Denial—is the only fact

Denial—is the only fact
Perceived by the Denied—
Whose Will—a numb significance—
The Day the Heaven died—

And all the Earth strove common round—
Without Delight, or Beam—
What Comfort was it Wisdom—was—
The spoiler of Our Home?


     -Fr826, J965, Fascicle 40, 1864


Let’s start with the ending of this poem and work backward. “The spoiler of Our Home” is a stomach-churning phrase. If Home has infinite power, as Dickinson has written elsewhere, then there is a real horror in spoiling it. Most of us can feel this at some level, though some of us may relate more than others. There are few things worse than having your home spoiled. It feels like "Heaven died."

And all the Earth strove common round
Without Delight, or Beam—

The home has been spoiled. There is no more delight, nor heavenly beam of light. There is only a common earthly striving.

The stakes in this poem are high then. So naturally, we want to know, what is it that happened that “spoiled” the poet’s home? So we go back to the beginning of the poem and find out that the only “fact perceived" is the beloved’s denial of the narrator. 

What is the Beloved's reason for the denial? Maybe there’s a very good reason? But, since this reason isn't given to us, the sense that I get here is that those other facts are irrelevant. There is no reason good enough to spoil a home. The only one that matters is what leads to -what Dickinson called in an earlier poem in this fascicle- “the finallest occasion.” It has spoiled the home. Whatever other “facts” there may be pale in comparison to this one.

The poet doesn’t give us the beloved’s purported reason for the denial because it is not pertinent to the overriding fact of the denial itself.

What Comfort was it Wisdom—was—

The spoiler of Our Home?

Whatever "Comfort” there may be in the reason for the denial couldn't possibly make up for the ultimate comfort of the home before it was spoiled. And it would be even more asinine to call reasons for denial “wise,” because what wisdom could there possibly be behind the spoiling of a home?

Think about the spoiled homes you know about and how the spoiler always has some “justification” for their actions. This poem is asking, how can you ever justify breaking up a home? The poem is asking the reader to stop and really think about those possible justifications for ending a relationship.

I think it might be useful to read this poem in light of the homeless problem, and the immigrant problem too. What does it mean to deny someone a home? What possible reason could be good enough?

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Can this poem be read against itself? I wonder about that word "Will" in the first stanza,

Whose Will—a numb significance—
The Day the Heaven died—

I can’t help but think of the phrase, "Not my will, but Thy will be done." Is it the “will” that got in the way in the first place and caused the beloved's denial? In Fr818, Dickinson writes,

Other Betrothal shall dissolve —
Wedlock of Will, decay —

A Wedlock that we have willed our self decays. The Will can be a problem.

But I also think that Dickinson may merely mean here that since the break up of the home, she lacks the will to even get out of bed.

P.P.S.

What about those other "facts," the unperceived ones? Maybe they do matter? If this is a poem to Sue, and I suspect it is, then Sue's reason for denying Emily may have seemed quite reasonable. After all, Sue was married to Emily's brother. It was a very complicated relationship.

"Unto Me?" I do not know you—

"Unto Me?" I do not know you—
Where may be your House?

"I am Jesus—Late of Judea—
Now—of Paradise"—

Wagons—have you—to convey me?
This is far from Thence—

"Arms of Mine—sufficient Phaeton—
Trust Omnipotence"—

I am spotted—"I am Pardon"—
I am small—"The Least

Is esteemed in Heaven the Chiefest—
Occupy my House"—

    -Fr825, J964, Fascicle 40, 1864


This poem is a conversation between the poet and Jesus. It starts in a very Dickinsonian way. Christ uses the same truncated language the poet does. “Unto me?” It’s like shorthand, encapsulating in two words the whole question. No set up, no pre-amble, and no extra words.

Dickinson loved that preposition “unto” and used it in several poems, usually love poems, and always with gravity. Here she opens up the poem with the open vowel of the word, which immediately brings us “unto” the poem itself. 

“Unto” is a strange word if you think about it. The etymology of the word is a merging of “until” with “to,” but it has come to mean something more totalizing. In King-James-Bible terms it has the connotation of moving exclusively toward something. Matthew 11:28 says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Dickinson shortens all of this to just the essential “Unto me?,” but the rest of the scripture is implied. The translator of the original Hebrew could have just written, “Come TO me,” but there is more of a sense of all-inclusiveness in that word “unto.” There is also a hint of “into.” Come into me.

Our sense of the connotation of this word matters. Dickinson writes in one letter to Abiah Root, “I have perfect confidence in God & his promises & yet I know not why, I feel that the world holds a predominant place in my affections. I do not feel that I could give up all for Christ, were I called to die.” To come “unto” Christ could be seen, then, as total, as giving “all up.”

Dickinson’s letters to Abiah are worth reading for their frank confessions of religious reckoning. You can read some of the excerpts Here. These letters were written when Emily was 19. This poem, written 18 years later, has years of Dickinson’s extremity of thought and feeling behind it.

If you read this poem directly after the poem that precedes it in fascicle 40, which is about the affliction and agony that comes from leaving home, the illness that comes from “Illocality,” then you also get the sense of the weight that is insinuated in Dickinson's answer, “I do not know you/ Where may be your house?”

Dickinson was attached to “home,” and to the “world,” and so for her, to give “home” up for some unknown “house” was a reigning concern.

So this poem starts off with that sense. Unto you? “I do not know you— Where may be your House?”

We hear in the tone of this reply, and the one in the next stanza, Dickinson’s playful impudence: You want me to come to you? I don’t even know you, sir!

Jesus answers, “I am Jesus late of Judea, now of Paradise.” We see a little bit of humor in this answer too. Christ saying He is "late of Judea,” but has moved to Paradise, makes it almost seem like we are talking about Paradise City, California rather than THE paradise.

Wagons—have you—to convey me?
This is far from Thence—

Again, asking Jesus if there are wagons is cheeky. And by the way, this is how we know it is the poet speaking here and not just some general narrator. Only Emily would answer Jesus with her tongue so firmly planted in her cheek, not to mention the turn from humor to pathos taken in the following line, “This is far from Thence.” You live in Paradise? Oh, well, I’m nowhere near there. We wince with the implied agony of this understated "Far from Thence." There is still a touch of humor in the understatement, but it is drying up. Things are getting more humble and real.

"Arms of Mine—sufficient Phaeton—
Trust Omnipotence"—

But they are not fully there, yet, because to have Jesus use a term that comes from Greek mythology is still pretty cheeky. It's clever too. A phaeton is a light, four-wheeled, open carriage popular in Dickinson’s day, but it is also mythological figure. In Greek mythology, Phaeton was the son of Helios, the sun god, who attempted to drive his father's sun chariot, resulting in disaster.

That alluded to disaster informs the following line. “Trust Omnipotence.” Trust? Wait, what happened to Phaeton again?

Still though, “arms of mine” has the implication of an embrace of love. We sense the poet leaning a bit closer to that embrace, trying to trust.

She admits,

I am spotted—

Jesus answers, 

"I am Pardon"—

The brevity and these lines is breathtaking. I am spotted. You have a sense here of the poet truly seeing her own limitation and weakness. She aspires to a Christ-like love and falls short. “I,” itself, falls short. “I” am “spotted.” The self is spotted by its isolated and inherently selfish nature. All of that is implied in this brief line.

And conversely, Christ is pardon. Christ is forgiveness. When we forgive, including forgiving ourselves, we become Christ-like. That is Christ. “I am Pardon.” (If you are not religious, you can still enter this poem through the understanding of forgiveness. That is the gist of it.)

