Pain — expands the Time —

Pain — expands the Time —
Ages coil within
The minute Circumference
Of a single Brain —

Pain contracts — the Time —
Occupied with Shot
Gamuts of Eternities
Are as they were not —


   -Fr833, J967, Fascicle 40, 1864


The core of this poem is the seeming paradox that it presents.

On one hand, pain makes the moment seem to last forever. We’ve all experienced this. I’ll never forget sitting in a hospital waiting room with a kidney stone. Every minute waiting seemed to last hours.

On the other hand, the contraction of time is about how pain puts you so absolutely in the moment that the rest of time, the “Gamuts of Eternities,” becomes irrelevant. When I was feeling that kidney stone, there was nothing else but the moment.

At least I think that’s what Dickinson means by contraction of time. The idea of being “Occupied” is hard to pinpoint here. Does Dickinson mean, as I surmise above, that while you are feeling the pain there is nothing else but being occupied with it? Or does she mean that you remain occupied by the pain long after the fact? Both are true, but they are very different things.

Dickinson was a philosophical poet and pain was often her subject. It makes sense that pain would be a starting point for thinking about existence, seeing how it is undeniably felt, and can take over the self. There are several Dickinson poems which are about pain. (See the notes below for a small sample). It was an important subject for Emily Dickinson, as it is, I suspect, for all of us.

Though this poem is about pain, it is still a pleasure to read. The image and sounds are fantastic. “Ages coil within/ The minute Circumference/ Of a single Brain.” One gets the rather fantastic image of pain causing masses of time to coil themselves up inside a tiny little round brain. The brain has the appearance of being coiled, which adds to the weirdness of the image, as if the brain were made up of coils of endless pain.

Dickinson wrote to T.W. Higginson, “My business is circumference.” She also wrote, “The brain is wider than the sky.” You can see both of these ideas echoed here. The minuscule brain’s circumference has expanded, through pain, to encompass the ages.

There is a pun on “minute” here too. The ages are felt in “minute,” meaning both spatially and temporally small.

In the second stanza we see something subtle happen in the placement of the dash.

Pain — expands the Time —
...
Pain contracts — the Time —

The phrase “the Time” appears as a contraction of “expands the Time.”

In the first stanza the reigning letter is "n," which has an expansive quality. It carries the sound of moaning in pain: nnnnnnn. But in the second stanza we are presented with a scattershot of “t”s, which enacts a feeling of curtness, a tautening.

Pain contracts — the Time —
Occupied with Shot
Gamuts of Eternities
Are as they were not —

Gamuts of Eternities is very Dickinson. There can only be one eternity, right? But here there are Gamuts. Likewise, in a different poem, Dickinson uses the word “infiniter,” as if you could get more infinite than infinite. In another she writes “finallest,” as if you could get more final than final. Here we have not just a whole gamut of eternities, but gamuts. It’s an excess of infinite excesses.

Gamut, as Dickinson would have likely known, was originally a musical term for all the notes on a scale. So here we are presented with the idea of scales upon scales of musical notes, each comprising an eternity.

The word “Shot” is a surprising one. “Occupied with Shot.” “Shot” is a compressed way of saying “the shot that killed me.” “Shot” is a single explosive word that contains multiple meanings. It brings to mind the suddenness and violence of gunfire. It suggests pain can strike in an instant, reducing vast swaths of time to a split-second trauma. There is the sense here of a shot piercing the body, cutting deeply into consciousness.

If we return to the musical idea of the gamut, a shot might be a single note in the broader symphony of time, a percussive sound that disrupts the flow.

A “shot” can also be a dose, a concentrated delivery, like a shot of whiskey or medicine. Pain, in this way, is like a compressed eternity injected into one moment, a “shot” of infinite feeling in finite time. The word cracks open the poem.

This poem predicts our post-modern sense of relativity. (Another writer who did this brilliantly is Ambrose Bierce in the amazing short story from 1890, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”) It undermines our trust in “objective” time. Dickinson shows that our inner lives defy the idea of regular measurable time. Pain bends time to its own will, distorting the normal order of things.

So what is Dickinson trying to get across to the reader with this paradox then? It positions pain not as meaningless agony, but as an existential force, something sublime. Pain is a window into the moment, and simultaneously into the infinite. It’s not seen as a weakness, but as a profound capacity of the human soul.

By recognizing how enormous and pointed our private suffering can be, Dickinson is asking us to pay attention to the unseen pains of others, and to their own, too.


     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Bullet piercing an apple. Harold Edgerton. 1964

Notes:

Here are some more thoughts on pain from Emily Dickinson:

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

***

There is a pain—so utter—
It swallows substance up—
Then covers the Abyss with Trance—
So Memory can step
Around—across—upon it—
As one within a Swoon—
Goes safely—where an open eye—
Would drop Him—Bone by Bone.

***

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

***

To learn the Transport by the Pain
As Blind Men learn the sun!

***

The hallowing of Pain
Like hallowing of Heaven,
Obtains at a corporeal cost—
The Summit is not given

To Him who strives severe
At middle of the Hill—
But He who has achieved the Top—
All—is the price of All—

'Tis Sunrise — Little Maid — Hast Thou

'Tis Sunrise — Little Maid — Hast Thou
No Station in the Day?
'Twas not thy wont, to hinder so —
Retrieve thine industry —

'Tis Noon — My little Maid —
Alas — and art thou sleeping yet?
The Lily — waiting to be Wed —
The Bee — Hast thou forgot?

My little Maid — 'Tis Night — Alas
That Night should be to thee
Instead of Morning — Had'st thou broached
Thy little Plan to Die —
Dissuade thee, if I could not, Sweet,
I might have aided — thee —


     -Fr832, J908, fascicle 40, 1864


This poem begins in morning, with the speaker wondering why the “Little Maid” hasn’t risen. She was never one to sleep in. She had a “station in the day,” something to do. But now she’s still. 

By noon, the poet is more worried. “Alas — and art thou sleeping yet?” We get the feeling this “sleep” is deeper than just a nap. The world continues without her. The lily is waiting “to be Wed,” and the bee is looking for her. These are metaphors for the promise of love. The world is going on without the “Little Maid,” but she hasn’t taken her place in it. 

Then we reach the last stanza, and it’s night. “Alas / That Night should be to thee / Instead of Morning.” This isn’t sleep. The “Little Maid” is gone, maybe dead, and worse, by her own hand. The poet wonders, if she had spoken of her “little Plan to Die,” maybe she could have been talked out of it? Or, if not, at least she wouldn’t have been alone. (I wonder what else Dickinson might have meant by “aiding” the “little maid” with her “little plan” to die?)

The repetition of the word “little” in this poem, used four times, stands out. Calling her "Little" signifies that the maid is young and vulnerable. Repeating the adjective in the last stanza, “Thy little Plan to Die,” gives us a sense of tragic irony. Death is not little. But to the Maid, perhaps it seemed like it, just a small escape. Dickinson’s use of "little" carries a sense of a stunned sadness.

The word also gives the poem the tone of a nursery rhyme, which makes it even more haunting. It sounds at first like something you'd say to a child reluctant to get up, but then becomes something more terrible when we realize the girl is dead, and even more so when we find out it was planned. 

By repeating "little," the poem keeps circling back to her lack of agency. The girl is little against the big world. 

The form of the poem is worth a close look. It is is divided into three stanzas, each corresponding to a different time of day; sunrise’s hopeful beginning, noon's missed opportunity, night's irreversible ending. This mirrors the arc of a life, from childhood, to a delay, then to death. The structure is the story.

Also notice how the stanzas begin to fracture as the poem progresses. By the third stanza the lines are choppier and the punctuation grows heavy with commas and dashes, mimicking the stumbling cadence of sorrow. There is a sense of observation giving way to collapse.

The repeated address “My little Maid” at the start of each stanza is repetitive, like a chant, but each time the tone behind the words shifts. First there is a mild correction, then concern and, finally, grief.

The poem says to the despondent reader, don't don't be afraid to talk to someone, especially if you have Emily Dickinson around. And don't forget the promise of the Lily and the Bee. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. The poem reminds me of Blake’s “Little Lamb, who made Thee,” with its repetition, and its use of “Thou.”  There is also an echo of "maid" there in the word "made." I’m convinced, by now, that Dickinson read and subsumed Blake. And like many of Blake's poems, this one is about innocence lost. 

