Twice had Summer her fair Verdure

Twice had Summer her fair Verdure
Proffered to the Plain—
Twice a Winter's silver Fracture
On the Rivers been—

Two full Autumns for the Squirrel
Bounteous prepared—
Nature, Had'st thou not a Berry
For thy wandering Bird?



       -F950, J835, sheet 19, 1865



I heard Malcolm Guite on the podcast Literary Life recently talking about his new epic ballad, “Gallahad and the Grail.” (4.69 rating on Goodreads!) He was talking about how easy it is to over-determine a poem in the act of “interpreting” it. He made a canny joke, “Lord, lead us not into interpretation.”

So yeah, reminder to self. Sometimes it's best to evade interpretation. The best way to do that is to look at the form, what it is that makes the poem different, and beautiful, formally.

With a poem like this I can take pleasure from it without needing to make sense of it. First there is the sound, the pleasure of words on the tongue. They insist on being read out loud. In fact, this one insisted on being sung. I got out my guitar and a melody immediately presented itself.

This one is SUCH a pleasure to sing. First of all, the rhythm is trochaic, which means each line begins with an emphasized syllable, on a down beat. On top of that the beat you are hitting has a spitting “TW!” sound. The way the sound of “TWICE” opens each couplet of the first stanza, followed by the emphatic “TWO” that begins the final stanza, drives the beat of the song. This emphasis softens considerably when we get to the plaintive final couplet which begins with the softer N sound of Nature, completely changing the tone on the final chordal run.

Another thing this poem does that lends itself to melody are the runs of “feminine” ending rhymes, and especially the repetition of the “er” and “ure” sound. For me that drop in emphasis on the second syllable corresponds to a drop of a note on the musical scale. The melody I gave to this song naturally seemed to descend.

There is also the pleasure of the images. It’s cool imagining Summer personified and proffering “fair Verdure” to the “plain.” And how about that image of a silver fracture on a river?

A third pleasure is in the logical structure. Summer proffers fair verdure which then seems to result in a silver fracture on the frozen river. So the suggestion is, to me, (edging into interpretation now), that Summer is the lover that is offering "fair verdure" and the result is a rejection by winter, leaving one fractured and frozen. It’s an remarkable way to see the progression of summer into winter.

The second stanza does something equally astonishing, but the poetic logic of the poem now says: “Like a squirrel in autumn, I saved and saved for winter, but what did it get me?  Now, alas, it’s spring time and I don’t even have a berry.” I want to interpret that on a personal level too. Like a squirrel in autumn, one invests in someone, invests enough to hopefully get through the tough times together, only to result in spring coming up with no fruit from the relationship. 

It's got to have a personal meaning, right? Because if you are just talking about plain old seasons, then there are always berries for the birds. The song-bird is the poet and she is searching for sustenance.

In looking at the poetic logic of the poem the meaning begins to become more clear. But there's more, we are sure of it, so we look for clues. That brings us to the next great pleasure in reading a Dickinson poem, the wrestling match with meaning. With Dickinson there is almost always the pleasure of the riddle. It's akin to the pleasure of solving a mystery.

This guessing is precisely where interpretation can start to become, perhaps, too personal. Lord, lead me not into interpretation. So I’ll ask you for yours instead. Here's my first question for you. Why are there two sets of seasons in this poem? And why do we have "Twice" given to us twice, followed by "Two," and then end on zero, on no berry, none? 

Perhaps there is a personal reason for these two sets of seasons for Dickinson? But any biographical interpretation begs a question. How personal are Dickinson’s poems in the end? Did Dickinson intend for her poems to have universal resonance or didn't she? My understanding is that she was able to write in both personal and universal modes simultaneously, and even the most obscure poem is meant, in part, to be for a general audience. Using the word “Twice,” for instance, is meant to invoke a specific meaning for a reader. But what? What is “Twice” doing here then, on a broader level?

Another question. Where is spring in this poem? How come it is missing? 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


P.S. Here's the song as it came out when I picked up my guitar. 

