We can but follow to the Sun—

We can but follow to the Sun—
As oft as He go down
He leave Ourselves a Sphere behind—
'Tis mostly—following—

We go no further with the Dust
Than to the Earthen Door—
And then the Panels are reversed—
And we behold—no more.


       -Fr845, J920, Sheet 4, 1864


I dreamt last night that I only had a few days left to live. There was an absolute finality to this, but it was an eerily calm one. I realized when I woke up that reading this poem before bed must have been the catalyst for the dream.

That sense of the finality of death is always with us, even though some of us are more in denial about it than others. We soothe ourselves with ideas of the afterlife, or through distractions and a hundred other ways.

This poem brings us back to the hard truth. Whatever may be on the other side of that “Earthen Door,” we cannot know for sure. The panels are reversed and we “behold—no more.”

But this poem begins by telling us that, in the meantime, "we can but follow the Sun." 

The Beatles agree

We can but follow to the Sun—
As oft as He go down
He leave Ourselves a Sphere behind—
'Tis mostly—following—

That first line points in an uplifting, life affirming direction, the Sun. But with typical Dickinsonian irony there is a some resignation, maybe even some defeat in that, "We can but..." We don't really have a choice, do we? But hey, at least for now we can.

By the second stanza of this poem we no longer can follow the Sun. We have entered back into the earth, to "behold no more." 

This poem may work best read backwards. I recently had a conversation with the gentlemen who put on the fantastic podcast "Old Poems for New People" and we talked about how Dickinson often has to be read both forwards and backwards to be understood. This poem is a good example. When you get to the end of it, you have to turn around again and go back to that first line.

There are a few different ways to read the first stanza. The word "sphere" itself is interesting. It can be taken literally. We do follow the disappearance of the sun with our own disappearance into unconsciousness when we sleep. Our circadian rhythms take us to sleep just as “oft” as the sun goes down. We are left behind in a literal sphere of darkness.  

But of course "sphere" can have other meanings of a more meytaphysical nature. It's an important word for Dickinson, as it aligns with her poetics, her business of "Circumference."

The Sun can have extra-literal meanings too. It is the source of light, after all, which can be seen in many different hues and shades. The Sun can also be a pun for Son of God, a frequent visitor to the poems of Emily Dickinson. The Son going down would then be the crucifixion. We can but follow...'tis mostly following.

The word "mostly" is resonant here too. What does it mean "'Tis mostly following?" I can think of a few different possible meanings here. One is that even though we mostly get up to follow the sun, sometimes we can't be bothered. Another intriguing possibility is that though we mostly follow the Sun, sometimes one may actually lead it. ("I passed the Sun// Or rather he passed me.")

The second stanza is more final. Here we compare the end of life with the end of the day, as put forward in the first stanza. There is no “mostly” in this one. Most of us go to sleep at night, but all of us die.

We go no further with the Dust
Than to the Earthen Door—
And then the Panels are reversed—
And we behold—no more.

The wonder is that we are able to go as far as we have with the dust at all. From dust to dust goes the old saying, yet so much depends upon the “to” between dust and dust. Still, when we get to that final door in the earth, the grave, the door locks behind us. Or, as Dickinson imaginatively puts it, “the Panels are reversed—/ and we behold—no more."

Just as there is so much in the "to" between dust and dust, so is there a world in that verb “behold.”

In one of Emily Dickinson's letters she writes, “I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.” The word "behold" is a good one to hold up and look at until it begins to shine. Behold the word “Behold.” It can mean to pay attention to or to be in awe of or to wonder about or just simply to hold, as in, to love. 

Beyond reminding us that we have this one life, though, there is also in this poem a kind of resignation as discipline, an acceptance that following is “mostly” what life amounts to. We are followers of the sun, followers of the dead. That sober acceptance is its own kind of truth.

Is there any consolation in this poem beyond what we have in the present? Well, if every death poem ended with consolation, the consolation would cheapen. By refusing it here, Dickinson makes room for the mystery. This one simply records the boundary.

The point of this resignation is to hold us at the edge of the horizon, the coffin lid, and make us feel what it is to be left behind. Rather than filling the silence with dogma or false comfort, Dickinson insists on the stark experience of mortality, then no more.

But if we read the poem front to back she does leave us with that one shining thing we can do for now. We can but follow the Sun.

Behold!

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

This Merit hath the worst—

This Merit hath the worst—
It cannot be again—
When Fate hath taunted last
And thrown Her furthest Stone—

The Maimed may pause, and breathe,
And glance securely round—
The Deer attracts no further
Than it resists—the Hound—

    -Fr844, J979, Sheet 4, 1864

When you read the first line in isolation, you think about the possible merit of "the worst." Is there merit in dealing with the worst? In 1862 Dickinson wrote to T.W. Higginson that she had had a great terror that she could tell to no one. That same year she wrote 366 poems, whereas the year before, 1861, she wrote about 80. The uptick in production seems to be tied to the “terror.” So the terror of Emily Dickinson’s "worst" at least had the Merit of being grist for great poetry.

But once you read the next line of the poem, you realize that the line is saying something darker. 

This Merit hath the worst—
It cannot be again—

The "Merit" of the worst is that it can’t happen again. 

When Fate hath taunted last
And thrown Her furthest Stone—

The Maimed may pause, and breathe,
And glance securely round—

When fate has thrown its furthest stone, or, dealt its worst blow, then the maimed may finally breathe and feel secure again. This is painful to read, especially once you have glimpsed the possible circumstances behind this poem. Once fate (overpowering force) has done its worst, what more can it do? The worst is over. It can never be that bad again. Cold comfort. 

The circumstances that I refer to here, to be blunt, is rape. I'm loathe to bring the subject up, as it is horrible to contemplate, but I feel that it must be reckoned with. There are two reasons why I believe this poem may refer to sexual assault. The first one is because this poem was written on the same sheets of paper as Fr841, a poem which I find it difficult not to read as an account of rape. You can go back and read the comments on that poem for a further explication. Suffice to say here that the poem at hand carries three words over from that poem, "furthest," “stone” and “maimed.” The two poems' shared word choice and subject matter are enough to link the two together in my mind. 

The second reason can be seen in the final two lines of this poem,

The Deer attracts no further
Than it resists—the Hound—

The Deer and the Hound is a classic predator/prey metaphor. In a hunting context, the deer is chased until it collapses. In a human context, this easily maps onto sexual predation. The victim is pursued, the predator relentless.

This line tells us that the deer only attracts the hound as much as it resists. This suggests that the predator is stimulated precisely by resistance. Once the prey stops resisting, the pursuit ends. This is disturbingly close to the dynamics of sexual assault where the act itself is bound with power.

