The Bird must sing to earn the Crumb

The Bird must sing to earn the Crumb
What merit have the Tune
No Breakfast if it guaranty

The Rose content may bloom
To gain renown of Lady's Drawer
But if the Lady come
But once a Century, the Rose
Superfluous become—


    -F928, J880, sheet 14, 1865

Was Emily writing these poems for just anyone? What was the “crumb” this poet earned with her song? What breakfast did these poems “guaranty” her?

These poems, this drawer of roses, an astonishing number of them, mean so much to us, but what do we, in turn, matter to Emily’s day to day life?

Or did Dickinson’s poems have a more pointed audience? Well, we do know that many of Dickinson's poems were given (often with a flower attached) to her  friends, and we also know know that the largest majority were given to Emily’s sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson. So I think it's fair to say that some, if not all, did have specific personal intentions.

But the ambiguity remains nevertheless. Is Sue the Lady in this poem then? Or is this Lady here meant to be something, or someone, more divinely ethereal?

The poem works either way. And sometimes I think Emily did too. But mostly I think this was for Sue. I bet this “song” was delivered to her with a red rose to underscore its message. It's implicitly asking, will this rose be shoved into a drawer with the rest? Will you finally come and visit me?

If you read this poem after F925, “The Lady Feeds Her little Bird,” which was written on the sheet before this one, sheet 13,  you begin to see a pattern. These poems were meant for a single Lady, one who lived right next door to Emily. This Lady wasn’t like Emily, who preferred to stay in the confines of her own garden. For interminable weeks on end Sue would get caught up in her own family and social life, ignoring her faithful friend (not to mention one of the world's greatest poets). After all, Sue could just look out of her window toward Emily’s, now and then, just offer the merest crumb, and the Bird would be fed breakfast. I can feel the deep sigh in these poems, the pathos.

Another poem in this Lady/Robin “series” is F810:

The Robin for the Crumb
Returns no syllable
But long records the Lady's name
In Silver Chronicle.

The wonder is that Dickinson did just that, she "records," in her poetry, the "silver chronicle" of her adoration for Sue. This chronicle was beautifully enough rendered that it would last long past the lifetimes of the friends. 

But the irony is that Dickinson doesn’t record "the Lady’s name.” We just know her has "The Lady" in these poems. What makes the poetry last, perhaps, is in the way it is so deeply personal and yet transcends the personal at once. Would we remember these poems if they all said "Susan" instead of "Lady?" By making it anonymous it includes the general reader. We are all the Bird looking for crumbs from the Lady’s hand. We are all hoping for breakfast, for a break in our fast. 

And if we are the Bird, we are also the Lady. If these poems are generalized to include us too, then what are the crumbs we may give to the hungry ghost of the poet? We may give Her our attention. She kept the roses for us by imbuing them with us much beauty and love as her genius could muster. 

***

"The Bird must sing to earn the crumb." Does this line reveal the secret of Emily's Dickinson's vocation? It's like the kid who learns to play guitar to impress the girl. Would Emily ever have become a poet if she hadn't had Sue to show her what a true feast is like, and then, terribly, if she hadn't been strung along by her for the rest of her life with nothing but a crumb here and there? 

***

Another irony to this poem is that the majority of the poems we have from Emily Dickinson come from her drawer, not Sue's. She kept a copy for herself. Why? Because they existed for her as objects of attention and beauty beyond their intended use. These "roses in song," kept for us in her own drawer, remain fresh and fragrant, and far from superfluous.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Vincent Keeling

P.S. One thing about this poem worth considering is where Dickinson places the stanza break. She lets it follow sense rather than form. She could have easily followed traditional form by putting the break after the first verse, but instead she uses the break to split up the ideas of "bird" and "flower." In other words, it functions more like the end of a paragraph than a stanza. I won't go so far as to say that this is a crack of reality in lyric's fault line, but it may be seen from a certain position as seismic. Because if this is a song, then the melody would be broken. The song bird is reduced to prose. The melody is presumed missing.

Each Second is the last

Each Second is the last
Perhaps, recalls the Man
Just measuring unconsciousness
The Sea and Spar between.

To fail within a Chance —
How terribler a thing
Than perish from the Chance's list
Before the Perishing!


          -F927, J879, sheet 14, 1865


In the first stanza I see a man who is in a shipwreck and is holding onto the spar (the mast), about to go under. This might be the end he thinks. He’s measuring how long it will be until he loses consciousness. Each second could “Perhaps" be his last. But maybe there's still hope?

The second stanza is where the philosophical heft of the poem comes in:

To fail within a Chance —
How terribler a thing

To die while there is still a chance of survival is more terrible...

Than perish from the Chance's list
Before the Perishing!

To be on "Chance's list" means you're still among those who might survive, so to "perish from Chance's list" means possibility has ended. In other words, it is worse to die while still having a chance to live than to be doomed from the start.

To return to the metaphor of the sailor drowning: if he is going to die anyway, it would've been easier to go down with the ship than to stay alive a little longer struggling to live, dying of thirst or exposure, which are fates worse than drowning.   

This metaphor could apply to love, or even faith. I think this poem can be seen as an examination of hope. The cruelty lies in being suspended between hope and loss. Hope is "terribler" because possibility intensifies suffering. 

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" it says on the doorway to hell in Dante's Inferno. But Dickinson might hang her sign on hell's exit: "Abandon all hope, ye who exit here."

"Be Mine the Doom" she says in F919.

I think if you read the poem backwards, you arrive again at that first line, "Each second is the last." That line, by itself, is powerful. There is no hope for the future in this line, but there is great emphasis on the present.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Alfred Guillou, "Adieu", 1892

P.S. In a letter to her niece Emily asked her to keep an apartment for Aunt in her heart, "call it Endor’s Closet." This must, I think, refer to the witch of Endor. Why does Emily refer to herself the witch of Endor? In the Bible, the "Witch of Endor" is a necromancer whom King Saul consults in 1 Samuel 28. Saul, the king of Israel, seeks wisdom from God in choosing a course of action against the assembled forces of the Philistines. He receives no answer from Yahweh. Having driven out all necromancers from Israel, Saul searches for a medium anonymously and in disguise. His search leads him to a woman of Endor, who claims that she can see the ghost of Samuel rising from the abode of the dead. The voice of the prophet’s ghost, after complaining of being disturbed, berates Saul for disobeying God, and predicts that Saul will perish with his whole army in battle the next day. Saul is terrified. The witch of Endor comforts Saul when she sees his distress and insists on feeding him before he leaves. The next day, his army is defeated as prophesied, and Saul commits suicide.

If I’m getting this reference right, Emily is identifying here with the witch of Endor; a medium who reveals the future (Saul's doom), no matter how uncomfortable this truth may be. The witch is working in opposition to Yahweh, but not, we note, without compassion for Saul. She feeds and comforts him.

P.P.S. I'm not sure I agree that hope is "terribler." Hope may intensify the pain, but it also motivates the struggle for survival. It can keep you alive. Things do, often, get better. 

I stepped from Plank to Plank

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch—
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

       -F926, J875, sheet 13, 1865


Stepping into an Emily Dickinson poem often feels like walking onto a precarious plank. You go slowly and cautiously. When I get to the line in this poem “The Stars about my head I felt” I am suddenly immersed in the immensity of the poem. I feel myself under the dizzying expanse of the night time sky. Then there’s a line break and I look down at the equally dizzying expanse of the Sea. Vertigo sets in. I am suspended there between these two giants, dwarfed.