P.P.S. Here's an acrostic written last week by one of my HS students. I thought it put the over-determination problem beautifully. 

Letting

All

Unique 

Readers.

Amusingly

Scholars

Create

How

Readers

Exactly

Imagine

Bright

Excellent

Reading.

Before He comes we weigh the Time!

Before He comes we weigh the Time!
'Tis Heavy and 'tis Light.
When He depart, an Emptiness
Is the prevailing Freight.

      -F949, J834, sheet 19, 1865


The heaviness of emptiness. Or, like Dylan sings, “Sometimes, the silence sounds like thunder.” Or, like Milan Kundera’s great title puts it, “The unbearable lightness of being.”

Before He comes we weigh the Time!

What does “He” represent in this poem? A lover? God? For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say “Love.” Without Love…

'Tis Heavy and 'tis Light.

This poem, itself, is both heavy and light. It has a heavy subject matter but is short and light. ‘Tis weighty, but sleight. It makes for a jarring contrast, like a jaunty pop song that expresses the deepest longing.

When He depart, an Emptiness
Is the prevailing Freight.

The poem shows the twin sides of anticipation for arrival and grief of departure. They are, in a sense, one in the same.


             -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Occasionally I will pick up an anthology of poetry called The Rattle Bag (edited byTed Hughes and Seamus Heaney) and read a random poem from it. Just after writing this post I seredipitously opened it to the following poem, 

Could mortal lip divine

The undeveloped Freight
Of a delivered syllable
'Twould crumble with the weight.

It's a much later Dickinson poem which I hadn't seen before, but I was struck right away by the similarity to, and difference from, the poem at hand.  It's fascinating the way Dickinson comes back over and over again to the same words and ideas, but with new shades of meaning. The mortal lip divine. 

Spring is the Period

Spring is the Period
Express from God—
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God—


     -F948, J844, sheet 19, 1865


Spring is the Period
Express from God—

The word "Period" is shorthand in Dickinson for the idea that something will come to an end. This is a poem about beginnings, but a reminder of the end is right there at the beginning of the poem. 

“Express” is another word to consider here. It can mean "to send quickly," but also "to communicate what you think and feel." Both meanings are at play. I also think of another definition of the word, which is to remove milk from a mother's breast using pumping in order to be able to feed it to a baby in a bottle. Spring is God’s expressed milk.

This first sentence sets us up for the second longer sentence:

Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God—

Spring is a gift from God says the first sentence, but the second says that none get there without a friendly, but officious meeting with God.

The word interview is derived from the Middle French entrevue (meaning "to see each other"). The term in 1865 would have been used to describe official meetings. Neither of the two most common modern definitions, the job and journalistic interview, existed back then in the way we understand them today.

Why does Dickinson call an encounter with God an interview rather than a meeting or communion? It turns God from an abstract theological presence into something like the top brass of spring, interviewing the natural world before letting it loose.

The word "cordial" has the connotation of being friendly but formal. “None stir abroad / Without a cordial interview / With God.” could merely mean that everything that comes out into the world in spring has a direct encounter with God, but the tone of the words "cordial interview" hint at something more going on. “Cordial," with it's bureaucratic tone, carries some irony. 

“Cordial” can have that slightly too-polite quality. It's warm and friendly, but also perhaps the kind of phrase you'd use about a meeting with someone who has power over you. It might be a stretch, but I can hear a little menace in the understated irony of this word, like in the Godfather: 

"Don Corleone has requested 'a cordial interview' with you before you leave, signore." 

I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit here, but I do think there's a hint of a power dynamic in the poem. 

Mostly though the term "cordial interview" is light and humorous. God is conducting interviews with the things that are about to emerge, the flowers and birds. If, after a long difficult winter, God's going to have a little talk with us in March or April, what does He say? The reader of this poem, along with the birds bees and butterflies, is being interviewed. God asks you, "So, what are your summer plans?"

Or, to quote the poet Mary Oliver, "What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Maybe Dickinson had this kind of cordial in mind as well?

P.S. The phrase "none stir abroad" reminds me that Emily did not go abroad. She stayed at home, like a flower that refused the cordial interview and kept her own company instead.

