Autumn — overlooked my Knitting —

Autumn — overlooked my Knitting —
Dyes — said He — have I —
Could disparage a Flamingo —
Show Me them — said I —

Cochineal — I chose — for deeming
It resemble Thee —
And the little Border — Dusker —
For resembling Me —


      FR786, J748, Fascicle 37, 1863

Let’s "overlook" that opening line:

Autumn — overlooked my Knitting —

The word "overlooked” is misleading here, because it has the connotation of "looking past” or "ignoring," but in the context of the rest of the poem, it merely means “looked over.”

Autumn, in poetry parlance, is the season of reflection, both a remembrance of the youth of summer, and a preparation for the winter of old age and death. It is also the time of harvest.

Another parallel with Autumn is Dusk, a word which appears in the second stanza of this poem. Dusk is to Night as Autumn is to Winter and as Old Age is to Death.

“Knitting,” in the context of this poem, is self-referential. It is one way to speak of the writing of poems. I’m sure there have been some terrific essays written on Dickinson’s use of this analogy. (You can see this motif on display in one of her earliest poems, which parallels this one in more ways than one, F21.)

So, we might say that, figuratively, old age is looking over the poet’s shoulder as she writes her poem. He offers her a better, richer color palette:

Dyes — said He — have I —
Could disparage a Flamingo —

There is word play in “Dyes” here, a homonym with "Dies." This is apropos, since this poem, at heart, is about the acceptance of the richness and beauty of death.

Autumn’s Dyes would disparage a flamingo. A flamingo carries the color of pink, of spring, of newness. It's a tropical, exotic bird. The word flamingo carries the word "flame" in it too. It reminds us of the heat of summer. Pink is the color of newborns, and of little girls.

 

Autumn’s Dyes "disparage" all of this. According to the Dickinson Lexicon, disparage means to “dishonor by a comparison of greater value.”

Flamingo pink is hot, says august Autumn, but I’ve got something even better than that.

Show Me them — said I

The Poet looks into the face of death and bravely demands to see these dyes. “Show Me them.” She chooses one.

Cochineal — I chose — for deeming
It resemble Thee —

Autumn shows the poet colors of a richer, deeper hue and the poet chooses, from among them, Cochineal. If spring’s pink is red with a dab of white, Autumn's cochineal is red with a dab of black.

Cochineal is notable, also, for being almost the exact color of blood.

Cochineal bugs are used to make carmine dye. Billions

are thoughtlessly killed every year to color everything 

from Nerds candy to rouge and lipstick. (Natural Dye #4)

The poet says she chooses this color because it resembles “Thee,” her beloved. Perhaps it reminds the poet of "Thee" because cochineal is the blood-red color of the heart, of life. There is also a flowering cactus called a Cochineal. Could it be that Dickinson was making a pointed joke about the prickly nature of this love?

cochineal cactus

Then for the coup de grâce we get these final lines:

And the little Border — Dusker —
For resembling Me —

Just by adding that word "Dusker" here Dickinson conjures up a sunset to accompany the deepening red of this poem. 

What is Dickinson knitting here? A scarf? A blanket? Surely it is something to keep her beloved warm, and perhaps even to cover them both.

I always read myself (and, by extension, all readers) into the role of “Thee” in Dickinson’s poems. She is knitting this poem for us, too, to keep us warm in the chilly depths of winter.

She has woven herself into the “border” of this blanket. The blood-red color of “Thee” takes up the bulk of this blanket. The poet is just visible at the blanket's edge. What color is dusker than cochineal? What color is a little closer to the darkness of midnight black? A deep maroon perhaps? It might look something like this.

The blanket your cool goth grandma might knit for you

Perhaps this poem was given to Sue with an accompanying blooming cochineal cactus plant? Dickinson often gave poems with flowers. Or maybe it was given as a note with an actual blanket she knitted herself?

Now this blanket poem, like a precious heirloom, is passed along to Thee, the reader. May it keep you warm when the temperature drops.



       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

It dropped so low — in my Regard —

It dropped so low — in my Regard —
I heard it hit the Ground —
And go to pieces on the Stones
At bottom of my Mind —

Yet blamed the Fate that flung it — less
Than I denounced Myself,
For entertaining Plated Wares
Upon My Silver Shelf —


          -FR785, J747, fascicle 37, 1863

Some Dickinson poems function as generic parables. In this one you can plug X in for “It.” X is anything that you once fell for, but has now fallen.

You could try, as many have, to apply the situation to Dickinson’s life. You could plug in for X some friend or lover who has fallen in Emily’s esteem. Or perhaps “publication” could be plugged in here, since there is another poem in this same fascicle which begins “Publication is the auction of the mind of man.”  But really it would all be guesswork. The poem could be applied to any disillusionment

How does it land for you? That is the important question I think.

There was a guy back in HS who I thought was the coolest guy ever. How amazing, I thought back then, that this guy doesn’t care what others think of him. He was the quarterback of the football team, handsome, well-dressed and wealthy. He had a sexy indifference that I deeply envied. But all of that surface show turned out to be like the silver plating over a base metal. Many years later this friend imploded in a spectacular way and the baseness was revealed on the craggy rocks of reality. It turns out, in retrospect, that my social anxieties were less a defect, and more a sign of a desire to connect with others. It was my own self-doubt that turned out to be a foundation for building a Shelf. (My own Shelf is made of recycled wood, but we can't all be Emily Dickinson.) 

The parable of this poem may be compared to another from the bible, the one about not building your house on sand, from Matthew 7. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

There is a parallel between the two parables even in that rock the house is built on. In Dickinson’s poem she hears, in her fertile imagination, this once esteemed thing hit the ground “And go to pieces on the Stones/ At bottom of my Mind —”

The bottom of Dickinson’s mind turns out to be as solid as the rocks in Jesus’ parable. But here we have an added element. If the bottom of her mind is like rock, the top is a silver shelf. What a wonderful rhyme with  "myself." She takes the parable to the next level. Make the thing where you keep your valuables the more valuable thing. The invaluable things will fall on their own accord, when... “the rains come down, the streams rise, and the winds blow and beat against that house,” but the silver shelf built in that house upon the solid rock will be inviolate.

For me, the idea of this poem being about publishing, and Dickinson's own poetry, makes some sense. I find the clue for this in that word “entertaining.” Dickinson is not here to entertain us with easy poetry, she’s here for those more rare and durable metals that belong on her shelf.

It’s fascinating to me that, in light of Dickinson’s aversion to publishing, in poems such as this one she seems to be writing for the general public. A parable, by its generic nature, has a public purpose, and yet what was Dickinson’s plan for making these poems available to this general readership? Did she expect that the same fates that threw the plated wares to the ground (according to this poem) would assist in leaving her finely wrought Silver Shelf for future generations? And doesn't it appear as if the fates have done their part? Here we are now, reading the poem, her letter to the word, that is sitting still upon her silver shelf.

-

Notes: 

1. I think it is meaningful that this poem and the one proceeding it in the fascicle both begin with something being dropped. If you read the poems in order, you can hardly help notice this. She drops this word "drop" here as if it were a hint. In the previous one, FR784, Dickinson wants to drop her burden of responsibility for a quick fix, and in this one what drops is something false. There is a progression between these two poems then. The desire for the quick fix in the previous poem is, in this poem, perhaps, the false thing that is dropped. In other words, in the previous poem, she wants to drop the burden, but in this poem Dickinson decides to drop her desire instead. 

2. There's a guy on YouTube that breaks down some Dickinson poems. He can get pretty histrionic when he gets worked up about the poems which I appreciate. There's a moment in his breakdown of this poem where he gets so worked up he throws his head back for a moment and then brings it forward and says  Wawawooey. It's around 7:45 mark in this video. I just thought I'd share this great hidden moment with the greater Prowling Bee community. 

