Snow beneath whose chilly softness

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?


     -F921, J942, sheet 12, 1865


As I read this moving poem over and over again it begins to seep into my bones. It's hard to express why it is so moving. The over-all impression is something beyond what any explication can convey. It is freezing and warm, sweet and sad, chilly and soft, all at once.

I remember having a conversation about art with the great poet and critic John Yau once years ago in Berkeley when I was a graduate student. We were talking about what makes art great. I told him that for me it came down in the end to "aura." A painting either had it or didn't. He asked me to explain what I meant. I told him I didn't think it was possible to explain "aura," it just is. He said, "You have to try." 

I’ll start with the newest impression:

A powerful gnome-witch is giving a stern talk to Old Man Snow. She’s admonishing Him, gently advising Him to please give extra blanket to a loved one that was buried in the late autumn. 

The neighbors, the family, (“We”) have given as a gift ("bestowed") this neighbor to the ground, to her new bed in her new neighborhood, and she will soon be tucked “beneath” the blanket of Snow’s “chilly softness.”

At first the poet is shaking her finger at the Snow, admonishing Him, but in the second stanza the stern tone has softened and become a plea. “Wilt Thou,” She asks, “please blanket with Snow his new new neighbor we have lovingly presented to you, and give a wealthier (larger) portion of the blanket to her? After all, the long-dead have become acclimated to the cold underground by now and they don’t need the insulation of the snow as much as our friend does. They're used to it, but I’m afraid our friend is going to be very cold, so won’t you please take some of the snow-blanket from the shoulders of the old cemetery residents and give a little extra to Her?”

But, alas, the Poet knows how "austere" Old Man Winter is, how chillingly severe and strict, knows Winter does not play favorites. But it doesn’t really matter because the Poet does, and therefore she is asking anyway, pleading with unyielding Winter to bend its rules and be merciful for the sake of the beloved.

***

Of course the poet knows down deep it is no use pleading for the dead. The body underground is a corpse, decaying flesh. (Perhaps there is a soul, perhaps not, but if so it can't remain there with the rotting vegetable matter for eternity anyway). The Poet knows this but nevertheless she is alive and grieving and can’t yet let go. 

She knows in her heart though that it’s really "We" that are feeling so chilly. The plea is, in the end, for ourselves. She is asking for the snow to cover us up and keep us warm. The plea is also a way of expressing her love. 

It’s a plea with the highest degree of poetic irony. I find myself wincing at the cold reality that this poem hints at, but am moved by the warm heart of it, and delighted, too, by its "wealthier" imagination. It is at turns comforting, cute, tragic, funny, fantastical, realistic, terrifying, angry, endearing, all the things.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. I would guess that this poem was written by Dickinson expressly upon the occasion of a late autumn death of a neighbor.

2. The line about "the neighbor we so new bestow" reminds me of the Whitman line, “I bequeath myself to the dirt." What a beautiful conception of death. 

3. The idea of grieving for yourself when grieving for the dead is beautifully expressed in a poem written some 15 years after this one by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and All. 

4. Dickinson's conception of the world of the dead is such that before she died she left instructions that the six Irish men that had long worked for the Dickinsons would carry her casket, and that "they circled her flower garden, walked through the great barn that stood behind the house, and took a grassy path across house lots and fields of buttercups to West Cemetery [500 yards from Homestead]." It's as if she was giving herself, from the casket, one last look at the beloved flower garden, and at the same time allowing herself to be honored by the flowers therein. How very Emily Dickinson. Thanks to Larry B for this wonderful bit of biography. See the note for F847. 

5. Dickinson provides “Russian” as an alternative word for “Austere” in the final line. ‘Wilt Though, Russian Snow?” The difference between the two is worth considering. "Russian" evokes the deepest, harshest northern winter, and it also hints at foreignness. The newly dead have entered an unfamiliar country. Snow becomes a strange realm, almost another nation. I suspect Dickinson went with "austere" as her first choice because the idea of winter being severe and unyielding is important to the logic of the poem. 

6. I imagined a gnome-witch pleading with Snow here because at various times in her letters Dickinson describes herself as both. It seems fitting for this poem to think of them being hyphened together. 