P.P.S. I like how the emphatic "d" at the end of God seems to be the impetus for the rhyme scheme of this poem. If you've spent much time in church, you've might've heard how preachers like to emphasize that "d" when they say the word "God." In the Midwest, where I grew up, the sound was sometimes given its own syllable. GawDah. 

In this poem we get a great rhyme scheme with that emphatic ending D sound, which acts like a bass drum thud driving the rhythm. 

1 and Duh

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3 

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3

1 and Duh

D is an interesting letter, meaning-wise. It is generally thought that the letter started out as an pictogram of "door," and you can see it if you look at the letter. It does look like a door, albeit a hobbit-door. 

But the sound of the letter is more like a door shutting than opening. Thud! If you turn the sound of it way up, like, say, in the word "DeaD," it's scary. It carries a touch of terror when that closing door sound comes so emphatically at the enD.

I made slow Riches but my Gain

I made slow Riches but my Gain

Was steady as the Sun

And every Night, it numbered more

Than the preceding One

All Days, I did not earn the same

But my perceiveless Gain

Inferred the less by Growing than

The Sum that it had grown.

-F947, J843, sheet 19, 1865

This is a poem that seems to be taking measure. It's as if Dickinson looked at her growing body of work, nearly 1000 poems by this point, and marveled. She marks the occasion, of course, with another poem. It's a flex meant to encourage the reader to keep going. She's standing on top of a hard-won mountain and looking at those of us at the bottom, as if to say, come on, you can do it! One step at a time. 

I made slow Riches but my Gain

Was steady as the Sun

This poem seems like investment advice, but the poet's sense of wealth is not the same as the banker's. After all, if a gain is as steady as the sun, what does that mean? What does the sun “gain” in its rotation except for the day itself? What does it gain other than itself, steadily? 

What does this have to do with “slow Riches?" Well, for one thing, if you "slow" down you can better appreciate the day. But also, over the course of a lifetime, you accumulate experience.

And every Night, it numbered more

Than the preceding One

The poet is gaining just by living. She gains Days. And if one is living these days doing the labor of love, then one gains an inner well-being that far surpasses any worldly wealth. 

All Days, I did not earn the same

The more worthwhile your days are then the better the experience of your life will be. If you are paying attention, then slowly, without anyone else (including yourself) perceiving the subtle changes, you will suddenly find you have grown taller, so to speak. 

But my perceiveless Gain

Inferred the less by Growing than

The Sum that it had grown.

There’s a catch 22 here. It’s difficult to perceive growth until after you've grown because how else can one measure? (It's like the job applicant that needs a job so he can list the experience he needs to get the job).

So then this final stanza is reminding us to have faith in the process. It's encouragement to keep going the best one can, a little at a time. Some days will be better than others, but don't worry about it, just keep going. 

This poem is filled with the light of the Sun and love for the reader. We are the beneficiaries of Dickinson's daily diligence. The question is, what will we do with it? Garner our own slow Riches.

-/)dam Wade I)eGraff

Dying! To be afraid of thee

Dying! To be afraid of thee
One must to thine Artillery
Have left exposed a Friend —
Than thine old Arrow is a Shot
Delivered straighter to the Heart
The leaving Love behind.

Not for itself, the Dust is shy,
But, enemy, Beloved be
Thy Batteries divorce.
Fight sternly in a Dying eye
Two Armies, Love and Certainty
And Love and the Reverse.

     

        -F946, J831, sheet 19, 1865

This is a difficult poem, so let's break it down slowly. The first thing I notice here is the use of the possessive pronoun “thine.” It gives the poem an immediate tone. The use of thy and thou was already antiquated in Dickinson’s time, but it was prevalent in the Bible and Shakespeare, which was by far the most popular literature in Dickinson’s America. It has a sense of personal devotion to it, and of the divine.

The second thing I notice is the military language; artillery, arrow, enemy, batteries, fight, army. We are in an epic battle and it involves the heart.

The third thing I take note of is the exclamatory gerund that ushers us into this poem: “Dying!”