I am small—"The Least
Is esteemed in Heaven the Chiefest—

This is the essence of Christ’s teaching. From Matthew 25:40, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (There’s that “unto” again.)

The poem begins with some arrogance, but by the time you get to “I am small” you have turned the corner into humility. And this humility is “esteemed in Heaven the chiefest.” We love Dickinson for her humor and attitude, but we also admire her ability to go deeper. In this poem we watch that happen.

"Occupy my House"—

Christ finishes the conversation with an invitation that also reads as an imperative. 

We note at the end of this poem that the “house” is still not a “home,” a distinction that would be clear to Dickinson. But she seems, in this poem anyway, to be moving toward making it into one.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A nearness to Tremendousness –

A nearness to Tremendousness –
An Agony procures –
Affliction ranges Boundlessness –
Vicinity to Laws

Contentment’s quiet Suburb –
Affliction cannot stay –
In Acres – It’s Location
Is Illocality –


    -Fr824, J963,  Fascicle 40, 1864


I’ve been thinking lately about how everything can be seen in terms of home and away. In western music, for instance, even the most complex Beethoven symphony can be boiled down to the tension between the tonic chord (home) and the dominant chord (away). Or think about the Fort/Da (Gone/There) game which Freud wrote about in "Beyond The Pleasure Principle," in which we see the child's innate drive to push the ball away and then have it sent back home to her. This poem is getting down to that essential thing. 

We have the connotation in the word “Tremendousness” that whatever is “away” is great. It's Boundless! But it is also from where “affliction,” a word used twice in this poem, and “agony,” derives. We want the safety of rules, a “Vicinity to Laws.” I remember asking my daughter Sofia, when she was 3 or 4, if she would rather be a wild horse running free or to be one kept fenced in on a farm. She surprised me by saying she'd rather be kept fenced in. Perhaps now, at 15, she would choose to be running wild?

Dickinson thought a lot about this dialectic too. She wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "My business is circumference." Circumference might be seen as the boundary between home and away. If Dickinson's vocation was poet, then you might say that all of her poetry was a meditation on the interplay of this binary.

Physically Dickinson was very much a home-body, though you might argue that mentally she traveled further into boundless Tremendousness than anyone. "The brain is wider than the sky," she wrote.

I think the astonishing statement in this poem is that "Affliction cannot stay in Acres." If you truly feel at home, then you cannot stay afflicted and in agony. You have a sense here that even if you are in pain, and your body is failing you, if you feel loved and located, then that pain can't reach you, or at least can't last. Elsewhere Dickinson has written of the "infinite power of Home." 

And yet, paradoxically, isn't her poetry difficult to locate? And isn't it tremendous?

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. I found an insightful essay about this poem from Joely Fitch, Mapping illocality, on the Dilettante Army blog. Here is an excerpt:

“Emily Dickinson is so often a poet of elusive definitions. She rhymes and riddles; she poses impossible questions and goes on to answer them, but leaves always an escape clause—something that slips away from meaning, or exceeds it. I’ve been thinking and writing for some time now about space and embodiment in Dickinson’s work—about the ways she renders human subjectivity as neither continuous with nor separate from its environment; about the persistent (and fascinating!) oddness of the spaces and bodies in her poems.

There’s one word in particular in which I find a center of these concerns, “illocality.” I’m still looking for a way to explain why some thread in me has so long been caught on the fishhook of this word, this illocality. I’ve found one way in through a series of questions that the writer and scholar Sara Ahmed asks in the introduction to her book Queer Phenomenology: “How do we begin to know or feel where we are, or even where we are going, by lining ourselves up with the features of the grounds we inhabit, the sky that surrounds us, or the imaginary lines that cut through maps?”

I find myself asking a question I’m not sure can be answered—where is illocality? Can it be said to be inside or outside of the body? Is it a place, or a feeling, or is the distinction between those things part of the problem? (“Is Heaven a Place—a Sky—a Tree?” Dickinson asks elsewhere.

This poem asks us to wonder where the interior is, where the boundaries of the self are and what crosses them. Pain takes us to the edges of ourselves, past the limits of the measurable. The poem ventures into abstraction because it must. “Tremendousness” and “Boundlessness” sprawl across their respective lines, enacting the vastness they describe in the capacious expanse of their syllables.

“Contentment” is a “Suburb,” here, or contains said Suburb, but “Affliction” can’t be figured in geographic terms. According to the poem’s logic, “Tremendousness” and “Boundlessness” are related to “Illocality,” meaning we have to think about it not only in terms of pain (for “Affliction”) but of expansiveness. It’s worth paying attention to the “ill” of “illocality,” too, as well as to its paradox: “illocality” can only be defined by what it isn’t, by thinking of “locality.” It’s a “Location” mappable only according to its own absence.

To me, this makes no sense—and it makes perfect sense. “Illocality” is place and no-place, a word which somehow contains within its syllables the feeling of embodied displacement, a state of being out-of-phase with one’s occupying of physical space. It rhymes with one of Dickinson’s favorite words, “Immortality,” which makes sense, too: both are expansive, unmappable states of being, which elude definition and yet remain captivating.

In fact, maybe thinking of illocality as the absence of locality isn’t quite right—we could think of it as something more like hyperlocation, as a sense of locatedness that continuously exceeds its boundaries. As suggested by its association with “Tremendousness” and “Boundlessness,” illocality might be a state of radical possibility even as it’s also one of dissociation. I find a link to this way of understanding illocality in an earlier poem, from 1861. It’s a species of love poem:

The Drop, that wrestles in the Sea –
Forgets her own locality –
As I, in Thee –

She knows herself an incense small –
Yet small, she sighs, if all, is all,
How larger – be?

The Ocean, smiles at her conceit –
But she, forgetting Amphitrite –
Pleads “Me”?

Knowing and unknowing, here and more broadly in Dickinson’s work, are inextricable from the ability or inability to locate oneself in space. Here, the poet and her “Drop” are worried about the boundaries of an inside and an outside. Where do we outline the limits of the interior? Is a drop in a sea still a drop? Where are the boundaries of the self—and if the “I” “Forgets her own locality,” then where is she to be located?

“As I, in Thee” is crucial to how I read this poem; the unspecified addressee may be a beloved, or God, or neither, or both. In any case, it remains true that Dickinson is comparing the condition of a drop of water in the ocean to that of an “I” in some relation to a “you,” whose immensity both enchants and overwhelms. The Drop “wrestles”; there’s a struggle here for self-definition, for an identity with clear boundaries, but the very material of which she’s composed resists this.

I read this “forgetting” of one’s own locality and “illocality” both as expressions of the problem of the individual—these irreconcilable forces of understanding oneself as bounded, separate, and as continuous with the world one inhabits, including the world of other people. Here, in the “now” I write this from—early 2021, approaching a year since the COVID-19 pandemic radically transformed the way so many of us move through the spaces of our daily lives—I’ve found myself turning anew to her poems as little machines of understanding, in which I find a universe as complicated as it is in life, suffused with a sense of wonder: Dickinson had a gift for looking at the world and asking what is it? in ways that still feel so striking, so continuously new. Queer phenomenology offers one way of understanding why these reframings-in-language might matter so much. Ahmed declares that “the ‘new’ is what is possible when what is behind us, our background, does not simply ground us or keep us in place, but allows us to move and allows us to follow something other than the lines that we have already taken.”Illocality, involving some degree of defamiliarization, could be what precedes the following of a new line, a new attachment, a different source of identification. I keep lingering in the condition of this “Drop”: suspended between the awareness of herself as a particular entity and the understanding that she’s continuous with, inseparable from, something so much larger, almost incomprehensibly immense."