I sometimes drop it, for a Quick –

I sometimes drop it, for a Quick –
The Thought to be alive –
Anonymous Delight to know –
And Madder – to conceive –

Consoles a Wo so monstrous
That did it tear all Day,
Without an instant’s Respite –
‘Twould look too far – to Die –

Delirium – diverts the Wretch
For Whom the Scaffold neighs –
The Hammock’s motion lulls the Heads
So close on Paradise –

A Reef – crawled easy from the Sea
Eats off the Brittle Line –
The Sailor doesn't know the Stroke –
Until He’s past the Pain –


    -FR784, J708, fascicle 37, 1863


This one gets me immediately with that first line. What is being dropped? Woe itself, assuredly. Though it could also be a goal. I dropped the drudgery of my goal for a Quick (blank.) Quick could be a noun, in which case it means “Life’ or it could be an adjective without a referent. In other words, something gets dropped before the sentence even comes to an end. It gets dropped quickly!

What else could you say is being dropped? The Martyrdom? The Renunciation? (This idea comes from the poem about renunciation preceding this one in the fascicle.)

The “it” being dropped in that first line stands for something difficult, something painful.

Drop it for a "Quick." A quick what, Emily? A quick fix? A quickie? A quick thought of being alive. It’s almost like she’s talking quickly out loud here, jumping ahead of her own thoughts, the way she elides the object of the sentence and picks it up in the next line. You can imagine it as spoken dialogue. If this were dialogue then the dashes might function as little questions in the pattern of speech: “I sometimes drop it, for a Quick (a quick what?) The Thought to be alive (why?) Anonymous Delight to know (but) and madder to conceive (What even is life? It seems crazy.)"

Each line is so redolent with meaning. But the basic gist is, you feel like dropping something difficult and painful for some quick fix, some easy way out.

Just have a quick little fix of whatever drug you need. Whatever diversion. What is your drug of choice?  Emily uses...

The Thought to be alive -

This line stands on its own, as a complete thought. You really can’t ever get past it completely. The thought to be alive. To be alive is the “quick,” if we take the definition of quick as a noun. Life.

I mean, really stop and think about that line. It's heady. 

Now feel that line in counterweight to what it is that is dropped: Woe. Whoa.

Anonymous Delight to know–

That word anonymous there is so packed. Why is Delight anonymous? Think of it as opposed to Woe. If delight is anonymous, then Woe is personal. If anonymous Delight is heady, then Woe is hearty.

Why is Delight anonymous? Because delight doesn’t care. When I am in a state of pure delight I am disconnected from the suffering of my fellow beings. I’m anonymous. It's wonderful in its way. And perhaps even necessary from time to time. But it's ultimately empty. It’s only in relation with other that we become Somebody. But in relation comes, by necessity, Woe.

What is the Delight? There are probably as many forms as there are types of people. But in this case, it is the mere thought of being alive. Being alive is an experience being translated into feeling, and then into thought, and then, perhaps, into words on a page.  

And Madder – to conceive –

Look at this line in isolation. It’s mad to conceive. What does it mean to conceive? Conceive may refer to "Thought," as in the line before it, but it also has the sense of "Birth." (It's strange that birth and thought share the same word, no? That thought itself is a strange conception!) The two senses of the word "Conception" seem to come together here. Dickinson ties the two ideas, of thought and life, into this one word.

And Madder – to conceive –  There is something a little mad about this line. It’s almost Shakespearean the way it turns in on itself. The thought of what life really is will drive you mad. Why? It makes you really question why.

The madness also points AWAY from the sanity, because sanity seems to be found in the woe. Woe is found in our connection with others.

(I was having a conversation with students today over the way people bond through complaining. I was reminded of this poem, and an earlier one in this fascicle, FR780, which is about two women who are wed through the bond of their grief.)

 Now we are now set up for the second stanza. This quick diversion consoles...

Consoles a Wo so monstrous
That did it tear all Day,
Without an instant’s Respite –
‘Twould look too far – to Die –

To have anonymous delight in being alive consoles us. We need it. Because the monstrous woe, which would be the loss of the beloved, can be so great that without an “Instant’s respite” we would want to kill ourselves, because “‘Twould look too far to die.”

I like that word “Instant” in there. Instantaneous gratification. As opposed to the work of woe, which is part of the drudgery, part of thing you wish to drop.

Delirium – diverts the Wretch
For Whom the Scaffold neighs –
The Hammock’s motion lulls the Heads
So close on Paradise –

Delirium is that mad happiness, that drug high, that gives some instant respite to the wretch "For Whom the Scaffold neighs–" I hear the line “For whom the bell tolls,” by John Donne here. (I would guess Emily was familiar with that poem.)

But for whom the scaffold neighs is…nightmarish. The scaffold, which is murdering the self for…being a murderer! sounds like a horse neighing, a horse rearing before galloping to hell. It creates a disturbing and surreal image. Neigh also sounds like Nay. The scaffold nays.

But remember, in this poem the neighing scaffold appears to be a punishment the poet wishes to willingly face! It’s akin to the cross. The mad delirious fun is a diversion from what really matters, which is the damned who are dying in distress.

The Hammock’s motion lulls the Heads
So close on Paradise –

The Quick fix is like the hammock’s motion lulling the Heads. It’s hard to know what those hammocks are doing there at first read, but the association is with boats. This is a sailor lying in the hammock. The waves are rocking him to sleep. The motion lulls. If the sailor was not lulled to sleep, he would be able to navigate the shoals and get to land. He let himself be lulled (drugged) to his own demise, and that of his crew.

The poem flips here I think. The first half of the poem seems to say, you need a diversion now and then to keep from killing yourself. The final stanza though, says to get back on watch! Don’t let your fellows be sacrificed on the gallows. Don’t let the ship be wrecked.

A Reef – crawled easy from the Sea

Eats off the Brittle Line –

At first I thought the first line meant that a sailor or someone to save the sailor is crawling up onto the reef. And the brittle line was a rope that was being eaten by the coral. 

But upon further reading I’m inclined to think that the Reef is personified as something that so easily can crawl up and cause us to wreck. Perhaps a fling?  Is it an affair we are “dropping” our burden for? It is some kind of addiction. That's the the reef that crawls so easily from the sea.

“Eats off the brittle line” is, itself, a brittle line. The brittle line in the context of this poem, as I read it, is the line reaching of safety being offered from the shore, but also the line between life and death. The coral gnaws through this fragile life-line, and the sailor dies in the wreck, which, of course, could have been avoided if he kept on his watch.

 The Sailor doesn't know the Stroke –
Until He’s past the Pain –

The sailor doesn’t know the stroke (of death) until he’s past the pain. I imagine him drunk, happily swaying in his cot as the ship hits the coral, dreaming of the pleasures of the South Seas. He relaxed his guard and now the whole crew is lost. 

Heavy.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Guillou’s Adieu! (1892)

Waterhouse's Miranda (1916)

Demont-Breton's Stella Maris (1894)

Check out the terrific blog post on paintings

 of shipwrecks from which I found these images. 

Never for Society

Never for Society
He shall seek in vain—
Who His own acquaintance
Cultivate—Of Men

Wiser Men may weary—
But the Man within
Never knew Satiety—
Better entertain

Than could Border Ballad—
Or Biscayan Hymn—
Neither introduction
Need You—unto Him—


      -FR783, J746, Fascicle 37, 1863


The syntax on this one is a little tricky, but once unraveled it is pretty straightforward. Here's a prose translation for the lines below, as I understand them.

Never for Society
He shall seek in vain—

One (who is wise) shall never vainly seek for the society of others.

Who His own acquaintance
Cultivate—Of Men
Wiser Men may weary—
But the Man within

Never knew Satiety—

If you are wise and cultivate an acquaintance with the One in yourself, then you may grow weary of others, but the One within to whom you acquaint yourself, you will never become satiated with his/her company.

Better entertain
Than could Border Ballad—
Or Biscayan Hymn—

The One inside that you become friends with will entertain you better than any Scottish border ballad or Biscayan (Basque) hymn.

Neither introduction
Need You—unto Him—

Unlike the people in society, you need no introduction to this Friend inside of you.