2. There is another echo here, the nursery rhyme,

Little maid, little maid,
Whither goest thou?
Down in the meadow
To milk my cow.

It's as if Dickinson took the maid's imperative to "milk my cow," and all of its innuendo, and rebelled against it. That was no life for her. That helps makes sense of "I might have aided — thee —"

3. I've noticed that Dickinson has used the endearment "Sweet" a few times in the poems written in 1864. In at least one of these, the word "Sue" was replaced with "Sweet. This makes me wonder if this poem was possibly for Sue too, though I'm not sure what to make of that. 

 

Till Death—is narrow Loving—

Till Death—is narrow Loving—
The scantest Heart extant
Will hold you till your privilege
Of Finiteness—be spent—

But He whose loss procures you
Such Destitution that
Your Life too abject for itself
Thenceforward imitate—

Until—Resemblance perfect—
Yourself, for His pursuit
Delight of Nature—abdicate—
Exhibit Love—somewhat—


     -Fr831, J907, Fascicle 40, 1864


I showed this poem to the poet Jennifer Moxley and her response was “Ouch! Dickinson is gnarly.” Yes! Gnarly is a good word for her.

Let’s take this poem stanza by stanza.

Till Death—is narrow Loving—
The scantest Heart extant
Will hold you till your privilege
Of Finiteness—be spent—

Loving someone only until death (“Till death do us part”) is shallow. Even the smallest heart can manage that and will hold you (keep you going) until your time as a finite being runs out.

But He whose loss procures you
Such Destitution that
Your Life too abject for itself
Thenceforward imitate—

But He (possibly Christ) whose loss leaves you so completely desolate that your life becomes too empty to sustain itself, you start to imitate,

Until—Resemblance perfect—
Yourself, for His pursuit
Delight of Nature—abdicate—
Exhibit Love—somewhat—

Until you resemble Him perfectly and give up your own self, abandon the joys of life and the natural world, and in doing so, finally show what love truly is.

The “But” of the second stanza marks a sharp contrast between ordinary and extraordinary love. Loving until death is common, but there’s another kind of love that begins after death, and it’s so powerful that it unmakes you. That “But” is the turning hinge of the poem. It shifts from finiteness to something that begins where death ends.

Another aspect worth exploring is the idea that “He” is Christ. A couple points about this. “Destitution” caused by loss of Him mirrors what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul." The poet's life becomes “too abject for itself,” like the soul without divine purpose, or maybe like one who has become overwhelmed because of the horrors of the world. The words “perfect” and “imitation” are clues too. “Thenceforward imitate—/ Until—Resemblance perfect—” "Imitatio Christi" is the basic idea of becoming more like Christ, imitating His life and even death. “Delight of Nature—abdicate—” Giving up the pleasures of nature sounds a lot like Christian asceticism. Finally, ending with “Exhibit Love—somewhat—” points to the realization that after all the self-erasure and abandoned joy, the poet only somewhat exhibits love. That humility mirrors Christian teachings. No love can fully match Christ’s love.

But all that said, it’s still difficult to get underneath this poem. First of all, it’s ambiguous whether or not the He in this poem is a lover (not necessarily a man) or Christ. But even if it is about Christ, and I suspect it is, one wonders at how devastating the cost of “perfect love” can be. To abdicate the "Delights of Nature" is a tall order for a nature lover like Emily Dickinson.

Let’s turn our focus to that term in the first stanza, “privilege of finiteness.” At first I took this phrase as earnest, as in, it’s a privilege to be alive, to experience the finite. But upon further reflection, I’m not so sure. I think she is being ironic here. The privilege here seems to be your mortality, the fact that you only have to endure until death. You’re spared the burden of forever. So it’s a dark kind of privilege, a relief by limitation.

But true love begins where that privilege ends, when the beloved is gone and you aren’t allowed to stop. That’s what the second stanza leads to, love that transforms in grief, without the escape hatch of death. This irony draws a sharp contrast between an ordinary and easy finite love and a radical love which is all consuming, and therefore not a privilege, but a burden or a calling.

Finally, let’s take a closer look at that “somewhat” at the end of the poem. After all that self-erasure and imitation, what does the poet say she’s done?

Exhibit Love—somewhat—

That “somewhat” undercuts everything that came before. After describing an act of self-abandonment in love, the poet minimizes it. It’s as if she's saying, even after all this, I only barely approach real love. After the poet gives everything, herself, her joy, her identity, she hesitates. It feels like a sigh. Maybe I’ve shown love. A little.

It also leaves the poem open-ended. The “somewhat” leaves the reader in tension. Is Dickinson being humble, or expressing futility?

Mourning can completely overtake a person, not just emotionally, but existentially. The real exhibition of love isn’t found in loyalty during life, but in the transformation of the self after loss.

This poem offers no easy comfort, but it does offer witness. It tells us that our grief isn’t just pain, it’s transformation. It points to the way that grief consumes you until your whole self becomes a sort of love-offering in return. 

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff 

A gnarly pine reveals the heat of thousands of seasons

The Admirations—and Contempts—of time—

The Admirations—and Contempts—of time—
Show justest—through an Open Tomb—
The Dying—as it were a Height
Reorganizes Estimate
And what We saw not
We distinguish clear—
And mostly—see not
What We saw before—

'Tis Compound Vision—
Light—enabling Light—
The Finite—furnished
With the Infinite—
Convex—and Concave Witness—
Back—toward Time
And forward—
Toward the God of Him—

      -Fr830, J906, fascicle 40, 1864

The reality of death puts things into perspective. There is a raw truth in this poem that most of us can understand. A confrontation with death can change your priorities. This is one reason why a thinker like Emily Dickinson spends time meditating on death. It helps one to see the “Light.”

What are the "Contempts" of time? Well, today I read that there are plans to build a new $200 million gold ballroom in the White house. Perhaps when you hold that idea up to people struggling and starving, this may, upon reflection through the "Open Tomb," be considered one of the “Contempts” of time? (Of course it is pretty easy to point the fingers elsewhere, but much harder to go inward, to go "concave." I have plenty of my own "Contempts" to worry about.)

I like that phrase “Open Tomb” in the second line. The adjective “Open” can be read both literally and figuratively here. If you are looking into an open tomb, you see the body for the last time, life-like but lifeless. It’s an unforgettable sight. But “Open” also has the connotation of truth being “Open.”

We are also reminded of the stone rolled away from Christ’s tomb, leaving it open and... empty. Evoking Christ points us back toward the “Admirations” in the first line, the sense of sacrifice for others, but it also helps us make sense of that odd phrase at the end, “the God of Him,” since “Him” may well be referring to Christ, He of the empty open tomb. 

The Dying—as it were a Height

Dying as the apex of life is something I have seen in Dickinson before, though I can’t recall the specific poem. Can anybody help me here? There is this one, in which it is the wounded deer that leaps highest, which carries a similar idea, but its not the one I'm thinking of. At any rate, death is seen as a height toward which you climb, and from which you can clearly see the life below you. This vantage point “reorganizes estimates” of what we focused on in life.

Reorganizes Estimate
And what We saw not
We distinguish clear—
And mostly—see not
What We saw before—

What we “saw not,” which might be, for example,  the incomparable worth of love and generosity, becomes more clear to us with death at hand. And, likewise, we no longer look at the objects of our own desires, with which we were so obsessed, in the same way, if at all.

'Tis Compound Vision—
Light—enabling Light—

This is a kind of double vision, more than ordinary sight, one kind of illumination (divine?) helps make sense of another, such as the light of eternity casting meaning onto the light of life.

The Finite—furnished
With the Infinite—

Our limited mortal experience is “furnished” with the eternal. The moment of death brings the two together. The idea of the Infinite being a "furnishing" is an interesting way to imagine it. It reminds me of Dickinson’s poem from earlier in this fascicle, in which she is getting bulletins from immortality all day.

Convex—and Concave Witness—
Back—toward Time—
And forward—
Toward the God of Him—

Convex and Concave Witness. What an interesting way to put it. This is another angle on Dickinson’s famous statement, “Circumference is my business.” Reviewing your life may be seen as a concave looking (inwardly round), with your furthest memories forming the furthest edge of the arc. Meanwhile, looking ahead, convexly, bubbles outward toward the “God of Him.” It’s a lens looking both ways at once.