Thank you, Joely! 

The first Day that I was a Life

The first Day that I was a Life
I recollect it—How still—
That last Day that I was a Life
I recollect it—as well—

'Twas stiller—though the first
Was still—
‘Twas empty—but the first
Was full—

This—was my finallest Occasion—
But then
My tenderer Experiment
Toward Men—

"Which choose I"?
That—I cannot say—
"Which choose They"?
Question Memory!

    

        -Fr823, J902, Fascicle 40, 1864


What an intriguing poem. The mystery of the poem begins with the idea that one could recollect the first day of being “a Life.” Because none of us can remember being born, it leads you to wonder if we are talking about biological life here or something else?       

Is it being born into the world of "Men" we are talking about in this poem, or the first day of being in love? This poem, I think, can be read both ways. Ultimately, For Dickinson, I think "Life" and "Love" are inextricable. (See the last line of the poem directly preceding this one in fascicle 40, which clearly states, "For Life—be Love—")

Either way, speaking of being born as “still” is tremendous. That single word “still” is so powerful. It says so much with so little. The word still, itself, is so still here. I think it is saying something like,  “The earth and time, everything, stood still when I met you.”

The mystery of the poem continues with that recollection of the last day of Life. How could we speak, let alone recollect, after the last day of Life? This is not an unusual impossibility for Dickinson, as several of her poems take this tack. (“I heard a fly buzz when I died.”)

The second stanza is hard to follow syntactically. It goes like this,

(The last day) 'Twas stiller—though the first
Was still—
(And the last day) ‘Twas empty—but the first
Was full—

Or, put into prose, "Though the first day was still, it was full, whereas the last day was empty, which made it even stiller."  In other words, Dickinson is saying that absolute loss (emptiness of death) is even more arresting (still) than absolute gain (fullness of birth.)

The third stanza begins,

This—was my finallest Occasion—

This is a sad poem, but we can smile at the idea of “Finallest.” Is there something finaller than final? The phrase intends to emphasize the finality of finality.  And yet, here we are. It begs the question: if it was the “finallest occasion,” then what occasioned the poem?

I’ll leave that question, and we’ll move on to the next mystery:

But then
My tenderer Experiment
Toward Men—

What is the experiment of living (and dying) as perceived by Dickinson? And does this poem point toward the result of this experiment? I think in the last lines it leaves the result up to the reader.

There is so much here to ponder in this third stanza. Is "Men" meant to be humanity in general? It seems to take this poem into the realm of the super-mythic.

Also, If this experiment is “tenderer,” does that mean there is another possible result of this experiment which is less tender toward men?

The last stanza begins with a question.

"Which choose I"?

It’s possible Dickinson means, which result of the experiment did I choose, being tender toward men, or becoming hardened to them. But since she sets up the dialectic between the full first day of life and the empty last day of life here, she is likely asking which of these she would choose given the choice. But perhaps those two questions are tied together. Again, Love and Life are inextricable. If the emptiness of death is stiller than than the fullness of birth, then I think Dickinson is asking here if it is, possibly, better not to be born, or, to extend the idea, better not to love.

She has asked this question in other poems. There was an earlier one (I can't remember which one exactly) in which she says: wouldn’t I have been better off never to known your love than to have it and then have it taken away? I would’ve never known the terrible difference if I had never known the love.

At any rate she concludes here,

That—I cannot say—

And then she throws the question to the reader, and the implication is that the reader's answer will influence her own,

"Which choose They"?
Question Memory!

This poem elicits so many questions, and then tells you, finally, to question for yourself. Question your memory. What do “They,” meaning “Men,” meaning you, choose?

Do you choose life and love, or do you choose death?

If this is a love poem, then this question is complicated, perhaps, by the idea of a lover choosing to leave a relationship.

"Which choose I? " Well, if this finallest thing has any hope, then I choose to live, but only if you, “They,” can search your memory and see that you too should live, that we should do this thing together.

Question Memory! There is an exclamation point there. The reader, who was probably originally Sue, but is now us, is given an imperative. Check your memory! Can you remember love?!?! If you can, then I can too, and maybe this “experiment” can have a “tenderer” result.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. This phrase, “my tenderer Experiment/ Toward Men” reminds me of the “experiment” mentioned in Fr817:

This Consciousness that is aware
Is traversing the interval
Experience between
And most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men —

Will we succeed at love? That seems to be the gist of this "profound experiment." 

2. 

Christanne Miller in her notes on this poem points out that this poem may allude to Philippians 1:21-23: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better."

Midsummer, was it, when They died—

Midsummer, was it, when They died—
A full, and perfect time—
The Summer closed upon itself
In Consummated Bloom—

The Corn, her furthest kernel filled
Before the coming Flail—
When These—leaned unto Perfectness—
Through Haze of Burial—


    -Fr822, J962, 1864, Fascicle 40


This poem seems, at first, to be a meditation on two “summer” deaths. We know there were two because in another version of this poem the penultimate line reads, “When these two leaned in.” Summer here could mean actual summer, but it could also mean, in the language of poetry, the summer portion of their lives. In other words, this poem could be read as a meditation on dying young.

There is something so haunting when someone dies young, when someone is “cut down in their prime.” But this poem is not dreary. Rather “They” died in full bloom, before having to deal with the “coming Flail” of the reaper’s scythe, which is to say, not having to deal with old age.

This poem hit me personally because last night, before having read it, I had a dream in which I was watching YouTube and saw a video of my friend Mikhal, who drowned in his mid-twenties. In the dream he was riding on a carousel and laughing. I was moved upon waking by just how beautiful Mikhal was when he died. So this poem really struck me. Mikhal’s "summer closed in upon itself in consummated bloom.” The poem actually made me feel less sad about his early death. He may have missed out on a lot of good living, but he also avoided the “flail” of the thresher too. He “leaned into Perfectness.”

The version of the poem with "Two" in it was given to Emily's cousins Louisa and Frances Norcross, so it is likely about the death of friends or family. But there is another possible way to read this poem, which is not about actual death at all. The “They,” the “Two,” in this poem could also refer to a couple who have “died” into each other in “consummated Bloom.” 

“They died” suggests the kind of ecstatic merging often described in romantic terms. The idea that summer “closed upon itself” in bloom mirrors two lovers coming together. The corn is fully ripe, just like the body when desire is at its furthest reach. The “coming Flail” represents either the end of innocence or, perhaps, a future separation. “Leaning into Perfectness” could be read as a romantic phrase. And “Haze of Burial” evokes a dissolving of boundaries, a fading of self into the other. It’s dreamlike, like the spiritual aftermath of intimacy.

Either way, whether about actual death, or romance, the idea of summer closing in on itself in consummated bloom points to a kind of fulfillment that feels.. eternal.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Wert Thou but ill—that I might show thee

Wert Thou but ill—that I might show thee
How long a Day I could endure
Though thine attention stop not on me
Nor the least signal, Me assure—

Wert Thou but Stranger in ungracious country—
And Mine—the Door
Thou paused at, for a passing bounty—
No More—

Accused—wert Thou—and Myself—Tribunal—
Convicted—Sentenced—Ermine—not to Me
Half the Condition, thy Reverse—to follow—
Just to partake—the infamy—

The Tenant of the Narrow Cottage, wert Thou—
Permit to be
The Housewife in thy low attendance
Contenteth Me—

No Service hast Thou, I would not achieve it—
To die—or live—
The first—Sweet, proved I, ere I saw thee—
For Life—be Love—


     -Fr821, J961, fascicle 40, 1864


I go to poetry for both its beauty and its truth, and I go to Emily Dickinson’s poetry in particular because she takes me deeper into both than any other poet I've read. With every poem, I’m trying to glean what it has to say to me.