 
Of course, understanding this poem syntactically and understanding this poem internally are two different things.

It’s hard to know for sure who this “Man” inside is meant to be. It could possibly be Christ, with that capital M “Man” and capital H “His.” It could also be read as higher/deeper Self, with that adjectival indicator “own” in the line “He shall never seek in vain/ Who His own acquaintance/ Cultivate.” 

This poem goes some way toward explaining Emily Dickinson’s increasingly reclusive nature. She was vastly entertained by her own ballads, and by her own hymn-like poems. Even the most compelling external distractions cannot rival the richness of self-discovery.

This is a model for the reader. A majority of the poems written before this one in Dickinson’s oeuvre exhibit a painful yearning for a Beloved. In this one the Beloved has been internalized as Self.

It is instructive to pair this poem with a very similar one from earlier in this fascicle, FR773, which begins, "Conscious am I in my Chamber –/Of a shapeless friend –"

Compare, for instance, these lines from the earlier poem,

Weariness of Him, were quainter
Than Monotony
Knew a Particle – of Space’s
Vast Society –

To the lines from this one,

Of Men
Wiser Men may weary—
But the Man within

Never knew Satiety—

Read together you get a a growing sense of this "shapeless Friend" within. In this poem you get the added idea that this Friend is...entertaining! To find this entertaining Self within is a challenge worth taking up. 

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Write your own Border Ballads and Biscayan Hymns!

Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue—

Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue—
The letting go
A Presence—for an Expectation—
Not now—
The putting out of Eyes—
Just Sunrise—
Lest Day—
Day’s Great Progenitor—
Outvie
Renunciation—is the Choosing
Against itself—
Itself to justify
Unto itself—
When larger function—
Make that appear—
Smaller—that Covered Vision—Here—


      -F782, J745, Fascicle 37, 1863


This is what David Preest refers to as “a definition poem of an abstract idea.” There are two more of them in this fascicle, FR775, "Suspense—is Hostiler than Death—" and FR781, the poem before this one in the fascicle, "Remorse—is Memory Awake—"  Together, they comprise a kind of series.

This one is difficult and esoteric, but its truth is a correspondingly deep one. 

Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue—
The letting go
A Presence—for an Expectation—

If you let go of your expectations, you are left with Presence. I find this axiom to be very meaningful. It reminds me of William Blake’s poem “Eternity”:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s Sunrise

The adjective “piercing” here is rich. Piercing implies pain. Renunciation hurts. But piercing also implies depth. Piercing is an adjective and verb at once, and it sums up the paradox of the poem; in the piercing pain can be found the piercing Presence. (Compare this with the previous poem about "Remorse" in the fascicle, which may be summed up, "when you burn you learn.")

"The letting go" is an echo from one of Dickinson's most famous lines, from FR372, "First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—" 

You see this line anew. It's not a letting go. It's THE letting go. 

I love that two word stand-alone line following this opening:

“Not now—”

Forget your expectation of immediate gratification, sir! Not now!

The putting out of Eyes—
Just Sunrise—

These lines are a puzzle. On a surface level, you could say that the putting out of eyes, the putting to sleep of eyes, leads to Sunrise the next morning. But I think, in the context of the rest of the poem, they mean something like; the shutting of the eyes to desire leads us to the opening of a greater vision, the Sunrise. 

Lest Day—
Day’s Great Progenitor—
Outvie

Here, I think, Day represents the self, and the Great Progenitor is equivalent to Presence and Sunrise. If we close our eyes to the day, then that day does not attempt to “outvie” (compete) against the Source of that day. We close our eyes to our desires, and we come into Presence with the Source of the desire itself.

Renunciation—is the Choosing
Against itself—
Itself to justify
Unto itself—

What?! This is difficult to untangle because we don’t quite know what the “it” refers to here. It seems at first that “it” refers back to renunciation, but that doesn’t quite gel. Put into prose it would be; renunciation is the choosing against renunciation to justify renunciation unto renunciation? That’s doesn’t make sense to me. But if “it” refers to the object of desire, then I think we are getting somewhere. Renunciation is the choosing against the desired object, justifying the desired object unto itself. In “letting go” you are also “letting be.” The object of desire is free to be. You have "justified" it. 

When larger function—
Make that appear—
Smaller—that Covered Vision—Here—

Larger function = the Presence, the Great Progenitor, the Sunrise. (Notice Dickinson’s avoidance of the fraught word "God" here, even though she dances all around it.) When the shutting of the eyes allows that larger function, then that larger function makes the renounced object of desire appear smaller, and, then, paradoxically, that covered vision appears... “—Here—”

"Here" is set off between dashes, full of portent and Presence.

Here!

I find this poem especially poignant during this season of Lent.


     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Buddha's 7th Great Deed: Renunciation

Notes: 

1. It would be remiss not to talk about the form of this poem, with its wildly fluctuating meter, and its heavy use of dimeter. The only poem that seems in line with this one so far in the first 782 poems of Dickinson's oeuvre is the one a few poems back in this fascicle, FR778. This one feels wholly experimental to me, but I’d love to know if there is an antecedent for it. Perhaps it is worth noting that the poem starts out with iambic pentameter and ends with trochaic pentameter, but all the lines between are seemingly random. Still though, the rhythm and rhyme have a satisfying flow and finish. It's disjointed, but feels right. Perhaps this is in line with Renunciation itself.

2. I recently learned that Dickinson’s library contained a volume of William Blake. I’ve always wondered about that, since there are so many similarities between the two poets. Not only is the Sunrise in this poem reminiscent of Blake's Eternal Sunrise, but I can feel Blake's epigrammatic concision in, "The putting out of eyes/ Just Sunrise." It just occurred to me that Blake, himself, may have been alluding to Alexander Pope’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

Remorse — is Memory — awake —

Remorse — is Memory — awake —
Her Parties all astir —
A Presence of Departed Acts —
At window — and at Door —

Its Past — set down before the Soul
And lighted with a Match —
Perusal — to facilitate —
And help Belief to stretch —

Remorse is cureless — the Disease
Not even God — can heal —
For 'tis His institution — and
The Adequate of Hell —

        -FR781, J744, Fascicle 37, 1863


This might have been written by Lady Macbeth just before she killed herself, burning with remorse for her part in killing King Duncan. It’s that dark.

Remorse — is Memory — awake —
Her Parties all astir —

Who are these Parties? Parties to what? Parties to some terrible act?  “Parties” here is short for “Participants” so it seems to imply that the fault was shared. Or maybe the memories themselves are being personified as Parties, and these memories are all astir. The mind is being stirred up, going crazy.

A Presence of Departed Acts —
At window — and at Door —

The idea of a presence of an absence, and, conversely, an absence of a presence, is one I’ve seen before in Dickinson, though I can’t quite recall where. The word departed leads one to wonder if perhaps the remorse here is because some beloved has departed over a disagreement, or a slight. And in that "Door," the one through which the lover “departed,” there is now a stoppage. It’s like the one who was left behind is now trapped in the house and cannot, themselves, leave.

Note that the word “Acts” here could be read as both a noun and a verb. The idea of the Presence of the Departed acting at the door and window has a ghostly quality to it.

Its Past — set down before the Soul
And lighted with a Match —
Perusal — to facilitate —
And help Belief to stretch —

The Match, first and foremost, is helping (facilitating) the remorseful in going over (perusing) the fault. But there is more than just light coming from the Match, there is also heat. That Match may be helping us to “read” the cause of our sin, but it is also starting a fire. There is a burning quality to remorse. And this becomes reified with the mention of Hell in the following stanza. Remorse is the spark that starts the fire of Hell in which we burn. In that burning we can "see." 

Also, there is another possible connotation to Match. If we are going with the remorse here being over the departure of a loved one, then the Match also alludes to what was lost, the Match between two souls.

What does it mean that this remorse “helps belief to stretch?” Does that mean it “stretches belief?” In other words, that it makes it hard to believe? Or does it mean that it helps us believe, it helps us stretch toward belief. So tricky with her syntax that Emily D!