The “Him,” at the end of this poem, could refer to anyone who has died and brought our attention to what really matters, but it could also refer to Christ. The two possibilities are suggestively conflated.

I’ve been to a few open-casket funerals and the experience does wake one up to life. Once, though, I encountered a dead homeless man in a park in San Francisco. The experience helped me realize that I didn't want to end up dying alone, without family or friends. Up until that time in my life I had notions of becoming an independent loner, with Whitman as a kind of model, but after witnessing this lonely death, my ideas changed. 

In a similar manner, by reminding us of the "Open tomb," this poem attempts to help us reorganize our estimations of the worth of things.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: This poem has a strange meter and rhyme scheme. The iambic meter goes 5/4/4/4/3/3/3/3 in the first stanza, with an AABBCDCD rhyme scheme, and then the second stanza is essentially a broken-up iambic pentameter, with regular rhyme at the end of each pentameter. I don’t know what to make of this, but its fascinating to watch what Dickinson does compositionally from poem to poem. 

Also, there is something about the short taught lines of the broken pentameter that enacts compound vision, seeing both sides; human and divine, temporal and eternal, Admiration and contempt, “saw not” and “distinguish clear”, convex and concave, back and forward, like a see-saw. 

Between My Country — and the Others —

Between My Country — and the Others —
There is a Sea —
But Flowers — negotiate between us —
As Ministry.


      -Fr829, J905, fascicle 40, 1864


This poem was most likely written to be presented to a friend and accompanied with a flower. Emily Dickinson often wrote occasional poetry of this kind. I've said it before but it bears repeating: there should be a book of these poems sold in flower shops which present a bouquet of two dozen of Dickinson's flower poems. This poem would be a good one to include in the bunch. 

Look how much this small flower of a poem does in such a little space.

For starters, it opens up vistas by conflating people with countries. This is a poem sent to a single person, or maybe persons. Therefore "my Country," in this poem, means, first, myself. It is understood that this flower is being used to negotiate through ministry to "Others," which is to say to other people. People are compared to Countries, and upon reflection, we can see how large and complex each of us are, like walking Countries. (See Fr687 for one of Dickinson's many poems with this theme)

And, conversely, Countries are like people. This idea opens up this poem to readings along political, racial and religious divides, and suggests a way to negotiate between them through ministry. It is recommended that this ministry be through the gift of flowers.

Flowers in this poem represent beauty. Flowers look and smell undeniably beautiful and the implication here is that beauty unites us. We all share a love for beauty. It brings smiles to our faces. Flowers, though often overlooked in our day to day lives, are revered in every culture, and you could say the same of poetry. The link between flowers and poetry is beauty. If flowers could speak, it would sound like poetry. I mean this in the grounded sense of poetry having pleasing patterns of sound, just as flowers have pleasing patterns of petals. This poem, for instance, pleasingly rhymes "There is a Sea" with "Ministry." 

Granted, you want the thing you give to be beautiful, and the consideration of beauty is essential, but the paramount thing is the gift itself. It is the act of giving that counts. 

If you give someone flowers, you are giving the literal flower of the earth itself. A flower is called a flower because it is beauty flowing from the earth. (That's probably not true, but it sounds good.) What better gift could a diplomat give? What Country could refuse?

But Flowers — negotiate between us —

The word “negotiate” in this poem strikes me as ironic. Countries “negotiate” with each other and so do people, but the idea of flowers negotiating is oxymoronic. Flowers are a gift from the earth, always. They don't negotiate, they just are. So when we give them as a gift it is a reminder of natural bounty.

But Flowers — negotiate between us —
As Ministry.

The word “ministry” is rich with resonance. The word can refer to a government department, like the "Ministry of Education" and therefore fits the "Country" diplomacy motif. It also has a religious connotation. A "ministry" can refer to the work or service, or the body of clergy in a church. Finally, there is a healing connotation, like the idea of a nurse “ministering” to one’s wounds.

The word "minister" itself comes from the Latin "minus," meaning "less," reflecting the idea of service or being subordinate. 

All of this, a flower, which is to say, beauty, will do.

I don't think that Truth and Beauty are the same (like Keats’ Urn tells us) but they do seem to be nearly synonymous. Truth and Beauty summon one another. They cry out for one another.

Truth is in the gift, in the human connection, and Beauty is in the flower. Dickinson gives them both to us in her poetry. This is her "ministry" across the great divide.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

lilies of the valley make good ministers

P.S. I found a good online essay about this poem by Brianne Jacquette that made some terrific connections. Check it out.

Had I not This, or This, I said,

Had I not This, or This, I said,
Appealing to Myself,
In moment of prosperity—
Inadequate—were Life—

“Thou hast not Me, nor Me”—it said,
In Moment of Reverse—
“And yet Thou art industrious—
No need—hadst Thou—of us”?

My need—was all I had—I said—
The need did not reduce—
Because the food—exterminate—
The hunger—does not cease—

But diligence—is sharper—
Proportioned to the Chance—
To feed upon the Retrograde—
Enfeebles—the Advance—

     -Fr828, J904, Fascicle 40, 1864


The logic of this poem, as best as I can make it out, goes like this.

Stanza 1: I’m appealing to myself (talking myself into the idea) that since I am prosperous right now and have this stuff, then life is adequate.

Stanza 2: But the stuff says to me: if your situation was to reverse itself, and you lost everything, it would be okay, because you are industrious.

Stanza 3: The poet answers this by saying “Well, yes, it’s true, I’m industrious because all I’ve got is my need. The hunger doesn’t go away when the stuff is gone.”

Stanza 4: Therefore, the poet concludes, I won't focus on what I've already attained, because to focus on the past weakens the chance for future possibility. I will be diligent, and therefore sharper, focused on that chance. 

This gets down to our basic humanity. "My need was all I had." We are needy. One would hope the things we have would satisfy our needs, but, no, Life is still inadequate. (What's missing?) And even if it did make life adequate, we might lose the stuff, and then life will be even less than inadequate. So all you can do is be industrious to try to fill your need. But whatever you fill your need with better be, like food, of substance to your soul. Forget about the last meal, though, if you can, and focus on the chance to advance to the next one.

Let's look at that "This, or This," for a moment. It's meaningless stuff, empty pronouns, insert any substitute. What the "This, or This" is really a substitute for? It's a substitute for the "Me, or Me," the "us." Dickinson makes that sly move between stanza one and two. 

Have you seen the movie The Jerk? There’s a scene in which the character played by Bernadette Peters leaves the character played by Steve Martin because wealth has changed him and therefore he is no longer the man she married. He walks away and says, “Well I'm gonna to go then! And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need *you*. I don't need anything. Except this. [picks up an ashtray] And that's the only thing I need is *this*. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game. - The ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need... And this remote control. - The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need... And these matches. - The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control, and the paddle ball... And this lamp. - The ashtray, this paddle game, and the remote control, and the lamp, and that's all *I* need. And that's *all* I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one... I need this. - The paddle game and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches for sure. Well what are you looking at? What do you think I'm some kind of a jerk or something! - And this. That's all I need. [walking outside] The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, and this magazine, and the chair. [outside now] And I don't need one other thing, except my dog. [dog growls at him] I don't need my dog.”

That’s a deep comedic take into what I think Dickinson is getting at with "This, or This" becoming "Me, or Me." 

In the poem, as well as the scene from the Jerk, there is a thin line between stuff and what you really need, Love. The Dickinson poem is tricky because the “This, or This,” or “it” in the next stanza, is impersonal, and seemingly immaterial. But the idea of “Me, or Me” and “us” makes it seem personal. So which is it? Dickinson is blurring the line between material and spiritual prosperity in this poem, as it so often is in real life.

There is that “Life” in the first stanza to consider. The poet seems to be saying that the Life (of stuff, without Love) is inadequate. She's trying to appeal to herself that this stuff makes up for it. The stuff says no. Dickinson says all I have is need though. The need here seems to be referring to the "stuff," but its really pointing toward the “chance” to make a Life, to ascertain what the poet really needs.

“If I no longer had Life,” the poem is saying, “I could try to appeal to myself that the things I own would make up for the loss of You, my Life.” Life, at the time this poem was written, meant Sue for Emily, just as it means Bernadette Peters for Steve Martin in The Jerk (and for awhile, in real life.) None of that “stuff” will mean anything when the Life of the home is gone.

This kind of "appeal" is the root of the great American Dream tragedy. Think of The Great Gatsby, or Death of a Salesman, or, The Jerk. : (
      

             -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

The "This, or This" scene from The Jerk

All forgot for recollecting

All forgot for recollecting
Just a paltry One—
All forsook, for just a Stranger's
New accompanying—

Grace of Rank, and Grace of Fortune
Less accounted than
An unknown esteem possessing—
Estimate— who can—

Home effaced— her faces dwindled—
Nature— altered small—
Sun— if shone— or storm— if shattered—
Overlooked I all—

Dropped— my fate— a timid Pebble
In thy bolder Sea—
Ask me —Sweet— if I regret it—
Prove myself— of Thee—


     -Fr827, J966, Fascicle 40, 1864


Dickinson continues her string of extreme love poems from fascicle 40.

Since we know that at least one of these poems was given to Sue, we can assume that they all were. (In fact, in Fr816, "Sue" is replaced by "Sweet," and in this poem we see the endearment "Sweet" used again. ) They point to a love which lifts the beloved up to a stature that is beyond everything, even, we are told in this poem, nature itself. Because Dickinson took out referents, and made these love poems general, we are able read ourselves into both the lover's and the beloved's place. In this sense the poems teach us how to love, and, also, how to be loved.

     All forgot for recollecting
     Just a paltry One—

This one starts by saying, I forgot everything so that I could remember only one paltry person. The word paltry suggests that the one person might be insignificant to others but is everything to the poet. We get a sense of "One" being worth more than Everyone. This reminds me of Jesus' parable of the shepherd who leaves the flock unattended to look for the one "paltry" sheep who is missing.

If this poem can be read in a general sense, it is also about the specific.  

This focus on the particular is the essence of love. Loving more than "One" becomes abstract. Philosophically you might even posit that you cannot ever love more than One. You cannot love the general person, only the genuinely unique one. If I say I love my family, I am still speaking in the abstract. If I say I love my wife, it is pointing toward the real. 

The paltry One is, ironically, the least paltry. And each of us, to someone, even if only to our mother, is the least paltry. 

     All forsook, for just a Stranger's
     New accompanying—

What an adventure a romance is. To forsake all that is known in the past for the possibilities inherent in the accompaniment of a stranger. If the first couplet of this poem is about choosing one person over all others, then this one is about choosing an unknown future with this one person over the known past without them. 

     Grace of Rank, and Grace of Fortune
     Less accounted than
     An unknown esteem possessing—

No Rank, or Fortune (nor, in the other existing copy of this poem, "Wealth" and "Station") can account for that rare quality of you for which the poet possesses an "unknown esteem." That "unknown esteem" means priceless. You can't put a price on love. But also "unknown" describes the beloved. It goes along with with paltry, and strange, to describe something low that has become most high.

     Estimate— who can—

Nice one, Emily. As my daughter would say, "You clocked her Tea." Or as Justin Bieber would say, "It's not clocking to you that I'm standing on business." 

Can anyone estimate a person's true worth? And especially a person as amazing as Sue (or you)?

In that line, "Estimate— who can— " Dickinson is throwing the ball in our court. Wealth and Status are not bearers of worth. That which is of worth transcends worth. It possesses an "unknown esteem." It's not quantifiable. "Estimate— who can— " is a sly way of saying to the reader, "Do you agree, or is there something you esteem that is more valuable than me?"

     Home effaced— her faces dwindled—

In some Dickinson poems the beloved is equated to home, and in some, like this one, She represents away from home. Here, She is a stranger, and she is even seen as the effacer of home. We know how powerful home is to Dickinson. To efface a home is a serious charge. The faces from home, this poem says, dwindled, when I met you. That's a heavy statement. It says, essentially, I left my own childhood home behind for you.

     Nature— altered small—

This strikes me as an unnaturally beautiful line. I'm imagining it etched into a tree trunk, as just a fragment by itself. From it, future generations might be able to unravel the entire love affair. (Would somebody please make that happen? Sign it, Emily Dickinson.)

I feel the truth of this line in my marriage. Nature has been altered small because of my wife. In other words, if something were to happen to her, nature would lose its luster.  

Nature, which is the largest thing, is altered to become smaller by the addition of you. This reminds me of my favorite Dickinson poem, Fr1178, which says that the smallest human heart's extent reduces all of Dominion to nothing.

We should mention, for a moment, the beauty in the music in the syllables of this poem, like, for example, the way that little rhyme of "alt" with "small" in this line echoes the two instances of "all" that came in the lines before, and sets up the "all" at the end of the stanza. 

     Sun— if shone— or storm— if shattered—
     Overlooked I all—

The S-SH-ST-SH-T combo of "Sun— if shone— or storm— if shattered—" is gorgeous. Just saying. The beauty of the poem is part of the absolute devotion to the beloved.

Here the poet is saying that she overlooks the stormy days because of her love. "Were I with thee, wild nights would be our luxury" she writes elsewhere. But, we should note, she is also overlooking her good sunshine days too. That might be a problem.

     Dropped— my fate— a timid Pebble
     In thy bolder Sea—

The poet is saying here that whatever her fate is, it is wrapped up in the large ocean that is her lover. Her lover, she admits, is bolder than she is. The poet is a "timid Pebble" in comparison to the bold sea of her lover. There is a pun here with bolder/boulder, which is triggered by the word "Pebble." Once you hear the pun, then the line says, "in my boulder sea," which is to say, I'm a pebble in your rocky ocean.

An uncanny thing about these lines for me is that they could be written to any future reader. Dickinson left the fate of her poems up to posterity, to the bolder sea of the future. She never profited from them. She has dropped her fate, her "timid Pebble," into the ocean of readers yet to come.  

     Ask me —Sweet— if I regret it—
     Prove myself— of Thee—

"Sweet" here has a little bitterness to it, maybe even a little spice, when followed by that word "regret."

The poet will prove to you that she did not regret it. She will prove herself OF Thee. What a move, using that preposition "of" like that. It can mean, I'll prove myself to thee, but also that the poet will prove herself OF Thee. Like the pebble is engulfed in the sea, the self is of Thee. 

Those last lines perhaps intimate an insecurity in the mind of the beloved. "Do you regret it?" the beloved is imagined asking the poet. The poet turns to comfort her and say, I'll help you see why I could never regret it. In this poem, and in poem after poem, she does exactly that. She proves it over and over again in the poetry itself.

In reading these poems there is a (very slow) quickening effect on the reader. These love poems are written, in essence, to you. The "you" that was once, very specifically, Sue, is now you you, because you have assumed the role of the reader.  They are ideal love poems written for an ideal lover: you. 

But you also are reading these poems in the guise of the lover, in the voice of a poet with a capacity to love that is proven, time and again, with a love that seems to be larger than nature herself.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

the incomparable Susan Gilbert Dickinson

P.S. This post feels like a love letter. But who am I even writing it to? There has to be someone specific, right? Otherwise, it's not you.  

Denial—is the only fact

Denial—is the only fact
Perceived by the Denied—
Whose Will—a numb significance—
The Day the Heaven died—

And all the Earth strove common round—
Without Delight, or Beam—
What Comfort was it Wisdom—was—
The spoiler of Our Home?


     -Fr826, J965, Fascicle 40, 1864


Let’s start with the ending of this poem and work backward. “The spoiler of Our Home” is a stomach-churning phrase. If Home has infinite power, as Dickinson has written elsewhere, then there is a real horror in spoiling it. Most of us can feel this at some level, though some of us may relate more than others. There are few things worse than having your home spoiled. It feels like "Heaven died."

And all the Earth strove common round
Without Delight, or Beam—

The home has been spoiled. There is no more delight, nor heavenly beam of light. There is only a common earthly striving.

The stakes in this poem are high then. So naturally, we want to know, what is it that happened that “spoiled” the poet’s home? So we go back to the beginning of the poem and find out that the only “fact perceived" is the beloved’s denial of the narrator. 