In this poem, and the one preceding it, Fr819, love is put to the test. Both lead me to question my own ability to love. I'm like a rank amateur compared to Dickinson, like a HS basketball player next to Michael Jordan. But just like having Michael Jordan as a rolemodel makes you a better ball player, having Emily Dickinson as one makes you a better lover.

In Fr819 it is impressed upon us that just a little from those we love can go a very long way. In the poem at hand, we come to understand just what a very long way means.

Some of the language is difficult in this poem, so let's break it down stanza by stanza.

Wert Thou but ill—that I might show thee
How long a Day I could endure
Though thine attention stop not on me
Nor the least signal, Me assure—

Were you ill, so that I could show you how long of a day of caretaking I could endure, even if you paid no attention to me, even if you gave me no sign of reassurance at all...

Note that the "if" statement set up by that "Wert Thou" is not yet resolved by a "then" statement. It will not come until the end of the poem.

Wert Thou but Stranger in ungracious country—
And Mine—the Door
Thou paused at, for a passing bounty—
No More—

If you were a stranger in an unfriendly land and it was my door you stopped at for charity as you were passing through, and nothing more than that...

Accused—wert Thou—and Myself—Tribunal—
Convicted—Sentenced—Ermine—not to Me
Half the Condition, thy Reverse—to follow—
Just to partake—the infamy—

This one is difficult. It took me a long time, for instance, just to figure out that the first line is saying "If we were both accused and the tribunal...," not "If you were accused and I was the tribunal." Ermine, I had to look up. It refers to the white fur once worn by judges. My best stab at this stanza is,

If you were accused, and I was too, and the tribunal convicted and sentenced only you, who is only half of the "condition," then  I, who share all with you as your reverse, would follow you to the cell and share your infamy. 

The main gist of this stanza, anyway, is one of radical love. Instead of blaming the beloved, the poet will share their guilt. For me this is getting down to true unconditional understanding.

I love these kinds of difficult stanzas because in trying to puzzle them out, you end up going deeper in. By the time I worked through this stanza for the dozenth time, I really started to feel the idea inherent in the radical love that comes not from a position of judgment, but rather one of solidarity.

The Tenant of the Narrow Cottage, wert Thou—
Permit to be
The Housewife in thy low attendance
Contenteth Me—

"The Narrow Cottage” refers to the grave. Dickinson often refers to death and burial with domestic metaphors (e.g., “A Coffin—is a small Domain”). So here, the beloved is imagined as already in the grave. The tone is intensely devotional and self-effacing. She’s not asking for closeness in life, or status in love, only the permission to serve the beloved, even in death. This is chillingly tender. She is saying, "Even if you were dead, and I could only sweep the dust from your grave, that would be more than enough."

No Service hast Thou, I would not achieve it—
To die—or live—
The first—Sweet, proved I, ere I saw thee—
For Life—be Love—

Now we get the "then" statement. Then, there is no service for you, the poet says, that I wouldn't do. I would die for you and I would live for you. To die is nothing, since death already seemed sweet to me before I met you, and to live means to love you.

In Fr819, which we know was given to Sue, Dickinson says that the smallest crumb, even just a single look, from Sue is enough. In this poem Emily shows us what that enough would look like. Whatever weakness the beloved has, whether sick, or lost, or guilt-ridden, or even dead, she will be there. Otherwise, says the poet, it would be sweeter to be dead.

Don't we all wish to receive love like that? And don't we all aspire to be able to give it? In these poems to Sue, Emily shows us how.


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. When I was looking up this poem I stumbled on another one by Robert Burns that appears to be the template for this one. Google search gave it to me because of the "Wert thou" construction. Sometimes researching these poems feels a bit like being a literary archaeologist and it was cool to happen across this connection, and to realize the influence of Burns on Dickinson. I'm sure Emily read Robert Burns poetry. The basic idea in the Burns poem is the same, though of course Dickinson makes it her own. Here is the first stanza,

Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt,
I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee;
Or did misfortune's bitter storms
Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,
Thy bield should be my bosom,
To share it a', to share it a'.

In doing further research I discovered that Mendelssohn put this poem to music in 1859, a few years before this poem was written. Perhaps Dickinson was inspired by Mendelssohn's version. Here is a sweet rendition... 

The Only News I know

The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.

The Only Shows I see—
Tomorrow and Today—
Perchance Eternity—

The Only One I meet
Is God—The Only Street—
Existence—This traversed

If Other News there be—
Or Admirable Show—
I'll tell it You—

      -Fr820, J827, fascicle 40, 1864

The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.

I admire people who stay engaged in politics. To do the real day to day work of bettering the planet, it seems necessary to stay connected to the “news.” But it is also all so transient, and moreover, it can affect your mental well-being. What to do?

Poems are, perhaps, closer to a lasting Truth, "bulletins from Immortality." I think of William Carlos Williams conclusion to his long poem, “Asphodel, that greeny flower,”

"It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there.// Hear me out/ for I too am concerned/ and every man/ who wants to die at peace in his bed/ besides."

I also think of the words of St. Clare, “Keep your mind on the mirror of eternity.”

The Only Shows I see—
Tomorrow and Today—
Perchance Eternity—

Dickinson is focused on the present and, perchance, Eternity. It leads me to think about the shows I watch, all the fluff. What does another episode of Modern Family have to do with my actual family? That's what I take from these lines. Be present, with your mind on Eternity.
 

One wonders what that “Perchance” is motioning toward. What is needed to turn the temporal moment into an eternal one? How do we watch THAT show?

The Only One I meet
Is God—

That’s an amazing thought. I’m reminded of Matthew 25:40. “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

I’ve heard the advice that you should treat everyone as if God was standing in front of you. That's helpful advice, especially when you are dealing with difficult people, or maybe aren't feeling that great yourself.

The Only Street—
Existence—This traversed

Existence is the only street? What is Emily getting at here? Perhaps she means that the only path she travels is the fact of being alive. Existence itself is her road. There is no literal street, just the metaphysical one of divine connection.

If Other News there be—
Or Admirable Show—
I'll tell it You—

That ending is funny. It has so much of the wry Dickinson attitude in it. She has just told us that she hears only bulletins from immortality, sees only today and tomorrow, maybe eternity, meets only God and walks only the path of Existence. So when she ends with "If Other News there be... I'll tell it You," she seems to be raising an eyebrow, like she’s saying, “if there’s anything else worth knowing, some grand spectacle or exciting gossip, anything you think I’m missing, sure, I’ll let you know.”

Okay, thank you, Emily. We'll stay tuned for more of your bulletins from Eternity. 

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: David Preest informs us: "In the summer of 1864 Emily was immured in her cousins’ house in Cambridge, Boston undergoing eye treatment. She there received a letter from Thomas Higginson,saying that he had been wounded in the Civil War. The first stanza of this poem forms part of her letter of reply (L290) to Higginson. She leads up to the stanza as follows: ‘I was ill since September, and since April, in Boston, for a Physician’s care – He does not let me go, yet I work in my Prison, and make Guests for myself – Carlo [my dog] did not come, because that he would die, in Jail, and the Mountains, I could not hold now, so I brought but the Gods – I wish to see you more than before I failed – Will you tell me your health? I am surprised and anxious, since receiving your note.’ Then follows the stanza, saying that her Only News is her ideas for poems recording her intuitions of immortality, ‘Bulletins’ being the apt word for the compressed, telegraphic language of those poems. 

