A Tooth upon Our Peace

A Tooth upon Our Peace
The Peace cannot deface—
Then Wherefore be the Tooth?
To vitalize the Grace—

The Heaven hath a Hell—
Itself to signalize—
And every sign before the Place
Is Gilt with Sacrifice—

    -F694, J459, Fascicle 32, 1863, 

This is one of those Dickinson poems with nary an online analysis. This one you are reading is, at the time it was written, the only one. It’s strange isn’t it? It may be a minor Dickinson poem, but it’s still a great one and well worth looking at closely. The first line alone has a memorable bite. 

Then we enter into some complicated, but insightful territory. At first I read the first two lines like this, “A tooth upon our Peace (that) the Peace cannot deface” as if Peace could not deface the tooth. But after puzzling on this for awhile I realized it might be the other way around, “A tooth upon our Peace (which) the Peace cannot deface”; the Peace cannot be defaced by the tooth. Which is the subject of these two lines, "Tooth" or "Peace"? These two possibilities lead to radically different readings, but both may be valid. No matter how deep our Peace, we are defaced by the bite of the teeth. But also, no matter how painful the bite, it can’t ultimately deface true Peace. Which is it?  Are both readings intended? Dickinson often leans into ambiguities of this sort. You really want it to mean one thing or another, but don't always get that satisfaction.

Perhaps we get a clue in the next line, “Then Wherefore be the Tooth? To vitalize the Grace.” Wherefore is an antiquated way of saying "why”, and vitalize means to give life. Why is the tooth there? To give life to grace. Here we have the thesis of the poem. Without the painful aspects of life, Grace would not be able to show itself.

The next two lines takes this idea further.

The Heaven hath a Hell—/ Itself to signalize—

Heaven has a hell to show us what heaven is. We wouldn't know "good" if we didn't have "bad". On one hand this might be an argument for the necessity of hell. On the other hand, it might be an argument for giving up the idea of heaven itself, to go beyond duality.

Look at the last couplet,

And every sign before the Place/ Is Gilt with Sacrifice—

These lines take some working out. Gilt means covering something with gold. Sacrifices are golden signs along the road to heaven. The idea of sacrifices circles back to Tooth. The painful things we endure, the pleasures we give up willingly, are pointing us to Heaven.

But there is a funny pun here with “guilt”, especially if this poem is read out loud. (This same pun can be seen in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth says, “I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal (with blood) For it must seem their guilt (they're gilt)." If we see/hear the word guilt in this line, it takes on a different timbre. Is sacrifice a noble thing, or an action driven by “guilt”? If it is the latter, then perhaps this poem is pointing toward giving up the notion of heaven and hell altogether. If it is the former, it is showing us the flip side of sacrifice.

Which way do you read it? Contranym is a term for words that can have opposite meanings, like "bolt" or "cleave". Some entire Dickinson poems have the quality of being contranymic. 

I love the ways Dickinson undergirds her meaning with sound. This one pushes the sibilance of the cee sound. Peace, Deface, Grace, Place, Sacrifice. You hear it very strongly in the first two lines and it persists throughout the short poem. It is to my ear a sharp whiplash-like slicing sound, which is in keeping with the sharp “Tooth”. There is also the near rhyme of vitalize and signalize, which adds to the effect.


-/)dam Wade l)eGraff


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This poem reminds me of a routine by the comedian Jacqueline Novak, which I recently watched on Netflix. Here’s an excerpt:

“The teeth…they’re the seeds in the watermelon…they’re the sand that irritates the oyster that produces the pearl. They’re the sea salt in the caramel. Remember in 2012, when they felt they had to go wide with that? Some of the caramel people realized we’d all grown too accustomed to the taste. They said, “We need to put a reminder, something in every damn bite.” “Something that says, ‘No, sweetness is not guaranteed in this life.'” It’s like the little rubber guy in the cereal box, the little gummy guy you throw against the wall and he clings, but then he fails, but tries and fails, and tries and fails, and through his trying and failing and trying, he appears to crawl. And that’s why we love him. That’s what makes him a prize. That’s why we dig through the grains for him before we’ve earned him through the steady, daily eating of the cereal. At bare minimum, at bare, obvious minimum, the teeth in the are the details that bring the textures to this life. The kind the English teacher promised us would illuminate the universal through the particular. They’re the plums in the icebox, the popping of my “P” sounds in the microphone. The “measuring out of life in coffee spoons, fog curling in the windowpane,” Garbo’s salary, cellophane, Zuzu’s petals. They mean you’re… you’re alive and you’re in your life, and this time, you get it. This time you see it’s a wonderful life. This time you see that you’re the richest man in town. I mean, they… they send a Susan to her potential death. But for faith and desire alone. The teeth shall remain. The teeth bring the centuries to the thing.”