I had a dream once I was riding on a cloud over the ocean and was suddenly freaked out by the precariousness of my position. How am I being held up by a cloud??? It was a metaphor for the seemingly impossible buoyancy of life. This poem feels a little like that. How do we stay suspended between these twin abysses? Any wrong move and we may fall.

There is an earlier poem, F340, "I felt a funeral in my brain," dated 1862, that could stand as a sequel:

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down—
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing—then—

"I felt a funeral in my brain" Andrew Bird, Phoebe Bridgers

Is it okay to fall? Is it a good thing to be "Finished knowing"? 

In the poem that was written down by Emily's hand directly above this one (on the same sheet of paper, sheet 13) there is a bird that falls slowly. Tom C pointed out in the comments (see F925) that the word “fall” is worth considering. Tom's astute comment reminded me of other uses of the word "fall" in Dickinson’s oeuvre, especially the lines from F754,

Still at the Egg-life –
Chafing the Shell –
When you troubled the Ellipse –
And the Bird fell –

Does "fell" mean the bird died or flew? 

I'm now thinking of the famous poem F372, "After great pain a formal feeling comes," where the feet mechanically go around in the air, 

The Feet, mechanical, go round—
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—

This further reminds me that any time Dickinson uses the word “feet” in a poem, which is often, she seems to simultaneously mean metrical feet. (Metrical feet are the rhythmic units in poetry). It's self-referential: Dickinson's actual feet become synonymous with her poetic feet. So then "step by step" can also mean something like beat by beat. Try re-reading the poem with this idea in mind. Reading these poems may feel precarious, but writing them must have felt even more so.  Along these lines, the last couplet of this poem is worth thinking about.

This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

If we think of the feet in this poem as metrical feet, then the precarious gait of the rhythm in Dickinson’s poetry suddenly appears to be an effect of heart-break. I’d never thought of the word choice and and clipped conciseness, both of which change up the gait of Dickinson's poems, as a product of pain and survival's subsequent fears, but in this poem, for the first time, I do.

However, the gait of this poem isn't precarious. The metrical feet in the earlier poem, "After great pain a formal feeling comes," F372, go all awry, but the gait in this poem stays in perfect iambic 4/3 march-step. And unlike in the earlier poem, "I felt a funeral in my brain," F340, where she falls from the plank, here, she doesn't. She's learned "a slow and cautious way." This poem is the sequel.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. My dream of riding clouds :

SEA OF BOOKS

I tell myself before going to bed that I want to have a good dream and remember it. And I do. This morning I had a dream where Eve and I were in an old Victorian house on an island belonging to her family. While exploring the house I found an old book in the bookshelf that explained how to ride clouds. I showed the instructions to Eve and we decided to follow them. First we took a boat out to sea. When we reached the right spot a cloud came down and we got on. The cloud took us a mile or so up in the sky and we just floated there. It was so comforting to the eye to see so much water around us, like the eye was seeing itself. But then the rational fears kicked in. Fear of falling. How could we be supported by a cloud? Fear of being lost. What if the cloud just keeps drifting and we don't come back? But, alas, we didn't fall off and, lo, the cloud eventually returned us to the ship. This is a metaphor for the seemingly impossible buoyancy of life if ever I dreamed one. We took the ship back to the island.

After we settled in I went back to look at the book again. This time I noticed that the whole bookshelf was stained in a dark sea-blue light, which made it hard to distinguish the books. I finally found the book I was looking for. I started leafing through. It was incredible. On some pages the words were cut out of the page, so you could only read them if you held the book up to the light. Other pages were made of wood with words and decorative leaves carved in relief. There were many fantastic pictures. On one page a woman, a nurse-maid, appeared before me to tell an old story. I listened, wrapped up in the story, rapt. The book was full of surprises. When I finished reading the book I noticed that there was now writing carved into my hand, all the way through, so you could see it backwards on the back of my hand. I held it up to the light in wonder. I didn't look to see what the writing said, but it was in a beautiful script, the same as in the book. The writing had somehow transferred from the book. I don't think it matters what the writing said. What matters is that there was writing carved into my hand... Kafka's "I am writing", Book of John's "In the beginning was the Word," the original impulse of communication, relationship itself. These words I am now writing were what was written in my hand.

The Lady feeds Her little Bird

The Lady feeds Her little Bird
At rarer intervals—
The little Bird would not dissent
But meekly recognize

The Gulf between the Hand and Her
And crumbless and afar
And fainting, on Her yellow Knee
Fall softly, and adore—


        -F925, J941, sheet 13, 1865


When researching this poem I came across a post on Instagram that asked for interpretations of it. The first one was admirably succinct:

“Humble Acceptance in face of retreat of time or affection.”

Emily gives us this idea in the guise of a charming allegory. It begins with... The Lady... 

This Lady could be Emily’s best friend Sue, or it could be Lady Fortune, or even Mother Nature. (It’s probably not the Virgin Mary though, since you don't picture Her forgetting about you.) This Lady is regal, but fickle. We don't know anything else about her except that she has a yellow knee. Why yellow? Is yellow the color of the Lady's dress, or of Her skin? Is yellow meant in a more cosmic way, like the color of the Sun or Moon?

In the first line this yellow Lady, who we imagine is dressed in fine regalia, is feeding her little pet Bird. 

Then line two drops a bomb. The Bird (the poet) is getting fed by The Lady at rarer and rarer intervals. The Lady, it would appear, seems to be forgetting about her little bird. Perhaps the bird no longer amuses her. Perhaps she has other interests? 

We’ve all been there. For whatever reason the person we admire who is paying attention to us begins to do so less and less. We lose favor.

What's a girl to do? She does something unexpected and transformative.

The little Bird would not dissent
But meekly recognize

The Bird would not dissent. A double-negative. Dissent is a funny word to use here too. Dissent means “to publicly disagree with an official rule or a popular idea.” Private feelings may be another matter.

What is being meekly recognized?

The Gulf between the Hand and Her

It’s an acknowledgement of how far the Bird, in its poverty, is from the Lady. But the trippy thing about this line is that the distance is between the "Hand" of the Lady and "Her," the Lady. It's as if the hand is still feeding the bird, but the arm is elastically stretching further and further. In other words, the distance begins to happen before the loving stops. 

And crumbless and afar
And fainting,

The ghosted poet feels bereft. And yet, dying, the little song-bird will... 

Fall softly, and adore—

The image of the fainting bird falling softly to its death is a sad one, yet there is a levity here. The bird is falling softly. And the reason the bird is falling so softly is because she is being held aloft in her adoration of the Lady.

Fall softly, and adore—

What a beautiful line. It has a hymn-like tone to it, almost religious, except that there's a twist; the merciful He is here a merciless She. 

The usual narrative is "Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned," but Dickinson upends that expectation. Instead of anger, she is "falling softly, and adoring." It's a monumental shift. The poet can love without being loved in return. 