The Luxury to apprehend

The Luxury to apprehend
The Luxury 'twould be
To look at Thee a single time
An Epicure of Me

In whatsoever Presence makes
Till for a further Food
I scarcely recollect to starve
So first am I supplied —

The Luxury to meditate
The Luxury it was
To banquet on thy Countenance
A Sumptuousness bestows

On plainer Days, whose Table far
As Certainty can see
Is laden with a single Crumb
The Consciousness of Thee.

          -Fr819, J815, 1864

Ah, a poem to luxuriate in. So many Dickinson poems are about austerity. But maybe this one is too, when you look close.  

It's a luxury to apprehend 

The Luxury 'twould be
To look at Thee a single time

It's a luxury just to apprehend that it's a luxury to look at you only a single time. That's all that is needed by this poet. Dickinson is luxuriating in luxuriating, but the twist is that it is just a "single" look, that the luxury is based on something so seemingly scant. I think here of Dante seeing Beatrice only a few times and then dedicating all of those love poems to her. This poem, we know, was given to Susan, who Dickinson once referred to as her "Beatrice." No wonder.

All that lux luxury comes down to a single glance from the beloved. Not only is that glance a luxury, it's a luxury to know that this one glance is a luxury.

"An epicure of Me" is a compact line. It means, just this one look makes an epicure of me. An epicurean is someone who loves rich food and drink, so Emily is saying that one glance at the beloved is like feasting on rich food and drink. 

But "An epicure of Me" also reads something like...an epicure made up of "Me-ness." Somehow this line has the feel of completion. It is the beloved that makes the self into a true epicurean. The vision of you, it seems to say, was a pleasure made especially for Me.

In whatsoever Presence makes
Till for a further Food

What does in "whatsoever Presence" mean? It's a mysterious line. Perhaps it means a memory? A letter? And, who knows, maybe even a doppelganger might do. 

I scarcely recollect to starve
So first am I supplied —

Once given the vision of you, says the besotten poet, I'll forget that I'm starving. That single look was enough sustenance for life.

The Luxury to meditate
The Luxury it was
To banquet on thy Countenance
A Sumptuousness bestows

We are going to luxuriate even more in that word luxury in the third stanza. Because that's what this poem is about, luxuriating, even if given just a taste. The poem is a meditation on luxury, on making much of little, the luxury to meditate on what a luxury it was to "banquet on thy Countenance." Sue must've swooned when she read that line. "Countenance" has a biblical resonance, especially when paired with "thy," but we know that Dickinson often wrote to and of Sue using such religious terms, just like Dante places Beatrice at the gate to Paradiso in the Divine Comedy. 

A Sumptuousness bestows

If you are going to top the lush language of using "luxury" four times in a row, you might go with a word like "Sumptuousness." 

 

To banquet on thy Countenance

A Sumptuousness bestows

On plainer Days, whose Table far

As Certainty can see
Is laden with a single Crumb

The Consciousness of Thee.

That single look bestows a sumptuousness on "plainer Days." Look how plain that phrase sounds after all that sumptuous bestowing of luxury.

In the end we have a poet who, instead of complaining about how little she is given, is satiated by it. "As Certainty can see." This speaks to both the object of affection, who must've really been something, and to the disposition of the poet, who was thrifty in the extreme.

Consciousness of Thee is all that is needed for the poet to persist, just a single crumb. In fact, that plain table is "laden" with that crumb. The crumb we "apprehend" is truly a sumptuous banquet. 

Has a little ever gone further than it did with Emily? And has there ever been a more romantic poem?

Bless Emily Dickinson for being so satisfied with that one look of love. May we all be so lucky. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Study for 'La Charite'by William Adolphe Bouguereau  

P.S. This poem sheds light on all the "crumb" poems Emily wrote. See, especially, the recent one, Fr807, which describes this very poem, a robin's silver chronicle in song given in return for a single crumb.

P.P.S. I very much enjoyed Dandi Meng's take on this poem. I heard the echo of Fr269 "Wild Nights Wild Nights" in this poem too, but Dandi really makes something of this connection.

Given in Marriage unto Thee

Given in Marriage unto Thee
Oh thou Celestial Host —
Bride of the Father and the Son
Bride of the Holy Ghost.

Other Betrothal shall dissolve —
Wedlock of Will, decay —
Only the Keeper of this Ring
Conquer Mortality —


    -Fr818, J817, sheet nine, early 1865


What to say about this poem? It is a fairly straight-forward poem of faith in the Christian trinity, a kind of wedding vow. The narrator, which we assume to be the poet, has given herself in marriage to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. She feels it is the only true marriage, one that will not decay, and will "conquer mortality."

I think if you lined up all of Dickinson’s poems that explicitly concerned Christian faith and doubt, there would be a few hundred of them. It would make for a great book. Together they must comprise one of the most deeply felt, honest and intellectually nuanced explorations of a spiritual journey on record. What emerges from all of it is almost impossible to pin down. You have to go to the source, and, even then, the tenor shifts from poem to poem, sometimes dramatically.

If you are not careful, it is easy to back up your own views on religion using Emily Dickinson’s poems. If you are an atheist, you can find Dickinson poems that will corroborate your lack of belief. But if you are a believer, you can do the same. This poem falls into the latter camp. As far as I can see, it is without a shred of doubt. Usually you can find some little way to read a Dickinson poem against itself, some thread that when pulled will unravel what you think the poem is all about, some tricky ambiguity.

Perhaps there is a tension in this one in the word "Will." Dickinson says that a “Wedlock of Will” shall dissolve and decay. To marry yourself to Trinity you must believe “Thy will be done,” not “my will be done.” There is a lot of weight on that word "Will." What does it mean for a willful poet like Dickinson to submit?

Dickinson’s will was quite strong, (in a later letter, she would call herself the witch of Endor, a biblical character that defied God’s wishes), but there was a noble ideal that Dickinson aspired to beyond her own desires. There is, at the heart of Christianity, the idea of sacrificing the desires of the self for the sake of others, and that idea, I think, deeply appealed to Dickinson. (See, for instance, the poem preceding this one in the Franklin order, Fr816.)

Dickinson's thoughts on Christianity were far from simple, which is why this simple statement of faith is all the more astonishing. 

In looking online at various articles on Dickinson and her reckoning with faith, I found a letter to Joseph Lyman, written a year before this poem,

“Some years after we saw each other last I fell to reading the Old & New Testament. I had known it as an arid book but looking I saw how infinitely wise & merry it is.

Anybody that knows grammar must admit the surpassing splendor & force of its speech, but the fathomless gulfs of meaning—those words which He spoke to those most necessary to him, hints about some celestial reunion—yearning for a oneness—has any one fathomed that sea? I know those to whom those words are very near & necessary, I wish they were more so to me, for I see them shedding a serenity quite wonderful & blessed. They are great bars of sunlight in many a shady heart.”