The poem, then, can be read as a trauma narrative in miniature. The worst arrives. It maims. But its merit, if that word can even stand, is that once endured, it cannot recur. The survivor breathes again, altered but alive. And in the grim arithmetic of violence, resistance draws pursuit, while collapse offers the only release.

Dickinson’s genius here is to lay all of this on the line, while at the same time refusing to let the poem settle. She could well be speaking of the general catastrophes of fate; death, illness, etc. Yet the language makes room for another kind of fate which is less speakable, the experience of predation, of being hunted and subdued. 

I should say that I'm not convinced that Dickinson did undergo sexual assault, and it still seems unthinkable. But I also see now that it is plausible, and if so, she has much to say to others that have been through a similar ordeal. 

If it is true, then the poem’s double valence (existential fate and predation) allows her to speak across taboo boundaries while still preserving deniability, and, at the same time, it also gives readers room to interpret the poem to fit their own circumstances. 

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

The Wounded Deer, by Frida Kahlo. 

In the lower left corner is written the word "Carma," 

which may be translated as "Fate."

It bloomed and dropt, a Single Noon—

It bloomed and dropt, a Single Noon—
The Flower—distinct and Red—
I, passing, thought another Noon
Another in its stead

Will equal glow, and thought no More
But came another Day
To find the Species disappeared—
The Same Locality—

The Sun in place—no other fraud
On Nature's perfect Sum—
Had I but lingered Yesterday—
Was my retrieveless blame—

Much Flowers of this and further Zones
Have perished in my Hands
For seeking its Resemblance—
But unapproached it stands—

The single Flower of the Earth
That I, in passing by
Unconscious was—Great Nature's Face
Passed infinite by Me—

    -Fr843, J978, sheet 3, 1864

I'm always delighted to come across one of Emily Dickinson’s flower poems. They often seem to have a floral quality to them, as if the poem itself was a kind of flower.  A signature gift that Emily liked to send to her friends was a flower from her garden accompanied with a corresponding poem. In the case of this poem however, I suspect there was no accompanying flower, seeing as to how the flower in the poem has been passed by. Perhaps the poet was emphasizing to some friend that, like the flower in this poem, she took her for granted. In that case this poem would have been sent by itself, perhaps accompanied by an empty ribbon tie.

Judith Farr, in her book “The Gardens of Emily Dickinson,” clues us in that the flower in question here was probably the Hemerocallis or ‘Day-Lily,’ whose flower lasts for one day only, often dropping in the noonday heat.

Hemerocallis, or Day-Lily

Though this may, indeed, be the flower Dickinson was thinking of, for the poet it becomes emblematic for life itself.

It bloomed and dropt, a Single Noon—

The first line of this poem makes it seem as if what blooms and then drops is noon itself, and not just any noon, but a "Single Noon," which, in poetry parlance, means the Single Noon of your life. Your middle years would be the noon of your life. The Single Noon of your life blooms and then drops.

The Flower—distinct and Red—

The Flower that blooms and drops, then, is the Self, or the Beloved. Since both of these become the reader of the poem, we will refer to the flower as "You." Like the Day-lily, you are distinct, one of a kind, and Red too in the red-blooded vigor and red-flushed cheeks of youth.

I, passing, thought another Noon
Another in its stead

Will equal glow, and thought no More

You, passing through this life, thought there would be another flower of noon, that youth would last forever, that it would keep coming with “equal glow” and then you "thought no more." That "thought no more" is this poem’s wry way of telling us that maybe we should think about it some more. In other words, don’t mindlessly ignore the circumstances of your life.

But came another Day
To find the Species disappeared—

Alas, you are here today and gone tomorrow. This species called by your name comes but once.

The Same Locality—

The same place where you are now, you will someday no longer be.

The Sun in place—no other fraud
On Nature's perfect Sum—

The Sun and all the rest of nature will still be here. The only thing stolen (defrauded) from the total Sum will be you.

Had I but lingered Yesterday—
Was my retrieveless blame—

If I had only lingered Yesterday, says the poet, I would have truly experienced this Flower, but I didn’t and now it is “retrieveless.” 

The poem wants you to listen to this future self and avoid the same sad fate by lingering over the flowers of Today. It's a common theme in poetry. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," wrote Robert Herrick. “I loafe and invite my soul. I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass,” wrote Walt Whitman, etc, etc.

We have no one to blame for missing the unique flower of life but ourselves.

The word blame carries some import here. Look at the way Dickinson uses rhyme to build up its emphasis. She moves from “bloomed” to “came," to “same,” to  “sum” and finally lands on “blame.”

Much Flowers of this and further Zones
Have perished in my Hands
For seeking its Resemblance—

There are no flowers to replace the one that has been missed, for nothing resembles that one. This reminds me of the ending of Grace Paley’s heartbreaking story, “Samuel.”

“When the policeman knocked at the door and told her about (Samuel's death), Samuel’s mother began to scream. She screamed all day and moaned all night, though the doctors tried to quiet her with pills.

Oh, oh, she hopelessly cried. She did not know how she could ever find another boy like that one. However, she was a young woman and she became pregnant. Then for a few months she was hopeful. The child born to her was a boy. They brought him to be seen and nursed. She smiled. But immediately she saw that this baby wasn’t Samuel. She and her husband together have had other children, but never again will a boy exactly like Samuel be known.”

The fact that “much flowers” have perished in the poet's hands in search for a replacement is chilling. The replacement flowers were killed in the process of being pulled up and compared. Think about this in real world terms. In the passage from Samuel above, you can imagine the collateral damage Samuel’s siblings will suffer, since they will always be compared with Samuel. Or you might think about a widow who remarries, and the psychological burden of the new spouse who must always be compared to the original love.

But unapproached it stands—

Nothing can approach the singular beloved, the original flower. Though it is gone, still "it stands," ghost-like, an unapproachable specter.

The single Flower of the Earth
That I, in passing by
Unconscious was—

In the first line of this last stanza Dickinson phrases it as if it was the whole earth that was the flower which has been passed by. You were here, the poem implies, but you let this flower, your Single Noon, on this Single Earth, pass you by.  You went through this life, this one chance, "unconscious."

Great Nature's Face
Passed infinite by Me—

This day-lily, the very face of nature, your youth, the beloved, our time on earth, has passed you by, irretrievably, gone forever, “passed infinite by.”

Again, I say "You" because that is who the "I" of this poem is. “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse – it does not mean – me – but a supposed person,” Dickinson wrote to T.W. Higginson. (L268)  You can see that idea in play in this poem. The “I” is a stand in for all of us, here. There is an admonition from the poet to herself, but also to all selves who inhabit the "I" of this poem, not to remain unconscious amidst the one-of-kind-for-one-time-only splendor of "Great Nature's Face."