There is a William Blake poem that is apropos here: "The Angel that presided o’er my birth/ Said, “Little creature, form’d of Joy and Mirth,/ “Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.” That's what the little bird is doing here with her song, loving with her own inner strength.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Lesbia and her Sparrow by Edward Poynter

Notes: Dickinson's poem may be riffing off of Catullus’ 1st century BC poems about his lover Lesbia and her pet bird. She likely knew them from studying Latin in school.  Here’s an interesting take on them. And here’s the poem.

Sparrow, my Lady's pet,
with whom she often plays and holds to her chest,
to whom she gives her fingertip as you peck away,
and whose sharp bites she likes to provoke
whenever it pleases her
to play some dear little game
(it’s a small relief for her longing, 
so that her passion might quiet down).
Oh – if only I could play with you as she does,
and alleviate the troubles of my melancholy mind!

On that dear Frame the Years had worn

On that dear Frame the Years had worn
Yet precious as the House
In which We first experienced Light
The Witnessing, to Us—

Precious! It was conceiveless fair
As Hands the Grave had grimed
Should softly place within our own
Denying that they died.

      -F924, J940, sheet 13, 1865


Here you have a poem about a framed photograph, which is in turn framed by a house; a frame inside a frame inside a frame. 

On that dear Frame the Years had worn

The frame is dear. Dickinson is not telling us who is in the photograph in the frame in the center of this poem, but we find out in the last line that it is someone who "died," so we can infer that it is a loved one, maybe a family member, or maybe some writer Emily revered. (We know she had images in her room of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot.) 

The memory of this person is kept alive through the image in the frame, which is as precious as the House “in which We first experienced Light.” "Light" could mean a few things. I take it as literal first. It refers to the house in which we were born, where we first opened our eyes and saw physical light. (Whatever may be meant metaphorically by "Light" is up to the reader).

This is especially pertinent because the house that Emily was born in, where she first saw “Light,” is the same house she was in when she wrote this poem 35 years later, and the same one in which she would die some 20 years after it was written. The house itself is a frame for memories. In fact, you can go to the Dickinson homestead tomorrow, if you wish, and walk inside of this frame, Emily’s ghost all around.

"Precious" is repeated twice in this poem, underscoring it. And look at the way that first stanza sets up that second “Precious!” for maximum impact: there are four lines of iambic meter that roll nonstop before pausing for a comma, a beat, then a dash at the end of the stanza: 

The Witnessing, to Us—

which resolves after a suspenseful stanza break into... 

Precious!

What is so precious? "The Witnessing, to Us—" It is the witnessing of life, the framing, epitomized the image of a loved one.

The poem though is missing the photograph. We can't see who is in this frame, so in a sense it is less about the actual photograph than it is about "The Witnessing."  

(I'm reminded of hearing Southern Baptists preachers shout, “Can I get a witness!”)

Since the photo is absent, the poem turns its attention to the reader witnessing the poem. You put your own photo there. The poem reminds us to give witness, and to give our love a solid frame to help keep it precious.

Not only is the memory double-precious, but the person we love is "conceiveless fair,” which is to say so fair that you can’t even conceive of it. Could you explain the physical beauty of one you loved in such a way that another could conceive of it? No, and not even a photograph could do that. A photograph is only an aid to memory.

As Hands the Grave had grimed
Should softly place within our own

Wow. That image of grimy skeleton reaching up out of the grave and softly placing before us the image of its past living self is worthy of a great ghost story. It’s a very haunting way of seeing a photograph, tender and terrible at once.  

Denying that they died.

The idea that the dead, through the photograph, are denying to us that they died is touching. Through our memories the dead deny -and defy- death itself.

The photograph is to the face as the poem is to the mind. In the poem we have the mind of Dickinson framed, as if her grimy skeleton hand is reaching up out of the grave and softly placing the words within our own.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

They won't frown always—some sweet Day

They won't frown always—some sweet Day
When I forget to tease—
They'll recollect how cold I looked
And how I just said "Please."

Then They will hasten to the Door
To call the little Girl
Who cannot thank Them for the Ice
That filled the lisping full.

        -F923, J874, sheet 13, 1865

This poem is slippery. The trick is to reconcile the ice in the second stanza with the cold in the first. Let's plunge into some possible meanings. 

My initial reading of this poem was about a little girl in trouble who is imagining how much she’ll be missed when she’s dead. The key to this interpretation is the line, “They'll recollect how cold I looked.” How can you not think of a corpse when you read this line, especially knowing Emily's penchant for having the narrator of the poem speak from beyond the grave? In this narrative the girl can no longer say thank you because she’s dead. The ice at the end that filled her lisping full was given to her by her parents as she was dying to wet her parched lips and give her final comfort, which all comes a little too late.  In this interpretation the point of the poem is to be kinder because some day the little girl who is annoying to you because of her teasing will be dead. Or something like that. 

It's a viable reading of the poem, but there is another way to read this narrative, in which the ice filling the mouth has a different meaning. The second interpretation is about a little girl who is angry for being violently punished for teasing and runs away.  This little girl has been teasing her sister and brother, (or maybe her parents), making fun of them by lisping and mocking them. Her siblings (or her parents) out of anger punish the little girl by filling up her mouth with ice.

The little girl asks them to stop because the ice is cold. "They'll recollect how cold I looked." She says “please.” (In both readings that "please" has real pathos, hanging there like it does.) You have to imagine how painful this punishment would be to a little girl, the sting of the ice. But, alas, the "please" is not heeded, so she runs away. The siblings/parents call out the door to her, but its too late.

The siblings/parents are no longer frowning at the little girl's teasing, now they are smiling, happy the girl is gone on this "sweet" day. 

They won't frown always—some sweet Day

Or is the day "sweet" for the girl because she has gotten away from her tormentors? I think it is likely meant to be the latter. It's not happy for the siblings/parents, we know, because they are hurrying to the door to call the girl back. 

Then They will hasten to the Door
To call the little Girl

But the girl is gone, and therefore cannot "thank them" for the ice they stuffed into her mouth.

Who cannot thank Them for the Ice
That filled the lisping full.

In this reading of the poem, "Who cannot thank them" is meant to be sarcastic. The girl does not stick around to "thank" the siblings/parents for this violent act. 

There is a possibility that the gratitude is meant to be sincere rather than sarcastic, that the chastened girl has learned her lesson about teasing others, and is grateful for the lesson. But I don't think so. I think Dickinson is baring her teeth. 

This poem was a real head-scratcher. I had to do a double-take.

Reading it again I see a little girl who is saying one day I'll be dead and they'll be sorry they stuffed my mouth with ice to stop my teasing. They'll wish they had their teasing girl back again. As a HS teacher I can relate. I often find myself frustrated with students who are teasing each other, but when they graduate, these are often the kids I miss the most. 

Do you have a different interpretation? If so, I'd love to hear it. 

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. This poem reminds me of one by Ron Padgett. I looked everywhere for this poem and couldn't find it, so I reached out to the poet himself, who generously sent it along to me. You can find it in Very Collected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2025). Here it is.

The Value of Discipline

I am very disappointed in you Myron. 

You are a very smart boy, 

and we had high hopes for you. 

And now this. 

I don't know.

Go to your room.

Myron heads toward his room,

but does his head hang low?

No way!

He is looking straight ahead

and feeling a hot black liquid

trickle through his heart. 

Great galleons

bound through the rough seas

and on them bearded men

are shouting sailor things

as if to the wind.

Back in his room

the objects look older.