We know that there are two copies of this poem, one of which was given to Sue Gilbert Dickinson, who was a professed believer. So it is possible that this poem was written for Sue, and reflects her beliefs, not Emily's. But I take this poem as a declaration on Dickinson's part that she was, in her own idiosyncratic way, making a vow to the "lasting" Christian value. It wasn't long after this that she began to wear a white dress, and become cloistered in her own home, and did, in appearance at least, begin to look like a bride of Christ.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

John Singer Sargent, Fumée d'Ambre Gris, 1880

This Consciousness that is aware

This Consciousness that is aware
Of Neighbors and the Sun
Will be the one aware of Death
And that itself alone

Is traversing the interval
Experience between
And most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men —

How adequate unto itself
Its properties shall be
Itself unto itself and none
Shall make discovery —

Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be —
Attended by a single Hound
Its own identity.


    -Fr817, J822, sheet 60, late 1865


I find this poem haunting because it leads me to imagine my own death. But it’s also transformative because it leads me to question identity. I’m reminded of Dickinson’s famous statement, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” This poem took my head off.

Let’s start at the beginning. We could spend a while just focusing on the first line of the poem. It’s like a mantra. THIS Consciousness that is aware. This CONSCIOUSNESS that is aware. This consciousness THAT IS aware. This consciousness that is AWARE. 

That first line speaks to pure awareness, a state prior to identity, but the next line gives us two objects of our awareness, which, together, sum up life; neighbors and the Sun.

Neighbors, of course, is a neighborly way of saying “others.” We can only be aware from our own center of consciousness, but then there are all of those other consciousnesses which we can only be aware OF. It is in comparison to these “others” that identity is formed.

The Sun is a compact symbol of life-source and force, of light and warmth, of a power beyond ourselves, and, also, simply, of day. This is a poem, after all, contemplating death. The self is saying goodnight neighbors, so long old Sun.

So if you had to boil awareness down to only two things, it might be neighbors and Sun. And then, finally, the third thing, death.

That lone consciousness…

Will be the one aware of Death
And that itself alone

You were aware of life, and now you will be the “one aware of death.” The singular “one” is echoed in the next line in the word “alone.” All alone you will be…

traversing the interval
Experience between
And most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men —

You will experience this interval between life and death. To think of this as an experiment, indeed, the “most profound experiment appointed unto men” is pure Dickinson. Death as an experiment? What does this mean? It means, I think, that we can’t know the results of our experience with death until we go through the process. What will be the result of this experiment? How will you experience your own death?

How adequate unto itself
Its properties shall be
Itself unto itself and none
Shall make discovery —

This is tough to get and we see here just how formidable a philosopher Dickinson was.

The phrase “adequate unto itself” reflects on the self-sufficiency of consciousness. Dickinson seems to be saying that whatever "properties" the self possesses, they will be adequate (sufficient) for itself, by its own nature. Nothing external is needed for its fulfillment.

That word “adequate” though makes me wonder if this state is something we may achieve, or something that inherently just is?

The answer lives in the tension between being and becoming. Dickinson seems to say the soul is what it is, sufficient unto itself, and no one can know it but itself. But as readers, we may experience that truth as something to grow into, learning to believe in and trust that inherent adequacy, to live from it, not search for it in others’ eyes.

Perhaps that is the quest of the “adventure” pointed to in the next stanza,

Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be —

Life and death are a kind of epic quest that happens entirely within. The word condemned is a telling one. We are trapped in our own consciousness. The adventure is a scary one, a battle. The adventure is grappling with isolation, and finally, the loss of identity.

It’s heroic in a quiet, harrowing way.

An “adventure unto itself” implies a quest for understanding, yet Dickinson says “none shall make discovery.” Even as the soul journeys inward, it can never fully know itself. Consciousness is bottomless.

Those final lines are the most thought-provoking and transformative.

Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be —
Attended by a single Hound
Its own identity.

The adventure for the soul is in the attempt to shake the hound of identity. It’s this that makes death such a terrifying prospect.

We're attached to identity because it is our sense of continuity and the coherence of all of our memories, our thoughts and feelings. We build our identities like narratives. We don’t just live, we interpret our lives, and identity is the spine of that interpretation.We're attached because identity gives meaning to our experience. It allows us to be seen and remembered. Without that story, we feel lost.

To let go of identity even for a moment is to fall into mystery, to admit you don’t fully know who you are, aren’t in total control of yourself. 

That’s terrifying. And also, maybe, where freedom begins. When the hour comes, can we best the hound of identity? And how about starting now?

I think of the epitaph on Keats' grave, "Here lies one whose name is writ on water."

And I also think of Dickinson's poem which seems to be about Keats, Fr448, "We talked between the Rooms/ Until the Moss had reached our lips/ And covered up — Our names —"

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff 

Identity by Alfred Gescheidt

P.S. I just finished writing about Fr823, in which this idea of "experiment" comes back, and now I'm more inclined to think the experiment Dickinson refers to here is whether or not we can learn to love. It's more about what we do with that "interval."

I could not drink it, Sweet,

I could not drink it, Sweet,
Till You had tasted first,
Though cooler than the Water was
The Thoughtfulness of Thirst.

      -Fr816, J818, early 1864


The Thoughtfulness of Thirst. What a thoughtful line. Who else but Emily Dickinson could help us appreciate restraint with so much thusness? 

According to Christanne Miller’s notes in “Poems As She Preserved Them” there is another version of this poem in which “Sweet,” at the end of the first line, is replaced by “Sue.”

Dickinson wrote hundreds of passionate letters and poems to Susan Gilbert Dickinson. In 1852, when she and Sue were still college girls, she wrote, “Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday, and be my own again, and kiss me as you used to?” 

The poem at hand was written some 12 years later. How's that for sustained thirst!

In another poem to Sue, she wrote:

“Sue—forevermore!”
“Sue, you can go or stay—
But there is a limit, Sue—
To any love—nay, but my love for you—”

That poem, like the one at hand, speaks to an unconditional love.

The poems are rarely so straight-forwardly “romantic” in a conventional sense, and are often coded in ambiguity. Changing the word “Sue” to “Sweet” is one way of moving this poem from the explicitly personal to one of general endearment. Not only does the change keep a sense of privacy, it also allows the reader into the poem, as both potential object and subject.

Another way to "code" is to use symbols. Water, for instance, represents literal refreshment, but it's also a symbol of emotional sustenance.

I could not drink it, Sweet,
Till You had tasted first,

This is a poetic way of saying that Emily is putting Sue’s needs first. Her concern is not for satisfying her own thirst (physical or emotional), but her beloved’s.

Though cooler than the Water was
The Thoughtfulness of Thirst.

This contrast highlights the satisfaction in the act of waiting. The “thoughtfulness of thirst” is not just physical longing but care and restraint, a valuing of love over desire.

"Thirst" usually represents an instinctive desire, but pairing it with “thoughtfulness” suggests that this is no blind craving. 

That act of putting another first transforms ordinary thirst into something sweeter and, ultimately, more meaningful. "Cooler." 

In restraint lies discipline, and in discipline, love. Consideration is more refreshing than self-satisfaction. 

Perhaps there is the hint of the erotic in this poem too. This phrase is telling: “Though cooler than the Water was / The Thoughtfulness of Thirst.” Here, the feeling of wanting, the ache itself, is more powerful than satisfaction. The anticipation is more emotionally charged than the act. This flips the usual hierarchy: wanting is more charged than having. And giving, more satisfying.

         -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Thirst, 1886, William-Adolphe Bougeaureau 

P.S. This poem, read carefully and deeply and often, might be a powerful tonic against addiction. It says, succinctly, that resistance to desire is more quenching than desire itself.