Each Scar I'll keep for Him

Each Scar I'll keep for Him
Instead I'll say of Gem
In His long Absence worn
A Costlier one

But every Tear I bore
Were He to count them o'er
His own would fall so more
I'll missum them —


-F920, J877, sheet 12, 1865


This poem has an involved complexity that takes a while to unravel, but it's worth it as it has something beautiful to say about love. Let's start at the beginning:

Each Scar I'll keep for Him
Instead I'll say of Gem

I will treasure and preserve every emotional wound. But instead of calling these injuries, I'll think of them as valuable gems. Instead I'll say (they are) of Gem.

In His long Absence worn

These wounds/gems were acquired from absence from the loved one.

A Costlier one

These "gems" are precious because they were earned through suffering. The pain of missing is proof of love, and therefore something precious. "Costlier" is a pointed word here. There was a dear cost (pain), therefore the scars/gems cost more (gain).

In the first stanza the poem establishes a theme of economy. The scars have a "cost." Then the poem shifts into accounting:

But every Tear I bore
Were He to count them o'er

Now we're literally in the language of reckoning. It's an audit of tears!

Then comes:

His own would fall so more
I'll missum them —

Were he to count my tears, and see how many there really are, then, because of His love, he would cry even more tears than I am, so therefore I'll misrepresent the amount.

As she often does, Dickinson takes the language of commerce and turns it inside out. Love doesn't follow the ordinary rules of accounting. Loss is entered as profit.

Missum is a cool word. I’ve read analyses of this poem that read this as “miss some,” but I don’t think so. It's awkward. "I'll miss some them"? I also don't see Dickinson misspelling "some" to be cute. I believe it must mean mis-sum.

She is saying, "I'll make the reckoning come out wrong." She won't let him see the total of her suffering. The emotional cost is falsified out of love. It's an act of loving deception.

There's an interesting twist if "Him" is Christ. If Christ were to count her tears, he would weep more than she did. So she says she'll missum them, she'll under-report to spare even Him grief. If so, it's a pretty surprising reversal, the believer protecting the Savior. She's pulling a Christ on Christ by refusing justice in favor of mercy.

There’s an elegant symmetry in this poem. In the first stanza you are seeing the scars as gems, and in the second you are missumming tears. The poem begins by revaluing suffering. Missumming the tears is doing something similar. In both cases, reality is reframed; one act changes how she sees her own suffering, and the other changes how he will see it.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: 

1. Poetry itself may be seen as a kind of "mis-summing." Calling scars "gems" and "mis-summing" tears are poetic moves.

2. M is a sacred sound, the sound of Mother, of home. It's the sound a baby makes when it is hungry for mom's milk. MMMM. So perhaps it is significant that the M begins and ends this poem. To drive the sound home, there is a tripling up of the M in that last line, "I'll missum them."

    

Be Mine the Doom —

Be Mine the Doom —
Sufficient Fame —
To perish in Her Hand!


      -F919, J845, sheet 12, 1865


This brief poem has a timeless aura, with all the drama and sexiness of a poem by Sappho. “To perish in Her Hand!”

“Her Hand,” I believe, refers to Emily’s sister-in-law and beloved friend, Susan Dickinson.

Perishing in the hand of the woman you love, this is sufficient fame for Emily. This is a doom that the poet can welcome as her own. It’s terribly romantic.

I would be willing to bet (at 7 to 1 odds) that this poem was sent to Sue and accompanied by a flower. The flower, once in Sue’s hand, would soon perish. It would be perishing even as she read the poem and held the flower, surely some prize from Emily’s garden. Imagine being Sue in that moment, reading this poem with the dying flower in your hand. You would understand that the flower is Emily.

I am sufficient for her, you would understand. I am hers in life and in death.

***

This poem doesn't need any biographical details to have meaning. Dickinson is hard to pin down with her pronouns. Sometimes we have a he and sometimes a she. Sometimes him can be deified as Him, and her as Her. There is a fluidity with both the male/female and the mortal/Deity in Dickinson's pronouns. The object of this poem may be exemplified in a single Her (such as Sue) or it can stand for the whole of Nature. It's powerful to read this poem if you read Her as meaning Nature.

***

It's such a miniature jewel of a poem, with that unique stanza structure of 2/2/3. It begins with that heavily syncopated first line, "Be Mine the Doom" and ends its brief iambic run with an emphatic exclamation point.

***

"Be Mine the Doom" is defiant. As long as it is in your hands, dear, bring on the Doom! There is also a bit of humorous over-the-top quality in this line, as if it is winking at us. I imagine the poet histrionically arching her eyebrows as she writes this line, making fun of her own penchant for drama. Yet the sentiment couldn't be more sincere.