What joy to make them walk the plank!

Avast! Avaunt! Splash! Garrr!

The Sun is gay or stark

The Sun is gay or stark
According to our Deed.
If Merry, He is merrier—
If eager for the Dead

Or an expended Day
He helped to make too bright
His mighty pleasure suits Us not
It magnifies our Freight


      -F922, J878, sheet 12, 1865


On the surface this poem seems to be saying that perception is everything. But under the surface the poem is saying something quite different, something about will in the face of devastation. Let's get into it:

The Sun is gay or stark
According to our Deed.

The sun seems cheerful or severe depending on what we ourselves are doing. This is thought-provoking because “Deed” is an action. The poem hinges on this word. What we do makes the difference. Easier said than done.

If Merry, He is merrier—

Before the poem goes dark, it is worth resting on this line for a second. The line is basically saying the sun seems merrier when we are merrier. But the way Dickinson has phrased it, it reads as if the Sun (with a possible pun on Son) is merrier when we are merry because He is happy for us. Those that love us are even happier than we are when we are happy. 

It’s a subtle point, but if taken it adds much to the heartbreak of this poem. It implies that, conversely, the Sun is even sadder than we are when we are sad. This dovetails with a poem written down prior to this one on the same sheet of paper, F920, where the poet hides her tears from “Him” because if she showed him her true pain He would be even more sad than she is.

If eager for the Dead

Dickinson has a chillingly concise way of putting things. Eager for the dead. Another poem written on this same sheet of paper, F921, is all about being eager (or anxious) for the dead, hoping that the newly departed won’t suffer after death. 

Or an expended Day

An expended Day is one that has come to an end. Day, in poetic parlance, can also mean "Life." The implied logic here is that we are so eager (anxious) for the dead that we ourselves are eager to die. It's an expression of extreme grief.

When we are grieving, the Sun isn’t welcome. We don’t want its brightness. The brightness throws the pain into relief and makes it worse. It "magnifies our Freight." (It's worth remembering that when we are happy it is not always welcome by those who are grieving and may even worsen the other's pain.)

Or an expended Day
He helped to make too bright
His mighty pleasure suits Us not
It magnifies our Freight

This idea is further explored in another recent poem from Sheet 11, F915, which begins with the line, “What Shall I do when Summer troubles?” 

There’s that word “do,” which echoes the word “deed” in this poem. When one is grieving what is to be “done?” The question is at the heart of both poems, but remains unanswered.

Perhaps the answer is implicit in the existence of the poem itself. A poem is a deed. It is an act. It is for someone, for some reason. In the poem we find solace born of sympathy. This may be its point. The poem commiserates with us and we are therefore less alone. This goes a little way, at least, toward helping us heal.

But there is something else happening beyond empathy. This poem says that when we grieve, “His mighty pleasure suits Us not.” We know Emily Dickinson is in intense grief since she expresses it acutely in poem after poem, yet, despite the extremity of the pain, she gives pleasure. There is great beauty in these poems. Creating beautiful language, in the face of pain, is a brave Deed.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Tales of the Sad Sun by João Bragato

Snow beneath whose chilly softness

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?


     -F921, J942, sheet 12, 1865


As I read this moving poem over and over again it begins to seep into my bones. It's hard to express why it is so moving. The over-all impression is something beyond what any explication can convey. It is freezing and warm, sweet and sad, chilly and soft, all at once.

I remember having a conversation about art with the great poet and critic John Yau once years ago in Berkeley when I was a graduate student. We were talking about what makes art great. I told him that for me it came down in the end to "aura." A painting either had it or didn't. He asked me to explain what I meant. I told him I didn't think it was possible to explain "aura," it just is. He said, "You have to try." 

I’ll start with the newest impression:

A powerful gnome-witch is giving a stern talk to Old Man Snow. She’s admonishing Him, gently advising Him to please give extra blanket to a loved one that was buried in the late autumn. 

The neighbors, the family, (“We”) have given as a gift ("bestowed") this neighbor to the ground, to her new bed in her new neighborhood, and she will soon be tucked “beneath” the blanket of Snow’s “chilly softness.”

At first the poet is shaking her finger at the Snow, admonishing Him, but in the second stanza the stern tone has softened and become a plea. “Wilt Thou,” She asks, “please blanket with Snow his new new neighbor we have lovingly presented to you, and give a wealthier (larger) portion of the blanket to her? After all, the long-dead have become acclimated to the cold underground by now and they don’t need the insulation of the snow as much as our friend does. They're used to it, but I’m afraid our friend is going to be very cold, so won’t you please take some of the snow-blanket from the shoulders of the old cemetery residents and give a little extra to Her?”

But, alas, the Poet knows how "austere" Old Man Winter is, how chillingly severe and strict, knows Winter does not play favorites. But it doesn’t really matter because the Poet does, and therefore she is asking anyway, pleading with unyielding Winter to bend its rules and be merciful for the sake of the beloved.

***

Of course the poet knows down deep it is no use pleading for the dead. The body underground is a corpse, decaying flesh. (Perhaps there is a soul, perhaps not, but if so it can't remain there with the rotting vegetable matter for eternity anyway). The Poet knows this but nevertheless she is alive and grieving and can’t yet let go. 

She knows in her heart though that it’s really "We" that are feeling so chilly. The plea is, in the end, for ourselves. She is asking for the snow to cover us up and keep us warm. The plea is also a way of expressing her love. 

It’s a plea with the highest degree of poetic irony. I find myself wincing at the cold reality that this poem hints at, but am moved by the warm heart of it, and delighted, too, by its "wealthier" imagination. It is at turns comforting, cute, tragic, funny, fantastical, realistic, terrifying, angry, endearing, all the things.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. I would guess that this poem was written by Dickinson expressly upon the occasion of a late autumn death of a neighbor.

2. The line about "the neighbor we so new bestow" reminds me of the Whitman line, “I bequeath myself to the dirt." What a beautiful conception of death. 

3. The idea of grieving for yourself when grieving for the dead is beautifully expressed in a poem written some 15 years after this one by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and All. 

4. Dickinson's conception of the world of the dead is such that before she died she left instructions that the six Irish men that had long worked for the Dickinsons would carry her casket, and that "they circled her flower garden, walked through the great barn that stood behind the house, and took a grassy path across house lots and fields of buttercups to West Cemetery [500 yards from Homestead]." It's as if she was giving herself, from the casket, one last look at the beloved flower garden, and at the same time allowing herself to be honored by the flowers therein. How very Emily Dickinson. Thanks to Larry B for this wonderful bit of biography. See the note for F847. 

5. Dickinson provides “Russian” as an alternative word for “Austere” in the final line. ‘Wilt Though, Russian Snow?” The difference between the two is worth considering. "Russian" evokes the deepest, harshest northern winter, and it also hints at foreignness. The newly dead have entered an unfamiliar country. Snow becomes a strange realm, almost another nation. I suspect Dickinson went with "austere" as her first choice because the idea of winter being severe and unyielding is important to the logic of the poem. 

6. I imagined a gnome-witch pleading with Snow here because at various times in her letters Dickinson describes herself as both. It seems fitting for this poem to think of them being hyphened together. 