P.P.S. In researching this post I discovered that the letter to "Susie" from 1852, in its entirety is online. It's worth a look.

To this World she returned.

To this World she returned.
But with a tinge of that—
A Compound manner,
As a Sod
Espoused a Violet,
That chiefer to the Skies
Than to himself, allied,
Dwelt hesitating, half of Dust,
And half of Day, the Bride.


    -Fr815, J830, summer 1864. 



The background for this poem is of interest. Thomas Johnson notes: "The copy reproduced above was written in pencil in the summer of 1864. It is addressed "Mrs. Gertrude -" and signed "Emily." On 20 March 1864, Mrs. Vanderbilt was summoned to her back door by cries of distress and accidentally received a pistol shot intended for her maid. Her critical illness but ultimate recovery moved ED to send her two poems, this and the poem that follows."

Imagine, then, being Ms. Vanderbilt and receiving this poem after having gone through such an ordeal.

Did Emily just assume that Mrs. Vanderbilt had returned from her critical state with “a tinge of that?” I suppose anyone who almost dies, especially from the result of a violent crime, would likely experience a bit of “that,” no?

And what is “that?" It’s a loaded question. I think it refers to whatever is on the other side of the veil. THAT. In this poem Emily turns that into something beautiful.

If that is whatever is beyond, than this is the sod, here and now. The sod typically refers to the piece of ground that is laid over a grave, and that connotation is here in this poem, but sod also stands in as a metonym for the earthly realm. Therefore, in a near death situation THIS and THAT come together to make “a compound manner.”

The near death experience is likened to a violet that is “espoused” from the sod and is now “chiefer to the skies than to himself allied.” This is a gorgeous idea, that the quality that develops from earthly woe is a flower which is more of the sky than the ground. It redefines the very idea of a flower to me.

Also, the idea of the sod "espousing" a violet is lovely. The soil speaks a flower. Here poetry is invoked. A poem after all is something one espouses. One could think of a poem, then, as a kind of auditory flower, espoused from the prosaic sod of life. 

The word "espouse" carries within it the word spouse too, which sets us up for the idea of the "bride" at the end of the poem. 

 Dwelt hesitating, half of Dust,
And half of Day, the Bride.

There is a restlessness hinted at the end of the poem in that word “hesitating.” The idea of being half married to dust and half to day is a dramatic way of looking at it. Half-bride of dust! What a way to put it. Here's a question though. What does Day represent? Does "day" here represent the heavenly “Skies” the flower is reaching for, or does it represent “life?" It’s ambiguous. The truth lies, somehow, in that ambiguity.

A flower peaks in that moment of hesitation. Next time you look at a flower imagine it “chiefer to the skies” than the sod, a bride hesitating between day and dust. Next, imagine yourself as that flower.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Violet Girl with Scars and Stars by Hali Kara

Notes:

1. My guess is that this poem was accompanied by a spray of violets. When the coffee table book of Dickinson flower poems, to be sold at florist shops, is put together, this one should be included.

2. In the poem by Hali Kara accompanying the painting above, I read that "Violets heal trauma/ (they say)" Do they say that? Maybe Dickinson was thinking of this when sending Mrs. Vanderbilt the poem. 

3. The idea of a flower being chiefer to the skies than the sod reminds me of this mind-blowing tidbit from the mind of the physicist Richard P. Feynman. "Trees are made of air." 

Soto! Explore thyself!

Soto! Explore thyself!
Therein thyself shalt find
The "Undiscovered Continent"—
No Settler, had the Mind.


     -Fr814, J832, sheet 13, early 1865


This poem was a note sent from Emily to her brother Austin.

It begins with a kind of primal sound, like a piercing bird-call. Soto! That's an attention grabber, emphasized even more by that exclamation point that follows. It’s almost pure exclamation.

I'd imagine Dickinson chose the name Soto partly for that reason. Magellan doesn't have the same sharpness. But there may have been other reasons she chose the name too (see end notes).

Why is this poem in such an excited state from the get-go? What’s with those double exclamation marks?

Why so urgent the command to Austin (and subsequently to us) to make like a great explorer and “Explore thyself!”

Was Emily feeling a sister’s frustration caused by an idiotic brother's behavior? Or, maybe it is just an enthusiastic expression of encouragement.

I hear echoes of “Doctor, heal thyself” in that first line, as well as the Delphic Oracle of Apollo’s command to, “Know Thyself!”

The wisdom that Emily’s imparting to her brother is that the thing he is looking for is already within him.

I'm reminded of the words attributed to St. Francis, "The one you are looking for is the one who is looking."

The poem poses a challenge to us. Can we discover our own “continent” within? Could Emily? I think at this point in her life she was beginning to be more and more self-possessed. Maybe Emily wrote this poem for herself first and that’s why the it is so exclamatory.

The last line of this poem is powerful. No settler, had the mind. No settler has the mind you do. No settler has the mind to settle there. The idea of “settling” your own mind is hard to fathom. Who, or what, is it that is settling the mind?

The idea there that the one thing most worth settling is your own mind because it is the one place that only you can truly explore.

I've never seen this poem printed with a comma in the last line. I’ve included it here, though, because it seems to be pretty clearly marked in the original handwritten letter.

The poem is deep enough without that comma there, but with the comma a whole new amazing idea comes into play.

"No settler, had the mind."  

If you truly had your own mind, you wouldn’t be a settler at all, in all senses of the words “settle.” The true mind does not settle. The mind is always in motion! It's more verb than noun, more flow than Florida. 

Dickinson’s mind cannot be settled, and did not settle, but always seemed to be motion, and, wonder of wonders, still is, through the alchemical magic of her poetry in the ear.

         -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Hernando De Soto 

* De Soto was a pretty despicable dude it turns out. Check out these 10 facts about him for a (bad) taste of his exploits, such as slave trading and native-American massacres. Maybe Dickinson knew this and it factors into her reason for invoking De Soto? Another possible reason perhaps is that De Soto's parents wanted him to be a lawyer, just like Austin's.

How well I knew Her not

How well I knew Her not
Whom not to know has been
A Bounty in prospective, now
Next Door to mine the Pain.


   -Fr813, J837, July 1864


I learned from David Preest that “this poem is a whole letter sent to Emily’s friend, Maria Whitney, whose sister Sarah had died 9 July 1864 at Plymouth, Connecticut.” That’s a helpful note. We can put the clues together. Emily must have heard about the sister from Maria but never gotten the chance to meet her. She had always looked forward to the prospect of the Bounty of meeting the sister, but now there is just the pain of the loss which has come to live ‘Next Door.”

For me a personal poem like this begs a question. Does it work as a poem for a general reader? I think so. Removed from its original purpose, it becomes about not letting the chance pass by to get to know someone, a reminder that there can be a serious loss that comes from failing to reach out and engage with others.

The poem dramatizes this, and even more so when you learn about its original circumstances. Imagine your friend has told you all about her sister, and you look forward to meeting her and then learn she has died. Now you’ll never know her at all, let alone get to know her "well." You can feel the frustrated grief, and the shared sympathy, in the expression of this poem. 

How well I knew Her not

Even in a simple poem of condolence, though, Dickinson’s language is mind-bending. The paradox in that first line creates tension. Can you “well” not know someone? It's as if Dickinson is saying that the lack of connection is something that has grown large in her awareness. Absence creates a presence, which you can get to know well. 

