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."