What is the Beloved's reason for the denial? Maybe there’s a very good reason? But, since this reason isn't given to us, the sense that I get here is that those other facts are irrelevant. There is no reason good enough to spoil a home. The only one that matters is what leads to -what Dickinson called in an earlier poem in this fascicle- “the finallest occasion.” It has spoiled the home. Whatever other “facts” there may be pale in comparison to this one.

The poet doesn’t give us the beloved’s purported reason for the denial because it is not pertinent to the overriding fact of the denial itself.

What Comfort was it Wisdom—was—

The spoiler of Our Home?

Whatever "Comfort” there may be in the reason for the denial couldn't possibly make up for the ultimate comfort of the home before it was spoiled. And it would be even more asinine to call reasons for denial “wise,” because what wisdom could there possibly be behind the spoiling of a home?

Think about the spoiled homes you know about and how the spoiler always has some “justification” for their actions. This poem is asking, how can you ever justify breaking up a home? The poem is asking the reader to stop and really think about those possible justifications for ending a relationship.

I think it might be useful to read this poem in light of the homeless problem, and the immigrant problem too. What does it mean to deny someone a home? What possible reason could be good enough?

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Can this poem be read against itself? I wonder about that word "Will" in the first stanza,

Whose Will—a numb significance—
The Day the Heaven died—

I can’t help but think of the phrase, "Not my will, but Thy will be done." Is it the “will” that got in the way in the first place and caused the beloved's denial? In Fr818, Dickinson writes,

Other Betrothal shall dissolve —
Wedlock of Will, decay —

A Wedlock that we have willed our self decays. The Will can be a problem.

But I also think that Dickinson may merely mean here that since the break up of the home, she lacks the will to even get out of bed.

P.P.S.

What about those other "facts," the unperceived ones? Maybe they do matter? If this is a poem to Sue, and I suspect it is, then Sue's reason for denying Emily may have seemed quite reasonable. After all, Sue was married to Emily's brother. It was a very complicated relationship.

"Unto Me?" I do not know you—

"Unto Me?" I do not know you—
Where may be your House?

"I am Jesus—Late of Judea—
Now—of Paradise"—

Wagons—have you—to convey me?
This is far from Thence—

"Arms of Mine—sufficient Phaeton—
Trust Omnipotence"—

I am spotted—"I am Pardon"—
I am small—"The Least

Is esteemed in Heaven the Chiefest—
Occupy my House"—

    -Fr825, J964, Fascicle 40, 1864


This poem is a conversation between the poet and Jesus. It starts in a very Dickinsonian way. Christ uses the same truncated language the poet does. “Unto me?” It’s like shorthand, encapsulating in two words the whole question. No set up, no pre-amble, and no extra words.

Dickinson loved that preposition “unto” and used it in several poems, usually love poems, and always with gravity. Here she opens up the poem with the open vowel of the word, which immediately brings us “unto” the poem itself. 

“Unto” is a strange word if you think about it. The etymology of the word is a merging of “until” with “to,” but it has come to mean something more totalizing. In King-James-Bible terms it has the connotation of moving exclusively toward something. Matthew 11:28 says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Dickinson shortens all of this to just the essential “Unto me?,” but the rest of the scripture is implied. The translator of the original Hebrew could have just written, “Come TO me,” but there is more of a sense of all-inclusiveness in that word “unto.” There is also a hint of “into.” Come into me.

Our sense of the connotation of this word matters. Dickinson writes in one letter to Abiah Root, “I have perfect confidence in God & his promises & yet I know not why, I feel that the world holds a predominant place in my affections. I do not feel that I could give up all for Christ, were I called to die.” To come “unto” Christ could be seen, then, as total, as giving “all up.”

Dickinson’s letters to Abiah are worth reading for their frank confessions of religious reckoning. You can read some of the excerpts Here. These letters were written when Emily was 19. This poem, written 18 years later, has years of Dickinson’s extremity of thought and feeling behind it.

If you read this poem directly after the poem that precedes it in fascicle 40, which is about the affliction and agony that comes from leaving home, the illness that comes from “Illocality,” then you also get the sense of the weight that is insinuated in Dickinson's answer, “I do not know you/ Where may be your house?”

Dickinson was attached to “home,” and to the “world,” and so for her, to give “home” up for some unknown “house” was a reigning concern.

So this poem starts off with that sense. Unto you? “I do not know you— Where may be your House?”

We hear in the tone of this reply, and the one in the next stanza, Dickinson’s playful impudence: You want me to come to you? I don’t even know you, sir!

Jesus answers, “I am Jesus late of Judea, now of Paradise.” We see a little bit of humor in this answer too. Christ saying He is "late of Judea,” but has moved to Paradise, makes it almost seem like we are talking about Paradise City, California rather than THE paradise.

Wagons—have you—to convey me?
This is far from Thence—

Again, asking Jesus if there are wagons is cheeky. And by the way, this is how we know it is the poet speaking here and not just some general narrator. Only Emily would answer Jesus with her tongue so firmly planted in her cheek, not to mention the turn from humor to pathos taken in the following line, “This is far from Thence.” You live in Paradise? Oh, well, I’m nowhere near there. We wince with the implied agony of this understated "Far from Thence." There is still a touch of humor in the understatement, but it is drying up. Things are getting more humble and real.

"Arms of Mine—sufficient Phaeton—
Trust Omnipotence"—

But they are not fully there, yet, because to have Jesus use a term that comes from Greek mythology is still pretty cheeky. It's clever too. A phaeton is a light, four-wheeled, open carriage popular in Dickinson’s day, but it is also mythological figure. In Greek mythology, Phaeton was the son of Helios, the sun god, who attempted to drive his father's sun chariot, resulting in disaster.

That alluded to disaster informs the following line. “Trust Omnipotence.” Trust? Wait, what happened to Phaeton again?

Still though, “arms of mine” has the implication of an embrace of love. We sense the poet leaning a bit closer to that embrace, trying to trust.

She admits,

I am spotted—

Jesus answers, 

"I am Pardon"—

The brevity and these lines is breathtaking. I am spotted. You have a sense here of the poet truly seeing her own limitation and weakness. She aspires to a Christ-like love and falls short. “I,” itself, falls short. “I” am “spotted.” The self is spotted by its isolated and inherently selfish nature. All of that is implied in this brief line.

And conversely, Christ is pardon. Christ is forgiveness. When we forgive, including forgiving ourselves, we become Christ-like. That is Christ. “I am Pardon.” (If you are not religious, you can still enter this poem through the understanding of forgiveness. That is the gist of it.)

I am small—"The Least
Is esteemed in Heaven the Chiefest—

This is the essence of Christ’s teaching. From Matthew 25:40, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (There’s that “unto” again.)

The poem begins with some arrogance, but by the time you get to “I am small” you have turned the corner into humility. And this humility is “esteemed in Heaven the chiefest.” We love Dickinson for her humor and attitude, but we also admire her ability to go deeper. In this poem we watch that happen.

"Occupy my House"—

Christ finishes the conversation with an invitation that also reads as an imperative. 

We note at the end of this poem that the “house” is still not a “home,” a distinction that would be clear to Dickinson. But she seems, in this poem anyway, to be moving toward making it into one.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A nearness to Tremendousness –

A nearness to Tremendousness –
An Agony procures –
Affliction ranges Boundlessness –
Vicinity to Laws

Contentment’s quiet Suburb –
Affliction cannot stay –
In Acres – It’s Location
Is Illocality –


    -Fr824, J963,  Fascicle 40, 1864


I’ve been thinking lately about how everything can be seen in terms of home and away. In western music, for instance, even the most complex Beethoven symphony can be boiled down to the tension between the tonic chord (home) and the dominant chord (away). Or think about the Fort/Da (Gone/There) game which Freud wrote about in "Beyond The Pleasure Principle," in which we see the child's innate drive to push the ball away and then have it sent back home to her. This poem is getting down to that essential thing. 

We have the connotation in the word “Tremendousness” that whatever is “away” is great. It's Boundless! But it is also from where “affliction,” a word used twice in this poem, and “agony,” derives. We want the safety of rules, a “Vicinity to Laws.” I remember asking my daughter Sofia, when she was 3 or 4, if she would rather be a wild horse running free or to be one kept fenced in on a farm. She surprised me by saying she'd rather be kept fenced in. Perhaps now, at 15, she would choose to be running wild?

Dickinson thought a lot about this dialectic too. She wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "My business is circumference." Circumference might be seen as the boundary between home and away. If Dickinson's vocation was poet, then you might say that all of her poetry was a meditation on the interplay of this binary.

Physically Dickinson was very much a home-body, though you might argue that mentally she traveled further into boundless Tremendousness than anyone. "The brain is wider than the sky," she wrote.

I think the astonishing statement in this poem is that "Affliction cannot stay in Acres." If you truly feel at home, then you cannot stay afflicted and in agony. You have a sense here that even if you are in pain, and your body is failing you, if you feel loved and located, then that pain can't reach you, or at least can't last. Elsewhere Dickinson has written of the "infinite power of Home." 

And yet, paradoxically, isn't her poetry difficult to locate? And isn't it tremendous?

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. I found an insightful essay about this poem from Joely Fitch, Mapping illocality, on the Dilettante Army blog. Here is an excerpt:

“Emily Dickinson is so often a poet of elusive definitions. She rhymes and riddles; she poses impossible questions and goes on to answer them, but leaves always an escape clause—something that slips away from meaning, or exceeds it. I’ve been thinking and writing for some time now about space and embodiment in Dickinson’s work—about the ways she renders human subjectivity as neither continuous with nor separate from its environment; about the persistent (and fascinating!) oddness of the spaces and bodies in her poems.

There’s one word in particular in which I find a center of these concerns, “illocality.” I’m still looking for a way to explain why some thread in me has so long been caught on the fishhook of this word, this illocality. I’ve found one way in through a series of questions that the writer and scholar Sara Ahmed asks in the introduction to her book Queer Phenomenology: “How do we begin to know or feel where we are, or even where we are going, by lining ourselves up with the features of the grounds we inhabit, the sky that surrounds us, or the imaginary lines that cut through maps?”

I find myself asking a question I’m not sure can be answered—where is illocality? Can it be said to be inside or outside of the body? Is it a place, or a feeling, or is the distinction between those things part of the problem? (“Is Heaven a Place—a Sky—a Tree?” Dickinson asks elsewhere.

This poem asks us to wonder where the interior is, where the boundaries of the self are and what crosses them. Pain takes us to the edges of ourselves, past the limits of the measurable. The poem ventures into abstraction because it must. “Tremendousness” and “Boundlessness” sprawl across their respective lines, enacting the vastness they describe in the capacious expanse of their syllables.

“Contentment” is a “Suburb,” here, or contains said Suburb, but “Affliction” can’t be figured in geographic terms. According to the poem’s logic, “Tremendousness” and “Boundlessness” are related to “Illocality,” meaning we have to think about it not only in terms of pain (for “Affliction”) but of expansiveness. It’s worth paying attention to the “ill” of “illocality,” too, as well as to its paradox: “illocality” can only be defined by what it isn’t, by thinking of “locality.” It’s a “Location” mappable only according to its own absence.

To me, this makes no sense—and it makes perfect sense. “Illocality” is place and no-place, a word which somehow contains within its syllables the feeling of embodied displacement, a state of being out-of-phase with one’s occupying of physical space. It rhymes with one of Dickinson’s favorite words, “Immortality,” which makes sense, too: both are expansive, unmappable states of being, which elude definition and yet remain captivating.

In fact, maybe thinking of illocality as the absence of locality isn’t quite right—we could think of it as something more like hyperlocation, as a sense of locatedness that continuously exceeds its boundaries. As suggested by its association with “Tremendousness” and “Boundlessness,” illocality might be a state of radical possibility even as it’s also one of dissociation. I find a link to this way of understanding illocality in an earlier poem, from 1861. It’s a species of love poem:

The Drop, that wrestles in the Sea –
Forgets her own locality –
As I, in Thee –

She knows herself an incense small –
Yet small, she sighs, if all, is all,
How larger – be?

The Ocean, smiles at her conceit –
But she, forgetting Amphitrite –
Pleads “Me”?

Knowing and unknowing, here and more broadly in Dickinson’s work, are inextricable from the ability or inability to locate oneself in space. Here, the poet and her “Drop” are worried about the boundaries of an inside and an outside. Where do we outline the limits of the interior? Is a drop in a sea still a drop? Where are the boundaries of the self—and if the “I” “Forgets her own locality,” then where is she to be located?

“As I, in Thee” is crucial to how I read this poem; the unspecified addressee may be a beloved, or God, or neither, or both. In any case, it remains true that Dickinson is comparing the condition of a drop of water in the ocean to that of an “I” in some relation to a “you,” whose immensity both enchants and overwhelms. The Drop “wrestles”; there’s a struggle here for self-definition, for an identity with clear boundaries, but the very material of which she’s composed resists this.

I read this “forgetting” of one’s own locality and “illocality” both as expressions of the problem of the individual—these irreconcilable forces of understanding oneself as bounded, separate, and as continuous with the world one inhabits, including the world of other people. Here, in the “now” I write this from—early 2021, approaching a year since the COVID-19 pandemic radically transformed the way so many of us move through the spaces of our daily lives—I’ve found myself turning anew to her poems as little machines of understanding, in which I find a universe as complicated as it is in life, suffused with a sense of wonder: Dickinson had a gift for looking at the world and asking what is it? in ways that still feel so striking, so continuously new. Queer phenomenology offers one way of understanding why these reframings-in-language might matter so much. Ahmed declares that “the ‘new’ is what is possible when what is behind us, our background, does not simply ground us or keep us in place, but allows us to move and allows us to follow something other than the lines that we have already taken.”Illocality, involving some degree of defamiliarization, could be what precedes the following of a new line, a new attachment, a different source of identification. I keep lingering in the condition of this “Drop”: suspended between the awareness of herself as a particular entity and the understanding that she’s continuous with, inseparable from, something so much larger, almost incomprehensibly immense."

Thank you, Joely! 

The first Day that I was a Life

The first Day that I was a Life
I recollect it—How still—
That last Day that I was a Life
I recollect it—as well—

'Twas stiller—though the first
Was still—
‘Twas empty—but the first
Was full—

This—was my finallest Occasion—
But then
My tenderer Experiment
Toward Men—

"Which choose I"?
That—I cannot say—
"Which choose They"?
Question Memory!

    

        -Fr823, J902, Fascicle 40, 1864


What an intriguing poem. The mystery of the poem begins with the idea that one could recollect the first day of being “a Life.” Because none of us can remember being born, it leads you to wonder if we are talking about biological life here or something else?       

Is it being born into the world of "Men" we are talking about in this poem, or the first day of being in love? This poem, I think, can be read both ways. Ultimately, For Dickinson, I think "Life" and "Love" are inextricable. (See the last line of the poem directly preceding this one in fascicle 40, which clearly states, "For Life—be Love—")

Either way, speaking of being born as “still” is tremendous. That single word “still” is so powerful. It says so much with so little. The word still, itself, is so still here. I think it is saying something like,  “The earth and time, everything, stood still when I met you.”

The mystery of the poem continues with that recollection of the last day of Life. How could we speak, let alone recollect, after the last day of Life? This is not an unusual impossibility for Dickinson, as several of her poems take this tack. (“I heard a fly buzz when I died.”)

The second stanza is hard to follow syntactically. It goes like this,

(The last day) 'Twas stiller—though the first
Was still—
(And the last day) ‘Twas empty—but the first
Was full—

Or, put into prose, "Though the first day was still, it was full, whereas the last day was empty, which made it even stiller."  In other words, Dickinson is saying that absolute loss (emptiness of death) is even more arresting (still) than absolute gain (fullness of birth.)

The third stanza begins,

This—was my finallest Occasion—

This is a sad poem, but we can smile at the idea of “Finallest.” Is there something finaller than final? The phrase intends to emphasize the finality of finality.  And yet, here we are. It begs the question: if it was the “finallest occasion,” then what occasioned the poem?

I’ll leave that question, and we’ll move on to the next mystery:

But then
My tenderer Experiment
Toward Men—

What is the experiment of living (and dying) as perceived by Dickinson? And does this poem point toward the result of this experiment? I think in the last lines it leaves the result up to the reader.

There is so much here to ponder in this third stanza. Is "Men" meant to be humanity in general? It seems to take this poem into the realm of the super-mythic.

Also, If this experiment is “tenderer,” does that mean there is another possible result of this experiment which is less tender toward men?

The last stanza begins with a question.

"Which choose I"?

It’s possible Dickinson means, which result of the experiment did I choose, being tender toward men, or becoming hardened to them. But since she sets up the dialectic between the full first day of life and the empty last day of life here, she is likely asking which of these she would choose given the choice. But perhaps those two questions are tied together. Again, Love and Life are inextricable. If the emptiness of death is stiller than than the fullness of birth, then I think Dickinson is asking here if it is, possibly, better not to be born, or, to extend the idea, better not to love.

She has asked this question in other poems. There was an earlier one (I can't remember which one exactly) in which she says: wouldn’t I have been better off never to known your love than to have it and then have it taken away? I would’ve never known the terrible difference if I had never known the love.

At any rate she concludes here,

That—I cannot say—

And then she throws the question to the reader, and the implication is that the reader's answer will influence her own,

"Which choose They"?
Question Memory!

This poem elicits so many questions, and then tells you, finally, to question for yourself. Question your memory. What do “They,” meaning “Men,” meaning you, choose?

Do you choose life and love, or do you choose death?

If this is a love poem, then this question is complicated, perhaps, by the idea of a lover choosing to leave a relationship.

"Which choose I? " Well, if this finallest thing has any hope, then I choose to live, but only if you, “They,” can search your memory and see that you too should live, that we should do this thing together.

Question Memory! There is an exclamation point there. The reader, who was probably originally Sue, but is now us, is given an imperative. Check your memory! Can you remember love?!?! If you can, then I can too, and maybe this “experiment” can have a “tenderer” result.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. This phrase, “my tenderer Experiment/ Toward Men” reminds me of the “experiment” mentioned in Fr817:

This Consciousness that is aware
Is traversing the interval
Experience between
And most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men —

Will we succeed at love? That seems to be the gist of this "profound experiment." 

2. 

Christanne Miller in her notes on this poem points out that this poem may allude to Philippians 1:21-23: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better."

Midsummer, was it, when They died—

Midsummer, was it, when They died—
A full, and perfect time—
The Summer closed upon itself
In Consummated Bloom—

The Corn, her furthest kernel filled
Before the coming Flail—
When These—leaned unto Perfectness—
Through Haze of Burial—


    -Fr822, J962, 1864, Fascicle 40


This poem seems, at first, to be a meditation on two “summer” deaths. We know there were two because in another version of this poem the penultimate line reads, “When these two leaned in.” Summer here could mean actual summer, but it could also mean, in the language of poetry, the summer portion of their lives. In other words, this poem could be read as a meditation on dying young.

There is something so haunting when someone dies young, when someone is “cut down in their prime.” But this poem is not dreary. Rather “They” died in full bloom, before having to deal with the “coming Flail” of the reaper’s scythe, which is to say, not having to deal with old age.

This poem hit me personally because last night, before having read it, I had a dream in which I was watching YouTube and saw a video of my friend Mikhal, who drowned in his mid-twenties. In the dream he was riding on a carousel and laughing. I was moved upon waking by just how beautiful Mikhal was when he died. So this poem really struck me. Mikhal’s "summer closed in upon itself in consummated bloom.” The poem actually made me feel less sad about his early death. He may have missed out on a lot of good living, but he also avoided the “flail” of the thresher too. He “leaned into Perfectness.”

The version of the poem with "Two" in it was given to Emily's cousins Louisa and Frances Norcross, so it is likely about the death of friends or family. But there is another possible way to read this poem, which is not about actual death at all. The “They,” the “Two,” in this poem could also refer to a couple who have “died” into each other in “consummated Bloom.” 

“They died” suggests the kind of ecstatic merging often described in romantic terms. The idea that summer “closed upon itself” in bloom mirrors two lovers coming together. The corn is fully ripe, just like the body when desire is at its furthest reach. The “coming Flail” represents either the end of innocence or, perhaps, a future separation. “Leaning into Perfectness” could be read as a romantic phrase. And “Haze of Burial” evokes a dissolving of boundaries, a fading of self into the other. It’s dreamlike, like the spiritual aftermath of intimacy.

Either way, whether about actual death, or romance, the idea of summer closing in on itself in consummated bloom points to a kind of fulfillment that feels.. eternal.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Wert Thou but ill—that I might show thee

Wert Thou but ill—that I might show thee
How long a Day I could endure
Though thine attention stop not on me
Nor the least signal, Me assure—

Wert Thou but Stranger in ungracious country—
And Mine—the Door
Thou paused at, for a passing bounty—
No More—

Accused—wert Thou—and Myself—Tribunal—
Convicted—Sentenced—Ermine—not to Me
Half the Condition, thy Reverse—to follow—
Just to partake—the infamy—

The Tenant of the Narrow Cottage, wert Thou—
Permit to be
The Housewife in thy low attendance
Contenteth Me—

No Service hast Thou, I would not achieve it—
To die—or live—
The first—Sweet, proved I, ere I saw thee—
For Life—be Love—


     -Fr821, J961, fascicle 40, 1864


I go to poetry for both its beauty and its truth, and I go to Emily Dickinson’s poetry in particular because she takes me deeper into both than any other poet I've read. With every poem, I’m trying to glean what it has to say to me.

In this poem, and the one preceding it, Fr819, love is put to the test. Both lead me to question my own ability to love. I'm like a rank amateur compared to Dickinson, like a HS basketball player next to Michael Jordan. But just like having Michael Jordan as a rolemodel makes you a better ball player, having Emily Dickinson as one makes you a better lover.

In Fr819 it is impressed upon us that just a little from those we love can go a very long way. In the poem at hand, we come to understand just what a very long way means.

Some of the language is difficult in this poem, so let's break it down stanza by stanza.

Wert Thou but ill—that I might show thee
How long a Day I could endure
Though thine attention stop not on me
Nor the least signal, Me assure—

Were you ill, so that I could show you how long of a day of caretaking I could endure, even if you paid no attention to me, even if you gave me no sign of reassurance at all...

Note that the "if" statement set up by that "Wert Thou" is not yet resolved by a "then" statement. It will not come until the end of the poem.

Wert Thou but Stranger in ungracious country—
And Mine—the Door
Thou paused at, for a passing bounty—
No More—

If you were a stranger in an unfriendly land and it was my door you stopped at for charity as you were passing through, and nothing more than that...

Accused—wert Thou—and Myself—Tribunal—
Convicted—Sentenced—Ermine—not to Me
Half the Condition, thy Reverse—to follow—
Just to partake—the infamy—

This one is difficult. It took me a long time, for instance, just to figure out that the first line is saying "If we were both accused and the tribunal...," not "If you were accused and I was the tribunal." Ermine, I had to look up. It refers to the white fur once worn by judges. My best stab at this stanza is,

If you were accused, and I was too, and the tribunal convicted and sentenced only you, who is only half of the "condition," then  I, who share all with you as your reverse, would follow you to the cell and share your infamy. 

The main gist of this stanza, anyway, is one of radical love. Instead of blaming the beloved, the poet will share their guilt. For me this is getting down to true unconditional understanding.

I love these kinds of difficult stanzas because in trying to puzzle them out, you end up going deeper in. By the time I worked through this stanza for the dozenth time, I really started to feel the idea inherent in the radical love that comes not from a position of judgment, but rather one of solidarity.

The Tenant of the Narrow Cottage, wert Thou—
Permit to be
The Housewife in thy low attendance
Contenteth Me—

"The Narrow Cottage” refers to the grave. Dickinson often refers to death and burial with domestic metaphors (e.g., “A Coffin—is a small Domain”). So here, the beloved is imagined as already in the grave. The tone is intensely devotional and self-effacing. She’s not asking for closeness in life, or status in love, only the permission to serve the beloved, even in death. This is chillingly tender. She is saying, "Even if you were dead, and I could only sweep the dust from your grave, that would be more than enough."

No Service hast Thou, I would not achieve it—
To die—or live—
The first—Sweet, proved I, ere I saw thee—
For Life—be Love—

Now we get the "then" statement. Then, there is no service for you, the poet says, that I wouldn't do. I would die for you and I would live for you. To die is nothing, since death already seemed sweet to me before I met you, and to live means to love you.

In Fr819, which we know was given to Sue, Dickinson says that the smallest crumb, even just a single look, from Sue is enough. In this poem Emily shows us what that enough would look like. Whatever weakness the beloved has, whether sick, or lost, or guilt-ridden, or even dead, she will be there. Otherwise, says the poet, it would be sweeter to be dead.

Don't we all wish to receive love like that? And don't we all aspire to be able to give it? In these poems to Sue, Emily shows us how.


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. When I was looking up this poem I stumbled on another one by Robert Burns that appears to be the template for this one. Google search gave it to me because of the "Wert thou" construction. Sometimes researching these poems feels a bit like being a literary archaeologist and it was cool to happen across this connection, and to realize the influence of Burns on Dickinson. I'm sure Emily read Robert Burns poetry. The basic idea in the Burns poem is the same, though of course Dickinson makes it her own. Here is the first stanza,

Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt,
I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee;
Or did misfortune's bitter storms
Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,
Thy bield should be my bosom,
To share it a', to share it a'.

In doing further research I discovered that Mendelssohn put this poem to music in 1859, a few years before this poem was written. Perhaps Dickinson was inspired by Mendelssohn's version. Here is a sweet rendition... 

The Only News I know

The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.

The Only Shows I see—
Tomorrow and Today—
Perchance Eternity—

The Only One I meet
Is God—The Only Street—
Existence—This traversed

If Other News there be—
Or Admirable Show—
I'll tell it You—

      -Fr820, J827, fascicle 40, 1864

The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.

I admire people who stay engaged in politics. To do the real day to day work of bettering the planet, it seems necessary to stay connected to the “news.” But it is also all so transient, and moreover, it can affect your mental well-being. What to do?

Poems are, perhaps, closer to a lasting Truth, "bulletins from Immortality." I think of William Carlos Williams conclusion to his long poem, “Asphodel, that greeny flower,”

"It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there.// Hear me out/ for I too am concerned/ and every man/ who wants to die at peace in his bed/ besides."

I also think of the words of St. Clare, “Keep your mind on the mirror of eternity.”

The Only Shows I see—
Tomorrow and Today—
Perchance Eternity—

Dickinson is focused on the present and, perchance, Eternity. It leads me to think about the shows I watch, all the fluff. What does another episode of Modern Family have to do with my actual family? That's what I take from these lines. Be present, with your mind on Eternity.
 

One wonders what that “Perchance” is motioning toward. What is needed to turn the temporal moment into an eternal one? How do we watch THAT show?

The Only One I meet
Is God—

That’s an amazing thought. I’m reminded of Matthew 25:40. “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

I’ve heard the advice that you should treat everyone as if God was standing in front of you. That's helpful advice, especially when you are dealing with difficult people, or maybe aren't feeling that great yourself.

The Only Street—
Existence—This traversed

Existence is the only street? What is Emily getting at here? Perhaps she means that the only path she travels is the fact of being alive. Existence itself is her road. There is no literal street, just the metaphysical one of divine connection.

If Other News there be—
Or Admirable Show—
I'll tell it You—

That ending is funny. It has so much of the wry Dickinson attitude in it. She has just told us that she hears only bulletins from immortality, sees only today and tomorrow, maybe eternity, meets only God and walks only the path of Existence. So when she ends with "If Other News there be... I'll tell it You," she seems to be raising an eyebrow, like she’s saying, “if there’s anything else worth knowing, some grand spectacle or exciting gossip, anything you think I’m missing, sure, I’ll let you know.”

Okay, thank you, Emily. We'll stay tuned for more of your bulletins from Eternity. 

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: David Preest informs us: "In the summer of 1864 Emily was immured in her cousins’ house in Cambridge, Boston undergoing eye treatment. She there received a letter from Thomas Higginson,saying that he had been wounded in the Civil War. The first stanza of this poem forms part of her letter of reply (L290) to Higginson. She leads up to the stanza as follows: ‘I was ill since September, and since April, in Boston, for a Physician’s care – He does not let me go, yet I work in my Prison, and make Guests for myself – Carlo [my dog] did not come, because that he would die, in Jail, and the Mountains, I could not hold now, so I brought but the Gods – I wish to see you more than before I failed – Will you tell me your health? I am surprised and anxious, since receiving your note.’ Then follows the stanza, saying that her Only News is her ideas for poems recording her intuitions of immortality, ‘Bulletins’ being the apt word for the compressed, telegraphic language of those poems. 

The Luxury to apprehend

The Luxury to apprehend
The Luxury 'twould be
To look at Thee a single time
An Epicure of Me

In whatsoever Presence makes
Till for a further Food
I scarcely recollect to starve
So first am I supplied —

The Luxury to meditate
The Luxury it was
To banquet on thy Countenance
A Sumptuousness bestows

On plainer Days, whose Table far
As Certainty can see
Is laden with a single Crumb
The Consciousness of Thee.

          -Fr819, J815, 1864

Ah, a poem to luxuriate in. So many Dickinson poems are about austerity. But maybe this one is too, when you look close.  

It's a luxury to apprehend 

The Luxury 'twould be
To look at Thee a single time

It's a luxury just to apprehend that it's a luxury to look at you only a single time. That's all that is needed by this poet. Dickinson is luxuriating in luxuriating, but the twist is that it is just a "single" look, that the luxury is based on something so seemingly scant. I think here of Dante seeing Beatrice only a few times and then dedicating all of those love poems to her. This poem, we know, was given to Susan, who Dickinson once referred to as her "Beatrice." No wonder.

All that lux luxury comes down to a single glance from the beloved. Not only is that glance a luxury, it's a luxury to know that this one glance is a luxury.

"An epicure of Me" is a compact line. It means, just this one look makes an epicure of me. An epicurean is someone who loves rich food and drink, so Emily is saying that one glance at the beloved is like feasting on rich food and drink. 

But "An epicure of Me" also reads something like...an epicure made up of "Me-ness." Somehow this line has the feel of completion. It is the beloved that makes the self into a true epicurean. The vision of you, it seems to say, was a pleasure made especially for Me.

In whatsoever Presence makes
Till for a further Food

What does in "whatsoever Presence" mean? It's a mysterious line. Perhaps it means a memory? A letter? And, who knows, maybe even a doppelganger might do. 

I scarcely recollect to starve
So first am I supplied —

Once given the vision of you, says the besotten poet, I'll forget that I'm starving. That single look was enough sustenance for life.

The Luxury to meditate
The Luxury it was
To banquet on thy Countenance
A Sumptuousness bestows

We are going to luxuriate even more in that word luxury in the third stanza. Because that's what this poem is about, luxuriating, even if given just a taste. The poem is a meditation on luxury, on making much of little, the luxury to meditate on what a luxury it was to "banquet on thy Countenance." Sue must've swooned when she read that line. "Countenance" has a biblical resonance, especially when paired with "thy," but we know that Dickinson often wrote to and of Sue using such religious terms, just like Dante places Beatrice at the gate to Paradiso in the Divine Comedy. 

A Sumptuousness bestows

If you are going to top the lush language of using "luxury" four times in a row, you might go with a word like "Sumptuousness." 

 

To banquet on thy Countenance

A Sumptuousness bestows

On plainer Days, whose Table far

As Certainty can see
Is laden with a single Crumb

The Consciousness of Thee.

That single look bestows a sumptuousness on "plainer Days." Look how plain that phrase sounds after all that sumptuous bestowing of luxury.

In the end we have a poet who, instead of complaining about how little she is given, is satiated by it. "As Certainty can see." This speaks to both the object of affection, who must've really been something, and to the disposition of the poet, who was thrifty in the extreme.

Consciousness of Thee is all that is needed for the poet to persist, just a single crumb. In fact, that plain table is "laden" with that crumb. The crumb we "apprehend" is truly a sumptuous banquet. 

Has a little ever gone further than it did with Emily? And has there ever been a more romantic poem?

Bless Emily Dickinson for being so satisfied with that one look of love. May we all be so lucky. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Study for 'La Charite'by William Adolphe Bouguereau  

P.S. This poem sheds light on all the "crumb" poems Emily wrote. See, especially, the recent one, Fr807, which describes this very poem, a robin's silver chronicle in song given in return for a single crumb.

P.P.S. I very much enjoyed Dandi Meng's take on this poem. I heard the echo of Fr269 "Wild Nights Wild Nights" in this poem too, but Dandi really makes something of this connection.