Through
it – compete with Death –
The
fellow cannot touch this Crown –
By
it – my title take –
Ah,
what a royal sake
To
my necessity – stooped down!
No
Wilderness – can be
Where
this attendeth me –
No
Desert Noon –
No
fear of frost to come
Haunt
the perennial bloom –
But
Certain June!
Get
Gabriel – to tell – the royal syllable –
Get
Saints – with new – unsteady tongue –
To
say what trance below
Most
like their glory show –
Fittest
the Crown!
J195, Fr230
(1861)
Few
people are fortunate enough to know their calling and believe it to be
glorious. Dickinson is one who did. It’s a good thing, too, for she was not
valued as much in her life for her poetry as for her baking and gardening!
Locals knew her as a recluse not as a poet. Cultured men who were in a position
to advance her as a poet discouraged her from publishing. And so she wrote and
wrote and wrote alone in her room. Even her sister who knew she wrote poems was
amazed at the number of them stashed away in Emily’s desk and cupboards. Many
of them were carefully bound together in little books that are referred to as ‘fascicles.’
“For
this” gift of poetry, Dickinson “accepted Breath.” That’s about as bold a
statement of destiny as one could make! Through her poetry she will outlive her
bodily death – and she certainly has. Death can’t touch the crown of her fame.
I hope she truly believed this for she has posthumously earned tremendous
respect and fame. Poetry for her is a “necessity” that “stooped down” from
whatever divinity inspires it.
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Poetry
is her “Certain June!” It wouldn’t matter if she were in a desert or a million
miles from nowhere. Cold couldn’t hurt the “perennial bloom” of her poetic
inspiration. And indeed, she wrote prolifically. Finally, she calls on the
messenger angel, Gabriel, archangel of revelation and truth, as well as all the
dear departed Saints (who may not speak as well as the angel since they are new
to heavenly language and so have “unsteady tongue[s].” Get them, she commands, to say just
what “trance” is available here on earth that is most like the glory they
experience in heaven, what livelihood most fit for the “Crown.” The proud
answer would be the experience of writing poetry.
By
saying this, Dickinson places herself in the company of those who say they
write by the Muse – that their poetry comes from outside themselves, from some
great wellspring of creativity. Dipping into this well is a source of
nourishing intoxication for the poet: her everlasting June.
The
poem seems a bit unpolished to me. There are word inversions (“By it – my title
take”) that might have been worked around, unnecessary anachronisms (“attendeth,”
“Fittest”), and a structure that gets tossed by the wayside in the last five
lines. It might be argued that the last six lines achieve a certain ecstatic
level, what with archangels and saints and crowns, but the AABCCB rhyme scheme
of the previous sets of six lines disappears. Oh well – this is a poem
celebrating the wonderful privilege and source of inner fulfillment and
transport that the gift of poetry brings (I use the word “gift” in the context
Dickinson here uses; I don’t mean to imply that poets have it easy…)
Wife and I visited ED's home in May 2015. Began reading the Final Harvest compilation, a few poems daily after dinner. Greatly appreciate your blog.
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