        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Patience—has a quiet Outer—

Patience—has a quiet Outer—
Patience—Look within—
Is an Insect's futile forces
Infinites—between—

'Scaping one—against the other
Fruitlesser to fling—
Patience—is the Smile's exertion
Through the quivering—


      -Fr842, J962, sheet 3,  1864

This poem is a meditation on patience, but it's a bleak one. Patience does not help one overcome one's predicament in this poem. All one can do, it tells us, is attempt to smile through the ever worsening struggle. There is, however, immense grace in the effort.

The poem starts by letting us know that patience has a quiet Outer.  If someone is quiet, then that stillness may well be hiding an inner storm. It's interesting the way the adjective “outer” gets turned into a noun here. And it's almost a verb. Dickinson often weirds language to great effect.

The second use of the word "Patience," emphatically repeated in the second line, seems to be moving from definition to imperative. Because patience has a "quiet Outer" and is therefore hard to see, have patience! Look within. Look within here means look within yourself to find the fortitude, but also look within the quiet outer of the other. What you will see behind the smiling face before you may be someone engaged in an epic struggle.

Patience…
Is an Insect's futile forces
Infinites—between—

We are compared to an insect, and our struggles are like the tiny, restless motions of the insect as it is caught between two obstacles, like a fly trying to escape from a windowpane. 

Dickinson, through her signature hyperbole, makes the struggle appear even greater by pointing to those Infinites—between— our exertions.  When we are struggling, it is painful, but the moments of collapsed exhaustion between efforts can be even worse. When the “monster futility” (as Robert Smith of The Cure puts it) becomes too overbearing, time crawls to a stop and the moment feels infinite. Dickinson deals directly with this idea in another aphoristic two syllable poem, Fr833, “Pain — expands the Time —”

'Scaping one—against the other

Fruitlesser to fling—

The insect’s “futile forces” describe how it flings itself over and over in its attempt to escape, yet remains stuck, its efforts fruitless. Just as the insect struggles in vain between barriers, escaping one just to hit another, back and forth, so patience struggles between human suffering and endurance. Our exertions, our patience becomes more and more fruitless, “fruitlesser,” with each attempt. 

“Fruitlesser to fling.” That line has an onomatopoeic quality. It sounds like a fly flinging itself back and forth against the pane.

Patience—is the Smile's exertion
Through the quivering—

Here is the third mention of "patience," in this short poem, as if the poet is patiently remembering to invoke the word over and over again. This one offers us another definition. Patience—is the Smile's exertion. Patience is the effort of a smile.

There are two alternate words that Dickinson left us in the original MS sheet for the phrase "Smile's exertion." One is "Mouth's exertion," and the other is "Love's exertion." 

Sometimes all of the word choices Dickinson leaves us can work together to form a more complete poem. If it were "Mouth" here, instead of "Smile," I would take that to be a metonym for expression through poetry, or song. If it were "Love," that would be more abstract, but it would more clearly show the reason for such exertion. It clues us in that "Smile" is a product of Love here, not duty, or social pressure, just as "Mouth" tells us that this "Smile" is akin to the words sung by the poet. The music of this poem, its beauty, may be seen as Emily Dickinson's love, her smiling exertion through quivering pain. 

Once upon a time there was a bomb threat at my school. The teachers, including myself, were all afraid to go back into the classrooms, yet we tried our best to put on brave faces for the sake of the students. I remember having to physically force a comforting smile onto my face. And of course I've done the same for my children during times of illness. In the midst of heartbreak a smile can take everything you have. 

One takeaway for me here is to remember to be aware of the extreme difficulty that comes with “grace under pressure.” Yesterday, for instance, I watched a friend, one who used to be extremely impatient, shut his eyes and wait out a difficult situation. There was a time when he would have been screaming and freaking out in this same set of circumstances. This “exertion” on his part, which was only barely discernible to any observer, carried with it immense unseen struggles. And yet this kind of gargantuan effort, so often hidden from us, can make a huge difference in the lives of others. It's worth remembering this next time we find ourselves impatient with someone. The person we are dealing with may well be struggling with something far worse than we are. 

Though this poem carries a sense of hopelessness, it also carries grace in its small act of resistance. The smile in the poem, which is to say, its beauty, lifts us up, even as the poet herself may be going down.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff 

David Foster Wallace's commencement address, 

"This is water," presents a similar idea to this poem.

Notes: A study could be made of Dickinson's aphoristic poems. This poem is written in the form she most often used for her aphorisms; a two stanza structure in 4/3 hymn meter, often with a trochaic rhythm. Other examples of these include Fr835 and Fr879.

It's worth paying attention to the intricate internal rhythms of these poems, which are part of their hidden beauty, part of the exertion of their "smile."

This one's trochaic rhythm goes like this: 

BA dum BA dum BA dum BA dum

BA dum BA dum dum

BA dum BA dum BA dum BA dum

BA dum dum dum BA 

BA dum BA dum BA dum BA dum

BA dum dum dum BA

BA dum BA dum BA dum BA dum

BA dum BA dum dum

See the way the 2nd line's rhythm is repeated in the 8th, and the 4th line in the 6th? It's a subtle dance.  

Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning—

Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning—
Lightning—lets away
Power to perceive His Process
With Vitality.

Maimed—was I—yet not by Venture—
Stone of stolid Boy—
Nor a Sportsman's Peradventure—
Who mine Enemy?

Robbed—was I—intact to Bandit—
All my Mansion torn—
Sun—withdrawn to Recognition—
Furthest shining—done—

Yet was not the foe—of any—
Not the smallest Bird
In the nearest Orchard dwelling
Be of Me—afraid.

Most—I love the Cause that slew Me.
Often as I die
Its beloved Recognition
Holds a Sun on Me—

Best—at Setting—as is Nature's—
Neither witnessed Rise
Till the infinite Aurora
In the other's eyes.


        -Fr841, J925, Sheet 3, 1864


Dear Susan,

I cried this morning after reading and trying to make sense of Fr841. It was shocking when I realized that the poem must be an account of rape. Could this be the terror Emily referred to her in her letter to Higginson in 1862? "I had a terror since September, I could tell to none; and so I sing, as the boy does by the burying ground, because I am afraid."

It made me so sad. This poem is just heartbreaking when read in that light. And yet somehow it still carries beauty and redemption in the end. I did some research and came across a book called The Rape and Recovery of Emily Dickinson, which makes the further claim that it was her father. I scoffed. Emily loved and idolized her father, didn't she? There was an excerpt of the book and the more I read, from between my fingers, the more I wondered if the author could be right. If so, how terrible.

Anyway, not to be a downer, but I felt the need to commiserate.

Love, Adam

***

Dear Adam --

I returned last night from a short trip to visit friends in the Klamath mountains and do some hiking.

I only read a few emails because there was a host of them but of course I read yours. I want to thank you for thinking of me and sending the poem to me. It cut me as I read.

I wanted to write down my immediate thoughts to help me process it. So I did, and they follow. But Emily is so powerful that there is no 'making sense' of her work until it is lived with a while and allowed to penetrate (word choice purposeful) and percolate. But as your travel partner in her work I wanted to share my darting thoughts -- commiserating. There is such pain.

Last night:

Oh, this one hits hard. I've read it several times over and yes I cried out. I will be waiting to read your deliberations on it.

"Struck", "Maimed", and "Robbed" -- so harsh!

I then stumble through her loving the Cause that 'slew' her even as its 'beloved Recognition' chillingly holds a Sun on her ... Also unsettling here is the 'Often as I die' as if the Robbing, etc., is as regular as the Sun.
The end is... possibly, slightly possibly, a bit of dawning reassurance? She, like her slayer, is best at setting? A setting so deep that

Neither witnessed Rise
Till the infinite Aurora
In the other's eyes

More:

It's hard to know just what has happened -- by whom or for how long and, oh, just about everything in the poem. But as I write and re-read I'm thinking of Sue, of someone or even something (Poetry?) that so powerfully affects her that it is as if the 'Mansion' of her being is torn.

But how to process the horror of "Robbed—was I—intact to Bandit—"? And the pathos of the 'Not the smallest Bird' stanza reinforcing the gentleness of the speaker, her harmlessness. She hasn't deserved or called forth any violence done her.

And yet ... the next stanza begins with 'Most': she most of all, more than anything said so far, loves what slew her (note past tense). Yet the slaying recurs. She notes that as she dies, and this now seems the climax of ecstatic sex, she has a deep recognition of the slayer who, in turn, holds "a Sun" on her as if the recognition is mutual.

This mirror/sun is best at "Setting" -- just as Nature's sun is (and why would that be?). Sunrise itself doesn't happen until both the speaker and the 'Cause' find the 'Infinite Aurora in each other's eyes. Maybe that is why the slayer and the slain are best at setting. That dawn of an infinite Aurora is more profound than the setting into night.

Complicating the poem is the change from first to third person in the last stanza.

Well, I've said to much without sufficient time to truly digest the poem and mull it about.

But it is shocking and powerful.

I'm reminded of an early commenter who on one poem and then a few afterwards (which ones I don't remember) said that the poems were clearly about sexual assault/rape. Each time I felt an agreement but was able to wiggle around it. Your comment about her father is even more shocking. I'm going to cogitate on that for a while.

Gotta to bed -- just got back from trip to Klamath Mts -- long and very beautiful drive home through steep mountains...

Love
Susan

ps: wonder what dreams will come...

***

Dear Susan,

Well, what dreams came?

Thank you for this. It helps. Yes, I do sometimes fail to give the poems enough time to "penetrate" before I write about them. 

This one may have "penetrated" too deeply, though, too quickly, without enough process to let the light in. I wrote about it right away, but probably won't keep much, if any, of what I put down. And it'll be a minute before I try again. Though I suppose I must. Like Emily I had to retreat. 

As you say, "how to process the horror of 'Robbed—was I—intact to Bandit—?'  And the pathos of the 'Not the smallest Bird' stanza reinforcing the gentleness of the speaker, her harmlessness. She hasn't deserved or called forth any violence done her."  Your words made me wish you were writing this commentary and not I.

I can't read that word "intact" followed by the word "torn" without thinking of a deflowering. But it's very hard to read it as anything consensual. It sounds horrible. Struck is so violent. And to be left maimed?

That first stanza tells us that there was no time for "process." 

Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning—
Lightning—lets away
Power to perceive His Process
With Vitality.

The lightning has "not yet" struck. This strike was something darker than lightning, a strike of anti-lightning. At least "Not yet" implies hope of illumination when lightning does, eventually, strike.

That "lets away" is telling too. Lightning lets away, unlike whatever monster overtook the narrator. Taking by force doesn't allow the Vitality of Process. It kills the love in its tracks. This poem should be required reading for all dumb boys.

There are a couple things in this poem that seem to point, unfortunately, to the unthinkable. The first one is the riddle set forward in the second stanza.

Maimed—was I—yet not by Venture—
Stone of stolid Boy—
Nor a Sportsman's Peradventure—
Who mine Enemy?

 Subtle the way she switches that "not yet" in the first stanza to "yet not" here. Who is the enemy she asks after giving us a series of clues as to who it is not. It's not an emotionally-removed stolid boy who violated her with his "Stone." (Oh, the hint of anger in that doubtle ST sound, stemming from the first spit out "Struck" that onomatopoetically begins the poem.) It wasn't some hunter who was looking for sport. (She's spitting out the SP sound now, along with so many plosive Ps in the first two stanzas). So then who was it? If it wasn't a boy, it must've been an older man. And not a man who was undertaking a journey, on a venture, so...someone close to home? And not one doing it for the sport of the hunt, as per usual. So who does all of this point to?

Robbed—was I—intact to Bandit—
All my Mansion torn—

The idea that she is intact to bandit, as in, connected to the bandit, and that it has torn her Mansion, as in The Dickinson Homestead, is troubling to me. There appears to be a double meaning to both "intact" and "mansion," the first pointing to herself, Mansion intact to bandit until it was torn, and the second pointing to the offender, to whom she was intact, and the Dickinson Mansion.

Sun—withdrawn to Recognition—
Furthest shining—done—

The light inside of the poet can no longer shine like it once did, at least not out into the world. This is one of the most heartbreaking lines in the poem for me, especially if Emily felt the compulsion to keep back her poems from "recognition" by the public because of the repercussions of this trauma. "...I could tell to none." 

Most—I love the Cause that slew Me.
Often as I die
Its beloved Recognition
Holds a Sun on Me—

The Cause. God. Burglar Banker Father. The Prime Mover. This is the perpetrator. And just as "often as" It kills the poet, she hungers for Its beloved recognition. It's such a tragic bind.

Best—at Setting—as is Nature's—
Neither witnessed Rise
Till the infinite Aurora
In the other's eyes.

I like your take on the slayer's cause being, like the Sun, best at setting because it is followed by the forgiveness of infinite auroras. (Not exactly what you said, but my take on it.) That makes sense to me. But also, if I am going to force myself to face it, there is the idea of the "setting" here of the Cause being best because one mellows with old-age, years later. It churns my stomach to write this. But it would be worse not to at least face the possibility, right? It's best to follow Emily's example. She takes us by the hand. I understood what you meant by wanting to wiggle around it though. I want to wiggle around it too. But Dickinson holds a sun on us, you might say. I also liked your way of putting it, that the setting is so deep that the sun can't rise again until the two witness the infinite aurora in each other's eyes. Lost in the auroras before sunrise. Is this Forgiveness or is it Escape?

I'm aware that this Father thing might well be a false trail. It's so easy with Dickinson to make clues fit a theory. And I really hope it isn't true. 

