'Twas just this time, last year, I
died.
I know I heard the Corn,
When I was carried by the Farms—
It had the Tassels on—
I thought how yellow it would look—
When Richard went to mill—
And then, I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.
I thought just how Red—Apples wedged
The Stubble's joints between—
And the Carts went stooping round the
fields
To take the Pumpkins in—
I wondered which would miss me,
least,
And when Thanksgiving, came,
If Father'd multiply the plates—
To make an even Sum—
And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The altitude of me—
But this sort, grieved myself,
And so, I thought the other way,
How just this time, some perfect year—
Themself, should come to me –
F344
(1862) 445
Haven’t we all imagined our death and, sometimes even more
satisfactorily, how our family and friends would get on without us? Dickinson
pens a poem here on the subject, adopting a pensive autumnal voice as she takes
on the persona of a girl who has been dead for a year.
As I write this commentary the pumpkins have ripened
into a full and brilliant orange. The pumpkin festival is coming up next
weekend and the town will have a parade, a crafts fair, a giant pumpkin
weighing, and all kinds of fun. The last of the corn still stands in the field,
guarded by some brightly dressed scarecrows.

All this is consistent
with Dickinson’s fascination with the moments after death. For her, the
consciousness does not die—at least not right away. Instead it lingers a while
on the sights around. Her more famous ones are “I heard a fly buzz when I
died,” and “Because I could not stop for death.” In “Dropped into the Ether
Acre” she is in a hearse “Riding to meet the Earl.” The sensuousness of these post-death
experiences—a buzzing fly, red apples and orange pumpkins, carriage rides—is
just about opposite what religious folks might expect. Instead of preparing her
soul and contemplating her life, Dickinson and her personas are taking a last
long look at the mortal life and world. There is all of eternity to contemplate
the soul, heaven, or whatever awaits. We only have the earth for a short time.
After admiring the
cornfields, the speaker wonders if anything of the world will miss her—the
familiar farms, fields, and vegetables. This seems to remind her about
Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to come and whether or not her father would
put out extra plates so that there wouldn’t be one missing. Likewise, she
wonders if her absence will dampen the spirits at Christmas. Her stocking will
be way out of reach, even for Santa and his flying reindeer.
However, this sort of
thinking is depressing, even for a dead person. Fortunately, the speaker lights
on a happier thought: Some “perfect” time in the future, her family will die
and so join her. Now that’s the way to cheer up!
I read this as the poet's own mystic death when she was carried beyond herself yet still retained her individual ego, unlike the greater death beyond all she wrote of in the poem beginning I felt a Funeral; here she still longs for connection and community with others
ReplyDeleteThe multiplying of the plates is a little ceremony that recalls the miracle of the loaves and fishes. The host passes around a plate of food and as it goes by the guests take out a plate of their own with a little bit of food or no food, that they have hidden.
ReplyDeleteAh! Thank you for that. I'd never even heard of the ceremony.
DeleteDickens’ “Christmas carol” (1843) imagined the life of those left behind absent the dead narrator - the Dickensons were Dickens readers. Shades of Tiny Tim....
ReplyDelete