*** 

I think the “sufficient Fame” is interesting here. There are enough Dickinson poems that dicker with the notion of Fame that we can be sure it was something the poet considered deeply. She knew her own worth as a poet. Even though she published almost nothing (less than a dozen poems) while she was alive, she gained a kind of mythic stature in Amherst and beyond. Sue was famous as a host and entertained the likes of Emerson and Francis Hodgson Burnett (author of A Secret Garden) in her salon. I'm sure she must've sung Emily's praises to the guests. There were also a number of other famous people of the time that Dickinson had a personal relationship with, either in person, or through letters. (See the end notes for a short list.) All of this would've helped create a local mystique. But Emily wasn't looking for fame. She repeatedly turned down offers to publish her poems.

The irony is that the more Dickinson pushed away society, the more intriguing and famous she became. (This same quality can be seen in her poems by the way; the more they try to elude us, the more we want to know what they have to say.) Still, had she not left so many great poems (nearly 2000) behind for us to find, no one would remember the locally-famous recluse. She would have her true international fame posthumously, where it wouldn't be a bother to her.

While alive  Dickinson closed her society to include just a few friends, and especially Sue, her most beloved friend for more than half of her life. That was “Sufficient Fame” for her.

And in fact this poem is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: Emily did, in the end, perish in Sue’s hand. Sue was with Emily when she died. Afterward it is reported that Sue designed a white flannel robe for Emily and laid her in a white casket. She carefully placed heliotrope, lady's slipper orchids, and a knot of blue field violets at Emily's neck and in her hands symbolizing devotion and faithfulness. Sue also personally lined Emily’s final resting place with evergreen boughs. 


         -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

blue violet symbolizing devotion and faithfulness

Note: a short list of famous people Emily knew, all of whom helped make her a myth in her own lifetime.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson: A decorated Civil War colonel, abolitionist, and literary critic. He and Dickinson exchanged letters from 1862 until her death, acting as her literary mentor. After her death, he helped co-edit her first published poetry collection.

Helen Hunt Jackson: A highly successful novelist and poet. She was a childhood friend of Dickinson's and tried (unsuccessfully) to convince Dickinson to publish her poetry during her lifetime.

Samuel Bowles: The highly influential editor-in-chief of the Springfield Republican newspaper. He was a close family friend, and Dickinson sent him several of her poems.

Charles Wadsworth: A prominent and nationally famous Presbyterian minister from Philadelphia. Dickinson heard him preach in the 1850s, and they struck up a correspondence; he became one of the most important intellectual confidants in her life.

Mary Lyon: A pioneering educator for women, famous for founding the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Dickinson attended the seminary during the 1847–1848 academic year and studied under Lyon's instruction.

Josiah Holland: A well-known Massachusetts doctor, writer, and co-founder of Scribner's Monthly magazine. He and his wife, Elizabeth, were close family friends and frequent correspondents.

We met as Sparks—Diverging Flints

We met as Sparks—Diverging Flints
Sent various—scattered ways—
We parted as the Central Flint
Were cloven with an Adze—
Subsisting on the Light We bore
Before We felt the Dark—
A Flint unto this Day—perhaps—
But for that single Spark.


     -F918, J958, sheet 11, 1865



Flint is a very hard dark quartz that produces sparks when it is struck.

 

flint

So here you are, resting in your flinty flintness, in your “quartz contentment," when love strikes! It comes down like an adze and creates sparks. This is an image that is violent, but brilliant, like a lover’s passion.

This violent blow of the blade is how you “meet.”

We met as Sparks—Diverging Flints.

I often want to just write “Wow!" in reference to a powerful line or idea in Dickinson, but I rarely do. Why?

Here I will, because this is such a viscerally powerful way of describing love. 

Dickinson’s spark creates a spark in us. That’s what great poets do. They wow us. They set us on fire.  They disturb our “quartz contentment.”

Sent various—scattered ways—

This line mainly gets across the idea that the initial sparks go off in the sky, scattered apart. But I want to stay with this line for a minute and imagine what some of those various and scattered ways might be? The mind reels at how various and scattered we really are. 

We parted as the Central Flint
Were cloven with an Adze—

An adze is an ancient cutting tool similar to an axe but with the cutting edge perpendicular to the handle rather than parallel. We parted as (if) the central Flint/ Were cloven with an Adze. The sparks are created by the adze striking the flint. 

Things get poetic here because the same thing that creates the spark, the adze, also creates separation. The sparks part from the flint as soon as the adze strikes. The idea is that love and longing come as a package deal. 

This duality can also be seen in that word “cloven.” "Cleave" is a classic contranym. Cleave can mean to cleave apart, which it primarily does here, but it can also mean to cleave together.

I love the rhyme of “Adze” with “Ways.” Following “sparks”, “flints”, “sent”, “scattered”and “Central,” these end rhymes create a soft susurration, a feeling, in this poem, of longing. Then the next line begins the triple S in the word "Subsisting." 

Subsisting on the Light We bore
Before We felt the Dark—

There is much to meditate upon in these lines. "Subsisting on the Light We bore." The light is the love we feel for one another. It feeds and nourishes us.

In our minds we see an image in this poem of two sparks that are coming off of the central flint. Their moment of parting is brilliant, but swift. We’ve all seen sparks rising into the sky, fading out into the dark. It happens quick. Death, or loss, is what the spark fades into.

The rhythm of these two lines is worth noting. The iambic tetrameter enjambs into the following line of trimeter, creating seven quick iambs in a row. This ramping up effect is heightened by the internal rhyme of “we bore” with “Before.” This all sets us up for the pause in the next line:

A Flint unto this Day—perhaps—

Was it so great to fall in love? Would it have been better to stay in the “quartz contentment," in the oneness and hardness of the dark flint?

The “perhaps,” set off there between dashes, has a lot riding on it. Perhaps it would’ve been better to just be in the non-dual contentment of that central flint, but then again, we would never have gotten fire.

But for that single Spark.

The diverging sparks at the beginning of this poem have, by the end of the poem, reverted back to their single state. This is the state of fire. One spark creates another. The original spark, I suppose, is the force behind that falling adze, its wielder's desire for fire.


       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


P.S. But where did that original desire come from? I recently read a first century BC poem by the Greek poet Meleager that wondered the same thing:

What I cannot see is how,
From the green wave rising,
Out of water, Oh Aphrodite,
You bred a flame.

P.P.S. Another curious thing about the form of this poem is that the stanzas are NOT split in two. Perhaps it is to emphasize the "single Spark" with which the poem ends. 

As One does Sickness over

As One does Sickness over
In convalescent Mind,
His scrutiny of Chances
By blessed Health obscured —

As One rewalks a Precipice
And whittles at the Twig
That held Him from Perdition
Sown sidewise in the Crag

A Custom of the Soul
Far after suffering
Identity to question
For evidence't has been —

         -F917, J957, sheet 11, 1865

Surviving illness brings a heightened awareness of vulnerability. That's what I think this poem is about on the surface. Under the surface I think there is wrestling here with the idea of Grace too. 

It's a tricky poem. Let’s break it down as best we can.

As One does Sickness over
In convalescent Mind,

The body is convalescing, getting better, and the mind reflects back upon the illness. But the phrase “does Sickness over” gives you a sense that reflecting on sickness is itself a sickness. You are doing Sickness all over again. And for what? It's like you are stuck in the suffering.

His scrutiny of Chances
By blessed Health obscured —

Upon recovering from an illness, presumably a serious one, we think about the chance of death. I am reminded of the classic doctor’s diagnosis here; “Ms. Vinrace, you have a 50/50 chance.” But there is something else going on too I think. The idea that these “Chances” are, normally, by “blessed Health obscured” means that it takes an illness to bring this "chance" to light. Dickinson's poetry often causes me to stop and really look at a word. I pick it up and turn it around. "Chance" can mean probability, but it can also mean “risk” and “opportunity.” We have a "chance" to live, so we have to take this "chance." We can easily forget that when we are in "blessed health." It takes an illness to wake us up to it.

Another meaning of “chance,” though, is randomness. I think this meaning plays into the poem in the second stanza when we are presented with the idea of contingency. Is there a purpose to life, or is it random?

As One rewalks a Precipice
And whittles at the Twig
That held Him from Perdition
Sown sidewise in the Crag

Dickinson presents us with an analogy. Scrutinizing the recovery of an illness is like falling off of a cliff, being saved by a twig on the side of the cliff, and then going back to examine the twig. Not only do we look at the twig, but we “whittle” at it too. That’s interesting. It suggests that by examining the thing that saved us, we are actually making it more fragile. There is a sickness not only to examining the sickness, but perhaps even to looking at what kept us alive.