It does seem, as you pointed out, like the poem switches to the third person in this last stanza, "Neither (of them) witnessed Rise," but the syntax could also read in first person as, "Neither (of us) witnessed Rise." But hey, maybe a blending of first and third person is the point here? The two have to be understood as one for forgiveness to take place. Or rather forgiveness has to take place before the two can become one. 

A tremendous poem. It takes my breath away.

Though I still feel it, that sick feeling, I'm left less with shock and sadness than I was before in having processed through it again. The lightning has let the light in. The feeling I'm left with now is just an even deeper respect for Dickinson's bravery, her capacity to forgive, and admiration for those infinite auroras.

And now it's time for me to enter the same. Blessed sleep.

Good night, Susan.

P.S. But what about that white dress?

***

Dear Adam,

Dreams -- oddly, as you mention at the end of your email -- white dresses. Girls in white dresses (sang to the tune of 'Nights in white satin').

I thought of Austin right away but moved away from that. I think the idea of the Cause as God is very strong but then there's that last stanza– where speaker and Cause find the aurora, finally, in each other's eyes– that complicates the notion.

The penultimate stanza does, however, suggest God as Cause -- and especially if then it is God's Recognition, His Beloved Recognition, that shines like Sun on the battered recipient of His love. Reminds me of "He fumbles at your Soul" (F477) and also a bit of the 'White Heat' poem (F401). God is not an easy lover.

Anyway, enough of my meanderings. I do so much look forward to your commentary. This is a tough one... That "who is the Enemy" question seems key. The enemy must be grand and powerful -- capable of a Recognition that shines (and burns) like a sun. Someone that hurts but makes alive. That would be God, Father, and Sue.

But you bring a light yourself with "The lightning has let the light in. The feeling I'm left with now is just deeper respect for Dickinson's bravery, her capacity to forgive, and admiration for those infinite auroras."

Okay, direction to self. Stop. Stop!

Sleep well -
Susan

***

Dear Susan,

Good morning.

You wiggled around it. Bless you.

Dreams of white dresses. How about that!

Your bringing it back to the "key" question -"Who mine enemy?"- made me remember that the first time I read this I took that to mean that the poet had no enemy, which is the statement that she makes in stanza four: Yet was not the foe—of any— 

The poet had no enemies before the attack, but I think we are to understand that, remarkably, she had none afterward either.

Once the Sun has set and you see the infinite auroras in the other's eyes then there are no more enemies. The littlest bird in the orchard remains safe as can be. Dreams of white dresses...

What a perfect way for the poem, and life, to resolve. 

Thank you. I couldn't have gotten there without you.

With that in mind, Dear Susan, I have a daring proposition for you.

What if we post this dialogue as the commentary for the poem?

Hear me out. This poem, in particular, could use a woman's touch. A dialogue also exposes process, which, on one level, is what this poem is about. It's raw and illuminating, like a slow flash of lightning.

So what do you say, partner? I can hardly imagine it now without you.

Love,

 
Adam

***

Dear Adam,

I'm for the posting of it! The poem deserves it. I didn't find it in the indexes of my Dickinson books ... Go for it!

And top of the morning to you!

I gotta run -- full day of gardening today -- and a nice day for it, too.

Love,
Susan

Love—is that later Thing than Death—

Love—is that later Thing than Death—
More previous—than Life—
Confirms it at its entrance—And
Usurps it—of itself—

Tastes Death—the first—to hand the sting
The Second—to its friend—
Disarms the little interval—
Deposits Him with God—

Then hovers—an inferior Guard—
Lest this Beloved Charge
Need—once in an Eternity—
A smaller than the Large—


      -Fr840, J924, sheet 3, 1864


In poems like this one Dickinson can be a hard nut to crack. But we can try. In the attempt we get much closer to the nut.

It starts off easy enough:

Love—is that later Thing than Death—
More previous—than Life—

Love was here before we were born and will be here after we leave. At a very basic level this is true. I loved my wife and out of that love came children. When I die these same children will still feel love for me.

The next line is easy enough too, and quite beautiful.

Confirms it at its entrance

We feel a natural love for the newborn child. This feeling confirms for us love’s primacy. That is indisputable. The powerful feeling we have automatically for a newborn is an inherent sign of our love. It is confirmed for us at our very entrance onto the planet.

The primacy of this love is not to be underestimated. (Conversely, the absence of Love is anathema to life. Lady Macbeth informs us she knows what it is like to give suck, to feed a newborn, yet still, to feed her ambition she claims that she would dash her baby’s brains against the wall. Ambition is thus revealed by Shakespeare as antithetical to Love.)

The next line though is a bit more difficult to suss:

                             ...And
Usurps it—of itself—

Love usurps Life. In other words, it is more important than Life. This is another quite beautiful thought. Love is there at the entrance, but not only that, it also takes over Life. This is what sacrifice of the soldier, or the mother, means. Life is offered up for Love. Love, which was there from before we began, is something we are willing to die for.

If the poem ended here, I’d already feel a whole world wiser. But it doesn’t. It gets harder:

Tastes Death—the first—to hand the sting
The Second—to its friend—
Disarms the little interval—
Deposits Him with God—

That syntax is hard to parse, but once you do, you begin to see that the difficulty stems from Dickinson's condensed matter. She is doing a lot in a very brief space.

Love, (here, meaning the love of the poet,) offers to be the first to taste death. Love is willing to take the bullet. Love worries. This willingness to die for a beloved lessons the sting, the pain, of their death. It is what hands the sting of the second death, the beloved's, over to the "friend.” The term "friend" here, lower case, is pointing to the friendship between the lover and the beloved. Love relieves the sting of death through friendship, through the willingness of one to take on the burden of another.

In so doing Love disarms the interval. In other words, Death is made easier for the one dying. In a poem preceding this one, Fr 838, Dickinson speaks of easing a loved one's death by holding a glowing candle up for the beloved’s failing eyes. (See post for relevant biographical details.) This is an important theme for Dickinson. This death-watch stands in the poems as a symbol of the kind of Love that is there until the end.

By being there, the loved one deposits the living one with God. Love was there before the beginning, reigned in life, and now is easing the sting of death and gently dropping us off with Providence.

I love how the syntax of the stanza allows that "Second" to be a second of time too. The second we love another before ourselves, the second a dying one can see this in our eyes, the second of that "little interval" just before death," all of this becomes the moment that is handed to a “friend."

“Disarms” is a great word here. For myriad reasons the moment of death may feel like being caught up in warfare. Love will take those self-lacerating weapons away from us.

Then hovers—an inferior Guard—
Lest this Beloved Charge
Need—once in an Eternity—
A smaller than the Large—

Love, since it is personal, and therefore only a fraction of the larger source of love, is inferior. We are guardian angels for each other, but are "inferior." "Inferior" implies that there is something even larger, something Superior, looking out for us, something of which we are only a small part. But this poem promises that the poet will, nevertheless, hover over the body of the beloved she is in charge of, in all her inferiority, just in case. Just in case of what?

Ah, this is where I think the poem becomes most meaningful. Just in case once in Eternity, which is to say now, which is to say this second, the beloved, you, might need such a love. The smaller love fits our smaller self. The smaller love is the representative of the love of this person and this moment. I’m here for you, now, the "small" poet says to her beloved.

Dickinson has “lesser” in the original MS as an alternative for "smaller." It seems at first to be a better fit, at least alliteratively. Lesser goes beautifully with “lest," "beloved" and "Large.” But I think she chose “smaller” because smaller is not necessarily lesser. It's just smaller. And also, it just sounds…sweeter.

Once again I am awed by Emily Dickinson's capacity to love.

     -/)dam Wade /)eGraff

The Angel of Death/ Horace Vernet/ 1851

P.S. The sting of death relieved by love is surely a reference to Corinthians 15:55, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

P.P.S. I'm grateful to Susan and The Prowling Bee for giving me the opportunity to go so deep into these poems. If I wasn't "charged" with writing about this poem, then I don't think I could have begun to truly understand it. 

Unfulfilled to Observation—

Unfulfilled to Observation—
Incomplete—to Eye—
But to Faith—a Revolution
In Locality—

Unto Us—the Suns extinguish—
To our Opposite—
New Horizons—they embellish—
Fronting Us—with Night.


    -Fr839, J972, Fascicle 40, 1864


Here we have arrived at the final poem of the final fascicle of the 40 left us by the poet Emily Dickinson. (The last fascicle, that is, according to Christanne Miller in "Poems As She Preserved Them.")  Sometimes Dickinson's fascicle arrangements feel composed, and they probably were considering how artfully everything was arranged by Dickinson, from her poems to her herbarium to her cakes and wine-jellies. But this poem, lovely and meaningful as it is, does not feel like a conclusion to a fascicle, let alone 40 of them. 

I sometimes find myself trying to reverse-engineer an Emily Dickinson poem. I’ve noticed that Dickinson often starts with an idea and then, to use an apt word from this poem, "embellishes" it. This one starts with the idea of the relative interdependence of dark and light. If we are standing on the dark side, then we can be assured of a relative light side. It all depends on where you are standing. It’s an intriguing idea, and, ultimately, an uplifting one. It’s true realization takes us beyond dualism and into a sense of a dynamic whole. This is an understanding worth preserving in poetry, just like Lao Tzu’s similar yin and yang wisdom was preserved for us in the Tao De Ching 2500 years ago. Likewise Dickinson is taking her philosophical gold and spinning it into poetry.* 

Okay, back to the reverse-engineering. So Dickinson had a strong and salutary idea and looked for a form for which it might fit. This particular thought necessitated two stanzas. The first stanza lays out the argument and the second stanza illustrates the argument with a metaphor.

Next Dickinson chose a meter for these stanzas. She sticks to her usual 4/3 common-hymn stanzas, but she gives it a little change-up by making the rhythm trochaic instead of the more usual iambic. I believe she chose this meter because it makes the poem punchier. It starts on the down beat, like funk music. (I imagine the poem starting out with James Brown’s emphatic “UHHNN!!!”) It’s more sing-songy this way, and therefore more memorable.

Unfulfilled to Observation—
Incomplete—to Eye—

First she states the issue. “Look, you can’t see your own complete fulfillment.” We are being told by an objective poetic narrator that they can see what we cannot. This is every great seer’s claim, from Homer’s Teiresias on down. You can’t see it with your two eyes, but if you listen to the blind poets, they will sing it to you.

Dickinson’s first two lines start off with open-vowelled cretics. A cretic, sometimes called an amphimacer, is a word that is stressed/unstressed/stressed. Both words, "Unfulfilled" and "Incomplete" are oxymoronic as well. They both speak of negations of positives. You can hear this emotionally in the very sounds of the words. The open-vowel sound serves as an orally visceral undoing of the positive words that follow, un/fulfill and in/complete.

The open-vowelled cretics also serve to give the poem a nice ring.

We thus have a strong doubly-emphasized point: there is a fulfillment, but one which you can’t observe from your blind side, a completeness that you can’t see in the dark.

This sets us up for the big “but.”

But to Faith—a Revolution
In Locality—

In other words, we have faith that the world has merely revolved and we are now on the dark side. The light is being blocked by something, namely, the revolving sphere of the earth. If you are in the western hemisphere, it is dark, but you have Faith, since you have seen it happen before, that the earth is ever-revolving and the sun is now shining on the other side.

The word Faith here takes us from the idea of a physical sunrise toward a hidden metaphysics. The word “Revolution” does the same thing. This poem is, on one level, talking about the way your local earthly location has revolved from day to night. But it also hints toward an inner revolution in seeing.

Dickinson wrote several poems about “locality." (See the notes below this post for a few examples.) It's an important theme for her. As Prowling Bee reader and commentator Tom Clyde has written, "Her poems have given me so much comfort in these difficult times. Truly Emily Dickinson’s sense of locality is a solace to me.”

Okay, we’ve had the argument, and now, in stanza two, we can embellish with some metaphors to help us better understand:

Unto Us—the Suns extinguish—
To our Opposite—
New Horizons—they embellish—
Fronting Us—with Night.

In returning our focus on the construction of the poem, we see that Dickinson chose to start this stanza with an open vowel again to echo the first stanza. The first line is tied to the second through an open-vowel trochee, and likewise the first stanza is tied to the second. She stitched the poem together this way.

That word “Unto” is one of my favorite Dickinson words. She always wields it beautifully.

Unto Us—the Suns extinguish—

This line, before the next line completes the syntax, has its own stand-alone power. 

The suns extinguish “unto” us. Reading and digesting this line in isolation, which for a moment we do, it’s as if the suns were extinguishing into us, which is an evocative image. I picture suns disappearing straight into our chests. “Unto” is originally a mash-up word of "until" and "toward." So the suns are extinguishing "until toward" us. 

Unto Us—the Suns extinguish— 

To our Opposite—

The way that “unto” works here, then, goes in two opposite directions at once. The Suns extinguish/ to our opposite, but that light moving over there is all coming unto you as darkness, as an extinguishing. The energy of the line goes away and towards the self at the same time, and the light is, through word magic, made synonymous with the darkness.

The word “Opposite” here is telling. “Our Opposite.” What does it mean when an opposite is “ours?”

Add to this the gorgeous music in this line in the sounds of "un", "us" and "sun."

You might also be able to hear an echo of “Son” here too. Christ, the Son of God, extinguishes “unto us,” dies for us, for our opposite and darkened selves. This is another idea that Dickinson thought a lot about, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she was hinting toward this idea here, which helps account for the word “Faith” set up in the first stanza.

Finally we have our second illustration:

New Horizons—they embellish
Fronting Us—with Night.

The sun, extinguishing here, is now, therefore, over there and embellishing “New Horizons.” While we are confronted with night, the side we can't see is filling with light.

New Horizons can mean a lot of different things, depending on how you hear it. It can literally mean the sun’s horizon is brightening up a new day on the other side of the world as we sleep. But poetically it can mean that as our eyes are darkening for our personal long winter's night sleep of death, the light is rising in heaven (or “Immortality” as Dickinson preferred to call it). Or it could mean that even as you die, a New Horizon, a new generation is being born into the world. It could simply mean to remember that when you are having a bad day things revolve and better days come. It could mean that when you take on someone’s load, their darkness, it lightens the burden of another. We know, from looking at big-picture nature, says the poem, that any darkness, which is to say any difficulty, promises an unseen blessing.

So don’t despair, for the other side is surely there. The darkness and despair is our sign of surety that the other side exists. And there is a further implication too: our darkness enables the light. In another poem Dickinson calls it the “white sustenance/ despair.”

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Sunrise by the Ocean/ Vladamir Kush

* For whom did Dickinson write this? Whom did she ultimately have in mind when writing her poetry? I doubt she was writing it just for herself, though maybe. If you were prone to depression, then a poem like this, channeled from your higher self, would be an awfully good reminder.

I can see a poem like this written for a friend or a cousin too, but it does feel a little bit “impersonal." It feels general, and therefore I mostly see it as something written for an ideal future reader. Poems are often written for that reason. The poems that Emily Dickinson loved to read, like those of Robert and Emily Browning, came to her via impersonal means as well, through books sold in bookstores. Poems like the one at hand convince me that Dickinson was thinking of future readers, of me and you, in the abstract, when she wrote them.

This might seem like an obvious reason for any poet to write poems, except for with Emily Dickinson it begs a question. If these were meant to be read by a general audience, why didn’t she try to have them published? There are several possible answers to that question, and people have long conjectured about it,  but suffice to say that Dickinson did make the gesture, at least, to sew 839 of them up into 40 little booklets. (Mabel Loomis Todd is the one who labeled them “fascicles). She left these booklets to the surprise of everybody, even the sisters who outlived her. And she left them for fate to do with as it would. I believe though that Dickinson trusted that the inherent worth of the poems would make sure they were delivered to their destinations. She also probably had some trust that she would get some post-mortem help from Lavinia and Sue, as well as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Helent Hunt Jackson and other well-published friends. I doubt Austin would’ve done much with them, if he were the sole responsible executor, but his wife Sue and daughter Martha and mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, all went a long way to help get the poems out there. Austin needed the women to do the important work. One thinks here of Vincent Van Gogh's brother Theo's wife being the prime mover in preserving and publicizing Vincent's worth after his death.

To be fair though, Higginson and Samuel Bowles, both men with a feminist agenda and a large broadband, went a long way to help Dickinson too. She covered herself well, in retrospect, like any great secret will that is meant eventually to spill. You might say that through these indirect means Dickinson pro-engineered the poems so that they might, with help from providence, be in front of us now 175 years later.

Notes: 

1. It's interesting to compare this poem with the one preceding it in Fascicle 40, Fr837. They both use the metaphor of the sun, but quite differently. 

2. Other uses of "locality" in Dickinson poems:

“A nearness to Tremendousness…” 

In this poem, Dickinson uses the word "Location" and the coined term "Illocality"—a play on "locality," suggesting a paradoxical state of being both place-bound and unplaceable. “In Acres—Its Location / Is Illocality—” This juxtaposes the domestic ("Acres") with an abstract, boundless sense of place ("Illocality"), highlighting her tendency to destabilize fixed locales. 

“The Drop, that wrestles in the Sea—…” includes the line: “…Forgets her own locality—” Suggesting something dissolving or transcending its sense of rooted place. 

“Unfulfilled to Observation…” Contains: “…In Locality—” and conveys a sense of existential or perceptual transformation tied to a sense of place.

Robbed by Death—but that was easy— (take 2)

Robbed by Death—but that was easy—
To the failing Eye
I could hold the latest Glowing—
Robbed by Liberty

For Her Jugular Defences—
This, too, I endured—
Hint of Glory—it afforded—
For the Brave Beloved—

Fraud of Distance—Fraud of Danger,
Fraud of Death—to bear—
It is Bounty—to Suspense's
Vague Calamity—

Staking our entire Possession
On a Hair's result—
Then—seesawing—coolly—on it—
Trying if it split—

    Fr838, J971, Fascicle 40, 1864

This is my second attempt at writing a post on this poem. My interpretation changed, in part due to reading the biography of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger, and in part because of David Preest's reading of the poem. Here goes take two:

Robbed by Death—but that was easy—

When you read this line in isolation, it appears to be saying that being robbed by the death of someone was easy. But that can't be right, can it? That's a cold thing to say. It seems selfish. It's like, no big deal, you died. But that isn't like Emily Dickinson at all. She was someone who was extremely affected by the death of a loved one. 

So we read on to see how the poet will qualify this statement. 

To the failing Eye

This qualification of "easy" reads like: It may seem easy to be robbed by death to the eye that fails to see. In other words, it's not easy at all. Your eyes are failing you if you think this is easy. 

But then I quickly realized that failing here must refer back to death. We need the next line now to further qualify these two lines. 

Here we have an excellent example of the slipperiness of Dickinson’s use of dashes. When I took just the first two lines together, I read it as a sentence. But then after I read the third line I could see, after having already processed the first two lines together, the dash at the end of line one better functions as a full stop, like this:

Robbed by Death—but that was easy—(.)

To the failing Eye

I could hold the latest Glowing—

Now she appears to be saying, "I was robbed of a loved one by death, but that was made easier, because at least I could hold up the latest glowing to their failing eyes."

So, it wasn't easy, after all, but it was the easier of the two, because the poet could help the beloved die.

I had to work a bit for that reading, but it's such a beautiful idea that it was worth working for, and it is, somehow, worth more because of having to work for it. It sticks deeper.

There's so much in the idea of holding the "latest Glowing.” It's such a beautiful phrase. I want to burn it onto a stump of tree in the backyard of my mother's house.

Literally the phrase would mean that you are holding a candle to help the failing eye to see. A held "Glowing" could be glowing eyes too, as they hold the gaze of the dying, the warm flame of a present soul, or even, a poem. 

This poem is, for the reader, the latest Glowing. 

I connect this passage with one I recently read in Alfred Habegger's biography of Emily Dickinson, "My Wars Are Laid Away In Books." 

When Emily was 14 she had a friend/cousin named Sophia Holland. Emily described her in a letter as a "friend near my age & with whom my thoughts & her own were the same." 

When this friend died Emily was allowed to watch "over her bed." 

"It seemed that to me I should die too," Emily recalled, "if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even to look at her face."

This is from Habegger:

"Emily prevailed on the doctor to allow one last look. She took  off her shoes and quietly stepped to the sickroom, stopping in the doorway. There Sophia

lay mild & beautiful as in health & her pale features lit up with an unearthly - smile. I looked as long as friends would permit & when they told me I must look no longer I let them lead me away." Then, " I shed no tears, for my heart was too full to weep, but after she was laid in her coffin & I felt I could not call her back again I gave way to a fixed melancholy. I told no one the cause of my grief."

It stops your heart doesn't it? It gives a living dimension to the opening lines of this poem.

Now we are fully invested in this poem and want to read on, to see the full light of the candle, its glowing apotheosis. So we read on.

Robbed by Liberty

For Her Jugular Defences—
This, too, I endured—
Hint of Glory—it afforded—

When you pair the words "Liberty" and "Defences" and even "Jugular" (meaning deadly) you think of fighting, and war, and then, remembering the period, The Civil War.  

Indeed we know that a few years before this poem was written Dickinson lost her family childhood friend Frazar Stearns in the Civil War. And as she wrote this poem the war still raged. 

But Freedom, and its loss, is meta-mythically personal for the poet.  The idea of liberty, and the fight for it, was something that was central to her life. 

Robbed by liberty. How does liberty rob? How does freedom limit? Think about it from the point of view of a woman trying to maintain her vocation of a poet? That would be harder to do in the domestic expectations of a married life, or to one trying to survive in the world without a husband/father's earning power in 1864. 

The struggle for Liberty can even kill you. It goes for the jugular! 

For Dickinson liberty had its own special meaning. She was able to live at home, with her father's support, and remain unmarried. 

In Matty Dickinson’s charming memoir of Dickinson, Face to Face, she tells of how her Aunt Emily once mimed turning the lock on her bedroom door and said to her: “It’s just a turn— and freedom, Matty!”

Dickinson's sacrifices for liberty, and the pain she endured for it, did afford her "Hint of Glory."  She "endured" freedom for it. The Glory, the direct result of Dickinson’s pursuit of liberty, are these poems, which have indeed held, and are still Glowing, for our own failing eyes.

For the Brave Beloved—

(Brave Beloved = Sophia Holland or Frazar Stearns or Sue or/and, ultimately, the reader)

Fraud of Distance—Fraud of Danger,
Fraud of Death—to bear—

The poet is being brave in this poem, facing danger, prison and death, and she is doing it for the sake of a brave beloved.  

I originally read the last section of this poem one way and then when I read David Preest's take on the poem I did a double take. I think Preest (in his priestly way) may have gotten a better fix on this poem. I'm still not sure. I will return to discuss his take, but first my initial take, which was that the end of this poem's about an uncommitted lover leaving the poet in suspense. Dickinson has written on this theme before. 

The turn-around in this poem comes in these lines:

"It is Bounty—to Suspense's
Vague Calamity—

All of that difficulty of danger and death is “Bounty” compared to being in suspense.  Difficulty in love is Bounty because at least you will grow from your efforts and sacrifices. I presume Dickinson is speaking of the suspense of whether or not the beloved will return her love, or even can return it.

To know is to respond decisively. But if the initial act is a maybe, is "Vague," then that’s true Calamity because then the love is in limbo. We are in stasis. There is no growth, no Life.

Staking our entire Possession
On a Hair's result—

If we are in love, then we are ready to give all of ourselves, our “entire Possession” to our beloved. But what if the beloved is indecisive, and could go either way? Just a hair's breadth, the smallest detail, could change the whole deal. It’s unfair that for one party the stakes should be complete surrender, while for the other the result is neither here nor there, fifty-fifty, iffy.

But then Dickinson makes an imaginative leap and now the hair's difference between yes or no is one the beloved is swinging on, as if glibly testing it. 

Then—seesawing—coolly—on it—
Trying if it split—

The thought of the beloved seesawing “coolly” on her decision, back and forth, is coolly devastating. We can guess just what is so painful about this suspense for the author. The poet is a “soul at white heat,” but the beloved is cool, indifferent. And not only that, by swinging so carelessly on the decision almost seems to be want the hair to split. If the hair breaks, it is the poet, not the beloved, who drops into oblivion.

Dickinson has written about the agony of suspense before, most notably in Fr755, which makes a similar claim, "Suspense is-hostiler-than-death." Here, she makes the word suspense come to life by imagining the beloved suspended in the air, holding onto a hair between her decision of yes or no.

Hair is such a personal physical connection to the beloved.  

The last word of the poem, the violent "split," is confusing at first. We think of the phrase splitting hairs here, in the sense of a vertical splitting of a hair, as in making small and unnecessary decisions, and maybe Dickinson is playing with that idea as well, how we argue our points until we are lost, but here she is talking about the hair splitting horizontally, as if the future is in the balance, just holding on by a thread.

In the first part of this poem we are privy to Dickinson’s brave love, as one who would take on any threat to her life, happily, for the beloved, and then, in the last section of the poem, there is a turn-around, and Dickinson shows us what it means when all of that devotion and bravery is undermined by an indecisive partner.

I would be willing to die for you, the poet says, and you can’t even bother to let me know if that’s good enough for you?

Well, ours may not be the voice Dickinson was hoping to hear from when she wrote this poem, but still, as its belated recipients we can answer that her love was not just good enough, it's still the latest Glowing.

I still think that reading works, but Preest's take is compelling too. He writes, "Indeed to be deprived of a friend by the specific danger of distant battle or by death is sheer ‘Bounty’ compared to the calamity of the vagueness of the suspense over life after death (lines 9-12). For the chances of immortality or annihilation are so evenly balanced that only a hair separates them, and we seesaw in suspense between them, trying to split the hair so as to come firmly down on one side or the other (lines 13-16)."

Preest's take is that Dickinson is talking about the suspense of whether there is an afterlife or not. I would add to this, piggybacking off of Preest, the idea that the suspense is of qualifying for the afterlife. The swinging back and forth suddenly takes on immense precariousness. In your hands you hold your own redemption, and you are glibly swinging around and risking the possibility of heaven? 

As of this writing all three readings seem possible. What do you think?

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

 Danny Phillips. Sept. 2025.

P.S. All the reproductions of this poem I could find online have the word “stalking” instead of “staking.” I assume one bad transcription of the poem has led to all of those others. I was sure “stalking” must be wrong and so I looked it up in Christanne Miller’s “Poems as She Preserved Them,” and sure enough, the correct word is “staking." Hopefully this blog will serve as a corrective.