The next stanza does not help resolve this conundrum.

Remorse is cureless—the Disease
Not even God—can heal—

Christian “Belief” would point to a cure, which would be forgiveness of sins through Christ’s sacrifice. But Dickinson isn’t accepting that. “Not even God—can heal—” It’s also tricky what Dickinson does with syntax here. It seems at first like she is saying God is impotent in the face of remorse, but the next line puts a twist on it:

For 'tis His institution — and
The Adequate of Hell —

God can’t heal, because remorse is from God. I think this is pointing to the idea that we must live with remorse, with our sins, because that’s how we can learn from them. If we were merely forgiven, how then would remorse work on us? It is hell, and therefore it is adequate for the situation. We need to burn to learn.

Like Shakespeare does with his treatment of Macbeth, Dickinson doesn’t let herself, or us, off the hook with easy Grace. Rather, she is saying, we should face the hell we create.



        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Ugolino by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

Notes

1. David Preest points out, “This is a definition poem of an abstract idea, like poems FR775 and FR782. Indeed all three poems come from the same fascicle, and their opening lines are syntactically similar.” This is a great insight. The other two poems begin, “Suspense is hostiler than death” and the one directly following this one in the fascicle, “Renunciation is a piercing virtue.” Preest also points out that Remorse, like the continual resurgences of Suspense in the earlier poem, will never end.

2.  Dickinson provides “Complement” as an alternative word for “Adequate.” Remorse is the complement of hell. She also provides, “Of its condensed despatch” as an alternative for “And help Belief to stretch.” Remorse as a condensed dispatch from God is quite a thought!

3. I like what writer Jamison Dove has to say, 

"The second stanza is a beautiful act of self-examination. “Its Past—set down before the Soul / And lighted with a Match—” is powerful reverb, or we could say an echo of how our “Soul” can transmute the “Past” into a more useful form. Implied by Dickinson is the process of self-examination leading to our growth of a better self. The “Match” acting as a spark towards “Belief” in a better self.

“His institution” is a marker of our folly, which reminds me of the lines from Homer’s Odyssey:

This is absurd,
that mortals blame the gods! They say we cause
their suffering, but they themselves increase it
by folly.

-Book 1, Lines 32-35, Emily Wilson translation

The Birds reported from the South —

The Birds reported from the South —
A News express to Me —
A spicy Charge, My little Posts —
But I am deaf — Today —

The Flowers — appealed — a timid Throng —
I reinforced the Door —
Go blossom for the Bees — I said —
And trouble Me — no More —

The Summer Grace, for Notice strove —
Remote — Her best Array —
The Heart — to stimulate the Eye
Refused too utterly —

At length, a Mourner, like Myself,
She drew away austere —
Her frosts to ponder — then it was
I recollected Her —

She suffered Me, for I had mourned —
I offered Her no word —
My Witness — was the Crape I bore —
Her — Witness — was Her Dead —

Thenceforward — We — together dwelt —
I never questioned Her —
Our Contract
A Wiser Sympathy


     -FR780, J743, Fascicle 37, 1863

This poem gets at the idea that when one is grieving, beauty is not always welcome, but sympathy is. 

Let's take it stanza by stanza.

The Birds reported from the South —
A News express to Me —
A spicy Charge, My little Posts —
But I am deaf — Today —

On the surface meaning of this poem, these birds are heading north for the summer, and the reports are the songs they bring. But the idea of something being “reported from the South,” a “News express,” suggests to me the Civil War. And the “spicy Charge” as well as the"report from the South" makes me think of the charge and report from a gun. Even “Posts,” perhaps, carries a hint of the posting of soldiers. The “I am deaf” at the end could be from refusing to hear, but it could also be from the report of guns!

I think it is possible that the woman dealing with “her dead” late in the poem is meant to be a mother or wife who had lost someone in the Civil War, which was raging when this poem was written. One of Emily and her brother Austin’s good friends, Frazer Stearns, had been killed in March of 1862. My guess is that Dickinson wrote this in the summer of 1862, as she was grieving for Frazer.

The Flowers — appealed — a timid Throng —
I reinforced the Door —
Go blossom for the Bees — I said —
And trouble Me — no More —

This stanza seems to me to be about the rejection of romance. I’m reading these lines as saying that suitors appealed to the author, timid as they were, but that she firmly shuts the door to them. Go blossom for someone else! Don’t bother me. The idea of shutting the door to love interests, and then reinforcing it (!) seems to be the impetus of this stanza. It's hard not to think of Dickinson's increasingly reclusive nature when you read those lines.

The Summer Grace, for Notice strove —
Remote — Her best Array —
The Heart — to stimulate the Eye
Refused too utterly —

The pain felt in the “Heart” will not let the eye enjoy beauty, or the flourishing of “Summer Grace.” The dearth of winter would be a more appropriate setting. That word “Grace” here is loaded and you can see why in the poem just previous to this one in the fascicle, “The Grace—Myself—might not obtain—” That line can be read as Dickinson refusing Grace, which is a motif we see in much of Dickinson’s poetry. But, paradoxically, by refusing Grace, Dickinson is able to confer it, through empathy, to the mourning woman. 

At length, a Mourner, like Myself,
She drew away austere —
Her frosts to ponder — then it was
I recollected Her —

In the fascicle, Dickinson provides an alternative to “I recollected Her,” which reads, “I rose to comfort Her.” I like this alternative, as it gives reason for the the fellow mourner to “suffer” the author. There is something touching about Dickinson reaching out to comfort the mourner. Why she goes with “recollected” instead, I’m not sure. Maybe because recollecting is a kind of remembering. It’s almost as if Dickinson is remembering herself. It’s a truer sympathy. To comfort someone has just a hint of condescension, but to "recollect" has none.

She suffered Me, for I had mourned —
I offered Her no word —
My Witness — was the Crape I bore —
Her — Witness — was Her Dead —

"I offered her no word —"  Wise advice. When someone is grieving, listening goes much further than any words could.

Crape is a black fabric often used for mourning dresses. An alternative to “Crape” provided by Dickinson in the fascicle is “Black.” I like that you can read this line as saying that the witnessing itself is the sign of mourning. My Witness — was the Black I bore —  Just witnessing someone else's pain, bearing witness, is meaningful. 

I think of Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, here. When asked why he wore black, Cash said he did it "on behalf of the poor and hungry, the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, and those who have been betrayed by age or drugs. With the Vietnam War as painful in my mind as it was in most other Americans, I wore it 'in mourning' for the lives that could have been' ... Apart from the Vietnam War being over, I don't see much reason to change my position ... The old are still neglected, the poor are still poor, the young are still dying before their time, and we're not making many moves to make things right. There's still plenty of darkness to carry off.” Dickinson was sensitive in this poem to the horrors of the Civil War just as Cash was to the Vietnam War.

Ironically, Dickinson, a few years after this poem was written, began to dress only in white, so that now she is as famous for wearing white as Cash became for wearing black. Make of that what you will.

Thenceforward — We — together dwelt —
I never questioned Her —
Our Contract
A Wiser Sympathy

The idea that somehow “thenceforward" these two women dwelt together is powerful. There is a kind of marriage that happen here, complete with a “Contract.” The contract is a sympathy, sadder, perhaps, but wiser. Still, that dwelling together itself is a “bond,” and in that bond is a kind of transcending love that lifts this poem into a place of healing.

The “I never questioned Her” line is also worth noting. There is something private about grief. Adults sharing parallel but private grief reminds me of way toddlers share parallel but private play, only it’s the other end of the spectrum.

I take from this that it is best to show the sign of our grief, without talking about it, or asking another to discuss theirs. It’s ironic because Dickinson scholars spend so much time “questioning” the particulars of Dickinson’s life. There is so much grief in her poems. Perhaps the “Crape," or "witness” the poems bear is enough. No need to know the particulars. Dickinson’s poems understand our pain, and that is a large part of why so many of us “suffer them,” and, indeed, why we love them. “Thenceforward — We — together dwelt —”

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Victorian crape mourning dress

The Grace—Myself—might not obtain—

The Grace—Myself—might not obtain—
Confer upon My flower—
Refracted but a Countenance—
For I—inhabit Her—


     - FR779, J707, Fascicle 37, 1863


This poem is a good example of a phenomenon familiar to readers of Dickinson: meaning is unfurled line by line in a way that keeps syntactically shifting. We must first grapple with the intricate process of reading the poem before we can truly understand it.

The first line of this poem, for instance, says something very different the first time you read it than it does the last time you read it.

The Grace—Myself—might not obtain—

If that were a fragment, if you read it as a discrete unit by itself, closed off with that ending dash, it would mean something like, “I might not ever obtain grace.“

You could ALSO read it as, “Grace may not ever obtain me,” which is a very Dickinsonian twist.

And while both of those readings fit the deeper meaning of the poem, the final sense of this line changes again dramatically as we come to understand it is meant with the reader as the object: “You might not obtain my grace, in person, but you can find me reflected in the flower I'm sending you.”

All of these meanings work together to form an overall argument, one that is about transcending our limited ideas of Grace. That flower is where the “I” resides, not “Grace,” which is too often defined as something like, God's special favor. (“There but for the grace of God go I” has always struck me as an arrogant and odious thing to say.)

It reminds me of the Buddha’s great lesson to his acolytes. The story goes that instead of speaking any words, he merely held up a flower. There's your Grace. Look no further. 

Likely this poem was sent to its original recipient with an actual flower. There is a whole subcategory of poems by Dickinson that would have originally been sent to the receiver with a flower. Many of these poems describe the flower itself. If anyone out there has time on their hands, a collection of these poems would make a great book, to be sold in florists shops everywhere.

This poem is aligned with the great transcendentalists that Dickinson was surrounded by, Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau, to name a few, all of whom were equally apt to see themselves in flowers. Keats, a big influence on Dickinson, had this propensity too. “Here lies one whose name was writ on water” reads the epitaph on his gravestone.

While the reader today has neither Dickinson in the flesh, nor the original flower, we do have the poem, which we can see as a kind of flower made of words. Poetry is, essentially, the flowering of the poet's mind into beautiful language and, like a flower, pressed and preserved between the leaves of a book.

We see Dickinson’s countenance refracted in the poem, which is where we can still find Her Grace. And, really, she is telling us, we can find Her in any flower, just like Whitman tells us to look for him in the grass.

There is also something of the exchange of lovers in this poem. The flower is "possessed" by its giver, who calls it "My" flower, but then, after it is given, the giver inhabits the flower. Who possesses whom? Who belongs to whom? It is in the gift that the possessor becomes one with the possessed.  

        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Pansies by Joe Brainard

 

Four Trees — upon a solitary Acre —

Four Trees — upon a solitary Acre —
Without Design
Or Order, or Apparent Action —
Maintain —

The Sun — upon a Morning meets them —
The Wind —
No nearer Neighbor—have they —
But God —

The Acre gives them — Place —
They — Him — Attention of Passer by —
Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply —
Or Boy —

What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature —
What Plan
They severally — retard — or further —
Unknown —

      -FR778, J742, Fascicle 37, 1863

Four Trees — upon a solitary Acre —

This image gets in your head immediately. Can’t you just imagine those four trees foregrounded on that solitary acre? The specificity of the number leads you to believe these trees were literal trees, rather than being a mere metaphor. It’s hard to know with Dickinson though. Perhaps there is a symbolic significance to the number four? For instance, there were four people living in Dickinson’s house when this poem was was written, after all, her sister and her parents. But, I like to imagine that Dickinson is musing here on four actual trees on an actual acre:

Without Design
Or Order, or Apparent Action —
Maintain —

Dickinson continues the meditation on “chance” that she explored in the previous poem, FR777, with the lines, “Life, and Death…Maintain—by Accident/ that they proclaim—”

You can see in both poems the word “Maintain” and in both cases the idea is connected to chance. In the former poem it is “ — by accident” that Life maintains and in this latter one it’s “Without Design/ Or Order, or Apparent Action —”  

Two years before Dickinson wrote this poem, Darwin’s seminal book, “On The Origin of Species,” was published. It’s possible that Dickinson, being part of a highly intellectual society of Amherst, would have read this book, but even if she hadn’t she would at least heard about the ideas which were sweeping through her circles. To look at nature "maintaining" by chance instead of "design" is part of the controversy surrounding Darwinism, and I think that is what Dickinson is thinking about here. To say that these trees are here “Without Design” is to see the world as random. This would seem to preclude a creator. And yet, surprisingly, it is not a Godless world presented in this poem. God, which appears here as the sun and wind, is a neighbor.

The Sun — upon a Morning meets them —
The Wind —
No nearer Neighbor—have they —
But God —

These trees may be random, but they still take sustenance from the elements, are part of an eco-system.

The idea of God as a neighboring wind hearkens back to the “shapeless friend” that visits the poet in FR773.

This relationship between the trees and the elements is followed up with the way the trees and the acre give each other a raison d’etre:

The Acre gives them — Place —
They — Him — Attention of Passer by —
Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply —
Or Boy —

That “Him” could refer back to God, if you read the two stanzas as connected, like this, “But God — // the acre gives them,” or the “Him” could refer to the Acre. Either reading carries a radical idea. God gives the trees place, and they, in turn, give Him place. Or, if "Him" refers to the Acre, then the Acre gives the trees a place, and the trees give the Acre, in turn, the attention of Passer by. In both readings you get the sense that without the trees, there is nothing, no God and no Place. The beings, the life, make the place. The life gives place to the Acre because it is life that draws the “Attention of Passer by —/ Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply —/ Or Boy —”

The Passer by, squirrel, and boy, are easy enough to reckon, because they are all attracted to the trees for various reasons. But how about the surprise of “Shadow” there? What does it mean to get the attention of a shadow? A shadow is in opposition to the sun, so what might it mean, metaphorically, for a being to have a shadow side? And, moreover, what does it mean for that shadow to be attracted to life? That evocative idea is easy to miss here, but it adds a special relevance to this poem.

Squirrels have a wealth of meaning for Dickinson too. I’m not going to explore it here, but suffice to say, that unlike the actual trees, which are without “Design/ Or Order, or Apparent Action,” there is nothing random in a Dickinson poem.

I think the word “haply” is worth looking into. The word, which is rarely used anymore, means “by chance.” It’s another nod to the idea of randomness in this poem. The trees are in this field by chance, and the boy notices them, too, haply, by chance.

What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature —
What Plan
They severally — retard — or further —
Unknown —

What deed is theirs? It’s a funny question. What do the trees own? They don’t own anything. They just are. The implication is that we don’t own anything either.

And not only do they own nothing except to occupy the space of themselves, neither can we say they slow things down (retard) or take things further. What plan they forward or reverse, we don’t know. Dickinson provides an alternative line here for “severally — retard — or further — ,” which is “severally — promote — or hinder — “

Are these random trees getting in the way of the acre's potential, or are they adding to it? Is nature meant to be wild, or would it be better to cut down the trees and grow a field of wheat here? Who can truly say?

Four trees on an acre, and Dickinson turns this simple fact into a meditation on the purposive quality of nature herself, and the way we impose our ideas of order upon it.


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Four Trees" by Egon Schiele

Notes:

1. The meter in this poem is all over the place. It goes from pentameter to dimeter to tetrameter back to dimeter in the first stanza, for instance. Why? Perhaps it is to underscore the idea of randomness.

1. The phrase “They severally — retard — or further —” has an odd power to it. I have a friend, Alex Cory, who used this phrase as a title for a poem. When I read Alex's poem, it was the first time I heard the phrase. I didn't know the title came from Dickinson until I read this poem for this blog, but it stuck in my head from the getgo. Why?

