The Earth has many keys –

The Earth has many keys –
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula –
Beauty – is Nature’s Fact –

But Witness for Her Land –
And Witness for Her Sea –
The Cricket is Her utmost
Of Elegy, to Me –


   -Fr895B, J1775, 1866

This blog is committed to following the Franklin order. But sometimes that presents problems. One of those problems is this poem. My source for the Franklin order is Wikipedia which gives both this poem and the one previous to it the number 895. Whereas the earlier numerical arrangement, by Thomas Johnson, gives the two poems separate numbers. 

Sometimes this poem is printed at the end of a longer poem. (More on this later.) Sometimes this poem is printed as two stanzas and sometimes as one. Without better source material I can't tell you which is correct. But whether it has two stanzas or one is essential to the reading of the poem. (The poem, perhaps, has many keys.) 

When the poem is in two stanzas, as it is above, then the phrase “But Witness..." appears to have the subject of Cricket sound. The cricket sound is the witness. But when the poem is in one stanza, then the word "Witness" appears to have the subject of the line immediately preceding it, "Beauty- is Nature's fact-" This second single stanza reading gives us a stunning idea: beauty as a WITNESS to the earth. It is an emblematic key.

Beauty is herein coupled with another way to unlock the earth, Melody. Beauty and Melody are both witnesses to something endemic to the earth; a spiritual order.

BUT that’s not the only key. The earth has many. Another one can be found where melody ISN’T. This is exemplified by the sound of the crickets.

This place that is unmelodic, which is to say, I think, without a pleasing order (and which is deemed later as an Elegy, making it about the chaos of death) can be heard in the late summer sound of the crickets. The cricket, in turn, is emblematic of all that is “out of tune.”

“What would you do if I sang out of tune, would you get up and walk out on me?” -John Lennon

I love the weird idea of the cricket song as a peninsula. A peninsula is part of Dickinson’s poetic lexicon and shows up in dozens of poems. It functions as a concept to her. It’s touching here how the peninsula is both reaching out of and into the land at once. A peninsula is not quite an island, but it’s apart from the crowd and juts out from the mainland. (Note that the poem before this one speaks of crickets as minor Nations and unobtrusive Masses. Here’s a good place to explain that this poem, and the one preceding it, Fr895A, appear together as part of a longer poem published later. As of this time, I don’t know where this other poem fits. I’ve only seen it a couple of places online where it is presented. It’s not in the newest anthology, "Poems as She Preserved Them," which is my main source for the poems. The source for this longer poem seems to be a transcription of a Dickinson poem by Mabel Loomis Todd which was presented to Gloria Vanderbilt. Apparently we've lost the original, so we don't know where Todd got the poem. Okay, parenthetical aside aside…)

Suffice to say, if you read this poem as a continuation of F895A, then it becomes even more apparent that the cricket is its subject. But wait, I’m getting ahead of the poem at hand. Can we just go back to the first line? It’s enough by itself:

The Earth has many keys –

It’s such a rich line. The earth, our fecund matrix, has many keys. There are many ways IN. We want to enter the earth! Sex! Death! There are many ways to plant seeds. Each seed is a key. What else is a key? Poetry?

Yes. Poetry and music are invoked by the word “Key,” especially when it is followed up with “Melody” in the subsequent line. The keys are in different melodies, and melodies themselves are keys. Dickinson has it both ways.

Where Melody is not

This is one of those poems where the sense of the syntax builds line by line. The first line “The earth has many keys” can be read as one sentence. But now we have two lines and together they say, “The earth has many keys/ Where Melody is not.” Okay, so we are being led down an alternative path now, an unmelodic one. We have a key where melody is not. But then you add the third line and another new sense emerges:

The Earth has many keys –
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula –

You see how the narrative of the poem unfolds as the syntax does? So now we have something like, "The earth has many keys. Where melody is not is the unknown peninsula." Hmm. And now that peninsula, in my mind, is one of the keys. A peninsula is shaped like a key, like Key West. It’s also a part of the earth, and one that is set apart from it in the sea. 

Now, the crickets, the sound of the crickets, is synaesthized here as being a peninsula, as if it were a peninsula of sound, set off from the rest of melody. Dickinson is mixing her metaphors here to wondrous effect. A key, a peninsula, a sea of cricket chirps, it all becomes one.

Okay, now we have a big statement:

Beauty – is Nature’s Fact –

Here is another line upon which we could go off. We won’t, except to say that Keats' insistence that Truth and Beauty are the same may be a premise. Beauty and Truth are usually seen as separate, and sometimes incompatible, but here Dickinson is pointing to the FACT of beauty. Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, yes or no? If beauty is a FACT, then it is not subjective, or maybe Emily is pointing to the idea that subjectivity and desire are facts. See what I mean? This is philosophically dense stuff. Dickinson’s mind was Nietzschean in its depth. (And Nietzsche's writing was Dickinsonian in it’s poetry, especially in "Thus Spake Zarathustra.")

Anyway, you get the idea. But once you have absorbed this line about the fact of beauty, you still have to somehow loop it back onto the overall meaning of the poem. What does the fact of beauty have to do with the lack of melody? Are crickets seen as anti-melodic? Is their sound still beautiful, or do they fly in the face of beauty? It’s hard to tease out just exactly what Dickinson is saying here, though I think we’re getting closer all the time.

Audience: *CRICKETS*

But seriously, the sound of crickets, that’s what this poem is rooted in. The cricket's chorus becomes a super dense metaphor, but one that is rooted in the actual sound.  

But Witness for Her Land –
And Witness for Her Sea –

The cricket sound, that minor Mass in the grass, is equated to a peninsula that goes out into the ocean to witness for the Land, and simultaneously goes into the land to witness for the ocean. It’s as if the ocean and land are holding hands. It’s a meet cute! The crickets are the sound-track to a gothic out-of-tune rom-com. 

The rhythmic hum of the late summer crickets lets us know that winter is on its way, a minor key without a melody.


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

I found this photo on a FB post about this poem 

by Marianna Erdei on a Shamanic Portal. 

I thought it was apt.

Further in Summer than the Birds –

Further in Summer than the Birds –
Pathetic from the Grass –
A minor Nation celebrates
It’s unobtrusive Mass.

No Ordinance be seen –
So gradual the Grace
A gentle Custom it becomes –
Enlarging Loneliness –

Antiquest felt at Noon –
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify –

Remit as yet no Grace –
No furrow on the Glow,
But a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now –


    -Fr895A, J1068, 1865


I’ve looked at several different interpretations of this poem, including a few from famous critics (I’ll attach them at the end, if you should want to take a deeper dive) but for me, none of them get at the mysterious heart of this poem.

For starters you have to get the riddle. The subject is never named, but it’s easy enough to solve if you take your time.

Here are the clues. It’s something that comes later in the summer than the birds. And it comes from lower than the birds too, from the grass in fact. This is a nation, which means it's a group. And they are singing a mass. So... if it’s in the grass, it's probably insects of some kind? And if it is a group singing, it must be, by process of elimination, crickets? Okay, so we are talking about crickets here, right? Suddenly you hear them, and hearing them, in your imagination, is essential to feeling this poem. Feel the sound as you remember it, peaceful, and perhaps a bit melancholic.

Here’s the thing about riddles though: what they are pointing to is only a means to an end. It’s in the pointing where the poetry is taking place.

Let’s look at some of the pointing that Dickinson does in the first stanza:

“Further in the Summer”

"Summer," (and later in the poem “noon”) means, in the parlance of poetry, the middle of life. This is wrought with meaning for Dickinson. Summer is not always a happy occasion in her mythos. Often she speaks of it as an excruciating time of glaring light and overbearing heat. At any rate, "Further in the Summer" means we are edging nearer to death. So, to begin with, we are talking about the gravitas of death. 

“Pathetic”

Pathetic can mean small, lesser, as in “a pathetic attempt” or, in its original meaning, full of pathos. Emily means both here I am sure. But it's tricky because small in Dickinson’s world is often greater. Less is more. So pathetic has that connotation too. ("Pathetic from the Grass" is also evocative of graves).

“A minor Nation celebrates"

Here the whole nation of America is called into question. America is the Major nation, and its celebration is in the summer, the fourth of July. Now though we are into August. In this one move Dickinson celebrates something very different from the Power and Pomp of the Majority. Perhaps the minority is pathetic in comparison, but we, with Dickinson, are going low and inside; we are celebrating something small and secret, something akin to dying.

“unobtrusive Mass”

There is something holy here, a reverence, in the sound of these crickets. In the same way this minor Nation is held up in contrast to the Major one, the unobtrusive Mass is held up in comparison to another kind of Mass, one that is, perhaps, being pointed to as Obtrusive. A Catholic Mass, like Independence Day, is, often, showy and extravagant.

The mass we hear later is of a darker timbre. The bird sounds of spring are high and sweet, whereas the crickets' is more somber and low. In these descriptors the world of great matter, Church and State, is held against the pathetic, the humble, and the late.

This poem is a riddle of layers. The first level is literal "crickets," but the next level of the riddle is in the realm of metaphor. It’s about celebrating the pathetically minor.

The wonder is that Emily Dickinson can hear all of this in the sound of crickets, and makes us hear it too, as if it were a given truth.

Okay, let’s look at the signifiers (or pointers) in the next stanza.

Let No Ordinance be seen –

Now we have added another layer of social criticism, a reference to ordinances, or man-made-laws, and another difference too: there is no room for them in nature.

So gradual the Grace

Every one of these lines is about the alternative. The alternative to "gradual Grace," then, is sudden Grace. This calls into question any kind of grace that is NOT gradual. Which has more depth, the unearned Grace of youth, or the earned Grace of aging? This is where I think Dickinson is going with the word gradual here.

A gentle Custom it becomes –

Grace coming gently, as the sound of crickets, like a custom, is so rich with meaning. It reminds me of the famous lines, “Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me.” It’s customary to die and we become accustomed to it, but it happens so gradually, and with such grace, when in accordance with nature, that it is welcome. Death kindly stops for us.

Enlarging Loneliness –

On the literal level alone this is gorgeous; the feeling in the sound of crickets is of your own loneliness being enlarged in the echoing sound of nature. Chef’s kiss!

On the metaphoric level we are here with the little people, not with the pompous and self-aggrandizing winners. The lonely are enlarged in their loneliness by joining the chorus. We are all part of this “celebration” by dint of our own true loneliness.

I think of Christ’ words in Matthew 25, “As ye have done to the least of these, ye have done to me.”

Okay, on to the third stanza, which deepens the ideas further.

Antiquest felt at Noon –

At first I thought this word was anti-quest. I love the idea of an anti-quest, but, alas, the word is antique-est. As in oldest. We have a paradox, and a new a riddle. How can the oldest (antiquest) be felt in the height of youth (Noon)?

There is a sense given here of the ancient being felt in the heart of youth. You can be young and hear crickets and feel calmly mournful. You can feel the ancient eternal in the very sound of the summer dying.

When August burning low

There is that word “low,” which mirrors “pathetic from the Grass.” Here we have something different than a raging summer fire, we have a low heat, one that is still burning.

Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify –

A “spectral Canticle” is a lovely Dickinsonian way of saying a ghostly song. The sound of this song “typifies” repose, meaning both sleep and death. Repose has the connotation of peace too. This ghostly cricket song is likened to the sound of resting in peace.

The final stanza builds on the last.

Remit as yet no Grace –
No furrow on the Glow,

In the poem we are still in the noon of our lives, even if we have moved on to the August side of that noon. There is no “furrow,” or wrinkle, on the “Glow” of our cheeks. We don’t quite have the “Grace” we are striving for yet. We are still gradually getting there.

But a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now –

But even though we are still young, we’re over the hill. Something has changed. We can feel the difference inside. “Druidic Difference” is so interesting. Google tells me, "Druidic" connotes a deep, mystical connection to nature, ancient Celtic wisdom, and esoteric knowledge, often relating to priests, sages, or magical practitioners. It evokes imagery of sacred oak groves, ritualistic practices, and an untamed, earthy spirituality.”

This lesser Mass is not Catholic then. It is Druidic. We are, through the eternal return of the crickets, aligned with the cycles of nature.

This Druidic difference is at the crux of this poem, in which the crickets, the answer to the riddle, are the signifiers of the opposite of the majority. They are champions of the pathetic, the minor, the unobtrusive and the aging. It’s closer to earth, low not high, and it's the song of the crickets, via the imagination of Emily Dickinson, that carries all of this in its sound.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

3 hours of cricket sounds for your internalization

Notes

1. Compare this poem to Fr320,

 
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are—


2. Deeper dive. Try this link, which is the poet and critic Yvor Winters and other critics arguing about this poem in the 1950s.

The Overtakelessness of Those

The Overtakelessness of Those
Who have accomplished Death —
Majestic is to me beyond
The Majesties of Earth —
The Soul her "Not at Home"
Inscribes upon the Flesh,
And takes a fine aerial gait
Beyond the Writ of Touch.


     -Fr894, J1691, 1865


There is a great song on the new Jeff Tweedy album called “Lou Reed was my Babysitter” and the chorus goes,

The dead don't die, the dead don't die
The dead don't die, the dead don't die
Whoo!

That’s the gist of this poem. Once you are dead you can’t die. You can’t be overtaken. You have accomplished “Overtakelessness.” Whoo!

One might take “death” as metaphoric in this poem. Once you can “accomplish” an egoless state, the death of self, you cannot be overtaken because there is nothing to overtake. I think this is a valid reading. Dickinson does write a lot about death in life, like for instance in the poem which begins, “My life closed twice before its close.” However there is a line in this poem that takes it out of the realm of the metaphoric,

The Soul her "Not at Home"
Inscribes upon the Flesh,

Here we are reminded of that odd sense we get when we look at a body in the casket; the flesh is there, but the soul is gone. So this is actual death we are talking about here then, a body without an animating spirit.

What to make of the fact that Emily brings a light touch to all of this? A “Not at Home” sign? That’s practically cute. It would make a funny epitaph. And the rest of this poem is full of lively flourishes too, like the phrase, “a fine aerial gate.” There is nothing morbid in that line. It’s as if the poet, already free from her the weight of her flesh, is feeling giddy. Giddy up! 

The poem itself has a fine aerial gait. 

But at the same time there is, underlining the flourish and humor, a real sadness. First, Emily never quite had the Home she wanted (see the poem written about the same time as this one, Fr891, for a heartbreaking account of this). The soul is “Not at Home," which is another way of saying: homeless.

Also there is that ending,

Beyond the Writ of Touch.

A writ is a formal court order commanding a person to perform a specific action. It serves as a powerful legal directive, often used in emergency situations when no other adequate remedy exists. So "Beyond the Writ of Touch" is a way of saying, I think, beyond the excruciating demand of need. 

So this poem, like much of Dickinson's poetry, is double-sided. It has pain behind its lightness, but also a lightness which runs ahead of its pain. It reminds me of the ending of Fr372, "First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—" It’s so hard to let go. It feels like dying. But once you do, you are free. Is this tragic or joyful? For Dickinson (“me”) it is Majestic.

Majestic is to me beyond
The Majesties of Earth —

There’s an irony here. If you look at the poem before this one in Franklin order, F893, she refers to Sue and herself as Sovereign People. They are Majesty. The reason that the majesty of death is better than the majesty of the earth is merely because the majesty of the earth can’t last, and that's painful. We can’t keep in “touch” with it, not even by writ of court order. And this is especially true if the other won't, or for some reason can't, return our affection. There is a constant tension in Dickinson’s poetry between her passionate love, which she felt so keenly, and the tremendous effort to let go. 

Meanwhile it's great to see Dickinson having...fun? 

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. The poet Peter Gizzi liked the word "Overtakelessness" so much that he used it as a title for a terrific poem.

P.P.S. And speaking of fun, give a listen to the Jeff Tweedy song I mentioned above, "Lou Reed was my Babysitter."

Her sovereign People

Her sovereign People
Nature knows as well
And is as fond of signifying
As if fallible -


    -Fr893, J1139, 1865


This poem is difficult to parse because what does it mean that Nature knows Her sovereign people “as well?” And why would nature be fallible for signifying these people?

It helps to know that this poem was given as a note to Sue Dickinson (L336) with a flower. The heading for the note was “Rare to the Rare.”

There are a number of ways to take this poem, but my best guess here is that Emily and Sue are the sovereign People, and that even Nature “knows” or recognizes them as such, but is fallible for signifying this. Nature should be impartial, but it appears to give special attention to certain people.

Beyond being a love poem, though, I think this poem can be read as cautionary. The key word here is fallible. It can be read as an admonition to not get too caught up in partiality. Emily may have seen herself as fallible for signifying the sovereign, yet also realized that to do so is in our "Nature."

It’s also worth mentioning the flower that came with the poem. 

When Emily sent a note with a flower, the accompanying poem most often pertained to the flower itself. Flowers, like Sue and Emily, are Nature’s sovereign people and we all may be fallible for "signifying them." We are drawn to them, seduced by their beauty and fragrance. I’m reminded here of Whitman from Song of Myself, where he pushes back against the fallibility of seduction:

“Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me."

Emily knew how special she and Sue were, and even though she wasn't wrong, and even Nature would have to agree with her, it still makes her fallible. She's susceptible to a hierarchy of preferences, which in this poem she seems to both accept and find fault with. Both signifying and sovereignty are suspect, and yet, who, besides Walt Whitman, can resist the perfume of the flower?

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. The Rare to the Rare. It's worth comparing this poem to the one just before it in Franklin's ordering, Fr892.

Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die
And are too seldom born—

     -

Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die

Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die
And are too seldom born—


    -Fr892, J1066, 1865


The amazing thing about this poem is that Emily herself could be one of the children of fame it refers to. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. In a kind of mind-bending recursivity, the poem validates itself by still existing.

In the inscrutable mystery of her poems, in their Truth and Beauty, Dickinson, miraculously, seems to still be alive. And it's true that "seldom born" are the poets that have achieved her level of literary fame. 

The achievement of this poem is made even more remarkable in the sense in which it seems to know its own fate. It doesn’t surprise me that Dickinson knew this about herself, but it’s still uncanny. It’s like Babe Ruth pointing to the bleachers in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series  before hitting the game winning home run to deep center field.

“Called Shot” by Robert Thom

Another intriguing thing about this poem is that we don't know if it is complete, or unfinished. Thomas Johnson describes it as being a ‘pencilled scrap, a jotting perhaps intended for future use.’ Was it? Or is it complete as is? What do you think? 

There are hundreds of Dickinson lines that would be remembered even if they just came down to us as fragments. Dickinson shares this in common with another of Fame's Girls, Sappho. Sappho's poetry has such an aura to it that the few fragments of it we have feel eternal. 

If it is a fragment, just a beginning, we are left are to wonder what's next.

I found an article online by David Lehman in which he talks about a poetry contest in which poets were asked to use these lines as the first two of a quatrain. Lehman writes,

"While this poem can be read as a complete work, the poet Mitch Sisskind acted on the assumption that it represents the beginning of a poem that Dickinson intended to finish but never did. When The Best American Poetry blog ran an “Emily Starts, You Finish” contest in 2008, Sisskind added these two lines:

Their epitaphs—memorialized—
Cut in water—frozen in stone."

That's a great image, Mitch Sisskind. Anybody else want to give it a try? (minus any help from AI, please.)

Here’s my try,

Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die
And are too seldom born—

Still can’t do what you can do
within some cloud of form.

Okay, now you.

      -/)dam l)eGraff

P.S. All that said about Emily's future fame, my best guess is that this poem was written to Sue and is a declaration of "eternal love" and an acknowledgment of its rareness. I get this idea, in part, because of the poem following this one in the Franklin order. See the next poem.

I learned—at least—what Home could be—

I learned—at least—what Home could be—
How ignorant I had been
Of pretty ways of Covenant—
How awkward at the Hymn

Round our new Fireside—but for this—
This pattern—of the Way—
Whose Memory drowns me, like the Dip
Of a Celestial Sea—

What Mornings in our Garden—guessed—
What Bees—for us—to hum—
With only Birds to interrupt
The Ripple of our Theme—

And Task for Both—
When Play be done—
Your Problem—of the Brain—
And mine—some foolisher effect—
A Ruffle—or a Tune—

The Afternoons—Together spent—
And Twilight—in the Lanes—
Some ministry to poorer lives—
Seen poorest—thro' our gains—

And then Return—and Night—and Home—

And then away to You to pass—
A new—diviner—care—
Till Sunrise take us back to Scene—
Transmuted—Vivider—

This seems a Home—
And Home is not—
But what that Place could be—
Afflicts me—as a Setting Sun—
Where Dawn—knows how to be—



     -Fr891, J944, 1864


I learned—at least—what Home could be—

In that first line we get a lot of information. We can guess from it that the poet met someone, and there was a deep connection, and because of that she at least learned what home could be, which also tells you, in Dickinson’s concise manner, that the relationship is, for whatever reason, over.  It also tells us that before she learned this she had no idea what Home could truly be. Home is a key word for Dickinson. Elsewhere Dickinson declared home to be "the definition of God," and a place of "Infinite power." 

How ignorant I had been

Of pretty ways of Covenant—

Until she met this person she was ignorant of "pretty ways of Covenant." The Home she is talking about is built upon a Covenant, which I take to mean Holy Matrimony. The word "pretty" there is a word that is laced. The picture is pretty, perhaps, because it is a fantasy. It's like that Hemingway line, "Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?"

How awkward at the Hymn

Round our new Fireside—but for this—
This pattern—of the Way—

She just barely got the hint at what the pattern of the relationship would’ve been like if it had continued, just long enough to see that the hymns, which are sung awkwardly at first, would eventually come to be sung in divine harmonies “Round our new fireside.” That line is hot. I think of St. Francis and St. Clare. The legend goes that when the two future saints met and spoke together in the valley, the villagers up above in Assisi could see the smoke of a great bonfire down below.

I like that word “Round” too. By abbreviating “around” into “round,” we have the idea of fullness.

Then she goes on to tell us that the memory of This pattern—of the Way—

…drowns me, like the Dip
Of a Celestial Sea—

Whew. What a dizzying image. The Celestial Sea has dipped down from the sky above and drowned the poet. It’s as if exposure to Paradise killed her by making everything that was “not the Way” suffer in comparison. The image is particularly striking in how it reverses the normal death by drowning. Normally you dip down into the sea to drown. Here the sea of heaven dips into the poet, even as she is reaching up to it.

What Mornings in our Garden—guessed—

The Pattern is spelled out. First, mornings in our garden. At least that’s the guess at what married life with this person would’ve been like. It does sound like an ideal way to start a day.

What Bees—for us—to hum—

Dickinson gives us a twist in nearly every phrase that makes it fresh. One way you could take the syntax here is that the Bees are humming for the lovers. “What bees for us to hum.” But because Dickinson disrupts the syntax from the normal "What bees to hum for us” to “What bees for us to hum,” you also get the sense that it is the lovers who are causing the bees to hum. To make the “bees hum” has a sexual vibrancy to it. It’s as if all of nature has come alive and is humming due to this great love affair.

With only Birds to interrupt
The Ripple of our Theme—

The theme the two lovers are conversing upon ripples along as easily and merrily as a stream, and the only thing to interrupt it is the birds. The word “Theme” is also a musical term resonating with “Hum,” and “Hymn” before that, and so the birds’ singing to interrupt the lovers’ harmony is almost absurdly over the top.

And Task for Both—
When Play be done—

Another thing interrupting the flow of the morning’s musical conversation is that there are tasks to do. Though I love that the first thing to do is to “play” in the garden. In this ideal world we are playing in the garden in the morning and singing round the fire at night. I'm in.

But what about those tasks? What is this work?

Your Problem—of the Brain—

Well, the task of this ideal lover is a cerebral one. The “brain” descriptor makes you really want to know who Dickinson is talking about. I mean who is more of a brain than Dickinson?! Well, Sue was perhaps. She was supposedly a brilliant mathematician. It could be a math "Problem" we are talking about. Emily once wrote to Sue that the only person she learned more from was Shakespeare. Charles Wadsworth, another possibility here, was a brainy one too. We know Emily was taken with the brilliance of his sermons. Or maybe it was someone else, someone she never wrote about? I feel like this is a mystery which The Prowling Bee, and biographers, will never fully solve. But whoever it was, they really lit Dickinson’s wick, that’s for sure.

If you make “Problem” the object of the sentence instead of the subject, then there may be a little light ribbing in the line, “Your Problem—of the Brain—” Being too brainy might be a problem. Not enough “feeling.” Perhaps we could even say that this is where the "Problem" of the relationship is, why it didn't work out. 

And mine—some foolisher effect—
A Ruffle—or a Tune—

My task, says the poet, is something less brainy, something foolish like a ruffle or a tune. Emily along with her sister Lavinia were known, when they were young, as fashionable, so the ruffle of a dress could be what is meant here, but of course sewing is often a metaphor for poetry too. A ruffle could just as well be a pretty turn of phrase. "A Tune" could be a lyric. This is what Emily does for work. Her poetry, often in common hymn meter, is ripe for music. 

Then after work?

The Afternoons—Together spent—
And Twilight—in the Lanes—

After work, the two come back together and then spend the last of the daylight strolling together down the lanes of the village.

The purity of love on display as the paramours walk the lane becomes…

Some ministry to poorer lives—

Those who are suffering will be lifted up by seeing the two together. The word “ministry” here, along with “covenant,” does put me in mind of Charles Wadsworth, who was a minister. It’s as if the glowing love of the two together is ministering to the lonely souls of the town.

Seen poorest—thro' our gains—

There is a double meaning here depending on how you read the syntax. The most obvious reading is that the people they see along the way appear to be poorer to the lovers because they don’t have what they have, which is each other.

But I think you can take this line another way. The poorest way to see the poor is through gains. Seen poorest—thro' our gains— In other words, to see the poor is harder to do when you are rich. Though this is a secondary reading of the line, I think it is actually closer to Dickinson’s thought. There is an underlying theme in much of Dickinson’s poetry about meeting the poor better through being poor one’s self; we are closer to each other, more Christ-like, in our poverty. (In that sense one could say that Dickinson is actually a better minister for having been miserable, an irony of which I think she was all too aware.)

And then Return—and Night—and Home—

This line is powerful set off by itself, almost breathless: And then Return! And Night! And Home!

It’s so heart-rending as an unfulfilled wish. And so are these next lines...

And then away to You to pass—
A new—diviner—care—

The lovers come together. “And then away to You to pass” sounds awkward at first, but it packs in a lot. First there is the idea of passing to the other person through consummation, but also “away…to pass” gives a sense of dying into one another, to “pass away” into one another. It’s quite breathtaking when the layers reveal themselves. They pass into one another’s “diviner” care just as death brings us into the diviner care of heaven. Dickinson is so sly the way she brings the earthly and heavenly, the sacred and profane, together into one. It’s just beautiful poetry at the end of the day.

They will make love and sleep together in each other’s arms and then they will wake up to start the "pattern of the Way" again the next morning:

Till Sunrise take us back to Scene—
Transmuted—Vivider—

There is a pun in “Scene.” You are back in the scene of life, back in the "play," but also your eyes are open again, you are back to “Seen.” This sets up the idea of “Vivider.” You see, after the night spent together, more vividly in the morning. Also, you are transmuted by sleep and love. Transmuted is a term that largely comes out of the world of alchemy. The idea here is that the two have been transmuted in each other’s arms from base metal into gold.

This seems a Home—
And Home is not—

This turn is heartbreaking. This Home is what Emily wants, and she wants it with this person, but Home is not. There is no real Home for Emily, except for her childhood home, which she never left. But it's not the same thing.

But what that Place could be—
Afflicts me—as a Setting Sun—
Where Dawn—knows how to be—

It could be a golden morning always with love, but instead the poet can only fade into darkness like the setting sun. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Sometimes I put a tune to a poem before I try to understand it. I find a melody that fits that “pattern of the way” (to borrow a phrase from this poem) and sing it over and over again, a dozen times or so, honing in a little more each time to the rhythm, hewing a little closer to the pattern.

That’s what I did with this poem and the way it unfolded was, every time, more and more achingly beautiful. By the time I was done I felt transmuted. Vivider. And I began to truly feel the immensity of Dickinson’s loss.

When you lock in to the “pattern,” the meaning behind the pattern begins to unlock.

A Coffin — is a small Domain

A Coffin — is a small Domain,
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In it diminished Plane.

A Grave — is a restricted Breadth —
Yet ampler than the Sun —
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon

To Him who on its small Repose
Bestows a single Friend —
Circumference without Relief —
Or Estimate — or End —


    -Fr890, J943, 1864

The first stanza is pretty straight forward, though it is made complicated by the word "Paradise." Does Paradise refer to the once living body’s time on earth, or does it point forward to a heavenly Paradise afterward? That’s one of the poignant puzzles of this particular poem. 

Another one is to ask who "He" is in the second stanza? Is it the "Sun" or the "Son" that populates the Seas and looks upon all the Lands? In other words, Christ of Paradise to come? Or is the literal sun of Paradise lost? 

One more problem to solve. Who is the Him in the third stanza? Is it the Sun/Son from the second stanza who is looking upon all of the earth? Or is it the one, the poet, who “Bestows a single friend” upon the grave’s “small repose?” Because of the enjambment (the lack of punctuation) between the second and third stanza, I read it is the latter: the one burying the body sees their friend as more ample than all that the Sun/Son looks upon. In other words, this one in the grave meant more to the poet than all of kingdom-come does.

The lack of “relief” in the penultimate line, then, is the lack of relief from grief felt by the friend mourning the loss. There is no estimate to the love. And there is no end for it, except the grave.  

It’s worth noting that this poem is one of the many that explore the word “circumference” in Dickinson’s poetry. It may be her favorite word. She tells T.W. Higginson in a letter, “My business is Circumference.”

reaching the Circumference in this poem would be a relief because at least it would be an end to the grief. Compare this to the end of the poem preceding it, Fr889, which sees the misery of Being itself, minus love, as infinite. The circumference of our lives, the little grave, we realize, is not an unwelcome one.

On the other hand, look at the largesse of Paradise! This leaves the reader with a pertinent question. Is Paradise lost, or is it yet to be gained? 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


P.S. When researching this poem I came across the following video essay about it by Adrian Fort. I got a kick out of Adrian’s perspective so I transcribed the video for your pleasure here. 

"I am Adrian Fort, and we are here for another poetry discussion. This poetry discussion comes to us by way of Emily Dickinson. This is not one of the better-known, more widely read Emily Dickinson poems. This is somewhat of a niche in the field of Dickinson, but we are going to do it anyway because it’s Emily Dickinson.

Before getting into the discussion, I want to define a key concept: paradox. A paradox is a statement that contradicts itself or that must be both true and untrue at the same time. Paradoxes are quirks in logic that demonstrate how our thinking sometimes goes haywire, even when we use perfectly logical reasoning to get there. But a key part of paradoxes is that they at least sound reasonable. They’re not obvious nonsense, and it’s only upon consideration that we realize their self-defeating logic.

This poem, I think, is a paradox that does not have self-defeating logic, and I’ll get into a little bit about what I mean by that. But when we look at this poem, Emily Dickinson is at times completely impenetrable for a reader, so if this poem doesn’t mean a whole lot to you, don’t worry about it. Get a coffee, grab yourself a cookie, and eventually this poem will make sense to you—at least insofar as it does speak to you.

Here is what I will tell you I believe the poem is talking about. A coffin is a small domain, yet able to contain a citizen of paradise in its diminished plane. Here we’re talking about a coffin being a small thing, but what it contains is vast, is large—it is the actual thing which was alive. People. It contains a person. A coffin contains a person, right?

People are all we really have. People are our entire reality, for the most part, right? Some of us are hermits, but even a hermit like Emily Dickinson is able to talk about a citizen of paradise—paradise being the next world. That citizen of paradise is contained in this little box.

Then we get: a grave is restricted breadth. It’s a small thing, a restricted breadth, yet ampler than the sun and all the seas he populates and lands he looks upon. To him who on its small repose bestows a single friend, circumference without relief or estimate or end.

So this part of the poem, as opposed to the first part of the poem, is talking about the great big thing that a grave is. A grave contains a coffin. A coffin is a small thing. A grave is dug exclusively for a coffin—it is meant to fit the coffin. It is a small thing that contains a large thing. The grave is a small thing that contains the large thing.

That is the paradox here. But I don’t think it has to be self-defeating logic, because it is literal versus idea, right? The literal thing—the literal coffin, the literal grave—is a small thing, but what it contains is so very large, is so very important. The grave, the coffin—they are small little things. The grave, the coffin contain everything that matters. The grave, the coffin contain everything there is to be had.

So this is a paradox, but it is not necessarily self-defeating, and this is the brilliance of Emily Dickinson.

So what is a paradox? A paradox is self-defeating, but if you include that self-defeating mechanism in a completely different type of reading, then you contain the original thesis. So a paradox is essentially thesis and counter-thesis in one idea, right?

Here we have the thesis that a grave and a coffin are both small things. We have the counter-thesis that the thing inside that little bitty thing is a great big thing. But when you dichotomize literal from literary—literal little thing, literary great big thing—the paradox can stand.

Emily Dickinson is my favorite poet. Emily Dickinson is able to do these things because these things exist in almost an astral plane, right? Emily Dickinson is able to create an entire world that is the literary. Emily Dickinson creates an entire existence outside of life.

It is difficult, I think, to reconcile this type of genius in today’s world. So one of the examples that I always like to give when speaking about true genius: Isaac Newton. Brilliant guy, right? Sort of a loner, kind of crazy.

Isaac Newton lived in a world where the plague was breaking out, and he had gotten into an argument with his friend over whether or not you could really try—I think it was track, don’t call me out on it, I’m not a math guy—track where the moon would be. The plague breaks out, both of these gentlemen are confined inside their own places, and basically on a dare, on a whim, on a “oh yeah, I bet I can,” Isaac Newton invents differentiated calculus—maybe that’s not the right term, again, I’m not a math guy—but decides yeah, you can figure that out with equations, and I’m going to invent a math. And he did it.

That type of brilliance, that type of genius, is something that is difficult for us in today’s world to really grapple with.

Emily Dickinson exists in that same space. Now, Emily Dickinson did not revolutionize physics, did not single-handedly craft a math, okay, I get it. What I mean is that everything Isaac Newton would have done to create a math was so mystifyingly cerebral that I don’t think many people have those tools. I think we are entering a world where fewer and fewer people will have those tools, because of what is necessary there.

It is so necessary to create that astral plane in your mind. Basically, each time you sit down to do that work, you have to invest some parabolic number of minutes or hours re-entering that space. So Isaac Newton starts making this math, has to take a sleep, wakes up, and in order to refine his place, to re-establish where he left off, he doesn’t just sit down and do it. He doesn’t just walk through the door. One does not simply recreate math.

He has to go through his notes and retrace those mental steps. Einstein was very good at this as well. Einstein, however, used what were known as thought experiments as shortcuts. So when he was thinking about the speed of light, one of the things he did was imagine he was on a train traveling at the speed of light—Jesse James style, hanging onto the top of the train—and he turns on a flashlight. What happens?

That’s a really useful shortcut. You still have to get back in that place, and that is what is, to me, so mystifying about 1,775 poems from Emily Dickinson.

Now, I started this off by saying maybe this poem won’t make any sense to you the first time you read it. That’s fine. It is sort of like Shakespeare and William Faulkner in the way that it helps to read Emily Dickinson out loud—but for different reasons. With Faulkner and Shakespeare, it’s the employment of the language itself. With Emily Dickinson, it is all of those dashes that screw you. Some of the line breaks screw you. A lot of what’s going on in Emily Dickinson screws you.

So to reclaim the place, reading it out loud is sort of like Einstein’s thought experiments, in that it is a cerebral shortcut. You are undermining the work it takes to silently read the words on the page, and you are short-circuiting the mental fatigue it takes to get there.

And here’s the thing: I might be absolutely wrong about what this poem is about. It might be that one of these line breaks that I’ve misinterpreted, one of these dashes that I sped right through, changes the entire composition of one or more of these stanzas. So I could be completely wrong here. I don’t know. I can’t say."

Such is the Force of Happiness—

Such is the Force of Happiness—
The Least—can lift a Ton
Assisted by its stimulus—

Who Misery—sustain—
No Sinew can afford—
The Cargo of Themselves—
Too infinite for Consciousness'
Slow capabilities.

     -Fr889, J787, Fascicle 39, 1864


This is the last poem of the 40 fascicles that Emily Dickinson left behind.* We (mostly Susan) have commented on every one of the 800 plus poems in these 40 fascicles, a feat that has taken 15 years. It’s quite an accomplishment I think, and yet the blog is still only half way through the 1775 poems of the oeuvre. We have another 900 non-fascicle poems to go. Diving this deep into the poems really makes clear just how prolific, and awesome, Emily Dickinson was, and still is. 

It's worth noting that there hasn't been a poem yet that we couldn't find plenty to write about. Sometimes I still don't get it, but trust her so much as a source of poetry that I know it's my problem, not hers. 

So many gems.

Part of the wonderful advantage of the fascicles is being able to watch the development from poem to poem as Dickinson laid them out in books she sewed together herself. For instance, in this poem we have the word “capability,” which is, since we have just recently read it, reminiscent of the word “capacity” in the poem previous to this one, Fr888. She's thinking about the capacity and capability of consciousness itself. (No cap, as the kids say.) You can watch the ideas develop when you read the fascicles, see words get picked up and looked at from all sides.

This poem is the end of a fascicle that has been wrestling with selfhood in the midst of tragic loss. The conclusion appears bleak. The last few poems have the poet questioning Being itself. Fr887 sums it up: “to die/ Is Nature's only Pharmacy/ For Being's Malady—”

This final poem in the fascicle starts off with a seemingly optimistic claim. The least bit of happiness can lift a ton. A little goes a long way. We see this idea played out in Dickinson’s poems often. In the poem before this one, Fr888, for instance, we get this: “Content of fading/ Is enough for me —/ Her least attention raise on me —”

The first stanza of this final poem is, like the lover's attention, short lived:

Such is the Force of Happiness—
The Least—can lift a Ton
Assisted by its stimulus—

Another reading of this poem, by the poet Alex Cory, is that with the stimulus of happiness the least of us can lift a ton.  This reading gets at "As you do unto the least of these, you do unto  me" idea. In other words, the happiness you spread to the least will lift them up a ton.

Though that's a lot of happiness, a ton is still finite. There was a finite amount of happiness, even if it was a whole ton. But the other side of the equation, in the more heavily-weighted second stanza, is the "Misery" of self alone. The weight of this Misery feels... infinite. 

The Cargo of Themselves—
(is) Too infinite for Consciousness'
Slow capabilities.

The misery felt in the weight of the “cargo” being carried by the self feels infinite. There's an overwhelming feeling of futility. Consciousness is bottomless, and, without love, endlessly painful.

But there is a catch of sorts. Dickinson writes,

Who Misery—sustain—
No Sinew can afford—

First of all, note that it doesn’t say “who sustains misery.” It’s “who Misery sustain.” There is something about misery that sustains poetry. We saw this idea play out in Fr887: "When she (Nature) had put away Her Work/ My own had just begun—"

Likewise in Fr706 Dickinson writes of the “white sustenance Despair.” Misery and despair can help sustain an artist, but, ironically, it’s not sustainable. “Consciousness’ slow capability” can’t handle it. "No sinew can afford" to take on all that weight. What's a girl to do?

Buckle down. With steel-eyed resolve and the diligent work of her poetry, Dickinson was able, through her misery, to sustain herself. The poems, seen in this slant light, are all the more remarkable for existing at all. Their presence, and the force of their beauty, are a living proof that all is not lost. Dickinson doesn't just sustain herself through a Herculean battle against depression, but, by doing so, in an act of service, helps sustain us. In Fr887 Dickinson writes, 

Severer Service of myself
I—hastened to demand
To fill the awful Vacuum
Your life had left behind—

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


*Mabel Loomis Todd ordered these fascicles, and this fascicle, according to her system, is number 39. But, according to Franklin’s ordering this one would be the 40th. The problem is Franklin didn't reorder the fascicles, just the poems. So we have two different tracking systems. According to Franklin though, this is the last poem in the last fascicle, and, therefore, this poem the final one preserved in this way. It’s all guess work.)