There is a sense in this poem that Dickinson already well knows this kind of pain, because the last line of the poem says that the pain has moved next door to "mine." In other words, she's already well-familiar with this feeling of absence. That sense of sympathy is part of Dickinson's strength. She understands Maria's, and our, pain. (See the gist of Fr780, which ends with the lines, "Our Contract/ A Wiser Sympathy.") 

The phrasing of that first line has a slightly formal tone, which gives us a sense of timeless reflection. It is this tone that takes the sentiment out of the “personal” realm of the circumstances with Maria and helps turn it into a poem for a general audience about regret.

The regret is emphasized through the irony of the line. Starting with “How well” leads us to expect a positive memory. Ending with “knew her not” pulls the rug out from under us. It mirrors the speaker's experience.

The strange phrasing slows the reader down and sets the tone for a poem that’s all about missed intimacy and the pain of possibility unfulfilled.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. I can't help but think about Dickinson's poetry on the whole here. I often feel a sense of wonder that she entrusted all of her careful work to an uncertain future. I think about how many other poets' and artists' works have been lost, and how easily that could have been the case for Emily. We are grateful that her prospects have been fulfilled and are bountiful. 

Love reckons by itself—alone—

Love reckons by itself—alone
"As large as I"—relate the Sun
To One who never felt it blaze—
Itself is all the like it has—


     -Fr812, F826, early 1864

It is helpful when reading this poem to put a full stop after the "I" in line two, so that it reads as two separate sentences. 

This poem is describing something indescribable -Love. Love is not comparable to anything else. It can’t be measured against anything else. It “reckons by itself.” To reckon means to describe. So Love defines itself. (much like "beauty" does, see Fr797.)

There is an interesting move at the end of line one, that “alone” sitting there after the dash — alone. If love is about connection with another, then what is that “alone” doing there? This tension is in the next line too. “As large as I.” It doesn’t say as large as We. That I, like the word “alone,” has a solitary feel to it. This continues throughout the poem. You have the word “One” and then “Itself is all the like it has.” In this last phrase you can hear an echo, “Itself is all…it has.”

You are left with the feeling that Love is actually solitary, which is insightful.

That “One” “Alone” “Self” though? It blazes like the sun. When one feels its true measure, it is like emerging from a dark room and experiencing the sun for the first time.

The most powerful line for me here, set off in quotes, is “As large as I.” I hear in this God telling Moses in Exodus, “I am who I am.” I-consciousness is awareness itself. Mystics say the universe is pure awareness. That’s how large “I” is. We are all “I.” I know I am! And, conversely, “I” is all. We are together, then, in this One Alone Self. This is true Love.

This poem invites us to come out of the cold and dark and feel the blazing heat and light of this Love. You are that large, "As large as I."

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

The sound of the sun is comparable to cathedral bells 

according to this article from NPR

Notes:

David Preest points out that "Emily also used the impossibility of explaining the Sun ‘to Races – nurtured in the Dark’ in poem Fr436. It's worth going back to that Prowling Bee entry to read Susan's terrific take on it, as well as the comments, but it's also worth restating the poem here,

I found the words to every thought
I ever had – but One –
And that – defies me –
As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun

To Races – nurtured in the Dark –
How would your own – begin?
Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal –
Or Noon – in Mazarin?

There is a June when Corn is cut

There is a June when Corn is cut
And Roses in the Seed—
A Summer briefer than the first
But tenderer indeed

As should a Face supposed the Grave's
Emerge a single Noon
In the Vermilion that it wore
Affect us, and return—

Two Seasons, it is said, exist—
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost—

May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer?

     -Fr811, J930, early 1864


It takes a while to unravel the complex weave of a poem like this, and then, once you do, it is still pretty mystifying.

The one thing that makes this poem easier to understand is if you take “The Summer of the Just” to be referring to the past instead of some future "Summer of the Just" (heaven perhaps). Other readings of this poem I have read interpret “Summer of the Just” as a future heavenly summer, but that doesn’t make sense to me. This is a poem about a late feeling of a false summer surpassing the real (or "just") summer of the past.

Okay, with that in mind, here’s my take on this poem, stanza by stanza.

There is a June when Corn is cut
And Roses in the Seed—

This poem begins, as many of Dickinson’s do, with a sort of riddle. What kind of June is it when the corn is cut and the roses are in the seed?

The literal answer would be what I called growing up as a kid “Indian Summer.” This name is no longer socially acceptable. We've finally dropped the original misnomer, "Indian." Took us long enough! Sometimes we call this season Second Summer, or False Summer. (In Bulgaria they call it “Poor man’s summer,” which is terrific). In the next two lines we get another riddle to help clue us in…

A Summer briefer than the first
But tenderer indeed

What summer is briefer than summer, but also tenderer? Now we are getting into poetic territory with that word tender. We know the “Second summer” is shorter than summer. But why is this second summer tenderer? It’s at this point that I start seeing the metaphoric meaning of a second summer here. If a year is analogous to a life, then, as we enter the winter of our life, we get a late life efflorescence, we get a "Second Summer." I do find as I get older that the beautiful summer-like moments are more meaningful and tender, first because I know they are waning, and second because I've come to appreciate them more. This poem speaks to both of those reasons.

Another thing that clues me into a late-life-resurgence idea in this poem is the images of corn being cut and roses in seed. These read as poignant signs of maturity. “Cut” is a violent verb, and you can see it, perhaps, as the down side of growing older, even if it means some good bread might be made from the corn. Roses in seed, however, is an extremely hopeful image, the upside of growing older. Roses to come!

As should a Face supposed the Grave's
Emerge a single Noon
In the Vermilion that it wore
Affect us, and return—

This is a shocking image. This second summer is compared to seeing a face that we thought was in the grave emerging at noon (noon=summer) with all the blood (vermilion) having returned to it. Wouldn’t that be affecting? That’s what it’s like to grow old while still feeling your youth. It’s haunting, but because its haunting, it's greater. We'll see why in the last stanza.

Two Seasons, it is said, exist—
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost—

I’ve already argued that Summer of the Just here means Summer of the Past. “Summer of the Just” is a pretty great phrase if you think about it. We all get our “Just” summer, the time which we are justified in being young. If I read this poem as a younger man, I’d hone in on that phrase as a way to excuse my youthful behavior. "Summer of the Just" also carries, perhaps, a sense of passing quickly. It's already fall? It was "just" summer!

So, the shorter Second Summer is richer because it still has prospects, but now these prospects are balanced with knowledge of the oncoming frost, which signifies winter and death.

Okay, that all sets us up for the idea in the final stanza,

May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer?

Because of our nearness to frost, to the grave, the second summer of our old age will be be infinitely better than the summer of our youth. The last two lines can be taken a few ways that I can see. The first, and to me strongest, is that we no longer take our "Just” summer, our youth, for granted. Now we are in the in-between time, the time between “cut” and “seed,” between “prospect” and “frost,” which is richer for carrying a sense of both sides of the equation. We can’t know how great the first summer was because we had nothing to compare it to. This Second Summer is infinitely better then for two reasons, first, because we know what it means to experience summer, having lived it. We are now nostalgic for it! But, secondly, we have become aware what it means to be losing it.

Being in my fifties with two daughters who will leave home in a few years, I can really feel the weight of this poem. I took them to Rockaway Beach today. I could feel my own youth through them, and could also feel my youth slipping away, even as my daughters will. I saw older kids all hanging out with their friends, and knew it wouldn't be much longer that these girls would be hanging at the beach with me. The corn is cut, the roses are in seed. It's almost unbearably poignant, and therefore, yes, better even than youth itself. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff