Because the Bee may blameless hum

Because the Bee may blameless hum
For Thee a Bee do I become
List even unto Me.

Because the Flowers unafraid
May lift a look on thine, a Maid
Alway a Flower would be.

Nor Robins, Robins need not hide
When Thou upon their Crypts intrude
So Wings bestow on Me
Or Petals, or a Dower of Buzz
That Bee to ride, or Flower of Furze
I that way worship Thee.

    -F909, J869, sheet 9, 1865


This poem grabs you right away with the sound of its bee phonics, its buzz and hum. First of all there is that bold triple B of Because/ Bee/ blameless, which sounds to my hear a little like an engine idling. Both “because” and “blameless” have a buzz sound in them too. Then there is the "hum" sound, that triple M in the first line which continues through the stanza: may/ blame/ hum/ become/ Me. The whole stanza fairly hums along. In other words, Dickinson is turning herself into a bee, which is exactly what the stanza is about,

Because the Bee may blameless hum
For Thee a Bee do I become

Like the flowers in the poem preceding this one on sheet # 9, Dickinson, as a bee, asks nothing but delight. Her “hum” is blameless. She has become pure delight of sound and being. Beeing.

List even unto Me.

“List” carries a gorgeous double meaning here. It’s primarily an antique way of saying “listen.” I will become a bee so you will want to listen to my buzz. But “list” also means to lean. The image I get is of the flower listing toward the bee so it can be nearer to it. Isn’t that what we are always doing when we read a poem by Emily Dickinson? We lean into the music of it.

There is a sexual innuendo, perhaps, to the birds and the bees that is at play in this poem, and one senses desire in that listing of the flower. Usually the flower is seen as passive, but here it’s leaning in toward the bee.

The construction “Even unto” has biblical connotations: “Even unto death...” Psalms 48, and “Even unto the end of the world..." of Matthew 28. This combined with the Thees and Thous in this poem give it the vibe of the sacred.

Because the Flowers unafraid
May lift a look on thine, a Maid
Alway a Flower would be.

In the second stanza the role is reversed and the poet is becoming the listing flower. Who in a relationship is the flower and who is the bee? Both are both. The flower here is portrayed as unafraid, just as the bee was depicted as beyond blame. To follow the sexual subtext, we have the idea of desire both being followed fearlessly and beyond society’s blame.

The flower is lifting up, unafraid to look "on thine.” "Thine" is curious here. It’s a possessive form so it begs the  question: unafraid to look on thine…what? Thine…desire? Thine…pollinator?

A “Maid,” in the old sense of the word, means a young unmarried woman, a virgin. Because of the way Dickinson wields syntax you can switch the subject and object of “a maid always a flower would be.” This can mean the maid is always going to be a flower, but also that a flower can always be a maid. So, if I’m getting this correctly, the flower is not afraid of being visited by the bee, because it knows it is still just as much a flower after the conjugal visit, that it will stay as pure and blameless as a maid. It’s a beautiful notion.

Nor Robins, Robins need not hide
When Thou upon their Crypts intrude

Dickinson spins this poem a whole different way with the intrusion of those “Crypts” there. The flower, being visited upon by the bee is now the “Crypt” of the Robin being intruded upon. It’s a weird parallel. It’s hard to read “Crypt” without the sense it has of “grave,” but I think Dickinson must mean it more in the older sense of the word. Crypt comes from the Greek word for “hide” and became the Latin "crypta" which means vault or cavern. Dickinson seems to be playing off of this here. The Crypt then is the hidden nest of the Robin, and in that sense it’s the opposite of death. it's the place where eggs are protected. It’s amazing to me that Dickinson is able to get a sense of both birth and death into one word like that. 

So why is “Thou” intruding on this crypt/nest? If Thou is the flower in the first stanza, and then becomes the bee in the second stanza, who or what is it now? What is trying to get into the nest, or the grave? What is intruding? Both the word "crypt" and the word "intrude" throw a complicating shadow on the poem. 

The last two stanzas are fused together as one long one. If I had to guess, I'd say Dickinson did this to subtly pick up speed, to give the poem a feeling of escalating excitement. Taking the stanza break away is like taking one’s breath away.

So Wings bestow on Me
Or Petals, or a Dower of Buzz

This poem becomes a kind of prayer here. Make me one with nature is the plea. Bestow wings on me, or petals, or dower of buzz. Dower of buzz is a great line. A dower is a dowry. The buzz, the energy,  the life-sound of the poet is her dowry.

A dower of Buzz
The bee to ride,

If you enjamb and fuse these two lines together, as the lack of punctuation after "Buzz" asks you to do, then you get something like, "The bee rides on its own dower of buzzing."   But if you put an end stop after dower of Buzz then you get a new thought with "The bee to ride" which is very cute, because you can imagine riding on a bee.

Dickinson loved Emerson’s poem about The Humble-Bee, and said of it, “Emerson's intimacy with his 'Bee' only immortalized him." That poem, incidentally, is like the experience of riding on the back of a bee.

or Flower of Furze

Flower or Furze is a such a pleasing rhyme for “dower of buzz,” it just lifts the poem right off of the ground, gives it wings, so to speak. Furze is a bush, more commonly known as Gorse. (According to Christanne Miller’s notes on this poem there was a saying in Dickinson’s day, “When the furze is in bloom, my love is in tune.”)

A terrific essay on the poetic history of Furze.

I that way worship Thee.

Dickinson becomes fluid with nature itself in order to worship "Thee," which may refer to God, Nature or Lover, take your pick. Her way of becoming is through poetry’s mimesis. It buzzes and hums. It has wings. We list even unto it.

     _/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. My daughter drank a cup of tea today and there was an Emily Dickinson quote on the tea bag. The quote was, “Beauty is not caused, it is.” Because I was thinking about this poem this quote came to life. Did Emily "cause" the beauty of this poem to happen? Or did she just quiet herself enough to tune into the hum and buzz of what already is?

They ask but our Delight—

They ask but our Delight—
The Darlings of the Soil
And grant us all their Countenance
For a penurious smile.


     -F908, J868, sheet 9, 1865


Emily Dickinson loved flowers. She famously grew them both indoors and out, including a few rare ones that were notoriously difficult to maintain. Sometimes these flowers accompanied poems she would send to her friends. These poems were often about the flowers themselves. My guess is that this poem was of that nature.

Flowers are perfects hosts. They ask nothing of us, except that we delight in them. That's not asking much, just that we accept the gift. After all, they give us all of their beauty, all of their “countenance.” But we, poor creatures that we are, can barely manage a “penurious smile” in return for all of this providence. The least we can do is give our full countenance back to the flowers, give as good as we get.

That notion itself is enough to make this a great poem. It reminds me of the ancient Sufi poem by Hafez which goes, "Even after all this time, the sun never says to the Earth , 'You owe me.' Look what happens with a love like that... It lights the whole sky."

But Dickinson's flower poems always have another layer to them.

Here are the clues. The first one is “Darlings of the soil.” The word "darling" comes from the Old English word deorling, which literally translates to "little dear one." "Darling of the soil" then can also be read as a young child that has died and been buried. To equate this child with a flower is already meaningful, but there's more going on here. The poem unfurls in a profound way when you replace flower with child.

Just as the flowers grant us all of their "countenance," a child granted us all of theirs. The old sense of the word “countenance” is face. We got to know this darling face, and now that there is nothing further to do, we are asked only to delight in having gotten to know it. Yet all we can seem to muster is a penurious smile. The penurious smile here takes on a different meaning when you replace flower with child.  Penurious is a word with a double meaning. It can mean "stingy," which is the way we read it in the primary "flower" reading of this poem, but it can also mean "destitute" which is how we read it in relation to "child." In the first case, the smile is poor because it is in comparison to the flower's, but in the latter case, the smile is poor because we are grieving.

Once you work out the two simultaneous meanings of the poem a kind of alchemy takes place wherein the dead child becomes the flower. We are reminded that all of nature, including the child, is there to delight us, and that we may find comfort in its countenance. 

Like the double meaning of the word "penurious," both meanings of "countenance" come into play in this poem. The way this poem is semantically arranged, "countenance" may be both a noun or a verb. The verb "to countenance" means to give one mental composure and moral support.  The flowers countenance us from the very place in the earth where the countenance of the darling has been laid to rest.

The death of children was extremely common in Dickinson’s time. The survival rate for children was around 50%. I wonder if this poem might have been sent as a note of condolence to a grieving family, along with a bouquet of flowers. This context would’ve made the double nature of this poem very poignant.


        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

That is solemn we have ended

That is solemn we have ended
Be it but a Play
Or a glee among the Garret
Or a Holiday,

Or a leaving Home, or later,
Parting with a World
We have understood, for better
Still to be explained—


   -F907, J934, sheet 9, 1865


This is a meditation on the solemnity of endings.

The word "solemn" derives from the Latin adjective sollemnis, meaning formal or ceremonial. It reminds me of the opening line from one of Dickinson’s most famous poems, “After great pain a formal feeling comes.”

It’s worth noting that Dickinson provided two alternate words for “solemn” here, “sacred” and “tender." Solemn has a grave connotation, whereas sacred hallows the event that came before it. With the word "sacred" you are not so much sad it is over as you are happy it happened. “Tender” brings the idea of endings into the world of emotions, and leans toward the sentimental. If you put them all together you have something richer than any of the words alone could get across. I’ve heard it argued (I forget by whom) that the alternate words Dickinson supplied should be read as part of the poem, and I tend to agree with this. Obviously for the tight metrical structure of the poems this doesn’t work, but if we are trying to get at Dickinson’s meaning, it can help.

The first line of this poem “That is solemn we have ended” is semantically a bit odd. It seems to describe the end of a relationship, one which is already over, but the next lines show us this line is meant to be conditional and universal, not past-tense and personal. This confusion is probably purposeful. Dickinson could’ve easily written something like, “It is solemn when the end comes” which would make the general nature of the poem much more clear from the get-go, more like an aphorism. The effect is that the poem has the feeling of personal loss, which heightens the emotional sincerity of the poem. The “ending” has already occurred, emotionally, but is still pending philosophically, “Still to be explained.”

The poem starts with small things, a play, a song, and it builds to more major ones, leaving home and death. It reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop’s villanelle “One Art” which tells us to practice losing small things like keys, and then build to larger things, like entire countries.

Be it but a Play

There's an echo here, I think, of Macbeth's famous soliloquy,  "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more." I think there is a sense in this poem too of life being "but a Play"...

Or a glee among the Garret 

"Glee among the Garret" a wonderful phrase. “Glee” is a word for joy, but also for an acapella part-song. Garret is “a small, cramped, dismal living space located directly under the roof of a house or building and is historically associated with cheap urban housing for struggling writers, students, and 'starving artists.'" So if you combine the two, you think of a happy moment of harmonious singing even while living in poor conditions. The fun will come to an end and someone will have to get a real job, or starve to death, but it is the very essence of living while it lasts.

The Artist's Garret by Thomas A. De Nobele, 1850

The last lines of the poem tell us something about Dickinson's understanding of the afterlife, which is that it is "Still to be explained."

Parting with a World
We have understood, for better
Still to be explained—

There is a wry move in the last two lines here. If there was a dash after "better," then we would read this as saying “we have ended...parting with a world we have understood, for better." But the line doesn't end there, it enjambs (a poetry term meaning continues on to the next line), so we get instead, "we have ended...parting with a world we have understood, for better still to be explained.” Dickinson doesn't assume any knowledge about what is coming. Maybe it will be better, or maybe not. The unknowability is essential here, part of what makes the ending so solemn. This unknown quality of what comes next is inextricable from what makes this play called life all the more sacred and tender.

-/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. It is interesting to look at Mabel Loomis Todd’s transcription of this poem, which you can see here. You can see how much Todd (who was Emily's brother's mistress) has edited the poem to fit into the standards of the day. She’s given it a title, “Endings,” and crossed out the last word “explained” and exchanged it with “unfurled" to rhyme with “World.” She also added an "s" to garret. This all makes perfect editorial sense, but also, in each case, weakens the poem. "Unfurled," is pretty good, but it doesn't give us the subtle sense of whether the next life is better or not, "for better still to be explained," that the original has.

That Distance was between Us

That Distance was between Us
That is not of Mile or Main—
The Will it is that situates—
Equator—never can—


     -F906, J863, Sheet 8, 1865


The distance between the poet and her beloved is not due to physical distance, but the Will. Physical distances can be crossed, but changing someone’s mind is a different matter altogether.

That Distance was between Us
That is not of Mile or Main—

I had to look up “Main.” It turns out it is an old-fashioned word for the ocean. Shakespeare uses it in Othello: “I cannot ’twixt the heaven and the main descry a sail.” "Mile and Main" works well in Dickinson’s poem as an alliterative way of saying “Land and Sea,” which is to say: every possible geographical separation.

The Will it is that situates—
Equator—never can—

It is the Will that situates us where we are in a way that the Equator never can. Two people can live far apart, on opposite hemispheres, and still feel close, or they can be emotionally divided even when living side by side.

Judith Farr thinks Emily intended this poem for Sue. As Sue lives just two hundred yards away, the distance between them is not of land or sea. It is Sue's Will that is keeping them apart, not an intervening ‘Equator.’

That makes sense to me, but there's another way to read this poem, a more hopeful one. If the Will can create an untraversable distance where there physically is none, that means it can also create closeness even if distance separates. If we have the Will to be together, then the physical distance means nothing. 

If the Will can “situate” distance, then relationship itself depends on acts of inward orientation. 

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

straddling the equator

Split the Lark — and you'll find the Music —

Split the Lark — and you'll find the Music —
Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled —
Scantilly dealt to the Summer Morning
Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old.

Loose the Flood — you shall find it patent —
Gush after Gush, reserved for you —
Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!
Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?

       -F905, J861, Sheet 8, 1865

I was first made aware of this poem when I watched the episode of the Apple TV series "Dickinson" called “Split the Lark.” In this episode this poem is sung on an opera stage by Sue. 

This made me take a deeper look at the poem and I have since come to view it as one of her best.

Let's start at the beginning, with the word "Split." 

The trochaic rhythmic structure of the poem causes this word to be emphasized. (Trochaic rhythm is the opposite of the more common poetic rhythm, iambic meter. Iambic meter goes: ta DA ta DA ta DA. Trochaic meter goes: TA da TA da TA da TA da.) Because this poem begins on the beat, the word “Split” comes down on us like an axe.  The effect is to give extra venom to an underlying anger.  It's almost as if this word, and therefore this poem, is being spit out, like a metal shriek. SPLIT the Lark!

This move gets carried through the rest of the poem too, especially in the second stanza with the emphasis on the first words of the 5th and 8th line, “Loose” and “Now.” It’s a masterful use of the trochee.

Another brilliant thing about this poem is the way the letters of the word “Split the Lark” continue through the poem, almost as if the phrase itself is being split apart: S L and R sounds, especially, are scattered through the poem. I’ve seen Dickinson do this kind of thing before, using a single consonant cluster of a key word or phrase to inform the sound of the rest of a poem, but this is next level. 

Also worth taking note of here is the use of the second person, "you." This is somewhat rare for a Dickinson poem. According to Google, “There is no single, publicly verified count of exactly how many of Emily Dickinson’s nearly 1,800 poems use the second person." I can think of a few. “I’m nobody, who are you?” comes to mind. In that poem though the "you" feels general. In this one it feels pointed at someone specific. This naturally makes us want to know who, in Dickinson’s wild and complicated private life, was the recipient of this poem? I’m not going to speculate too much here (see end notes), but I will share something which relates to this poem and further deepens the mystery. The second of Dickinson's so-called "Master letters" (L233) begins:

“Master, If you saw a bullet hit a Bird—and he told you he was'nt shot you might weep at his courtesy, but you would certainly doubt his word. One drop more from the gash that stains your Daisy's bosom—then could you believe? Thomas's faith in Anatomy was stronger than his faith in faith. God made me—(Sir) Master—I didn't be—myself. I dont know how it was done.”

(Gosh, I just re-read that letter six or seven times in a row and it got more strange with every pass. The line “Thomas’s faith in Anatomy was stronger than his faith in faith” stopped me in my tracks. It’s so wry!)

We’ve covered the first word, "Split," so now let’s contend with the rest of the first line. 

Split the Lark — and you'll find the Music —

There is a long poetic history of the lark. Many of the poets Dickinson knew and loved, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Milton, Bronte, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Emily's favorite) all used the lark in their poetry as a symbol of poetry itself.

What does it mean that if you split open the lark you'll find music? 

Much of Dickinson’s poetry, especially in her prolific period from which this poem comes, is born from the pain of loss. It is elegy. She calls it the “White sustenance Despair” and hers is a “Soul at White Heat." (Elegy is, perhaps, at the very heart of poetry. See Elizabeth Bishop’s "One Art," for a prime example, where loss and poetry are posited as "One Art.")

This first line carries anger and sadness in its blood, what Federico Garcia Lorca called duende. It's the sound of heartbreak, like the voice of Merry Clayton on The Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter when she belts out, “Rape, murder!”

The second line of the poem is equally astonishing,

Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled —

I showed this poem to my HS senior English class and I asked them what they thought these bulbs were. I was given many possible answers. It must have something to do with music, because it follows directly from "you will find the music" in the previous line. But bulbs could refer to the bulbous organs found inside the split bird, "in Silver rolled," encased in the silver feathers of the bird. It could be bulbs of blood. It could be the bulb of the bird's throat as it expands over and over to chirp. It could refer to the bulb of the clapper of a silver bell. Bulb after bulb in silver rolled could be bullets that have split open the bird. There is a dense synaesthesia of music and image in these bulbs. The song itself, we are to understand, has a silver sound. 

Dave Cappleman captions this photo “The sweet silver song of the lark.”

Because of the next line of the poem we might also see the bulbs as flower bulbs, seeds that are:

Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning

The notes of the bird song are like seeds which are scantily dealt. This music, this poetry, is rare.

It's difficult to make the turn between the first two lines of the first stanza and next two, but I think it is key to understanding the poem. The dense syntax of this poem goes something like this. Split the lark and you'll find music. You'll find it alright! gushing out, a profuse outpouring of agony. But the next lines tell us that a song bird doesn't normally gush. It deals its song scantily. You catch a little here and there, if you are lucky, on Summer mornings. The "reserved" song, the rareness, is what preserves it, what saves it for the long run, so that it be...

Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old.

If you can be patient, and just accept the little snatches of song, of love, when they come, then it will last you your whole life, but if your doubt, or your jealousy, causes you to be impatient, or greedy, because you couldn’t wait for the music, you will kill the bird. 

"When Lutes be old" could be the two lovers, or Lutes, growing old together. That's how I take it. But it could also mean something like old-fashioned instruments (and ideas) as opposed to music that stays as fresh as the song of a lark.

The gist is that by not having faith and killing the bird you are getting all of its music at once, in this pained outpouring, instead of having it dealt out to you slowly over the long run. It won't last.

After a much needed breath of a stanza break the next gush of blood-song spurts up.

Loose the Flood — you shall find it patent —

Flood is a poignant word here. It rhymes with blood, a word which is not mentioned, but is at the center of this poem’s scarlet imagery. It's a flood of blood gushing out of the split-open bird. But it's also a flood of emotions, a flood to drown in. The word "patent," used in this way, is antiquated. Here it means something like "proof."

Gush after Gush, reserved for you —

This line does the same thing "Bulb after Bulb" did, which is to create a rhythmic surge. Gush gushes.

“Reserved for you” has an interesting double meaning here. It means, on one hand, all of this is for one chosen person. It’s not a general love, but a specific one. But “Reserved” can also mean to hold back. Both meanings play out here. It's reserved for you, and you can have it all now, painfully, or you can have it spread over the years, reserved.

Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!

Experiment is an odd word to use in the context of this poem. If this song is about lack of faith killing a song bird, then how does experiment fit in? How is the lover experimenting? Is this poem about infidelity perhaps? However it plays out in the psychological drama at which it hints, “experiment” takes the poem into the realm of science, like the idea that you have to prove the existence of God, or music, through some kind of tangible evidence. If you look at the two previous poems in the sheet this poem was originally written on (the previous two poems on this blog), you’ll see the words “prove” and “doubt.” The poems on this one sheet can all be read in dynamic relationship to one another.

Dickinson adds a whole new idea here with that word “experiment.” When you try to analyze something (like a poem!) you can kill its music. It's like the irony of killing and dissecting a frog to find out how it lives. It reminds me of one of my favorite Kafka aphorisms, The Top, in which a philosopher wants to understand how a top spins, so he picks it up, which stops it from spinning, thus upsetting the kids, who then chase him away. 

Dickinson could have written “doubting Thomas” here and it would have scanned just fine in the trochaic rhythm, but by using the word "Skeptic" she doubles up on that SK sound.The double SK sound in this line gives a harshness to the already vitriolic poem. You hear this sound subtly in the first line "Split the larK," and in "Scantily" in the third line, which prepares you for this. It's part of the scathing sound underlying the poem. This is intensified by those two exclamation points.

(The word Skeptic is spelled in this poem with a C. This is confusing because we naturally read this as a different word at first, sceptic as in sceptic tank. I assume though that in Dickinson's day it was just common to spell it with a C and the word should be "Skeptic.")

Thomas, for those of you who don't know the Gospels, is the one who had to touch Jesus' wounds to believe He was real. This reference gives the bird, and thus the "I" of this poem, a Christ-like quality. This poem can be imagined to be spoken by Christ himself. 

It’s dazzling, and dizzying, how much is going on in this poem.

We finally end with the plaintive line,

Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?

All the disbelieving skeptics, all the scientists, all the jealous lovers, indeed, all of us, are hereby admonished. The Love of the poet, of nature, of music, is True. Be patient, it will be scantily dealt to you, saved for you when you get old. If you rush to prove it is true you will kill it. But hey, the poem sardonically reminds us, at least in killing it, you will have your proof!

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff
 

 

Notes: 

1. David Preest, amongst others, has made the argument that the recipient of this poem was Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Dickinson referred to Higginson in a letter as her Preceptor, which is another term for Master. Also the reference to "skeptic Thomas" in the second stanza may be a sly reference to Higginson's first name, Thomas. I’d personally love to believe it was Higginson instead of Charles Wadsworth, who some believe to be "Master," just because I like Higginson better as a person. I’m also fine with "(Sir) Master" being Emily's sister-in-law Sue. (Johnny Cash's song "A boy named Sue" suddenly comes to mind). Anyway! This poem could be for anyone who sometimes doubts love, which is to say, I suppose, if we are honest, all of us.

2. There is much more to say about the play of consonance and rhyme in this poem, which is mind-boggingly well-composed. One small example I love is the way the sound of "Lutes" in the first stanza sets up "Loose" in the second.

Absence disembodies — so does Death

Absence disembodies — so does Death
Hiding individuals from the Earth
Superstition helps, as well as love —
Tenderness decreases as we prove —

       F904, J860, 1865, sheet 8

(Note: I wrote the following essay based on the word "Superposition" in this poem where "Superstition" should have been. It has been brought to my attention by a sharp-eyed reader that this is incorrect. I made the mistake of cutting and pasting the poem from an online source without checking with the most recent source, Christanne Miller's "Poems As She Preserved Them." There are several versions online that say "superposition," but I'm going to assume they all came from one erroneous source. I like the poem better with "superposition," but oh well. It did seem like an odd left-field word. I've changed the poem back to say "Superstition," but I haven't changed the essay because I like the discussion of Superposition in the comment section. So be it. Sometimes a mistake can lead to a revelation.)

This poem is chewy like a jawbreaker. (Do you remember those? The good ones had a tart but sweet center that made all of the hard work worth it, not unlike this poem.)

Death, like any absence, takes the body away from us. This leaves us in anguish. But "superposition" and love both help us deal with this pain. 

Love is something we each have our own deep feeling for. I guess if I had to define it I would say it is the summation of feeling we have built up for a particular person. But the problem is that it's often iffy whether or not that feeling comes from attachment or concern. It's slippery.

Superposition though? What is that?

Superposition, I take it, is a position above the position, like an overlay. It is a position removed from the position of presence, left behind in the imagination. (Now days the term "superposition" is used in Quantum Mechanics, but not back in Dickinson’s time.*)

One possibility for superposition here is that you hold both the present and the past (your memory with the other person) at once. Hope might be in there too, the possibility of seeing them again someday. There may also be the idea that you are connected together in some kind of immortal sphere, beyond time. The emphasis in the second line of "Earth" helps us see "superposition" as something beyond the earth, a view from above.

The wonder is that Dickinson goes into such far out territory with this one word, as if summing up an entire theoretical understanding. It's tantalizing.

I think the clue to what superposition means can be found in the final line. 

Tenderness decreases as we prove —

When we are with someone, when we "prove" our connection through presence, then our tenderness for the other person lessens. That line alone gives us a lot to chew on. It's like the final layer of the jawbreaker, the hardest one yet. It's a line full of irony, like "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." But "tender" is a better word here than "fonder," and one that clues us into the "superposition." 

Tenderness is one of those words that shifts as you look at it. Tenderness means sensitivity. But what causes sensitivity? Pain. When we feel pain we therefore become sensitive to the pain of others. 

This is, I think, the superposition. We are in pain due to loss and therefore become more tender toward others. Conversely then, when the beloved is near we are, unfortunately, less tender. We may be in a state of bliss, but because we are, we are less aware. 

When you see that the corresponding gain of tenderness is in proportion to loss, it helps. There is a painful, but beautiful exchange.There’s a sour dramatic irony there, no doubt, but it's one that still leaves us, in the end, with something sweet too.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Schrodinger's cat, like Emily, in a superposition

* Quantum superposition is, according to Google, a fundamental principle in quantum mechanics where a photon exists in multiple states or configurations simultaneously. Instead of being in one definite state, a quantum object exists in a linear combination of all possible states, described by a wave function, until a measurement causes it to "collapse" into a single, observed result.

The poem uses "Superposition" then almost prophetically in the way that it resembles the language of quantum physics. Uncertainty sustains Love. Proof collapses possibility.

A Doubt if it be Us

A Doubt if it be Us
Assists the staggering Mind
In an extremer Anguish
Until it footing find -

An Unreality is lent,
A merciful Mirage
That makes the living possible
While it suspends the lives.

     -F903, J859, 1865, sheet 8


It seems as if Dickinson purposely made many of her poems to be one size fits all. This one, for example, carries a general idea that anyone can fit into their own situations. All of us have struggled with doubts and insecurities about belonging and being accepted, and all of us find some kind of comfort in a fantasy that helps us deal with this and go on with life. Our doubts lead us to our illusions.

This is an idea worth thinking about. It spurs me to ask myself what constitutes my own merciful mirage. Am I suspending my real life in a fantasy? In asking myself this question I come up against some uncomfortable answers. But I'm glad. I'd rather not "suspend" my life.

It’s mind-boggling to think about how many ways there are to apply this maxim. Here's one. I recently heard that Gen Z was the “parasocial” generation. I asked my 16 year old daughter Sofia what Parasocial meant. She said it basically meant a one-sided relationship with celebrities on social media.* The rise of AI “friends" is another pertinent example. In both cases real Lives are being suspended. There are countless ways to suspend reality.

Okay, let’s take a deep dive into the poem.

A Doubt if it be Us

We can apply this poem in our own particular way, but still one is always deeply curious what the poem meant to Dickinson. It’s hard to say what the impetus of this poem was though. The word “Doubt” suggests the anguish of not being a "believer." Dickinson’s struggle with her self-exclusion from the church can be seen in many of her letters and poems.

But there might be another genesis for this poem. The word “Us” may point to a relationship. The lost faith may be predicated on lost love. Either way, this doubt...

Assists the staggering Mind
In an extremer Anguish

If doubt assists the mind in an 'extremer Anguish," then that means the anguish was already extreme. When you are deep in extreme anguish, you so badly want to believe in someone or something. To not have the comfort of that belief in the midst of extreme discomfort is doubly devastating. 

Until it footing find -

Footing may mean anything that gives you a toehold out of the extremer anguish, but the word "footing" gives us a possible hint as to what Dickinson meant. The word "feet" is almost always code for metrical feet (or verse) in Dickinson's lexicon, so the idea of finding "footing" may be read here as finding poetry. 

An Unreality is lent,
A merciful Mirage

The Merciful Mirage that Dickinson escaped to may be poetry, but it also might have been a good novel? When I read “Unreality is lent” I suddenly think of a library. Fiction is lent to us from the library. What else could be lending this Unreality? What does it mean that it is lent to us? Are we finding the mirage or is the mirage finding us?

That makes the living possible
While it suspends the lives.

Note the contrasting meanings of “living” and “lives” here. It’s a paradox. How is “living” possible if the “lives” are suspended? The false kind of life, the unreal mirage, isn’t really LIVING.  Instead, it suspends real life.  

“Suspends” is a super interesting word. It has a double meaning. The Unreal mirage suspends our lives, like a castle in the air, but it also causes us to suspend, or put off, really living.

I also hear an echo in this poem of the phrase that was coined by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his 1817 work Biographia Literaria, which I'm sure Dickinson must have read: "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."

We suspend our disbelief, so that we may live. But deep down? We can't believe it.

   -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A parasocial relationship of the first order:

this sticker is on the back of my laptop.

*I found this insightful, from First Things:

“Parasocial relationships, ersatz intimacies, are shaping Gen Z in ways we are only beginning to understand. From the rise of finstas (secondary Instagram accounts where users post more personal, unfiltered content) to ceaseless online commentary lamenting the paucity of real-life relationships, it’s clear that Gen Z craves authenticity and connection. And yet members of Gen Z are more likely than those of older generations to bail on commitments and reflexively distrust the very peers they long to connect with. This simultaneous craving for, and retreat from, the real is symptomatic of a crisis of belonging.”

Too little way the House must lie

Too little way the House must lie
From every Human Heart
That holds in undisputed Lease
A white inhabitant—

Too narrow is the Right between—
Too imminent the chance—
Each Consciousness must emigrate
And lose its neighbor once—


     -F902, J911, 1865

Dickinson often does a funny thing where she speaks of her subject in a purposefully indirect way.

House…undisputed Lease…white inhabitant…Right…emigrate…neighbor? For a minute I thought this poem had something to do with white property owners and immigrant rights. That wouldn't be a very Dickinsonion theme though so we are suspect. Sure enough, with a closer reading, this line of thought appears to be a ruse. It seems as if the poem purposely misdirects you. 

This misdirection does a few things. First, I think it is a way of making a meta-commentary on both the subject and the metaphor. It adds a layer of meaning and gives a deeper dimensionality to the poem. (For instance, to follow one possible thread of thought, I think the metaphor in this poem may be making a subtle side-swipe at the narrow-mindedness of the rich in the line, "Too narrow is the Right between—").

Another thing about this misdirection is that, though frustrating, it adds to the power of the poem to pull you in. That puzzle-loving part of us is awakened. We want to see the puzzle, and therefore the poem, completed. But Emily doesn't make it easy. 

After a few readings of the poem, paying attention to all of the clues at our disposal, we come to the conclusion that House means grave. Once we see this, then “white inhabitant” becomes "corpse." Okay, we have a starting point. 

Too little way the House must lie
From every Human Heart

Life is short and the grave is close. The Human Heart brings in the idea of life-force, but also, love.

That holds in undisputed Lease
A white inhabitant—

Does "That" refer to the Human Heart or the grave? Both, perhaps. Both hold a body in undisputed Lease; the Heart in memory, and the grave in physical residence. 

Death as a permanent undisputed lease is a provocative idea. The idea of paying “rent” here has a dark humor. It makes me think, in contrast to an undisputed lease, about how difficult it is to pay rent when you are living. Your rent is always in “dispute” when you are alive.

Too narrow is the Right between—

This line seems to further the “Too little way” in the first line. If it does, then it means something like: our life-time is too narrow between birth and death. In this case, we have a kind of “Right” to life, though it is a very limited one. It also carries the sense of "Right now." This is your in-between, don't miss it.

The line could also easily mean the “narrow” space in the ground, the space of the grave, where the body has its lease. In this case “Right” could mean a number of other possible things, the "Right" to be dead, for instance. More dark humor.

It’s a bit mind-boggling how Dickinson pulls off simultaneous readings. Does the "narrow... between" refer to time or space? And, if so, why is it "Right" between?

Too imminent the chance—

What Dickinson means by “chance” here is pretty hard to pin down too. It might mean something like the “chance” to really live while we still can. This is the reading I prefer. I suppose this exposes my optimistic idealism, because there's another way to read the line. If the thing that is imminent is the House (grave), then it might also be referring to the chance of death. Death is the imminent chance. To think of death as a chance is darkly funny too. It's not a chance, but a certainty.

There is another option I can think of for the meaning of "Chance" here, which is introduced in the next lines about emigrating. "Chance" could refer to escaping the grave after death, the chance of the spirit being released into Paradise. If so, there is perhaps the suggestion that there is something we can do to increase that chance. 

Each Consciousness must emigrate
And lose its neighbor once—

These lines could mean that since our consciousness must emigrate to the house of the grave, we should embrace our neighbors while we can. 

But, following the other track of meaning, these lines could mean that each consciousness must (should) emigrate from the grave to Paradise and lose the neighborhood of corpses it once had.

Both meanings have power.  

The “once” at the end of the poem is poignant. It could mean that we only get "once" to be here, only one go around. But if you take “death” as the “Right” in this poem, then the “once” refers to the joy of leaving this earth and going to paradise, like in the old spiritual: "Some bright morning when this life is over, I'll fly away."

I far prefer the former reading, the one which seems to say to us, "Take the chance of life while you can." But the latter reading, the wish to emigrate from the House of the grave to the spirit in the sky may be more in line with Dickinson’s meaning.

On top of this, there is still that subtext about white inhabitants and emigrating at play in the subtext of this poem, whatever we are to make of that.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff