A Man may make a Remark —

A Man may make a Remark —
In itself — a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature — lain —

Let us deport — with skill —
Let us discourse — with care —
Powder exists in Charcoal —
Before it exists in Fire.

  

     -F913, J952, sheet 10, 1865


Slowly going through Dickinson’s poems feels like being adrift in an endless sea of surprises. Every poem has hidden aesthetic pleasures. Every one has secrets to reveal.

This one begins with one of those small aesthetic pleasures, the way the M and K sounds work together:

A Man may make a Remark —

The M is the softest of syllables, the K is the sharpest. Concentrated together they sound remarkable.

A Man may make a Remark —
In itself — a quiet thing

There is a short story I love by Haruki Murakami called Cream. In this story a boy gives up playing the piano because of a quiet remark:

“When we played that piece together, she gave me a sour look every time I hit a wrong note. She was a better pianist than I was, and I tended to get overly tense, so when the two of us sat side by side and played I bungled a lot of notes. My elbow bumped against hers a few times as well. It wasn’t such a difficult piece, and, moreover, I had the easier part. Each time I blew it, she had this Give me a break expression on her face. And she’d click her tongue—not loudly but loud enough that I could catch it. I can still hear that sound, even now. That sound may even have had something to do with my decision to give up the piano.”

I think that is what Dickinson is getting at here. One very quiet line can change a person’s life for better or worse.

a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature — lain —

If one quiet remark can cause someone to “give up music,” it can also cause them to take it up. The spark that lays dormant in nature can be ignited by others.

My wonderful mother-in-law, Ada George, likes to say about teaching that you can only give students flammable material, but they have to provide the spark. But here Dickinson puts it the other way around. The flammable material is already inside, “in dormant nature — lain —,” and we can help provide the spark.

I love that “lain” set off there in between dashes. It highlights that the dormant spark has been "lain" there, by God or nature or what have you. For better or for worse we have the power to set that powder keg off. So...

Let us deport — with skill —
Let us discourse — with care —

“Deport” as Dickinson uses it here does not carry its contemporary meaning of sending someone out of the country. It means “to behave or comport (oneself) especially in accord with a code.”

The practice of this “skill” is a life-long pursuit. You could say that all of Dickinson’s poetry is an extremely careful discourse. 

The stakes are great. One “wince” as someone sings out of tune can be enough to stop them from ever singing again. One laugh at someone else's dancing, even if the laughter is meant to be in delight, can keep them off the dance floor. On the other hand one quiet remark may also be enough to keep them singing and dancing for life.

As a teacher, parent and friend, I don't think these words could be more meaningful.

Powder exists in Charcoal —
Before it exists in Fire.

Dickinson ends the poem with a tight little aphorism, dense as charcoal. Charcoal is an interesting metaphor because it is made by heating wood in the absence of oxygen. This process allows it to burn hotter, cleaner and with a longer duration than regular wood.

Goals.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

a fascinating history of Charcoal

To my quick ear the Leaves—conferred—

To my quick ear the Leaves—conferred—
The Bushes—they were Bells—
I could not find a Privacy
From Nature's sentinels—

In Cave if I presumed to hide
The Walls—begun to tell—
Creation seemed a mighty Crack—
To make me visible—


    -F912, J891, sheet 10, 1865

There’s a crack in this poem. You can hear it in the very word, which comes at the climax of the poem, not just any crack, but a mighty Crack. It’s a great word. First of all, the word is onomatopoeic. It sounds like what it is, so you feel it in the body. The word has power. It winds up with CCCRRR then sails through AAA and ends on a resounding CKCKCK. I’m exaggerating to make the point felt, but if you say the word out loud, you can feel its power for yourself. Dickinson amps up this power even more by giving us an extra CR in the word “Creation,” which kickstarts the line.

 
Creation seemed a mighty Crack—

There’s also another Crack in this poem; the stanza break. The poem appears as if it has been rent in two. (There are other Dickinson poems that make a similar move, but I can’t currently recall them. If you do, please let me know.)

Like the audible Crack, this visual one serves a purpose. There are no words in that stanza break. There is only the white of the page (the screen), only silence. It reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s line, “There is a crack in everything/ that's how the light gets in." 

Notice that the poem begins with a hint of this mighty climactic "Crack" in the sound of “Quick.” 

To my quick ear the Leaves—conferred—

(See how quick Dickinson’s ear is? She heard the Crack even before it came. It was there in the quick.)

"Leaves" here might be read as the leaves of books. To read the leaves of a book of great poetry, such as Dickinson was attuned to, is to have a quick ear.

