The Way I read a Letter’s – this –

The Way I read a Letter’s – this –
‘Tis first – I lock the Door –
And push it with my fingers – next –
For transport it be sure –

And then I go the furthest off
To counteract a knock –
Then draw my little Letter forth
And slowly pick the lock –         (+slily, softly)

Then – glancing narrow, at the Wall –
And narrow at the floor
For firm Conviction of a Mouse
Not exorcised before –

Peruse how infinite I am
To no one that You – know –
And sigh for lack of Heaven – but not
The Heaven God bestow –

   -Fr700, J636, Fascicle 33, 1863


Imagine reading this poem the way Emily tells us in the poem that she reads a letter. First you take it into your bedroom and lock the door. Then you push on the door just to make sure it’s locked (because you know how sometimes you lock the door but it’s not all the way closed like you thought, so it’s still possible for someone to barge in?) The idea here is that you will need the most private space to get the full transport from the poem. Also, make sure you go as far away from the door as you can get, just to counteract any knock, should you receive one. Even one decibel less can make a difference! Then after you have locked yourself away, take the poem, and slowly unlock IT, with an emphasis on slooowly. Slowly (slily and softly) unlock the poem. But wait, before you read it, look along the floor to make sure not even a mouse can interrupt you. All clear? Okay, NOW you can read the poem with full transport.

What does the poem say?

It says how infinite you are.

Girl Reading Letter by Johannes Vermeer 

 
I think this gets at something essential about Dickinson’s poetry. It’s only in the small private space that the largess of the soul can be discovered, not in “public, like a frog”.

There is something curiouser and curiouser happening in this poem, like what happens to Alice in Wonderland. There is a reducing down in size, an effect Dickinson accomplishes here with word choice. The word “narrow” is used twice and there’s the word “little”. A mouse is mentioned. But it is, paradoxically, in that small, locked away space that the vastness of infinite self is discovered. The contrast helps you feel the effect of this sudden opening at the beginning of the last stanza. That infinity seems so much larger after locking away and narrowing down.

Peruse how infinite I am
To no one that You – know –
And sigh for lack of Heaven – but not
The Heaven God bestow –

Look at what Dickinson does in the last stanza. First that singular line, “Peruse how infinite I am”. Though the narrative of the poem is about looking over a letter from a lover, there is a doubleness here, because you are ALSO perusing a poem. You are perusing the lasting words of the poet, who becomes, herein, the infinite “I am”. This has a resonance with the biblical “I am”, except the end of this poem let’s you know that the biblical is not exactly what we are talking about here. “Peruse how infinite I am” If, in a thousand years, you had JUST this one line surviving from this poem, in the way that we only have one line fragments of certain Sappho poems, then “Peruse how infinite I am” would still resonate in the aura of the eternal.

But the sentence doesn’t stop at the line break. The line enjambs and carries over into the next one. “Peruse how infinite I am/ To no one that You – know–”. The reader is infinite TO the one who writes her the letter, but, lest you, like the little mouse, try to pry and see who it is from, save your questions. It is no one YOU know. The way Dickinson sets off the “know” in dashes makes that word hover importantly there, makes knowing itself hover there. It’s not someone YOU know, it is private. Love is, by necessity, between two people, and therefore private. But also, on the meta mystical level, when one is infinite, and, in turn, is seen by one who is infinite, how can there be any knowing? It is beyond the knowable.

Though it’s hard to imagine Emily was thinking about future biographers here, it's funny the way a line like this seems to be purposely teasing us readers who would love to know who that letter is from. This is not the right question it seems to be telling us. Emily Dickinson tells us HOW she reads, but not WHO the letter is from, since the letter writer is, like the poet, infinite and unknowable.

The last two lines of this poem continue the theme we saw in the previous fascicle, the idea of earthly love -and the momentarily infinite gaze between lovers- versus a heavenly love, which lacks the only thing we can truly know in this moment.

She keeps driving that point home, poem after poem.

- /)dam Wade l)eGraff