Each Scar I'll keep for Him

Each Scar I'll keep for Him
Instead I'll say of Gem
In His long Absence worn
A Costlier one

But every Tear I bore
Were He to count them o'er
His own would fall so more
I'll missum them —


-F920, J877, sheet 12, 1865


This poem has an involved complexity that takes a while to unravel, but it's worth it as it has something beautiful to say about love. Let's start at the beginning:

Each Scar I'll keep for Him
Instead I'll say of Gem

I will treasure and preserve every emotional wound. But instead of calling these injuries, I'll think of them as valuable gems. Instead I'll say (they are) of Gem.

In His long Absence worn

These wounds/gems were acquired from absence from the loved one.

A Costlier one

These "gems" are precious because they were earned through suffering. The pain of missing is proof of love, and therefore something precious. "Costlier" is a pointed word here. There was a dear cost (pain), therefore the scars/gems cost more (gain).

In the first stanza the poem establishes a theme of economy. The scars have a "cost." Then the poem shifts into accounting:

But every Tear I bore
Were He to count them o'er

Now we're literally in the language of reckoning. It's an audit of tears!

Then comes:

His own would fall so more
I'll missum them —

Were he to count my tears, and see how many there really are, then, because of His love, he would cry even more tears than I am, so therefore I'll misrepresent the amount.

As she often does, Dickinson takes the language of commerce and turns it inside out. Love doesn't follow the ordinary rules of accounting. Loss is entered as profit.

Missum is a cool word. I’ve read analyses of this poem that read this as “miss some,” but I don’t think so. It's awkward. "I'll miss some them"? I also don't see Dickinson misspelling "some" to be cute. I believe it must mean mis-sum.

She is saying, "I'll make the reckoning come out wrong." She won't let him see the total of her suffering. The emotional cost is falsified out of love. It's an act of loving deception.

There's an interesting twist if "Him" is Christ. If Christ were to count her tears, he would weep more than she did. So she says she'll missum them, she'll under-report to spare even Him grief. If so, it's a pretty surprising reversal, the believer protecting the Savior. She's pulling a Christ on Christ by refusing justice in favor of mercy.

There’s an elegant symmetry in this poem. In the first stanza you are seeing the scars as gems, and in the second you are missumming tears. The poem begins by revaluing suffering. Missumming the tears is doing something similar. In both cases, reality is reframed; one act changes how she sees her own suffering, and the other changes how he will see it.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: 

1. Poetry itself may be seen as a kind of "mis-summing." Calling scars "gems" and "mis-summing" tears are poetic moves.

2. M is a sacred sound, the sound of Mother, of home. It's the sound a baby makes when it is hungry for mom's milk. MMMM. So perhaps it is significant that the M begins and ends this poem. To drive the sound home, there is a tripling up of the M in that last line, "I'll missum them."

    

Be Mine the Doom —

Be Mine the Doom —
Sufficient Fame —
To perish in Her Hand!


      -F919, J845, sheet 12, 1865


This brief poem has a timeless aura, with all the drama and sexiness of a poem by Sappho. “To perish in Her Hand!”

“Her Hand,” I believe, refers to Emily’s sister-in-law and beloved friend, Susan Dickinson.

Perishing in the hand of the woman you love, this is sufficient fame for Emily. This is a doom that the poet can welcome as her own. It’s terribly romantic.

I would be willing to bet (at 7 to 1 odds) that this poem was sent to Sue and accompanied by a flower. The flower, once in Sue’s hand, would soon perish. It would be perishing even as she read the poem and held the flower, surely some prize from Emily’s garden. Imagine being Sue in that moment, reading this poem with the dying flower in your hand. You would understand that the flower is Emily.

I am sufficient for her, you would understand. I am hers in life and in death.

***

This poem doesn't need any biographical details to have meaning. Dickinson is hard to pin down with her pronouns. Sometimes we have a he and sometimes a she. Sometimes him can be deified as Him, and her as Her. There is a fluidity with both the male/female and the mortal/Deity in Dickinson's pronouns. The object of this poem may be exemplified in a single Her (such as Sue) or it can stand for the whole of Nature. It's powerful to read this poem if you read Her as meaning Nature.

***

It's such a miniature jewel of a poem, with that unique stanza structure of 2/2/3. It begins with that heavily syncopated first line, "Be Mine the Doom" and ends its brief iambic run with an emphatic exclamation point.

***

"Be Mine the Doom" is defiant. As long as it is in your hands, dear, bring on the Doom! There is also a bit of humorous over-the-top quality in this line, as if it is winking at us. I imagine the poet histrionically arching her eyebrows as she writes this line, making fun of her own penchant for drama. Yet the sentiment couldn't be more sincere.

*** 

I think the “sufficient Fame” is interesting here. There are enough Dickinson poems that dicker with the notion of Fame that we can be sure it was something the poet considered deeply. She knew her own worth as a poet. Even though she published almost nothing (less than a dozen poems) while she was alive, she gained a kind of mythic stature in Amherst and beyond. Sue was famous as a host and entertained the likes of Emerson and Francis Hodgson Burnett (author of The Secret Garden) in her salon. I'm sure she must've sung Emily's praises to the guests. There were also a number of other famous people of the time that Dickinson had a personal relationship with, either in person, or through letters. (See the end notes for a short list.) All of this would've helped create a local mystique. But Emily wasn't looking for fame. She repeatedly turned down offers to publish her poems.

The irony is that the more Dickinson pushed away society, the more intriguing and famous she became. (This same quality can be seen in her poems by the way; the more they try to elude us, the more we want to know what they have to say.) Still, had she not left so many great poems (nearly 2000) behind for us to find, no one would remember the locally-famous recluse. She would have her true international fame posthumously, where it wouldn't be a bother to her.

While alive  Dickinson closed her society to include just a few friends, and especially Sue, her most beloved friend for more than half of her life. That was “Sufficient Fame” for her.

And in fact this poem is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: Emily did, in the end, perish in Sue’s hand. Sue was with Emily when she died. Afterward it is reported that Sue designed a white flannel robe for Emily and laid her in a white casket. She carefully placed heliotrope, lady's slipper orchids, and a knot of blue field violets at Emily's neck and in her hands symbolizing devotion and faithfulness. Sue also personally lined Emily’s final resting place with evergreen boughs. 


         -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

blue violet symbolizing devotion and faithfulness

Note: a short list of famous people Emily knew, all of whom helped make her a myth in her own lifetime.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson: A decorated Civil War colonel, abolitionist, and literary critic. He and Dickinson exchanged letters from 1862 until her death, acting as her literary mentor. After her death, he helped co-edit her first published poetry collection.

Helen Hunt Jackson: A highly successful novelist and poet. She was a childhood friend of Dickinson's and tried (unsuccessfully) to convince Dickinson to publish her poetry during her lifetime.

Samuel Bowles: The highly influential editor-in-chief of the Springfield Republican newspaper. He was a close family friend, and Dickinson sent him several of her poems.

Charles Wadsworth: A prominent and nationally famous Presbyterian minister from Philadelphia. Dickinson heard him preach in the 1850s, and they struck up a correspondence; he became one of the most important intellectual confidants in her life.

Mary Lyon: A pioneering educator for women, famous for founding the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Dickinson attended the seminary during the 1847–1848 academic year and studied under Lyon's instruction.

Josiah Holland: A well-known Massachusetts doctor, writer, and co-founder of Scribner's Monthly magazine. He and his wife, Elizabeth, were close family friends and frequent correspondents.