But the primary source of imagery here is nature itself, the leaves of the trees. Nature comes alive to speak to Dickinson, to confer to her ear. To confer can mean to exchange ideas, or seek advice, or to formally bestow an honor. All of this do the leaves confer to Emily.

The Bushes—they were Bells—

What a juicy line. How does Dickinson do it? The lines sing, each and every one, just as the landscape does, the very bushes themselves.

I could not find a Privacy
From Nature's sentinels—

The first question here is why would you want privacy from conferring leaves and ringing bushes? It reminds me a little of the line from F597, “The emperor with Rubies pelteth me.” It’s like being protected from being overwhelmed. The idea of these bushes and trees being “sentinels,” watching over the poet, adds a wrinkle too. Why would you want privacy from the thing that is watching out for you? Nature is presented, in this first stanza as wholly good: conferring, ringing, and protecting.

I think “privacy,” in this first stanza at least, is meant to be ironic. There can be no privacy when all of nature rings and sings along with us.

But after that visual Crack between stanzas the tone changes a bit. The need for privacy, the hiding, takes one into the darkness.

In Cave if I presumed to hide
The Walls—begun to tell—

The self wants to hide, puts itself in a cave. But even the cave walls begin to tell. One thinks of Plato’s cave here. (I wonder if Emily did?) Plato’s cave is a metaphor telling us that we can’t know outside reality from within our own mental caves. We can only see shadows on its walls that hint at the truth. In Dickinson’s cave it’s more like the walls themselves are dissolving into light. The “walls began to tell.” Maybe those cave walls are echoing the poet's song back to herself?

The idea of nature “telling” is a revelatory one. We see this idea play out often in Shakespeare. The line "stones have been known to move and trees to speak" is spoken by Macbeth after seeing Banquo's ghost, suggesting to us that nature itself exposes the truth behind his hidden actions.

Creation seemed a mighty Crack—
To make me visible—

This idea of the poet becoming visible in the “crack” is resonant on many levels, though we can start with hearkening back to that Leonard Cohen line: the "visible," the light, gets through the Crack in the stone of the cave. The truth comes through in the very place where there has been violence and injury.

A certain level of irony can be seen in this poem when we know a little about the poet. She was famously reclusive. I think in this poem she may be calling herself out for this tendency. She’s admitting to herself that it is in her vulnerability that she sings as a poet. Her poems are often the result of heart-break.

The tell is also in the scars. This poem is the second one written on “sheet 10” (as Miller numbers them.) If we look at the first poem Dickinson wrote down on that sheet, F911, then we see the result of this crack. It is presented there as a permanent"gash," a "crease" and a "stain."

When you read these two poems together you get a bigger picture. You see the reason for wanting to hide in the first one, whereas this subsequent poem presents the problem with hiding. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Yellowbells: Harbingers of Spring

As Frost is best conceived

As Frost is best conceived
By force of its Result —
Affliction is inferred
By subsequent effect —

If when the sun reveal,
The Garden keep the Gash —
If as the Days resume
The wilted countenance

Cannot correct the crease
Or counteract the stain —
Presumption is Vitality
Was somewhere put in twain.


     -F911, J951, Sheet 10, 1865


The Lexicon of this poem is largely in latin. The result is a dry and academically abstract tone. This cold legalistic language seems to be part of the freezing effect of the subject in the poem. Frosty words for a frosty poem.

The wonder is the way she makes these sharp-angled words flow so smoothly within the confines of the common hymn meter.  

This poem is a cold counter-example to the aphorism, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Where there are wilted flowers, there’s been frost. 

This is a gardening metaphor, and it is understood that the frost in question is one that is out of season. It’s one of those late unexpected frosts that destroy the early bloomers. 

Frost is best conceived
By force of its Result —

When we see that plants aren’t making it, we can understand the full import of the reason, we can then  “conceive of the force” of frost.

The metaphor is, I think, meant to tell us that when we see someone who is depressed, who has a “wilted countenance,” drooping like a frost-damaged dahlia, there is a “force” behind it. We didn’t fully understand the strength of this force until we saw the “subsequent” damage.

Affliction is inferred
By subsequent effect —

The garden (and all that word implies) cannot be completely healed. It “keeps the gash.” The wilted countenance (face) of the damaged person cannot correct the crease created by the damage, nor counteract the stain. Gash, crease and stain here are violent words. Notice that they are all both verbs and nouns. When you gash, crease and stain, you are left with a permanent gash, crease and stain. Perhaps Dickinson is alluding to emotional cruelty, but there may be something even worse implied here, a physical effect of violence that far outlasts the emotional intensity of the moment.

Presumption is Vitality
Was somewhere put in twain.

In other words, we presume there is a real reason, some invisible frost, that has caused a person’s Vitality to weaken. The depression is a symptom of real, or perceived, violence. PTSD.

I think of all that icy imagery in Dickinson’s poetry here, like in the famous poem that ends, “As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –/ First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –.”

I also think of those tragic lines from F841, “Sun—withdrawn to Recognition—/ Furthest shining—done—”

Our actions can effect serious permanent damage upon the growth of others. Have patience with those who are having trouble thriving. Take care of your people and your plants, and take care of yourself. Grow indoors when the temperatures threaten to take a downward spike.


      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

tips on how to handle a late frost

P.S. Aside from the deft handling of the latinate, there are some other shining moments of Dickinson's craft that are worth noticing in this poem. 

There is the way that the steady iambic tri-meter (3 beats) in the first 10 lines sets up the push into tetrameter (4 beats) in the 11th, creating extra emphasis on that word “Vitality,” and then, the way this tension resolves back to tri-meter in the final line, “Was somewhere put in Twain.” It’s like the breath was held a bit longer at the climax of the poem and then released.

Another impressive moment is in the consonant cluster of C T N and R sounds in “countenance/ Cannot correct the crease/ Or counteract.” 

P.P.S. The subtle use of the word "force" here reminds me of Sylvia Plath's poem, "The Rabbit Catcher" which begins, ominously, with a very Dickinsonian line of iambic tri-meter, replete with a dash, 

It was a place of force—

Finding is the first Act

Finding is the first Act
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The "Golden Fleece"

Fourth, no Discovery —
Fifth, no Crew —
Finally, no Golden Fleece —
Jason — sham — too.


      -F910, J870, sheet9, 1865

Our guest poster for this poem is Nate B Hardy. Nate is a frequent commenter on the Prowling Bee and has subsequently become a friend. Here's Nate's take on this poem:

As far as Emily sticking the knife in goes, this is one of my favorites:

Finding is the first Act 

The second, loss, 

Third, Expedition for 

The “Golden Fleece” 

 Fourth, no Discovery — 

Fifth, no Crew — 

Finally, no Golden Fleece — 

Jason — sham — too.


Cold!

It reminds me of a Tom Waits spoken word number called Children’s Story, which is apparently taken directly from a granny in the Georg Büchner play Woyzeck:

Once upon a time there was a poor child 

With no father and no mother 

And everything was dead 

And no one was left in the whole world 

Everything was dead 

 And the child went on searching day and night 

And since nobody was left on the earth 

He wanted to go up into the heavens 

And the moon was looking at him so friendly 

And when he finally got to the moon 

The moon was a piece of rotten wood 

 And then he went to the sun 

And when he got there 

The sun was a wilted sunflower 

And when he got to the stars 

They were little golden flies 

Stuck up there like the shrike 

Sticks ‘em on a blackthorn 

 And when he wanted to go back down to earth 

The earth was an overturned piss pot 

And he was all alone 

He sat down and he cried 

And he is there till this day 

All alone

When I read this, what I feel is elation. It’s one delightful surprise after another.

I get that same electric feeling from Emily’s poem. It’s just as fresh and savage.

Maybe Tom Waits would make it a polka, like a wry grin. My ear was saying we needed space. So I aimed the mic at the wall behind the piano, and the crickets behind the guitar. I thickened the crickets with tambourine, and whacked on toms. I sang the poem, and let the harmonica have the last word. It’s like a resigned shrug.

The song

Nate

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 ear 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

Dickinson, in her poem, has become pure delight of sound and being. Beeing.

List even unto Me.

“List” carries a wonderful 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, of bees and flowers that is at play in this poem, and one senses desire in the listing of that 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 tone of the sacred.

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

In the second stanza we have switched to the perspective of the listing flower. Who in the 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 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 will 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 in the first stanza is now the “Crypt” of the Robin being intruded upon in the second. It’s a weird parallel. It’s hard to read “Crypt” without the sense it has of “grave,” but perhaps 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 (gift) of buzzing."  Dickinson is buzzing on her own poetic prowess.

or Flower of Furze

Flower or Furze is a such a pleasing rhyme for “dower of buzz" that 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 Lover, God, Nature or take your pick. Her way of becoming is through poetry’s mimesis. It buzzes and hums. It's floral. It has wings. We list even unto it.

     _/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. 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.

P.P.S. My daughter drank a cup of tea today and I noticed that hanging out of the cup was an Emily Dickinson quote, “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 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