2. There is much more to say about this poem, But let me end here by saying I just got an e-mail from my friend Steve Nickson which included a poem by John Ashbery called “Some Trees.” I’ve loved Ashbery's  poem for years now, but would never have connected it with Dickinson’s poem if Steve hadn’t just happened to have sent it to me as I was thinking about it. Here’s Ashbery’s poem, which strikes me as a moving response to Dickinson’s poem,

Some Trees

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

Life, and Death, and Giants—

Life, and Death, and Giants—
Such as These—are still—
Minor—Apparatus—
Hopper of the Mill—
Beetle at the Candle—
Or a Fife's Fame—
Maintain—by Accident
that they proclaim—

     -FR777, J706, Fascicle 37, 1863

This poem continues the near nihilistic bent of fascicle 37 so far. In the first poem in the fascicle, FR773, Dickinson says that she senses a friendly and hospitable Presence in the vastness of space, but, after she gets that caveat out of the way, the next few poems are rather bleak.

This one seems to say that the things that feel Giant to us, like Life and Death and Fame, are all just small parts of a machine, and, moreover, merely accidents of nature.

In the first metaphor here, Life is compared to fodder for the mill. That seems stark, but if our lives are in a hopper awaiting the machinations of the mill, then it follows that something is being processed on the other side of that mill, like the way paper is made from trees. It’s interesting to think this metaphor through, to think of our bodies composting in the ground as a kind of mill from which life is reborn, or, perhaps, to think of our experiences as being grist for, say, a poem. 

The second metaphor shows us a beetle coming out of the dark toward a flame, presumably to be consumed by the fire, or perhaps to be quickly stepped on. Here we have visions of Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, waking up as a giant insect.

The flame here seems more in service of exposing the painful truth of the situation than it does in warming up the subject, but, nonetheless, you might say that, at least for a moment, there was some light and warmth for the lowly beetle. 

The last metaphor is my favorite of the bunch. Life is like a "Fife’s Fame." We believe we are making such grand music, but in the big scheme of things life is more like the music of a tin flute than it is like a symphonic orchestra. Okay, fine, but, again, I can’t help but note, at least there is music!

Life may be predicated on the accidental, and all “proclaiming” be therefore ironic, as this poem seems to, ironically, “proclaim,” but hey, you still have the product of the mill, the light of the candle and the small and tinny, but still miraculous, music from the flute.

You need not spin this poem in a positive light as I have to done here. It's helpful to remember that the things we see looming so large can be seen as small, and even terrible, accidents of nature. But isn't it interesting that the metaphors provided here by Dickinson point us back toward light and music, and even, with that mill, toward the productive?

The minor apparatus, when seen from the other side of the binoculars, are Giant indeed. 

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Manet's "The Fifer" -1866

(playing an F note, the internet informs me)

Note:

This poem is laid out very differently by Christanne Miller in "Emily Dickinson's Poems as She Preserved Them."  It’s very difficult, in looking at the MS of the fascicle, to know how this poem is supposed to go on the page. It does seem, by looking at the MS, as if “Minor—Apparatus— Hopper of the Mill—” is all supposed to go on one line, but it makes so much more sense to split this line in two and keep this poem at 3 beats per measure, so that’s what I’ve done here. If Life and Death, which seem Giant, are still minor apparatus, then perhaps we could say that punctuation, and seemingly minor details like the layout of poems, seem small, but are major apparatus. 

Drama’s Vitallest Expression

Drama’s Vitallest Expression
is the Common Day
That arise and set about Us—
Other Tragedy

Perish in the Recitation—
This—the best enact
When the Audience is scattered
And the Boxes shut—

“Hamlet” to Himself were Hamlet—
Had not Shakespeare wrote—
Though the “Romeo” left no Record
Of his Juliet,

It were infinite enacted
In the Human Heart—
Only Theatre recorded
Owner cannot shut—


     -FR776, J741, Fascicle 37, 1863


Drama! Dickinson’s life, for all of her supposed reclusivity, was full of it. Just look at the love triangle with her brother and Sue Gilbert, or the purported relationship she had with the famous married Pastor, Charles Wadsworth. 

Drama’s Vitallest Expression
is the Common Day
That arise and set about Us—

You don’t have to go to the theater for high drama. It is “Common” and part of everyday life. And, besides, it is more “Vital” than the drama in the theaters. It lives in us more than drama in the theater because it is our life.

I like the line, "That arise and set about us.” Where does this Drama come from? It arises. And then, rather sinisterly, it sets about us. It comes from seemingly nowhere, and then traps us in.

Other Tragedy

Perish in the Recitation—

Tragedies for the stage perish as soon as they are recited. But ours go on and on. You can see this thought extended from the poems preceding this one in the fascicle. In FR775, the poem directly before this one, there is the idea that our suspense (our worries and fears) never “Perish” as long as we are alive, but keep being born anew. We see Dickinson turning that word, “Perish,” over in her mind again here. Our suspense doesn’t perish in life, nor does our Drama. The actors get to take off their stage make up. We don’t. There is also a correlation between suspense and drama in these two poems too. Both of them are aspects of good theater.

This—the best enact

I love that word “best” there. What does Dickinson mean by best? Best…actors, because it's real? Best… people, because the best of us still have to deal with drama? Or maybe even, the best people are those with drama in their lives? I think there is something to this for Dickinson. I think back to FR706, when Dickinson speaks of that “white sustenance/ Despair.” Dickinson seems to esteem the drama of life, as something that sustains, even as she despairs of it. It’s the paradox of her art.

When the Audience is scattered
And the Boxes shut—

Those words “scattered” and “shut” give an interesting counterpoint to each other. The audience is scattered, but we are left with our drama. The boxes are shut, but our drama is open ended.

“Hamlet” to Himself were Hamlet—
Had not Shakespeare wrote—

As I was reading the last two poems before this one in fascicle 37 I was reminded of Hamlet, and I even mentioned him in the commentary to FR774. There was just something about the dire quality of the diction in both poems that felt to me akin to the mind of Hamlet. So it was a shock of recognition to see him mentioned in this poem. It makes me wonder if Dickinson was reading the play around this time.

Shakespeare may have captured something with Hamlet, but the tragedy of Hamlet would live in us regardless of Shakespeare’s play. I appreciate the move of putting the quotes around the first “Hamlet" in this line, but not the second. It takes the referent from literature, in quotes, to real life, without quotes. It’s a subtle example of form mirroring content.

Though the “Romeo” left no Record
Of his Juliet,

It were infinite enacted
In the Human Heart—

Again with the quotes followed by no quotes.

To feel the terror of this poem, one has to remember the depth of tragedy evoked in Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. Dickinson is not being arch here I don’t think. She is talking about the most heart-wrenching grief being, in actuality, a part of each of us.

I sometimes wonder why Dickinson didn’t write plays herself, but this poem gives you a sense of why. Her poetry is a kind of drama, after all, a soliloquy that mirrors real life and goes on and on, “infinite enacted.”

The idea of a drama being “infinite enacted” echoes the previous poem in the fascicle, FR775, which speaks of the “immortality” of suspense in our lives. The word “infinite” here does a lot of work. It gives us a sense of infinite pain, of an infinite amount of time, and of an infinite number of people. The Heart is made for infinite pain.

There is an alternate word for “infinite” in the fascicle, which is “tenderer.” While “infinite” is a strong word choice, I think “tenderer” is even stronger. It gives us the double sense of the heart being both sympathetic and fragile. It both sweetens and deepens the sense of pain at the same time. But perhaps this is one of those times when it is helpful to have both words, which gives us the sense that to be human is to be infinitely tender. Dickinson's alternate words may be read as part of the poem. Perhaps she even wanted us to see them that way. 

Only Theatre recorded
Owner cannot shut—

It’s unusual for Dickinson to repeat words in a poem, but in this one she does it twice. “Record” and “shut.” Dickinson, like Shakespeare, is recording her pain, but what she is recording in her Theatre, is the ongoingness of the drama, which can't be shut. It just keeps going on and on, like a broken record.

And the owner of this theater? Our self.