We met as Sparks—Diverging Flints

We met as Sparks—Diverging Flints
Sent various—scattered ways—
We parted as the Central Flint
Were cloven with an Adze—
Subsisting on the Light We bore
Before We felt the Dark—
A Flint unto this Day—perhaps—
But for that single Spark.


     -F918, J958, sheet 11, 1865



Flint is a very hard dark quartz that produces sparks when it is struck.

 

flint

So here you are, resting in your flinty flintness, in your “quartz contentment," when love strikes! It comes down like an adze and creates sparks. This is an image that is violent, but brilliant, like a lover’s passion.

This violent blow of the blade is how you “meet.”

We met as Sparks—Diverging Flints.

I often want to just write “Wow!" in reference to a powerful line or idea in Dickinson, but I rarely do. Why?

Here I will, because this is such a viscerally powerful way of describing love. 

Dickinson’s spark creates a spark in us. That’s what great poets do. They wow us. They set us on fire.  They disturb our “quartz contentment.”

Sent various—scattered ways—

This line mainly gets across the idea that the initial sparks go off in the sky, scattered apart. But I want to stay with this line for a minute and imagine what some of those various and scattered ways might be? The mind reels at how various and scattered we really are. 

We parted as the Central Flint
Were cloven with an Adze—

An adze is an ancient cutting tool similar to an axe but with the cutting edge perpendicular to the handle rather than parallel. We parted as (if) the central Flint/ Were cloven with an Adze. The sparks are created by the adze striking the flint. 

Things get poetic here because the same thing that creates the spark, the adze, also creates separation. The sparks part from the flint as soon as the adze strikes. The idea is that love and longing come as a package deal. 

This duality can also be seen in that word “cloven.” "Cleave" is a classic contranym. Cleave can mean to cleave apart, which it primarily does here, but it can also mean to cleave together.

I love the rhyme of “Adze” with “Ways.” Following “sparks”, “flints”, “sent”, “scattered”and “Central,” these end rhymes create a soft susurration, a feeling, in this poem, of longing. Then the next line begins the triple S in the word "Subsisting." 

Subsisting on the Light We bore
Before We felt the Dark—

There is much to meditate upon in these lines. "Subsisting on the Light We bore." The light is the love we feel for one another. It feeds and nourishes us.

In our minds we see an image in this poem of two sparks that are coming off of the central flint. Their moment of parting is brilliant, but swift. We’ve all seen sparks rising into the sky, fading out into the dark. It happens quick. Death, or loss, is what the spark fades into.

The rhythm of these two lines is worth noting. The iambic tetrameter enjambs into the following line of trimeter, creating seven quick iambs in a row. This ramping up effect is heightened by the internal rhyme of “we bore” with “Before.” This all sets us up for the pause in the next line:

A Flint unto this Day—perhaps—

Was it so great to fall in love? Would it have been better to stay in the “quartz contentment," in the oneness and hardness of the dark flint?

The “perhaps,” set off there between dashes, has a lot riding on it. Perhaps it would’ve been better to just be in the non-dual contentment of that central flint, but then again, we would never have gotten fire.

But for that single Spark.

The diverging sparks at the beginning of this poem have, by the end of the poem, reverted back to their single state. This is the state of fire. One spark creates another. The original spark, I suppose, is the force behind that falling adze, its wielder's desire for fire.


       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


P.S. But where did that original desire come from? I recently read a first century BC poem by the Greek poet Meleager that wondered the same thing:

What I cannot see is how,
From the green wave rising,
Out of water, Oh Aphrodite,
You bred a flame.

P.P.S. Another curious thing about the form of this poem is that the stanzas are NOT split in two. Perhaps it is to emphasize the "single Spark" with which the poem ends. 

As One does Sickness over

As One does Sickness over
In convalescent Mind,
His scrutiny of Chances
By blessed Health obscured —

As One rewalks a Precipice
And whittles at the Twig
That held Him from Perdition
Sown sidewise in the Crag

A Custom of the Soul
Far after suffering
Identity to question
For evidence't has been —

         -F917, J957, sheet 11, 1865

Surviving illness brings a heightened awareness of vulnerability. That's what I think this poem is about on the surface. Under the surface I think there is wrestling here with the idea of Grace too. 

It's a tricky poem. Let’s break it down as best we can.

As One does Sickness over
In convalescent Mind,

The body is convalescing, getting better, and the mind reflects back upon the illness. But the phrase “does Sickness over” gives you a sense that reflecting on sickness is itself a sickness. You are doing Sickness all over again. And for what? It's like you are stuck in the suffering.

His scrutiny of Chances
By blessed Health obscured —

Upon recovering from an illness, presumably a serious one, we think about the chance of death. I am reminded of the classic doctor’s diagnosis here; “Ms. Vinrace, you have a 50/50 chance.” But there is something else going on too I think. The idea that these “Chances” are, normally, by “blessed Health obscured” means that it takes an illness to bring this "chance" to light. Dickinson's poetry often causes me to stop and really look at a word. I pick it up and turn it around. "Chance" can mean probability, but it can also mean “risk” and “opportunity.” We have a "chance" to live, so we have to take this "chance." We can easily forget that when we are in "blessed health." It takes an illness to wake us up to it.

Another meaning of “chance,” though, is randomness. I think this meaning plays into the poem in the second stanza when we are presented with the idea of contingency. Is there a purpose to life, or is it random?

As One rewalks a Precipice
And whittles at the Twig
That held Him from Perdition
Sown sidewise in the Crag

Dickinson presents us with an analogy. Scrutinizing the recovery of an illness is like falling off of a cliff, being saved by a twig on the side of the cliff, and then going back to examine the twig. Not only do we look at the twig, but we “whittle” at it too. That’s interesting. It suggests that by examining the thing that saved us, we are actually making it more fragile. There is a sickness not only to examining the sickness, but perhaps even to looking at what kept us alive.

The word Perdition here adds a whole new element to the poem. Perdition primarily refers to eternal damnation; the state of being spiritually lost and punished forever after death. So now there is the suggestion that we are not just talking about a physical illness, but a spiritual one. If this is so, then the twig that saved us is no longer a thing of “chance,” but an instrument of Grace. This is why it has been “sown” into the crag, as if by design. The message I get is, don't question Grace or you will whittle it down to nothing.

“Sown” is an interesting word choice, but so is “sidewise.” It makes me think of Emily’s love of the word “slant" and these famous lines from a much later poem by Dickinson,

Tell all the truth but tell it slant -
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

The twig that saves us has been sown there, but it isn't coming in from an angle we can recognize. It's coming in sidewise. 

A Custom of the Soul
Far after suffering

Custom is another word you can pick up and turn around. I think the “does sickness over” and “whittles at the twig” both give us a sense that it might be better not to reflect upon the illness. Better to move forward.

Identity to question
For evidence't has been —

Here you are questioning identity itself. The poem turns existential. If I can die so easily, or, worse, become damned for eternity, then who am I? Does life have any meaning at all?

But then we remember all those twigs sown sideways into all of those crags, the millions of chances that had to be surmounted just for us to be here in the first place. 

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

  

P.S. An old joke:

Jack was walking along a steep cliff one day. He accidentally got too close to the edge and fell. On the way down he grabbed a branch, which temporarily stopped his fall. He looked down and to his horror saw that the canyon dropped straight down for more than a thousand feet.

