862. ED composed this poem (F358) "about summer 1862" (Franklin, Work Metadata).
ReplyDeleteSusan, your explications are wonderful, but this one comes from a different universe, higher than the rest. I’m in awe.
ReplyDelete