The word Perdition here adds a whole new element to the poem. Perdition primarily refers to eternal damnation; the state of being spiritually lost and punished forever after death. So now there is the suggestion that we are not just talking about a physical illness, but a spiritual one. If this is so, then the twig that saved us is no longer a thing of “chance,” but an instrument of Grace. This is why it has been “sown” into the crag, as if by design. The message I get is, don't question Grace or you will whittle it down to nothing.

“Sown” is an interesting word choice, but so is “sidewise.” It makes me think of Emily’s love of the word “slant" and these famous lines from a much later poem by Dickinson,

Tell all the truth but tell it slant -
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

The twig that saves us has been sown there, but it isn't coming in from an angle we can recognize. It's coming in sidewise. 

A Custom of the Soul
Far after suffering

Custom is another word you can pick up and turn around. I think the “does sickness over” and “whittles at the twig” both give us a sense that it might be better not to reflect upon the illness. Better to move forward.

Identity to question
For evidence't has been —

Here you are questioning identity itself. The poem turns existential. If I can die so easily, or, worse, become damned for eternity, then who am I? Does life have any meaning at all?

But then we remember all those twigs sown sideways into all of those crags, the millions of chances that had to be surmounted just for us to be here in the first place. 

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

  

P.S. An old joke:

Jack was walking along a steep cliff one day. He accidentally got too close to the edge and fell. On the way down he grabbed a branch, which temporarily stopped his fall. He looked down and to his horror saw that the canyon dropped straight down for more than a thousand feet.

He couldn’t hang onto the branch forever, and there was no way for him to climb up the steep wall of the cliff. So Jack began yelling for help, hoping that someone passing by would hear and rescue him.

“HELP! HELP! Is anyone up there?”

He yelled for a long time, but no one heard him. He was about to give up when he heard a voice. “Jack, Jack. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, yes! I can hear you. I’m down here!”

“I can see you, Jack. Are you all right?”

“Yes, but who are you, and where are you?”

“I am the Lord, Jack. I’m everywhere.”

“The Lord? You mean, GOD?”

“That’s Me.”

“I’ll do anything, Lord. Just tell me what to do.”

“Okay. Let go of the branch.”

“What?”

“I said, let go of the branch. Just trust Me. Let go.”

There was a long silence.

Finally Jack yelled, “IS ANYONE ELSE UP THERE?”

Drab Habitation of Whom?

Drab Habitation of Whom?
Tabernacle or Tomb —
Or Dome of Worm —
Or Porch of Gnome —
Or some Elf's Catacomb?

     -F916,  J893,  Sheet 11, 1865

This poem is only six lines long, but it spans religion, mortality, biology, folklore, magic and mystery all at once.

Drab Habitation of Whom?

In the first line an existential question is posed. Who are we in this drab habitation? We are presented with an open-ended riddle. Eventually this question turns toward death, but not yet. A "Whom," after all, follows from being someone, from being alive. If there is a habitation, there is living going on. So the question is posed to you. You look around the room to see... Whom? There is no one else around. Perhaps you notice that your habitation is a bit drabber than it needs to be.

Tabernacle or Tomb —

This is confusing at first because a Tabernacle and a Tomb are "Whats" not "Whoms." So I think we are to understand that the place defines the inhabitant, or, put another way, the inhabitant defines the place. Is the habitation you are living in a sacred place where God’s presence resides or a dead place of nothingness? Is your room more tabernacle or tomb?

Or Dome of Worm —

Now the riddle is revealed. The "drab place" must be a burial mound, for what else could a dome of worm be? “Dome of Worm” is a memorable phrase. The body is shown to be, on one level, mere worm-food.

The word “worm” seems to derive from the “tomb” in the line above, but the word “Dome” ties back to “Tabernacle.” This doubling up of metaphor is cunning. We can infer that the church itself may be infested with worms.

Or Porch of Gnome —

Now we are back among the living again, but not among the real, not in any factual realm. The Gnome, though, for a moment of inspired imagination, is at home, and this mound is his porch. It’s magical, like a child's fairy garden. The imagination has transformed the worm-riddled mound into something wondrous. 

But maybe this fantasy is naive? This thought sets us up for a return to the dark. Is this some magical creature's porch, 

Or some Elf's Catacomb?

One way you can read this poem is as a question: is there life after life? That's a mystery that occupied Dickinson, as it does so many of us. But another way to read this poem, one that is, I think, more valuable, is to ask: is there life among the living? Is life merely a set-up for the harsh reality of being worm-food, or is it lit up with the magic of the imagination? 

I think this poem has it both ways. It acknowledges reality, but also dwells in possibility. 

We go back to the beginning of the poem and take note again of that "Whom." It's not “What” life and death are that is being defined here, it’s “Whom.” The power to transform one's home is, at least on this side of the veil, ours to own. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: 

1. "Porch of Gnome" may be riffing off of the idea of a "porch gnome," a fad which was already in vogue in the 19th century and is still popular today. 

2. The word gnome was coined by the 16th-century Swiss alchemist Paracelsus. He derived it from the Greek word genomos, meaning "earth-dweller"

3. The form of this poem, 33223, is the same as a limerick. (I don't think I've seen Dickinson use it before?) The effect is to heighten the fairy-tale elements of the poem. 

4. The child-like word-play in this poem is a lot of fun. Whom/ Tomb/ Dome/ Worm/ Gnome/ some/ comb. The over-riding sound is OM, the sacred Hindu syllable. I doubt Dickinson was familiar with this Indian root-word, so I think it is more likely the poem functions as a meditation on the word “Home.” That word is conspicuously absent here. We have "habitation" followed by a series of words that rhyme with home.

 

What shall I do when the Summer troubles—

What shall I do when the Summer troubles—
What, when the Rose is ripe—
What when the Eggs fly off in Music
From the Maple Keep?

What shall I do when the Skies a'chirrup
Drop a Tune on me—
When the Bee hangs all Noon in the Buttercup
What will become of me?

Oh, when the Squirrel fills His Pockets
And the Berries stare
How can I bear their jocund Faces
Thou from Here, so far?

'Twouldn't afflict a Robin—
All His Goods have Wings—
I—do not fly, so wherefore
My Perennial Things?


    - F915, J956, Sheet 11, 1865

This poem presents a classic trope. The sun is shining in the summer, but for the broken-hearted it might as well be midnight in the dead of winter. I can think of many poems (including a few others by Dickinson) that deal with this theme. I can think of a few great songs too, including this one.

Dickinson adds her own spin, and in the meantime she regales us with music from her Maple keep. One reason this poem feels so alive is that Dickinson doesn't merely describe summer, she invents a language that seems to behave like summer:

What shall I do when the Summer troubles—
What, when the Rose is ripe—
What when the Eggs fly off in Music
From the Maple Keep?

You can spend some time looking at the effect Dickinson achieves by the interweaving of those W and R sounds in the first two lines, the way she wields the vowels, the way the lines flow so mellifluously and then end on those hard Ps. It’s so rhythmically perfect and in keeping with the subject. One swoons with summerness.

The eggs are flying off in music from the Maple Keep. "Keep" is a medieval word for the fortified tower of a castle. Suddenly the maple is a fortress. (See F912, where trees are “sentinels.”) The nestlings are escaping into the world, flying off in Music, as though music is the air they travel through. 

But in the midst of this music we know that there is trouble. The phrase “Summer troubles” is one of a few in this poem that is memorable. It would make for a good title.

What shall I do when the Skies a'chirrup
Drop a Tune on me—

Another memorable phrase, “Skies a’chirrup.” Like the eggs flying off in music, the atmosphere itself seems to be made up of bird song. But this doesn’t cheer the poet. Rather the skies “drop” a Tune on her head as if it were a piano falling from a building. (I think of F597, “The emperor with Rubies pelteth me.”) Happiness is an assault to one who is unhappy.

When the Bee hangs all Noon in the Buttercup
What will become of me?

"Hangs" is perfect. The word captures the lazy suspension of a summer afternoon. The line stops, again, on that P sound at the end of Buttercup, and you are, for a moment, hanging in the air, before the painful question returns, "What will become of me?" 

Oh, when the Squirrel fills His Pockets
And the Berries stare
How can I bear their jocund Faces
Thou from Here, so far?

It’s such a simple phrase, “the Berries stare,” but much is going on there. We’ve seen a similar idea in Dickinson before, the most famous example being, “We passed the fields of gazing grain," from F479.

The berries are imagined as having “jocund faces.” They're little cheerful people, but also, the poet feels exposed by their happiness. Everything around her seems to be looking at her loneliness, cheerfully insensitive, obliviously happy.

The berries are staring because the poet is staring at them so intensely. A stare is persistent. It won't leave the poet alone. The berries confront her with beauty, and therefore with absence.

'Twouldn't afflict a Robin—
All His Goods have Wings—

A robin would not suffer like the poet because it can fly to where it needs to. Everything the robin values, its “Goods,” is mobile. The poet, however, is bound to one place. This is especially poignant with Dickinson who famously never left her home in the last 15 years of her life. 

I—do not fly, so wherefore
My Perennial Things?

("Wherefore" is an antiquated poetic word for "why.")

"If I cannot fly," she seems to be saying, "why do I keep having these recurring (perennial) attachments and hopes?"

"Perennial Things," I think, can mean recurring emotional needs that return year after year, just as the seasons do. The poet is questioning why she has been given desires and attachments that reach toward someone distant when she lacks the freedom to follow them. But, conversely, perhaps, she is admiring those who can live life on the wing. It reminds me of the William Blake poem, "Eternity". 

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy.

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

Well, Dickinson may feel out of season with summer, but her poetry gets her as close to it as can be. It's interesting to see the trochaic pattern in the stanzas. 4343 4343 4343 3343. The loss of the expected beat in the last stanza adds a plaintive feeling when you are reading it out loud. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A Door just opened on a street -

A Door just opened on a street  —
I — lost — was passing by  —
An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed -
And Wealth — and Company.

The Door as sudden shut — And I  —
I — lost — was passing by —
Lost doubly — but by contrast — most -
Informing — Misery.

     -F914, J953, sheet 10, 1865


The speaker is lost out in the cold. Then she gets a glimpse into a warm home through an open door. When that door is shut (in her face presumably), she feels even worse than before, "Lost doubly." Why? Because she had a brief glimpse of home, of “Wealth - and Company,” and now she knows what she is missing.

This idea, of being worse off after a glimpse of joy than you would have been if you had never gotten it in the first place, is a common one in Dickinson’s poetry. Usually this idea is about lost love, which always makes me wonder: is it true that "it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all," or would it actually be better to have never loved at all? Dickinson wavers, but she generally seems to fall on the side of better never to have loved at all.

The poem may be read as a metaphor for love lost, but the words “Wealth” and “Warmth” makes one think of those who are poor and cold; the homeless.

The heart goes out. One wants that door to open all the way. But will it? 

The “I” in this poem is mentioned three times, with a kind of doubled-up emphasis in the second occurrence:

The Door as sudden shut — And I  —
I — lost — was passing by —

The poem is iambic, but that second "I" there is trochaic, the beat on the first syllable. This rhythmic hiccup stands out. You are forced for a moment to reverse the beat. It creates a kind of stutter effect. You falter under the weight between those two “I”s. 

...And I —
I — lost — ...

There is a pregnant pause between the two stanzas and in the drama of that moment is born a bitterness. 

There is another potential “I” in this poem, the one who is hidden in their wealth and warmth behind that door. Perhaps that is us. The poet, then, aligns us with the downtrodden, with the nobody. "I'm nobody - who are you?" Dickinson always sides with the poor.

Dickinson wasn’t poor, not financially. She lived all of her life in a warm and wealthy home. So the “I” here is, at some level, "another," a projection. As Dickinson says in a letter to a friend, "When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse - it does not mean-me - but a supposed person."

Perhaps this poem is, then, designed to be a way for the poet, and the readers of the poem, to feel for those outside of her (our) comfort zones.

The poem accomplishes this in a couple of striking ways. First of all it begins in medias res. We are suddenly in the moment. “The door just opened on a street—” We are there, on the street, standing in front of the opened door. 

Secondly, the first person perspective allows us to inhabit the role of the narrator and therefore empathize with the anguish. What would it be like to be homeless? What would it feel like to be cold and hungry and have that “instant width of warmth disclosed." What would it be like to be so all alone. What would feel like to be in such a forlorn state and then have a little taste of warmth and Company? And finally, what would it feel like, then, to have the door shut on us? The more we try to imagine this situation, the more our hearts, like doors, open up.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

 

P.S. I found the following on FaceBook from a writer named David Mosey. It is insightful: "For some reason this poem always seems to remind me of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, probably because of the contrast of the “Width of Warmth” of the festivities inside with the cold snow-blown street outside. But it is a salutary reminder that Dickinson’s selection of her “Own Society” was not without cost. It is as elegant, concise and heartrending a self-examination as she ever confided to paper."