He couldn’t hang onto the branch forever, and there was no way for him to climb up the steep wall of the cliff. So Jack began yelling for help, hoping that someone passing by would hear and rescue him.

“HELP! HELP! Is anyone up there?”

He yelled for a long time, but no one heard him. He was about to give up when he heard a voice. “Jack, Jack. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, yes! I can hear you. I’m down here!”

“I can see you, Jack. Are you all right?”

“Yes, but who are you, and where are you?”

“I am the Lord, Jack. I’m everywhere.”

“The Lord? You mean, GOD?”

“That’s Me.”

“I’ll do anything, Lord. Just tell me what to do.”

“Okay. Let go of the branch.”

“What?”

“I said, let go of the branch. Just trust Me. Let go.”

There was a long silence.

Finally Jack yelled, “IS ANYONE ELSE UP THERE?”

Drab Habitation of Whom?

Drab Habitation of Whom?
Tabernacle or Tomb —
Or Dome of Worm —
Or Porch of Gnome —
Or some Elf's Catacomb?

     -F916,  J893,  Sheet 11, 1865

This poem is only six lines long, but it spans religion, mortality, biology, folklore, magic and mystery all at once.

Drab Habitation of Whom?

In the first line an existential question is posed. Who are we in this drab habitation? We are presented with an open-ended riddle. Eventually this question turns toward death, but not yet. A "Whom," after all, follows from being someone, from being alive. If there is a habitation, there is living going on. So the question is posed to you. You look around the room to see... Whom? There is no one else around. Perhaps you notice that your habitation is a bit drabber than it needs to be.

Tabernacle or Tomb —

This is confusing at first because a Tabernacle and a Tomb are "Whats" not "Whoms." So I think we are to understand that the place defines the inhabitant, or, put another way, the inhabitant defines the place. Is the habitation you are living in a sacred place where God’s presence resides or a dead place of nothingness? Is your room more tabernacle or tomb?

Or Dome of Worm —

Now the riddle is revealed. The "drab place" must be a burial mound, for what else could a dome of worm be? “Dome of Worm” is a memorable phrase. The body is shown to be, on one level, mere worm-food.

The word “worm” seems to derive from the “tomb” in the line above, but the word “Dome” ties back to “Tabernacle.” This doubling up of metaphor is cunning. We can infer that the church itself may be infested with worms.

Or Porch of Gnome —

Now we are back among the living again, but not among the real, not in any factual realm. The Gnome, though, for a moment of inspired imagination, is at home, and this mound is his porch. It’s magical, like a child's fairy garden. The imagination has transformed the worm-riddled mound into something wondrous. 

But maybe this fantasy is naive? This thought sets us up for a return to the dark. Is this some magical creature's porch, 

Or some Elf's Catacomb?

One way you can read this poem is as a question: is there life after life? That's a mystery that occupied Dickinson, as it does so many of us. But another way to read this poem, one that is, I think, more valuable, is to ask: is there life among the living? Is life merely a set-up for the harsh reality of being worm-food, or is it lit up with the magic of the imagination? 

I think this poem has it both ways. It acknowledges reality, but also dwells in possibility. 

We go back to the beginning of the poem and take note again of that "Whom." It's not “What” life and death are that is being defined here, it’s “Whom.” The power to transform one's home is, at least on this side of the veil, ours to own. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: 

1. "Porch of Gnome" may be riffing off of the idea of a "porch gnome," a fad which was already in vogue in the 19th century and is still popular today. 

2. The word gnome was coined by the 16th-century Swiss alchemist Paracelsus. He derived it from the Greek word genomos, meaning "earth-dweller"

3. The form of this poem, 33223, is the same as a limerick. (I don't think I've seen Dickinson use it before?) The effect is to heighten the fairy-tale elements of the poem. 

4. The child-like word-play in this poem is a lot of fun. Whom/ Tomb/ Dome/ Worm/ Gnome/ some/ comb. The over-riding sound is OM, the sacred Hindu syllable. I doubt Dickinson was familiar with this Indian root-word, so I think it is more likely the poem functions as a meditation on the word “Home.” That word is conspicuously absent here. We have "habitation" followed by a series of words that rhyme with home.

 

What shall I do when the Summer troubles—

What shall I do when the Summer troubles—
What, when the Rose is ripe—
What when the Eggs fly off in Music
From the Maple Keep?

What shall I do when the Skies a'chirrup
Drop a Tune on me—
When the Bee hangs all Noon in the Buttercup
What will become of me?

Oh, when the Squirrel fills His Pockets
And the Berries stare
How can I bear their jocund Faces
Thou from Here, so far?

'Twouldn't afflict a Robin—
All His Goods have Wings—
I—do not fly, so wherefore
My Perennial Things?


    - F915, J956, Sheet 11, 1865

This poem presents a classic trope. The sun is shining in the summer, but for the broken-hearted it might as well be midnight in the dead of winter. I can think of many poems (including a few others by Dickinson) that deal with this theme. I can think of a few great songs too, including this one.

Dickinson adds her own spin, and in the meantime she regales us with music from her Maple keep. One reason this poem feels so alive is that Dickinson doesn't merely describe summer, she invents a language that seems to behave like summer:

What shall I do when the Summer troubles—
What, when the Rose is ripe—
What when the Eggs fly off in Music
From the Maple Keep?

You can spend some time looking at the effect Dickinson achieves by the interweaving of those W and R sounds in the first two lines, the way she wields the vowels, the way the lines flow so mellifluously and then end on those hard Ps. It’s so rhythmically perfect and in keeping with the subject. One swoons with summerness.

The eggs are flying off in music from the Maple Keep. "Keep" is a medieval word for the fortified tower of a castle. Suddenly the maple is a fortress. (See F912, where trees are “sentinels.”) The nestlings are escaping into the world, flying off in Music, as though music is the air they travel through. 

But in the midst of this music we know that there is trouble. The phrase “Summer troubles” is one of a few in this poem that is memorable. It would make for a good title.

What shall I do when the Skies a'chirrup
Drop a Tune on me—

Another memorable phrase, “Skies a’chirrup.” Like the eggs flying off in music, the atmosphere itself seems to be made up of bird song. But this doesn’t cheer the poet. Rather the skies “drop” a Tune on her head as if it were a piano falling from a building. (I think of F597, “The emperor with Rubies pelteth me.”) Happiness is an assault to one who is unhappy.

When the Bee hangs all Noon in the Buttercup
What will become of me?

"Hangs" is perfect. The word captures the lazy suspension of a summer afternoon. The line stops, again, on that P sound at the end of Buttercup, and you are, for a moment, hanging in the air, before the painful question returns, "What will become of me?" 

Oh, when the Squirrel fills His Pockets
And the Berries stare
How can I bear their jocund Faces
Thou from Here, so far?

It’s such a simple phrase, “the Berries stare,” but much is going on there. We’ve seen a similar idea in Dickinson before, the most famous example being, “We passed the fields of gazing grain," from F479.

The berries are imagined as having “jocund faces.” They're little cheerful people, but also, the poet feels exposed by their happiness. Everything around her seems to be looking at her loneliness, cheerfully insensitive, obliviously happy.