This is not a word said in jest. It is a word excruciatingly juxtaposed between life and death. It is death made agonizing. In this poem Dying refers both to an actual death and heartbreak at once. It is the feeling of being inside the process of dying of heartbreak. 

The next thing I notice is syntactical confusion in the first four lines. My first question is, what does the “thee” refer to? It takes some close reading to understand that the “thee” points back to “Dying,” as if Dickinson is personifying not just death, but the act of dying itself. She’s addressing a verb.

And what is she saying to the Agent Of Death? “To be afraid of thee/ One must to thine Artillery/ Have left exposed a Friend.”

In order to be afraid of dying, one must lose a Friend in the act. In other words, the fear is in exposing the one you love to your death. If you know that your death will break the heart of someone that loves you (your Friend), then it is much more painful to die. Exposing yourself to love gives death its sting. 

My daughter told me last week in a birthday card that she would be “horrified” to have a different dad than me. This was simultaneously the sweetest thing I've ever heard and terrifying. That paradox sums up the way this poem affects me.

Than thine old Arrow is a Shot
Delivered straighter to the Heart
The leaving Love behind.

These lines make me dizzy with their genius. It’s tough to sum up. First you have to contend with that “Than.” What does "than" modify? I believe it refers to “straighter.” I think these lines are saying that the shot to the heart is straighter “than” it would be otherwise, if love is left behind. (Dickinson’s sophisticated use of grammar sometimes leaves me behind.)

So this is saying, then, that the more you are exposed (to friendship), the quicker the arrow of death hits the center of the Heart. It’s difficult to get at this paradox, but it’s something that can be felt. You grip your literal heart when you think about the pain you feel leaving a loved one when you die, and, worse, that a loved one will feel after you die. The thought itself kills you.

Now that we’ve unraveled some of the syntax and ideas here, at least a little, try going back and re-reading the first six lines out loud, taking note of their tightly controlled meter, form and diction. It’s highly stylized, and yet it could hardly be more authentically felt. 

The next lines keep up the level of difficulty and poetic depth,

Not for itself, the Dust is shy,
But, enemy, Beloved be
Thy Batteries divorce.

The Dust here, I think, is a wry synecdoche of man. Man, made of dust, is shy of love, because love makes death more intense. Without it, death loses its bite and we are no longer so afraid of it. But then, without love, we are just dust!

The highly condensed syntax here goes something like this:

(It’s) Not for itself (for love), that the Dust (the man) is shy, But, (for the) enemy, (Death, because of whom, the) Beloved be (the one that) Thy (Death's) Batteries divorce (from me.)

To put it a little more simply: It’s not for love itself that we are shy, but because the parting from the lover in death will be such an assault. That's what one has to deal with when taken from a Friend in death, and worse, not just being taken from love, but realizing the pain that will be felt by the one left behind.

We feel this more than we understand it intellectually. We feel it in the sound of the words themselves. “Thy Batteries divorce” carries the sense of “battering” and the pain of parting in its plosives: BaTTeries DiVorce.  Also, subtly, the “Thy” here does not feel reverential. It now carries a bit of spit, like the Shakespearean insult. (Shakespeare uses it this way often, like "Thou lily-livered boy" in Macbeth, or, in Twelfth Night, when Sir Toby Belch advises Sir Andrew on how to write a challenge letter to a rival: "If thou 'thou'st' him some thrice, it shall not be amiss." Sir Toby is explicitly telling Sir Andrew to use the word thou as a deliberate insult to provoke a fight.) And finally, "divorce" is such an ugly word in its connotations. We feel all of that in this line, in our gut.

Fight sternly in a Dying eye
Two Armies, Love and Certainty
And Love and the Reverse.

The way Dickinson uses “divorce” to set up the rhyme of “reverse” is, as the kids say, sick.

Okay, we are inside of a “Dying eye" now. There is a fight happening. You might say we are each of us, in some way or another, inside of this dying eye, in a battle-zone, always pushing and pulling toward and away from love in our dance with exposure.