My 14 year old daughter just came home from school. I asked her if there was any drama in school. She said, “Always.” I said, “Really, always?” She said, “Yeah, that’s why I stopped watching Gossip Girl. There’s enough drama in real life.” Perfect timing.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. This poem is trochaic in meter rather than the normal iambic. Dickinson uses this move often, and usually to give a sense of…drama. Drama itself is a trochee, and the word, this poem makes us realize, carries its own sense of drama. DRA!ma. If Dickinson is going to begin her poem with this sense of drama, then it makes sense that she would carry the inverted iambic meter throughout the rest of the poem.

2. The way Christanne Miller lays out this poem in “Emily Dickinson’s Poems as She Preserved Them” is with the first two lines as one. I’m sure Miller made this decision because the “is” is not capitalized in the fascicle. But if you look at the MS of the poem, you can see that the line is broken up after “Expression.” It makes more sense to me to lay it out the way I have done here because it fits Dickinson's typical 4/3 hymn meter. It seems a stretch to have a Dickinson poem start with a line of heptameter. It’s a judgement call. I love these little moments of confusion in trying to translate Dickinson’s handwriting into print. I like the weirdness of the long line, personally, but this layout makes more sense to me.

3. Dickinson wrote in a letter to Joseph Lymon, "Going home I flew to the shelves and devoured the luscious passages. I thought I should tear the leaves out as I turned them. Then I settled down to a willingness for all the rest to go but William Shakespeare. Why need we Joseph read anything else but him?"

Suspense—is Hostiler than Death—

Suspense—is Hostiler than Death—
Death—tho'soever Broad,
Is Just Death, and cannot increase—
Suspense—does not conclude—

But perishes—to live anew—
But just anew to die—
Annihilation—plated fresh
With Immortality—


      -FR775, J705, Fascicle 37, 1863


Suspense—is Hostiler than Death—

Death is final. There is nothing hostile about it, really. Death isn't scary. It's the anticipation of death that is terrifying. You could apply this logic to any finality, like, say, the finality of a relationship. One way you can read this poem is to learn to accept the end of things. 

Death—tho'soever Broad,
Is Just Death, and cannot increase—

Death is the broadest thing. It’s absolute. It’s so broad it covers all. But, in the end, it’s just death.

When you read the poems in the fascicles in order you watch Dickinson's mind move. In the poem that precedes this one, FR774, we note the lines, "An Altitude of Death, that could/ No bitterer debar/ Than Life” Death is something toward which we climb, because we are trying to climb out of life, which is more bitter than death. This is bleak, though I suppose it does offer, at least, the hope of “no more.” We see this line of thought continuing in this poem.

Suspense—does not conclude—

Death concludes, but Suspense, not so much. What is meant by suspense here? We are suspended in life, waiting to die. We are in suspense about what will happen after we die. We are in suspense about whether or not we will find love, or peace, in life. 

This poem seems to say that there can never be any real lasting peace in life.

There’s a apropos moment of suspense between the first and second stanza:

Suspense—does not conclude—

   

But perishes—to live anew—

Suspense does not conclude……..But perishes to live anew. It’s like a nightmare in which the fear just keeps returning. You end up in a circular hell,

But perishes—to live anew—
But just anew to die—

The worry goes away only to come back again, only so it can go away again. You can’t get rid of it, until you perish for good that is. Life is a state of constant tension and release. 

What’s a poor girl to do?

Annihilation—plated fresh
With Immortality—

These last two lines are tricky. I can see a few ways to take them. One way would be as a continuation of the preceding thought. The annihilation of suspense is "plated," or covered over, with Immortality. Suspense is always perishing, or being annihilated, and then coming back again, in what seems like an immortal loop. In other words, it feels like forever! 

There is also the possibility that she means these lines in the sense John Donne did when he wrote,

"One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die."

There is, perhaps, a hope of "Immortality" after death, a nod to some kind of afterlife, and the optimist in me certainly wants to believe this. But I think this poem is more about coming to terms with the endless recurrence of pain in life. The word "Immortality" is fascinating, especially as used by Dickinson. She wields it in so many ways. Here, though, I think she is using it in a darkly sarcastic way, pointing toward the apparent immortality of always returning to fear and worry.

The only thing that ever gets "born again," I fear, is fear, over and over again, until we are finally relieved of it by death.

Looking at that wonderful word in the second line, "tho'soever," makes me wonder if Dickinson is riffing off of the word “whosoever” in the famous scripture, John 3:15, “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” The word “perish” is here in this poem too, as well as the idea of eternal life, or immortality. It's the word "believeth" that is in question. Dickinson seems to have inverted the hopeful sense that is in the scripture. I don't believe Dickinson was a believer in an afterlife. Eternal life, in Dickinson’s brave telling, is, rather horribly, only the seemingly eternal return of suspense.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

frame from 1919 film, "Suspense"

You taught me Waiting with Myself—

You taught me Waiting with Myself—
Appointment strictly kept—
You taught me fortitude of Fate—
This—also—I have learnt—

An Altitude of Death, that could
No bitterer debar
Than Life—had done—before it—
Yet—there is a Science more—

The Heaven you know—to understand
That you be not ashamed
Of Me—in Christ’s bright Audience
Upon the further Hand—

     -FR774, J740, Fascicle 37, 1863 

This is one of those Dickinson poems which, at first, underwhelmed me. Then I scratched a little deeper. And then a little deeper. And pretty soon I had a gusher on my hands.

What seems like a pretty straight forward poem about the virtues of patience and fortitude, turns out to be full of slant upon slant of meaning, wink upon wink of subtext. Let’s look at the first couplet.

You taught me Waiting with Myself—
Appointment strictly kept—

God, or some friend or lover, or perhaps life itself, teaches the poet to “Wait” with Herself. “Waiting with Myself—” I find these words inspiring. How hard is it to just wait with yourself? Are you like me, in that every moment of every day seems to be taken up with some way of avoiding the simple act of “Waiting with Myself”? This difficulty seems to me to be at the very core of our modern malaise.

Dickinson somehow manages it though. She says she keeps that appointment. 

Here you also have the first of several humorous turns in this poem. Usually you “wait” for an “appointment.” But one way to read those first two lines is that the appointment that is kept is the waiting, itself. That’s absurd, but also profound. An appointment implies a certain anxiety of accomplishment, but learning to wait is quite the opposite. It’s a bit like saying the journey is the destination.

There is also a wink in the diction here. It's a parody of formal bureaucratic business-speak, “appointment strictly kept.” Another way to read “Appointment” is as an appointment with death, or fate. If that’s the case, then the idea of strictly keeping that appointment is funny because, after all, it wouldn't be possible to not strictly keep that appointment.

You taught me fortitude of Fate—

“Fortitude of Fate” is, like “Waiting with Myself,” an inspiring phrase. That mouthful of fricatives is strong. ForTiTuDe of FaTe. What does it mean to learn fortitude of fate? You need fortitude to deal with your fate.

This—also—I have learnt—

There’s something slightly cheeky about this line too. She’s learned so much. She’s figured out the "fortitude of Fate" and gained some wisdom, yet she says it with a kind of calm finality. It’s almost like she’s speaking with the self-assurance of someone who’s just learned a secret and is saying, "Oh, I’ve got it all sorted now." It's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek way of presenting profound realization. There’s an understated humor in how it contrasts with the weight of what she's saying.

An Altitude of Death, that could
No bitterer debar
Than Life—had done—before it—

Wow. “An Altitude of Death.” What a way to think of death, as something we climb up towards, as a kind of achievement, albeit a vertiginous one. Death would appears to bar us from life, but NOT more bitterly than life has already barred us from life. Which is more bitter? Death, which bars us from life, or life itself keeping us from what we desire? This line has the dark sense of humor of Hamlet. Death seems to be higher than life only in the sense that it is not so bad. Yeesh.

Yet—there is a Science more—

I'd really like to know exactly what Dickinson means by science here. Is there a “method” to going beyond the bitterness of life, in transcending death? If so, what is it? Well, I suppose the first stanza has already laid out part of the science. You start with practicing waiting with your yourself. Then you learn fortitude by embracing life’s trials.

Then, moving onto the second stanza we get another part of the scientific equation. Accept death as natural, and even as the high point of life. Don’t be afraid of it, because the struggles of life can be more difficult than death itself.

There is more to this “science” in the third stanza, but let’s pause here for another joke I think Dickinson is making. To posit “science” against the mysteries of “fate” is ironic. There is a sense that Dickinson is, in a way, poking fun at how humans try to intellectualize or grasp these mysteries.

The Heaven you know—to understand
That you be not ashamed
Of Me—in Christ’s bright Audience
Upon the further Hand—

There are many ways you could parse the grammar of this last stanza. I take it like this. 

The Heaven you know—to understand 

Note that Dickinson does not use a capital “y” for “you” in this stanza. I take this to mean Dickinson’s not speaking to God, now, but to a human. Herself, or maybe Sue. (I personally think this poem is part of a larger conversation with Sue.) I think this line has a bit of a wink in it. How can anyone, with any absolute understanding, “know” Heaven? The line, “The heaven you know to understand” (read: “the Heaven you think you understand”) is undercut further with with the follow-up line, “that you be not ashamed/ of Me.” What does shame have to do with Heaven? Do you really know and understand heaven as you think you do? 

“Me” (unlike “you") is capitalized. if you look at just those last two lines, you get “Of Me—in Christ’s bright Audience/ Upon the further hand.” While you, who think you know heaven, are ashamed of me, I will be standing in the brightness of an audience with Christ. I picture Dickinson actually standing upon the hand of Christ. There is no shame. The audience is "bright." Dickinson makes a pun of “upon the other hand” and turns it into, “Upon the further hand.” It’s an amazing word substitution. Christ’s hand reaches out further. It doesn't shame. It welcomes. It reaches out.

“The Heaven you know—to understand / That you be not ashamed / Of Me—in Christ’s bright Audience” has a cheeky confidence. Dickinson might be suggesting that, ultimately, understanding the divine is not about an overwhelming fear of judgment, but rather about coming to a place where we are at peace with ourselves in the face of something transcendent. There’s a subtle humor in the way she frames this—a comfort in the idea that we needn’t be ashamed, as if the idea of standing before Christ might actually be more about reconciliation and understanding than fear.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Leon Bonnat:  Roman Girl at Fountain

Conscious am I in my Chamber –

Conscious am I in my Chamber –
Of a shapeless friend –
He doth not attest by Posture –
Nor confirm – by Word –

Neither Place – need I present Him –
Fitter Courtesy
Hospitable intuition
Of His Company –

Presence – is His furthest license –
Neither He to Me
Nor Myself to Him – by Accent –
Forfeit Probity

Weariness of Him, were quainter
Than Monotony
Knew a Particle – of Space’s
Vast Society –

Neither if He visit Other –
Do He dwell – or Nay – know I –
But Instinct esteem Him
Immortality –

      – FR773, J679, fascicle 37, 1863

This poem marks the beginning of fascicle 37. I’ve come to view each fascicle as a discrete volume of poetry. Dickinson was very careful about her arrangement of everything, and I’m sure fascicles were no different. (See her childhood herbarium for an example of what I mean. The pages full of local flora are all beautifully arranged.) So when I start a new fascicle I find it as exciting as cracking a new book by my favorite author.

What a terrific start too. This fascicle begins with an exploration of consciousness itself, and consciousness’s instinctive sense of a loving Presence.

This is a poet zooming out, from her small chamber, to the largest of subjects, "Space's Vast Society." She begins,

Conscious am I in my Chamber –

This is the existential condition of mankind, no? We are timeless consciousness confined in the temporal chamber of our bodies.

What are we conscious of?

Of a shapeless friend –

It’s easy to skim past this simple referent, “friend,” but it says a lot. Perhaps it says everything. There is something friendly in the vastness. It is not just an endless void. There is “love” out there, even if that love is just in here.

I appreciate the adjective “shapeless," because the thing about this friendly Presence is that it is beyond a definite shape, which I take to also mean beyond definition. It’s not something that can be pinned down by man’s need to dissect or control it.

He doth not attest by Posture –

Since “He” has no shape, I assume there is no gender either ; ) We also note It has no “posture,” which I take to be a small jab at the “upright” posture of the pious and righteous, and of all posturing. It's funny that this is said in the biblical language of posturing, "doth not attest."

Nor confirm – by Word –

Also, it's interesting that this Presence is not speaking to us through “Word.” Most likely this is a sly reference to the Bible, which is commonly referred to as The Word of God. But it could refer to any words written by anybody. Nobody knows, even the poet, and the best she can do is intuit that this Presence is friendly.

Neither Place – need I present Him –
Fitter Courtesy
Hospitable intuition
Of His Company –

Neither in Word, nor in deed (posture) is the poet going to present (small p) this Presence (capital P). The best courtesy she will give to this Presence, and a more fitting one than Word or Deed, is to pass along her intuition of this friendliness. Her intuition is that this Presence is hospitable. It likes our company. We note the subtlety that the intuition itself is qualified as "hospitable." To see a friendly "Presence" in the universe is to be a friendly "Presence" in the universe. If our intuition is hospitable, then what we perceive is, in turn, hospitable. 

Presence – is His furthest license –

Mere Presence. That’s as far as this Presence can be presented by the poet.

Neither He to Me
Nor Myself to Him – by Accent –
Forfeit Probity

That’s an intriguing thought. To “forfeit probity” would mean to give up a sense of honesty, or decency, or righteous posture. This Presence has its own sense of Probity, as we have ours. I love the idea that our “accent,” the way we speak, our “Word” carries our own sense of personal Probity. In other words, we all have a different way of being honest and decent.

The way Dickinson puts this is so clever. We don’t have to Forfeit our own sense of Truth to someone else's definition, even for that of The Presence Itself. (I think Dickinson means something akin to God when she speaks of this Presence, but it would be loaded, and too definitive, I think, for her to use the word God.) And, even better, The Presence doesn’t have to Forfeit Its moral sense for us either. This is funny I think. It’s one thing to say that we need not give up our own sense of morality for someone else’s definition. But it's cheeky to say, essentially, that God need not give up His sense of morality for us.

Weariness of Him, were quainter
Than Monotony
Knew a Particle – of Space’s
Vast Society –

Okay, so the poet intuits that the Presence is friendly, but she also presents it as endlessly interesting to get to know. To become tired (weary) of Him would be less likely than if a particle of the universe could become bored by all of the vast “Society” of Space. It's a big party!

The use of the word “quainter” here is great. Quaint means pleasingly old-fashioned, but can carry a bit of sarcasm too. So here it reads like this, “Oh, so you find the vast universe weary and monotonous? Oh, that’s quaint.” Dickinson is smiling at our complaints of being tired and bored. She’s saying, “Look here! The universe is vastly interesting and friendly.”

Neither if He visit Other –
Do He dwell – or Nay – know I –
But Instinct esteem Him
Immortality –

Dickinson can’t speak for anyone else. This is her intuition only. Does He visit anyone else besides her? She can only speak for her own consciousness. Does He dwell in Her, or anywhere for that matter? She doesn’t know.

But her instinct is that this Presence is Immortal. Dickinson added an alternative word here for “Esteem” which is “Report.” This friendly Presence may or may not be Immortal, but the poet’s instinct reports It to be so, and even esteems It for being so.

Intuition tells the poet that there is a welcoming Presence, and her highly-honed instinct tells her it is both immensely vast (“Space’s Vast Society”) and Immortal.

That’s enough, yes?


              -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


              

Note: There is a variant of this poem that is addressed to Sue and signed "Emily." Sue was more traditionally religious in her beliefs than Emily and I think this poem, along with many many others by Dickinson, may be seen as part of an ongoing conversation the two women had about the subject of God over the 35 years they knew one another.