The berries are staring because the poet is staring at them so intensely. A stare is persistent. It won't leave the poet alone. The berries confront her with beauty, and therefore with absence.

'Twouldn't afflict a Robin—
All His Goods have Wings—

A robin would not suffer like the poet because it can fly to where it needs to. Everything the robin values, its “Goods,” is mobile. The poet, however, is bound to one place. This is especially poignant with Dickinson who famously never left her home in the last 15 years of her life. 

I—do not fly, so wherefore
My Perennial Things?

("Wherefore" is an antiquated poetic word for "why.")

"If I cannot fly," she seems to be saying, "why do I keep having these recurring (perennial) attachments and hopes?"

"Perennial Things," I think, can mean recurring emotional needs that return year after year, just as the seasons do. The poet is questioning why she has been given desires and attachments that reach toward someone distant when she lacks the freedom to follow them. But, conversely, perhaps, she is admiring those who can live life on the wing. It reminds me of the William Blake poem, "Eternity". 

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy.

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

Well, Dickinson may feel out of season with summer, but her poetry gets her as close to it as can be. It's interesting to see the trochaic pattern in the stanzas. 4343 4343 4343 3343. The loss of the expected beat in the last stanza adds a plaintive feeling when you are reading it out loud. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A Door just opened on a street -

A Door just opened on a street  —
I — lost — was passing by  —
An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed -
And Wealth — and Company.

The Door as sudden shut — And I  —
I — lost — was passing by —
Lost doubly — but by contrast — most -
Informing — Misery.

     -F914, J953, sheet 10, 1865


The speaker is lost out in the cold. Then she gets a glimpse into a warm home through an open door. When that door is shut (in her face presumably), she feels even worse than before, "Lost doubly." Why? Because she had a brief glimpse of home, of “Wealth - and Company,” and now she knows what she is missing.

This idea, of being worse off after a glimpse of joy than you would have been if you had never gotten it in the first place, is a common one in Dickinson’s poetry. Usually this idea is about lost love, which always makes me wonder: is it true that "it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all," or would it actually be better to have never loved at all? Dickinson wavers, but she generally seems to fall on the side of better never to have loved at all.

The poem may be read as a metaphor for love lost, but the words “Wealth” and “Warmth” makes one think of those who are poor and cold; the homeless.

The heart goes out. One wants that door to open all the way. But will it? 

The “I” in this poem is mentioned three times, with a kind of doubled-up emphasis in the second occurrence:

The Door as sudden shut — And I  —
I — lost — was passing by —

The poem is iambic, but that second "I" there is trochaic, the beat on the first syllable. This rhythmic hiccup stands out. You are forced for a moment to reverse the beat. It creates a kind of stutter effect. You falter under the weight between those two “I”s. 

...And I —
I — lost — ...

There is a pregnant pause between the two stanzas and in the drama of that moment is born a bitterness. 

There is another potential “I” in this poem, the one who is hidden in their wealth and warmth behind that door. Perhaps that is us. The poet, then, aligns us with the downtrodden, with the nobody. "I'm nobody - who are you?" Dickinson always sides with the poor.

Dickinson wasn’t poor, not financially. She lived all of her life in a warm and wealthy home. So the “I” here is, at some level, "another," a projection. As Dickinson says in a letter to a friend, "When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse - it does not mean-me - but a supposed person."

Perhaps this poem is, then, designed to be a way for the poet, and the readers of the poem, to feel for those outside of her (our) comfort zones.

The poem accomplishes this in a couple of striking ways. First of all it begins in medias res. We are suddenly in the moment. “The door just opened on a street—” We are there, on the street, standing in front of the opened door. 

Secondly, the first person perspective allows us to inhabit the role of the narrator and therefore empathize with the anguish. What would it be like to be homeless? What would it feel like to be cold and hungry and have that “instant width of warmth disclosed." What would it be like to be so all alone. What would feel like to be in such a forlorn state and then have a little taste of warmth and Company? And finally, what would it feel like, then, to have the door shut on us? The more we try to imagine this situation, the more our hearts, like doors, open up.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

 

P.S. I found the following on FaceBook from a writer named David Mosey. It is insightful: "For some reason this poem always seems to remind me of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, probably because of the contrast of the “Width of Warmth” of the festivities inside with the cold snow-blown street outside. But it is a salutary reminder that Dickinson’s selection of her “Own Society” was not without cost. It is as elegant, concise and heartrending a self-examination as she ever confided to paper."

 

A Man may make a Remark —

A Man may make a Remark —
In itself — a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature — lain —

Let us deport — with skill —
Let us discourse — with care —
Powder exists in Charcoal —
Before it exists in Fire.

  

     -F913, J952, sheet 10, 1865


Slowly going through Dickinson’s poems feels like being adrift in an endless sea of surprises. Every poem has hidden aesthetic pleasures. Every one has secrets to reveal.

This one begins with one of those small aesthetic pleasures, the way the M and K sounds work together:

A Man may make a Remark —

The M is the softest of syllables, the K is the sharpest. Concentrated together they sound remarkable.

A Man may make a Remark —
In itself — a quiet thing

There is a short story I love by Haruki Murakami called Cream. In this story a boy gives up playing the piano because of a quiet remark:

“When we played that piece together, she gave me a sour look every time I hit a wrong note. She was a better pianist than I was, and I tended to get overly tense, so when the two of us sat side by side and played I bungled a lot of notes. My elbow bumped against hers a few times as well. It wasn’t such a difficult piece, and, moreover, I had the easier part. Each time I blew it, she had this Give me a break expression on her face. And she’d click her tongue—not loudly but loud enough that I could catch it. I can still hear that sound, even now. That sound may even have had something to do with my decision to give up the piano.”

I think that is what Dickinson is getting at here. One very quiet line can change a person’s life for better or worse.

a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature — lain —

If one quiet remark can cause someone to “give up music,” it can also cause them to take it up. The spark that lays dormant in nature can be ignited by others.

My wonderful mother-in-law, Ada George, likes to say about teaching that you can only give students flammable material, but they have to provide the spark. But here Dickinson puts it the other way around. The flammable material is already inside, “in dormant nature — lain —,” and we can help provide the spark.

I love that “lain” set off there in between dashes. It highlights that the dormant spark has been "lain" there, by God or nature or what have you. For better or for worse we have the power to set that powder keg off. So...

Let us deport — with skill —
Let us discourse — with care —

“Deport” as Dickinson uses it here does not carry its contemporary meaning of sending someone out of the country. It means “to behave or comport (oneself) especially in accord with a code.”

The practice of this “skill” is a life-long pursuit. You could say that all of Dickinson’s poetry is an extremely careful discourse. 

The stakes are great. One “wince” as someone sings out of tune can be enough to stop them from ever singing again. One laugh at someone else's dancing, even if the laughter is meant to be in delight, can keep them off the dance floor. On the other hand one quiet remark may also be enough to keep them singing and dancing for life.

As a teacher, parent and friend, I don't think these words could be more meaningful.

Powder exists in Charcoal —
Before it exists in Fire.

Dickinson ends the poem with a tight little aphorism, dense as charcoal. Charcoal is an interesting metaphor because it is made by heating wood in the absence of oxygen. This process allows it to burn hotter, cleaner and with a longer duration than regular wood.

Goals.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

a fascinating history of Charcoal