There are two sides. One is going toward the certainty of love. The other is the reverse, going away from the certainty of love. The closer you get to the first, the center of the heart, the more the departure from love, the reverse, is felt. It’s a conundrum that haunts all of us. 

The “Reverse” at the end of this poem is a sliding modifier. It has (at least) two possible referents: Certainty and Love, and there’s a third implied, which is life itself. We want to progress toward love and certainty, but we are always to be met in our advance with that which reverses us from love, which is death. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. In the Christanne Miller collected Dickinson we get a note: "Poem sent to Gertrude Vanderbilt who had recently recovered from a bullet wound, after being shot by her maid's rejected suitor on March 20, 1864." Make of that what you will. 

2. 

I confess that I didn't much care for this book, but I include the cover here because Faulkner achieves the same kind of immediacy in the title that Dickinson does in the first line of this poem.

Good to hide, and hear 'em hunt!

Good to hide, and hear 'em hunt!
Better, to be found,
If one care to, that is,
The Fox fits the Hound—

Good to know, and not tell,
Best, to know and tell,
Can one find the rare Ear
Not too dull—


      -F945, J842, sheet 18, 1865

What an undull poem.

Let’s start with that first line, and the wonderful weirdness of it.

Good to hide, and hear 'em hunt!

If we are talking about an actual Hound and Fox here, then I would presume it would not be so pleasurable to listen to the hounds hunt, even if you were hidden. If the Hound gets you, you’re done. 

Something else is going on. Why would it be good to "hear ‘em hunt?" Dickinson makes being hunted sound down-right pleasurable.

I think this is a meditation on erotic and romantic pursuit. She is recognizing the desire of being desired, and, also, the necessity of evading capture. We have a suitor situation going on here.

Dickinson was reserved and reclusive. She mostly hid from the world. She was a bit like Penelope that way, weaving and unweaving her poems to keep the hounds at bay, until the fitting one, Odysseus, arrived on the scene.

Likewise, in Dickinson's poems she hides from her readers. In a sense, we are all hounds on the hunt for that fox. We are all prowling bees in pursuit of the flower.

In that case then you could say it is we who are the “'em” in “Good to hide, and hear ‘em hunt!”

Funny, right?

Also funny is the use of the word ‘em. You can just hear Emily saying this to her niece Mattie (Susan’s daughter) with whom she was close. Imagine them playing hide and seek with the other cousins. In a closet together Emily whispers in delight, “It’s good to hide and hear ‘em hunt, ain’t it Mattie?”

After that terrific first line Emily goes one better,

Better, to be found,

Better to be found, but then there’s a caveat. It's better to be found by the right hound. We find out at the end of this stanza that it's only a fitting hound that can find the fox. It has to be the right suitor, a dogged Hound as wily as the Fox.  

The next line is great too.

If one care to, that is,

The fox wants the hound to care enough. This is part of why it is so elusive. We have a case of playing hard to get. How much does the caller care? Enough to keep calling? Let's find out.

The next line is the capper,

The Fox fits the Hound—

Not only does the right hunter get the right prey, but the right prey gets the right hunter. The two creatures give each other what they need. The fox's elusiveness intensifies the hound's desire, and the desire, in turn, intensifies and heightens the union.

There is also a very funny pun here on the word “fits." The Fox fits the hound, or, in other words, the Fox has the Hound in fits. 

The second stanza is parallel to the first. They both start by telling us what’s “good.”

Good to know, and not tell,
Best, to know and tell,

Hiding and hearing 'em hunt is good, and, likewise, keeping your secret is good. Being found is better, and, likewise, sharing yourself with someone who genuinely wants to know who you are is better. The hunt is evidence of that desire. There is a pleasure in knowing you are worth pursuing by a hound that is worthy of you.

Can one find the rare Ear
Not too dull—

The way this poem is set up, the Hound and the Ear are one. If the Hound is fitting, or sharp enough (“not too dull”) or, conversely, if the ear is rare enough, or cares enough, then the fox is happy to be caught/ heard. Note that subtle rhyming interplay between "care" in the first stanza and "rare ear" in the second. It is a rare ear that cares enough.

