The Heart has narrow Banks

The Heart has narrow Banks
It measures like the Sea
In mighty—unremitting Bass
And Blue Monotony

Till Hurricane bisect
And as itself discerns
Its insufficient Area
The Heart convulsive learns

That Calm is but a Wall
Of unattempted Gauze
An instant's Push demolishes
A Questioning—dissolves.


    -F960, J928, sheet 21, 1865


To be this deep into the oeuvre of Emily Dickinson and still be discovering great poems one after another is such a gift. They “measure like the sea," but somehow never become in the slightest monotonous.

This one is powerful, in part because of its amazing imagery and sound.

Let’s start with that image. We picture a mighty sea with a tiny shoreline on either side, "narrow banks." The sea is so large and blue that it becomes monotonous to the eye. But here comes a hurricane to “bisect” the sea, to cut the blue in two. This causes water to push out over the wall of calm air and onto the narrow banks, which demolishes...what? "A Questioning." What do we imagine this Questioning looks like? The Questioning, which is the same thing that presumably caused the hurricane in the first place, is demolished, and then dissolves back into monotonous blue. 

Now let’s listen to the sounds, which follow the image. Great poets tend to write onomatopoeically and Dickinson is especially adept at this. The poem at hand is a master class in sound carrying sense. Note how many words here carry their own meaning in their sound. "Banks" has the hard K ending which forms in this poem the sense of a hard stop, a bank, at the end of a fluid line. (Think how different it would be if she had written “shores” instead of "Banks" here). "Sea" has an open vowel ending at the end of the line, like an endless expanse. "Bass" carries within it a bass sound. (You can hear this if you say "Bass" in your lowest Bass register). There is a sense of cutting in the “sect” of "Bisect." There is a lot of area in the vowels surrounding the r in "Area." The word “Convulsive” sounds like something convulsing. The z sound of "Gauze" has a softness like the fabric of gauze. "Calm" is one of the calmest of words, the way it softly ends in “alm.” "Push" sounds like air being pushed. "Dissolves," to my ear, sounds like sound breaking down. The English language is more onomatopoeic than we realize and Dickinson takes full  advantage of it.

Not just words, but entire lines and stanzas can have an onomatopoeic effect. Look at what Dickinson does, for instance, with the B and the M in the first stanza,

The Heart has narrow Banks
It Measures like the Sea
In Mighty—unreMitting Bass
And Blue Monotony.

The hum of the M surfaces again and again, weaving in out of the percussive B sounds of billowing waves.

Another bit of sound-play is the way those beating B sounds in the first stanza gives way to the calm endings of “Gauze” and “Dissolve” in the second stanza. The hurricane of sound has decidedly died down.

The meaning of the poem is bolstered by the image and the sounds. This one is fairly easy to follow, but it leaves us with a disruptive hurricane of “Questioning.” The question of the heart, perhaps, is one that is being asked of another; a heart extending itself. The answer to this question may profoundly shake up the calm of the heart, create a hurricane which will break it in half. But perhaps an answer is unnecessary for a disruption. The Question itself upsets the mighty blue expanse of the heart. Now that the sea has been disrupted and spilled over there is no more shore to retreat to. There is only chaos of feeling and then eventually a settling down which dissolves the question itself. 

You return back to the mighty blue monotony. The poem is a loop.

I notice upon returning back to the first line that it’s a declarative statement, “The heart has narrow banks" It's an odd way to start the poem. It would make more sense as a second line, something like, "The heart is like a mighty sea/ encased by narrow banks." But by starting with this line it puts an emphasis on the banks themselves. The heart, we are told, has narrow banks. But so what? We come to find out they are not a safe space. The hurricane caused by the push of need crashes down on them.

Another question in the poem is raised with the phrase, "sufficient area." 

as itself discerns
Its insufficient Area
The Heart

This begs a question. What is insufficient Area for a heart? The heart has to discern this for itself, and does it by learning that "calm is just wall...an instant's push demolishes."  

The heart 

...convulsive learns

That Calm is but a Wall
Of unattempted Gauze
An instant's Push demolishes
A Questioning—dissolves.

    

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Hurricane Emily, an extraordinarily powerful 

early-season tropical cyclone in 2005 

P.S. One other exquisite bit of of sound-craft in this poem is the way the first stanza is tied to the second stanza through the T-H-R-N-B-K sound clusters of the first and fifth lines. I don't know what to make of it, but it's awesome.

P.P.S. The phrase "A Questioning" functions in this poem as a sliding modifier. It can slide backward to qualify that which comes before it, or forward to "dissolves."