The Ear may be read as that of the reader, whether that was Sue, initially, or you, now. Sue, we know, was an ideal reader for Emily, which is why more poems were given to her than anyone else in Emily’s life. Emily once wrote of Sue that she had learned more from her than anyone else save Shakespeare. The Hound fit the Fox. 

But of course the ear is also that of anyone reading the poem. Emily is telling us, in riddles, who she is. We just have to listen very carefully.

I love this poem because it reminds me that I can't be too dogged in my pursuits, and on the other side of the divide, that I can't be too wily with my secrets.   

-/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A rejoinder to this poem by the great Belle and Sebastian:

"Fox in the snow, where do you go
To find someone that will do?
To tell someone all the truth before it kills you
They listen to your crazy laugh
Before you hang a right
And disappear from sight
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book.
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book tonight."

A Moth the hue of this

A Moth the hue of this
Haunts Candles in Brazil.
Nature's Experience would make
Our Reddest Second pale.

Nature is fond, I sometimes think,
Of Trinkets, as a Girl.

    - F944, J841, sheet 18, 1865


This poem recalls one of Dickinson’s earliest extant poems, F32, written seven years before this one (according to Franklin’s system of dating the poems). In that poem the poet puts a trinket on to be in keeping with the fashion of autumn. 

It’s fascinating to see the threads that Dickinson weaves through her work. In F541 Dickinson wrote about Butterflies in Brazil. In F687 the “Mighty Merchant” offers the poet Brazil in exchange for what she really wants. Trinkets, butterflies and Brazil are all part of Dickinson’s vast Lexicon. They all symbolize something essential to her.

 A Moth the hue of this
Haunts Candles in Brazil.

This poem starts out with a mystery pronoun, “this.” We never find out what "this" is. Does it refer back to the hue of the moth? or to something else? The “this” is hereby elevated to the level of ineffable possibility, just as "It” was in the poem previous to this one, F943.

I’m curious what specific hue it is that Dickinson is comparing to a moth that “haunts Candles in Brazil.” My best guess is that she is referring to the flush of a lover’s skin, because what else would so haunt Dickinson’s Candle?

The idea of a moth haunting a candle is such a brilliant reversal. Normally the moth is drawn to the flame, but here the moth is the trinket, the object of desire. We always assume that it's the moth that is drawn to the flame, but maybe we have it backwards?

Nature's Experience would make
Our Reddest Second pale.

This poem is made up of three distinct, but interconnected couplets. All three are worthy on their own. In this middle phrase we have the amazing idea of a "Reddest Second" of our lives. Not the reddest minute or hour, but the the Reddest Second. Can you recall your Reddest Second? I blush just thinking about it. Dickinson points out to us that this moment, however red it may have been for us, pales in comparison to the full experience of Nature Herself. That is a humbling but awesome thought. 

And yet, 

Nature is fond, I sometimes think,
Of Trinkets, as a Girl.

As below, so above.

This poem appears to be, in part, about the erotic attraction of beauty. There's something almost flirtatious about it. The moth is attracted to the candle; Nature is attracted to beauty; the girl is attracted to ornaments. Everything is being pulled toward beauty. 

A trinket often has the connotation of something of low value, something trivial and frivolous. But hold on. In this poem the stakes are high, life and death. We have the potential perishing of the moth in the flame due and all the human drama this implies. (Maybe those moths haunt the candles because they now ghost moths.)

So, is Natural beauty in this poem being lowered to the level of a trinket? Or, is the trinket being raised to the level of a prime mover? 

        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Meanwhile, what about that red moth from Brazil?

Here's one:

 



And here are a few more incredible moths, all quite stunning examples of Nature's trinkets. 

     

I cannot buy it—'tis not sold—

I cannot buy it—'tis not sold—
There is no other in the World—
Mine was the only one

I was so happy I forgot
To shut the Door And it went out
And I am all alone—

If I could find it Anywhere
I would not mind the journey there
Though it took all my store

But just to look it in the Eye—
"Did'st thou?" "Thou did'st not mean," to say,
Then, turn my Face away.

      -F943, J840, sheet 18, 1865

The language of this poem is that of a classic riddle:

I cannot buy it—'tis not sold—

What is “it?" We are never told the answer to this riddle. We just get “it” repeated four more times. It is repeated so often in this short poem that it becomes conspicuous. What is “It?” It is IT. Dickinson seems to be pointing to the essential but unnamable thing, the IT factor.

The mystery of this poem is a microcosm of the mystery at the heart of much of Dickinson’s poetry. What is “IT?” Is it God? Is it a lover? Is it poetry? You start to wonder if defining “it” isn’t precisely beside the point. The problem of definition is at the root of Dickinson’s poetics.

“It,” in the final stanza, has a face. The poet is looking at “It” in the Eye and then turns her own face away. The word “Eye” leads us to believe it is a human face we are looking at here, and maybe it is, but the singular “Eye” makes us wonder. Still, the “it” is given an Eye and, presumably, a face. “It” moves toward being known in a body. The poem moves in this way from impersonal to personal, toward the final "my Face.”

In the first line we learn, importantly, that this mysterious “It” cannot be bought or sold.

This is worth deep consideration. As a father I can say, without hesitation, that there is literally no amount of money, or anything else, I would trade for my children’s life. The idea of putting a price on them is anathema.

Here I want to suggest a potential connection between this kind of priceless love and the uniquely uncommodifiable property of poetry. Poetry is special, in part, because it generally operates outside of the marketplace. This is especially true of Emily Dickinson, who shied away from publication and fame.

I’ve been reading the novels of Joy Williams, a writer who is a big fan of Dickinson and often reminds me of her. In Williams’ novel “The Quick and The Dead” there is an eight-year-old girl named Emily. From the novel: “Emily didn’t know what pagan was. Possibly she might like to be one. But what she really wanted was to be a triggerman, or a poet. She did not want to work in sales.”

Sounds about right. ("My life had stood a loaded gun.")

There is no other in the World—
Mine was the only one

This is the romantic ideal of there being only one person for you. It’s an ideal seemingly sewn into the seam that binds Dickinson’s poetry together. Who was this “Mine” that was the only one? Maybe we are talking about Sue here, since a copy of this poem was given to her.

But maybe this “Mine,” this “no other in the World” wasn't so much a someone as a something else altogether. It could be, for instance, poetry. A reader commented on the use of “Mine” on the poem before this one, F942, saying that it reminded them of F411, "Mine—by the Right of the White Election!" In other words, it is about vocation. The mystery deepens.

I was so happy I forgot
To shut the Door And it went out

If we are talking about a lover, then this is strange. Is Dickinson saying don’t get so happy with your relationship that you let your lover go out of the house? I don't think so. This sounds more like protect your peace of mind than protect your relationship, doesn’t it?

At any rate the general sense I get here is that you have to stay on guard, which is difficult to do if you get too comfortable and happy.

If I could find it Anywhere
I would not mind the journey there
Though it took all my store

Is “it” beyond place too? It is not (apparently) “Anywhere.”  There is nowhere to “journey” to. So it is beyond place. And, again, it is beyond price, beyond “store.”

But just to look it in the Eye—
"Did'st thou?" "Thou did'st not mean," to say,
Then, turn my Face away.

This is the most difficult part of the poem because of a very odd syntax. If “It” is a relationship, then these lines seem to be saying “Did’st thou” really leave? Because if thou did'st, I believe "Thou dids’t not mean” to, after which the poet forgives and turns away. And maybe that IS what's going on here.

But the way the line fragments is intriguing. 

Thou dids’t not mean,” to say,

seems to be a warning against signifying, against “meaning” itself. “It” doesn’t “mean” anything because meaning, like definition (and price and place and happiness) is a desire outside the realm of "it." When you look for meaning, you risk losing what it is your desire.

The final line, “Then, turn my Face away,” becomes, then, a negation of meaning, which, perhaps, is where one encounters “it.”

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff