Twas awkward, but it fitted me —

Twas awkward, but it fitted me —
An Ancient fashioned Heart —
Its only lore — its Steadfastness —
In Change — unerudite —

It only moved as do the Suns —
For merit of Return —
Or Birds — confirmed perpetual
By Alternating Zone —

I only have it not Tonight
In its established place —
For technicality of Death —
Omitted in the Lease —


     -F900, J973, 1865



'Twas awkward, but it fitted me —

An Ancient fashioned Heart —

I love "Ancient fashioned Heart." The heart is not just old-fashioned, it's Ancient fashioned. That word Ancient is so deep in time. It's like saying, "My love has been around forever, and therefore it's not going anywhere soon." 

Why is this ancient fashioned heart awkward though? I think Dickinson is implying it's not the newest thing that counts, the new interesting person, it’s the tried and true, the old friend, the society of the soul. 

This "awkward" business is funny. Dickinson's poetry is awkward not because it’s old-fashioned, but rather because it’s always new and difficult to get used to. Suffice to say, the most important thing is that the heart, and the poetry too, are ever true:

Its only lore — its Steadfastness —

This line is funny also, because there is SO much lore that has been created about Emily Dickinson. Scores of lore. Emilycore. And yet here it is as if she is saying that you can set all that aside. The only lore she has for us is her Steadfastness. It's remarkable too because here she still is, her Ancient heart still travelling into the future, steadfast as ever.

In Change — unerudite —
 
Yet another funny line. To be erudite is to have deep and arcane knowledge about subject. It’s to be in the know. By saying “In Change — unerudite —" it’s as if she is saying that change, the newest knowledge, is not what she knows about. Maybe one can read a hint of fear here. The poem takes a turn at the end, and so we know change is imminent for this Steadfast heart.

It only moved as do the Suns —
For merit of Return —

Are you kidding me with these lines? Dickinson aligns her Ancient heart with the Sun. We get the idea that Dickinson's Heart moves as the Sun does. And the reason it moves is merely for the merit of returning again. But wait? What? The sun doesn’t move, does it? Rather the earth moves around the sun. The line is a kind of trick of perspective. Rather it is the lover, the reader, that is always returning to the Steadfast Sun of Emily’s Ancient Heart.

Still, this idea of moving, for the sake of returning, whether it is the sun or the earth, is shrewd. Dickinson is declaring eternal steadfast love, but she’s also acknowledging the dance.

"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing"

Or Birds — confirmed perpetual
By Alternating Zone —

The birds perpetually fly south for the winter and north in the summer. Now Dickinson’s heart isn’t just the Sun, it’s the "confirmed perpetual" movement of life toward the Sun at all times, following it just as the birds do, from north to south in the winter and back again in the summer. 

The change is all contained in a larger love, just like the seasons are overseen by the sun. It’s a wonderful way to look at both the heart and the sun. The two become one, the heart and the Sun.

I only have it not Tonight
In its established place —

Ugh, crushing lines. The way Dickinson wields a “not” is wicked. (See F891.) Dickinson’s heart is steadfast, so why isn’t in its established place? It must be because the lover’s heart wasn't as constant? 

For technicality of Death —
Omitted in the Lease —

Either someone literally died, and Emily’s Steadfast heart can’t follow them into death, or for some reason the other person could not be steadfast in return. (Who knows what that reason might be, but it's worth mentioning, perhaps, that Dickinson's two greatest loves, Sue Gilbert and Charles Wadsworth, were married to other people.)

Here Dickinson switches her tone from the eternal language of nature, of birds and suns, to a legal language. Her father and brother were lawyers, so this kind of terminology in her poems often has, I've noticed, a bit of a bite. The poem begins so earnestly and grand and ends in a "technicality? " A broken lease due to the cause of death? 

There’s the tone to me in those last lines of an icy finality. Either Emily’s begrudging the business-like transaction of death, or she's bitter because of a lover's neglect, as if to say, hey! you broke a contract with the Sun!

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Our Lady of Sorrows at the Church of the True Cross, Salamanca, Spain

Experience is the Angled Road

Experience is the Angled Road
Preferred against the Mind
By — Paradox — the Mind itself —
Presuming it to lead

Quite Opposite — How Complicate
The Discipline of Man —
Compelling Him to Choose Himself
His Preappointed Pain —

  

         -F899, J910, 1865

The first thing that stops me in this poem is the adjective "Angled." In a letter to T.W. Higginson Dickinson 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." "Angled" starts to shine when you look at it. 

Experience is the Angled Road 

Here "Angled" means that the road isn't straight. But Dickinson could've used other words, like windy for instance. Why use "Angle?" Well, for one, it gives the impression of a sudden sharp turn. Experience leads to sharp, painful, turns. But there is another meaning of "Angled Road," which is the idea of something being "angled" for. That one word carries the "paradox" of this poem. You are not expecting the road to angle, and yet you are angling for just that. Neat.

The next thing that stops me is to wonder what is doing the preferring?

Experience is the Angled Road
Preferred against the Mind
By — Paradox — the Mind itself —

Is it “Paradox” or the “Mind" that is doing the preferring? It depends on how you punctuate the lines. Both readings are fitting, but one has an emphasis on fate and one on freewill, which is an undercurrent throughout this poem. Either the mind prefers something against itself (against its own desire,) or the principle of Paradox itself is preferring it for us, because that’s just how life is. 

Either way the first stanza is basically saying that Experience is a road with surprising turns, and though the mind would prefer an easier and more straight-forward path our actual experience takes us a different way.

Experience goes against what the mind thinks it wants and yet it is still preferred. Why? How could we prefer something that we don’t want? 

No pain, no gain. We choose experiences we know may hurt, like starting a new relationship after a painful breakup, or committing to something grueling like marathon training, because they promise us meaning and growth, and maybe even self-respect.

Quite Opposite— How Complicate

It's fun to say this line, the way the K, P and T sounds interweave, and the rhyme of Opposite and Complicate. "Quite opposite— How Complicate." 

There is a great scene in the movie "The Five-Year Engagement" where Jason Segal is telling Emily Blunt why instant gratification can be a wiser choice than self-discipline.

It's complicated!

The word "Complicate" also describes the syntax of this poem. That may or not be on purpose, but it's apt.

          — How Complicate
The Discipline of Man —

The word "Discipline" clues you into the idea in this poem that something is being "angled" for. The complication is that we are of two minds; satisfaction in the moment as opposed to a long term gain. 

Compelling Him to Choose Himself
His Preappointed Pain —

How complicated human discipline becomes, since our goals compel us to choose our own suffering. We are forced to participate in our own struggle.

This poem is funny. It's a God's eye view of the tragi-comedy of being human. The Self must act in spite of the self to become the Self. Haha! Good luck, humans!

On one hand the mind doesn’t want pain, especially in lieu of pleasure, but on the other hand, there are great benefits to be had from choosing pain. So what's a girl to do?

"Preappointed" is another word that stops me cold. Does "Preappointed" mean that the pain is fated? On one hand it is probably true that pain is fated no matter what "road" you choose. But here "Preappointed" seems directly tied into discipline, so the one doing the preappointing is either fate or the self, it's up to you. Have your pain now or later. Just like with the word "Angled," this word encompasses the paradox of this poem. 

The question this poem begs for me is what it is that is "Compelling" us to "Choose" pain. This is a question worth leaving open.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S.  A story I love that asks the same open question is Cream by Haruki Murakami. Check it out if you get half a chance.

P.P.S. I've never heard of the Lithuanian poet, Jonas Zdanys, but I dig the title of his collected poems, "The Angled Road." From a review of the book by Ken Hada, "Emily Dickinson’s 'angled road' of experience is the touchstone for Zdanys, her lines declaring a “paradox” that surpasses intellectual abstraction to confirm the authority of art.' According to Hada then, Art is the thing that compels us to choose pain. That's one angle anyway.

An Hour is a Sea

An Hour is a Sea
Between a few, and me —
With them would Harbor be —


      -F898, J825, 1865


This poem is similar in content to the famous poem Wild Nights, Wild Nights. For comparison, let’s look at that one, written four or five years earlier:

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the Winds –
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden –. Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor – Tonight –
In Thee!

It's a similar idea right? But "Wild Nights" sweeps you away. It’s full of anguish, but it’s also very romantic. 

But this poem on the other hand? There is something in the extreme compression that adds a note of desperation to it. The poem almost seems like it's in a hurry, desperate for that hour to be over. The three lines are like three final gasps of air before the poet sinks down into that Sea.

Those three perfect end rhymes of Sea/me/be seem cloying at first, almost lazy, but when given an emotional emphasis they begin to sound plaintive, almost like a dolphin cry: eee eee eee.

An Hour is a Sea

Dickinson morphs time into space. She was ahead of Einstein! E=MC2 and relativity are both at play here. Time, a mere hour, expands into the great distance and depth of an unfathomable sea.

Between a few, and me —

“A few” is a phrase that makes you wonder; not one, not many, but a few. For what it's worth, this poem was sent by Emily to her beloved friend and sister Susan Gilbert Dickinson. So who are the few? Maybe it was Sue’s family, including her brother Austin, that Emily was missing, but maybe it was just two, Emily and Sue.

With them would Harbor be  —

If the hour is a sea, then being with these few is a harbor from that seeming endlessness of time.

The startling thing here, to me, is the bareness. I think of that phrase from Dickinson’s poem about a snake, “zero at the bone.” This poem is zero at the bone. It’s as if it is all she could muster. 


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A lovely piece of music called "An Hour is a Sea" by Dextro

P.S.  David Preest's notes on this poem are informative, "When Sue was staying with her sister, Martha Smith, in New York, Emily concluded a short letter (L312) to her with this poem. She led up to the poem with the words, ‘[I] turn my thoughts [to you] without a Whip – so well they follow you.’ An hour had also felt long in poem J781. The harbour is reminiscent of the last two lines of poem J249 and the last lines of poems J368 and J506."

P.P.S. Here is a heartfelt response to this poem from another blogger who just goes by Possibility.  

She sped as Petals of a Rose

She sped as Petals of a Rose
Offended by the Wind—
A frail Aristocrat of Time
Indemnity to find—
Leaving on nature—a Default
As Cricket or as Bee—
But Andes in the Bosoms where
She had begun to lie—


     -F897, J991, 1865


For this poem we are indebted to this note from David Preest: “Emily sent a copy of this poem to Sue on the death of her niece, also called Susan, at two years of age.”

This context adds gravitas. Let’s take it a few lines at a time.

She sped as Petals of a Rose
Offended by the Wind—

A two year old girl’s life is compared to rose petals, silky-soft, delicate and beautiful. But what is this Wind? And why does it offend? The Wind here probably refers to the illness that took the child’s life. But the way Dickinson framed it, as the flower being offended, makes it seem more like a soul peeped out into the world, looked around and was like, nope, this world with all of its storms of sorrow offends me, I’m out of here.

Notice how this poem grabs you right away with its imagery and music. The lines speed by, but they have such a beautiful sound as they go with those little detonations of D sounds studded through them. “She speD as peTals of a rose/ offenDeD by the winD.” The D sounds continue throughout the poem. I think that the D sound comes up often in poems about Death, echoing the sickening sound of "DeaD." (See Gwendolyn Brooks poem "the mother" for a powerful example of this).

A frail Aristocrat of Time

An aristocrat is a funny way to think of a child, but Emily was always inverting status words in this manner. Queens and Emperors are something wholly different in the spiritual realm of Dickinson’s lexicon. What does it mean to be an Aristocrat of time? An aristocrat is historically defined by hereditary rank, noble titles, and landed wealth. This child was born of wealth, but not the monetary kind. The fact that this child was an aristocrat OF time is the little tell here. Just being alive, it would seem, and taking part in time makes us rich. That’s what we inherit just by being born.

Indemnity to find—

“Indemnity” means a payment for loss. The child, in dying, is seeking some kind of compensation, perhaps spiritual peace, or maybe transcendence beyond time.

It’s almost as if Dickinson is hinting that the child is better off. She was offended by the Wind, so she quit time and looked for her treasure outside of it, in a place without all those cruel Winds. And yet those winds offend for a good reason. Look what they are preventing! Life, in all its potential beauty. 

Leaving on nature—a Default
As Cricket or as Bee—

Default is in the same realm of language as Indemnity, the legal language of money.

It implies a failure to fulfill an obligation, or something left undone. But here Dickinson implies that because Nature is so vast, this default can be compared to the loss of a cricket or a bee, something hardly noticed. But…

But Andes in the Bosoms where
She had begun to lie—

But the child is as large as the Andean mountains in the bosoms (hearts) of those where she had “begun to lie.” One can imagine the two year old still lying on the mother’s bosom, nursing. To that mother there is nothing larger than this child. Unlike the fragile rose petals, to the mother this child is as solid and large as an entire mountain range.

I think that “begun” is the most poignant word here for me. The child was just beginning, and like that she is gone.

I have a friend, the critic and poet Lytle Shaw, who says that Emily Dickinson's poems are weird in the right ways. This poem is a good example of what it is I think he means. It's an odd one, with its mix of natural imagery and legal financial terms, with its idea of a flower being offended by wind, or of being an aristocrat OF time, or of seeking compensation elsewhere for defaulting on life, or even the idea of the relative worth of a child to nature vs. man. And of course the language is always weird and sticky. "Andes in the Bosoms" is such an inimitable, and indelible, way to put it.  

But this is part of what makes the poem so affecting. Somewhere (somebody help me out here) Roland Barthes puts forward the idea that condolences have to be expressed in a unique way to be effective. A Hallmark card isn't going to cut it. So being weird, then, may be seen as an essential quality of being real, which is in turn an essential part of being felt. 

-/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes


1. I’d be willing to bet this poem was sent with roses.

2. I think this poem is influenced by and echoes Emily’s own feelings about the loss of a major love in her life, one which was so painful in the extreme for her that it seems to drive much of her poetry. It's not hard to read this poem as a love poem to Sue Sr. in disguise.

3. Judith Farr in a deeply-felt appreciation of this poem, remarks on the poignancy of the last line in a society where the rate of infant mortality was terrifyingly high.

Purple is – fashionable twice –

Purple is – fashionable twice –
This season of the year,
And when a soul perceives itself
To be an Emperor.

     -Fr896, J980, 1865

My first question is, what season of the year is fashionably purple? Spring? Autumn?

My guess is that it is spring. This poem is saying that purple is naturally fashionable twice, first in the spring, and then again when the soul perceives that it is an Emperor. 

Autumn could make sense too though. There is a tradition of reading the late year as a kind of earned sovereignty. August has a deeper purple: wine-dark harvest tones. 

But “Fashionable” doesn’t sound like autumn to me. Fall tends to carry a sense of august inevitability, not trendiness. “Fashionable” feels lighter, as if the purple is in vogue, not hard-won.

It also makes sense that this season would be spring because it is traditionally associated with rebirth, which aligns with that sudden sense of inner grandeur Dickinson is describing.

When the early purple flowers are blooming the soul suddenly feels grand as “an Emperor."

And maybe Dickinson is also letting us know that this feeling won't last forever. Normally one thinks of the soul as being beyond the the temporary. But here, it is reversed; feeling and soul are inextricably intertwined.

After all, Dickinson doesn’t say the soul is an emperor, only that it feels like one. It perceives itself so.  This feeling is seasonal and fashionable (temporary and subject to change) and self-perceived (possibly illusory).

Maybe the purple feeling of the soul is only temporary, and self-perceived, but it's still awesome. And just like Spring, it's bound to come around again. For a season at least the soul rules. 

     
    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

My neighbor Quinn O'Sullivan took this video of spring purple in Sunnyside for Prowling Bee. 

The background song "Turned to Dust" is by Bonnie Prince Billy and Ronnie Bowman

Notes

1. David Preest agrees Dickinson must be talking about Spring: 

"'This season of the year’ is presumably spring. When she described the coming of spring in poem 140 Emily wrote that a ‘Tyrian light’ the village fills, ancient Tyre being famous for its purple dye. She also said in the same poem that spring was the season of ‘a purple finger [of the violet] on the slope.’"

2. I found a delightful paper on the subject, a deep dive the different moods and meanings of purple in Dickinson’s poems. 

3. From the above article I learned that Dickinson refers to purple in her poems more than any other color. It’s mentioned in 54 of her poems. That would make a good little book of poems if anyone's got the time and inclination. It would look fantastic too, with photos fitting every poem in all shades of purple.

The Earth has many keys –

The Earth has many keys –
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula –
Beauty – is Nature’s Fact –

But Witness for Her Land –
And Witness for Her Sea –
The Cricket is Her utmost
Of Elegy, to Me –


   -Fr895B, J1775, 1866

This blog is committed to following the Franklin order. But sometimes that presents problems. One of those problems is this poem. My source for the Franklin order is Wikipedia which gives both this poem and the one previous to it the number 895. Whereas the earlier numerical arrangement, by Thomas Johnson, gives the two poems separate numbers. 

Sometimes this poem is printed at the end of a longer poem. (More on this later.) Sometimes this poem is printed as two stanzas and sometimes as one. Without better source material I can't tell you which is correct. But whether it has two stanzas or one is essential to the reading of the poem. (The poem, perhaps, has many keys.) 

When the poem is in two stanzas, as it is above, then the phrase “But Witness..." appears to have the subject of Cricket sound. The cricket sound is the witness. But when the poem is in one stanza, then the word "Witness" appears to have the subject of the line immediately preceding it, "Beauty- is Nature's fact-" This second single stanza reading gives us a stunning idea: beauty as a WITNESS to the earth. It is an emblematic key.

Beauty is herein coupled with another way to unlock the earth, Melody. Beauty and Melody are both witnesses to something endemic to the earth; a spiritual order.

BUT that’s not the only key. The earth has many. Another one can be found where melody ISN’T. This is exemplified by the sound of the crickets.

This place that is unmelodic, which is to say, I think, without a pleasing order (and which is deemed later as an Elegy, making it about the chaos of death) can be heard in the late summer sound of the crickets. The cricket, in turn, is emblematic of all that is “out of tune.”

“What would you do if I sang out of tune, would you get up and walk out on me?” -John Lennon

I love the weird idea of the cricket song as a peninsula. A peninsula is part of Dickinson’s poetic lexicon and shows up in dozens of poems. It functions as a concept to her. It’s touching here how the peninsula is both reaching out of and into the land at once. A peninsula is not quite an island, but it’s apart from the crowd and juts out from the mainland. (Note that the poem before this one speaks of crickets as minor Nations and unobtrusive Masses. Here’s a good place to explain that this poem, and the one preceding it, Fr895A, appear together as part of a longer poem published later. The convoluted history of this poem, and a look extra stanzas, can be found here.)

Suffice to say, if you read this poem as a continuation of F895A, then it becomes even more apparent that the cricket is its subject. But wait, I’m getting ahead of the poem at hand. Can we just go back to the first line? It’s enough by itself:

The Earth has many keys –

It’s such a rich line. The earth, our fecund matrix, has many keys. There are many ways IN. We want to enter the earth! Sex! Death! There are many ways to plant seeds. Each seed is a key. What else is a key? Poetry?

Yes. Poetry and music are invoked by the word “Key,” especially when it is followed up with “Melody” in the subsequent line. The keys are in different melodies, and melodies themselves are keys. Dickinson has it both ways.

Where Melody is not

This is one of those poems where the sense of the syntax builds line by line. The first line “The earth has many keys” can be read as one sentence. But now we have two lines and together they say, “The earth has many keys/ Where Melody is not.” Okay, so we are being led down an alternative path now, an unmelodic one. We have a key where melody is not. But then you add the third line and another new sense emerges:

The Earth has many keys –
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula –

You see how the narrative of the poem unfolds as the syntax does? So now we have something like, "The earth has many keys. Where melody is not is the unknown peninsula." Hmm. And now that peninsula, in my mind, is one of the keys. A peninsula is shaped like a key, like Key West. It’s also a part of the earth, and one that is set apart from it in the sea. 

Now, the crickets, the sound of the crickets, is synaesthized here as being a peninsula, as if it were a peninsula of sound, set off from the rest of melody. Dickinson is mixing her metaphors here to wondrous effect. A key, a peninsula, a sea of cricket chirps, it all becomes one.

Okay, now we have a big statement:

Beauty – is Nature’s Fact –

This line comprises a whole philosophy. Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, yes or no? If beauty is a FACT, then it is not subjective, or maybe Emily is pointing to the idea that subjectivity and desire are facts.  Keats' insistence that Truth and Beauty are one in the same may be a premise here. Beauty and Truth are usually seen as separate, and sometimes incompatible, but here Dickinson is, like Keats, pointing to beauty as a fact. Dickinson’s mind was Nietzschean in its depth. (Just as Nietzsche's writing was Dickinsonian, especially in "Thus Spake Zarathustra.")

Anyway, you get the idea. But once you have absorbed this line about the fact of beauty, you still have to somehow loop it back onto the overall meaning of the poem. What does the fact of beauty have to do with the lack of melody? Are crickets seen as anti-melodic? Is their sound still beautiful, or do they fly in the face of beauty? It’s hard to tease out just exactly what Dickinson is saying here, though I think we’re getting closer all the time.

Audience: *CRICKETS*

But seriously, the sound of crickets is what this poem is rooted in. The cricket's chorus becomes a super dense metaphor, but one that is rooted in the actual sound.  

But Witness for Her Land –
And Witness for Her Sea –

The cricket sound, that minor Mass in the grass, is equated to a peninsula that goes out into the ocean to witness for the Land, and simultaneously goes into the land to witness for the ocean. It’s as if the ocean and land are holding hands. It’s a meet cute! The crickets are the sound-track to a gothic out-of-tune rom-com. 

The rhythmic hum of the late summer crickets lets us know that winter is on its way, a minor key without a melody.


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

I found this photo on a FB post about this poem 

by Marianna Erdei on a Shamanic Portal. 

I thought it was apt.

Further in Summer than the Birds –

Further in Summer than the Birds –
Pathetic from the Grass –
A minor Nation celebrates
It’s unobtrusive Mass.

No Ordinance be seen –
So gradual the Grace
A gentle Custom it becomes –
Enlarging Loneliness –

Antiquest felt at Noon –
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify –

Remit as yet no Grace –
No furrow on the Glow,
But a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now –


    -Fr895A, J1068, 1865


The subject of this poem is never named, but it’s easy enough to solve if you take your time.

Here are the clues. It’s something that comes later in the summer than the birds. And it comes from lower than the birds too, from the grass in fact. This is a nation, which means it's a group. And they are singing a mass. So... if it’s in the grass, it's probably insects of some kind? And if it is a group singing, it must be, by process of elimination, crickets? Okay, so we are talking about crickets here, right? Suddenly you hear them, and hearing them, in your imagination, is essential to feeling this poem. Feel the sound as you remember it, peaceful, and perhaps a bit melancholic.

Here’s the thing about riddles though: what they are pointing to is only a means to an end. It’s in the pointing where the poetry is taking place.

Let’s look at some of the pointing that Dickinson does in the first stanza:

“Further in the Summer”

"Summer," (and later in the poem “noon”) means, in the parlance of poetry, the middle of life. This is wrought with meaning for Dickinson. Summer is not always a happy occasion in her mythos. Often she speaks of it as an excruciating time of glaring light and overbearing heat. At any rate, "Further in the Summer" means we are edging nearer to death. So, to begin with, we are talking about the gravitas of death. 

“Pathetic”

Pathetic can mean small, lesser, as in “a pathetic attempt” or, in its original meaning, full of pathos. Emily means both here I am sure. But it's tricky because small in Dickinson’s world is often greater. Less is more. So pathetic has that connotation too. ("Pathetic from the Grass" is also evocative of graves).

“A minor Nation celebrates"

Here the whole nation of America is called into question. America is the Major nation, and its celebration is in the summer, the fourth of July. Now though we are into August. In this one move Dickinson celebrates something very different from the Power and Pomp of the Majority. Perhaps the minority is pathetic in comparison, but we, with Dickinson, are going low and inside; we are celebrating something small and secret, something akin to dying.

“unobtrusive Mass”

There is something holy here, a reverence, in the sound of these crickets. In the same way this minor Nation is held up in contrast to the Major one, the unobtrusive Mass is held up in comparison to another kind of Mass, one that is, perhaps, being pointed to as Obtrusive. A Catholic Mass, like Independence Day, is, often, showy and extravagant.

The mass we hear later is of a darker timbre. The bird sounds of spring are high and sweet, whereas the crickets' is more somber and low. In these descriptors the world of great matter, Church and State, is held against the pathetic, the humble, and the late.

This poem is a riddle of layers. The first level is literal "crickets," but the next level of the riddle is in the realm of metaphor. It’s about celebrating the pathetically minor.

The wonder is that Emily Dickinson can hear all of this in the sound of crickets, and makes us hear it too, as if it were a given truth.

Okay, let’s look at the signifiers (or pointers) in the next stanza.

Let No Ordinance be seen –

Now we have added another layer of social criticism, a reference to ordinances, or man-made-laws, and another difference too: there is no room for them in nature.

So gradual the Grace

Every one of these lines is about the alternative. The alternative to "gradual Grace," then, is sudden Grace. This calls into question any kind of grace that is NOT gradual. Which has more depth, the unearned Grace of youth, or the earned Grace of aging? This is where I think Dickinson is going with the word gradual here.

A gentle Custom it becomes –

Grace coming gently, as the sound of crickets, like a custom, is so rich with meaning. It reminds me of the famous lines, “Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me.” It’s customary to die and we become accustomed to it, but it happens so gradually, and with such grace, when in accordance with nature, that it is welcome. Death kindly stops for us.

Enlarging Loneliness –

On the literal level alone this is gorgeous; the feeling in the sound of crickets is of your own loneliness being enlarged in the echoing sound of nature. Chef’s kiss!

On the metaphoric level we are here with the little people, not with the pompous and self-aggrandizing winners. The lonely are enlarged in their loneliness by joining the chorus. We are all part of this “celebration” by dint of our own true loneliness.

I think of Christ’ words in Matthew 25, “As ye have done to the least of these, ye have done to me.”

Okay, on to the third stanza, which deepens the ideas further.

Antiquest felt at Noon –

At first I thought this word was anti-quest. I love the idea of an anti-quest, but, alas, the word is antique-est. As in oldest. We have a paradox, and a new a riddle. How can the oldest (antiquest) be felt in the height of youth (Noon)?

There is a sense given here of the ancient being felt in the heart of youth. You can be young and hear crickets and feel calmly mournful. You can feel the ancient eternal in the very sound of the summer dying.

When August burning low

There is that word “low,” which mirrors “pathetic from the Grass.” Here we have something different than a raging summer fire, we have a low heat, one that is still burning.

Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify –

A “spectral Canticle” is a lovely Dickinsonian way of saying a ghostly song. The sound of this song “typifies” repose, meaning both sleep and death. Repose has the connotation of peace too. This ghostly cricket song is likened to the sound of resting in peace.

The final stanza builds on the last.

Remit as yet no Grace –
No furrow on the Glow,

In the poem we are still in the noon of our lives, even if we have moved on to the August side of that noon. There is no “furrow,” or wrinkle, on the “Glow” of our cheeks. We don’t quite have the “Grace” we are striving for yet. We are still gradually getting there.

But a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now –

But even though we are still young, we’re over the hill. Something has changed. We can feel the difference inside. “Druidic Difference” is so interesting. Google tells me, "Druidic" connotes a deep, mystical connection to nature, ancient Celtic wisdom, and esoteric knowledge, often relating to priests, sages, or magical practitioners. It evokes imagery of sacred oak groves, ritualistic practices, and an untamed, earthy spirituality.”

This lesser Mass is not Catholic then. It is Druidic. We are, through the eternal return of the crickets, aligned with the cycles of nature.

This Druidic difference is at the crux of this poem, in which the crickets, the answer to the riddle, are the signifiers of the opposite of the majority. They are champions of the pathetic, the minor, the unobtrusive and the aging. It’s closer to earth, low not high, and it's the song of the crickets, via the imagination of Emily Dickinson, that carries all of this in its sound.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

3 hours of cricket sounds for your internalization

Notes

1. Compare this poem to Fr320,

 
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are—


2. Deeper dive. Try this link, which is the poet and critic Yvor Winters and other critics arguing about this poem in the 1950s.

The Overtakelessness of Those

The Overtakelessness of Those
Who have accomplished Death —
Majestic is to me beyond
The Majesties of Earth —
The Soul her "Not at Home"
Inscribes upon the Flesh,
And takes a fine aerial gait
Beyond the Writ of Touch.


     -Fr894, J1691, 1865


There is a great song on the new Jeff Tweedy album called “Lou Reed was my Babysitter” and the chorus goes,

The dead don't die, the dead don't die
The dead don't die, the dead don't die
Whoo!

That’s the gist of this poem. Once you are dead you can’t die. You can’t be overtaken. You have accomplished “Overtakelessness.” Whoo!

One might take “death” as metaphoric in this poem. Once you can “accomplish” an egoless state, the death of self, you cannot be overtaken because there is nothing to overtake. I think this is a valid reading. Dickinson does write a lot about death in life, like for instance in the poem which begins, “My life closed twice before its close.” However there is a line in this poem that takes it out of the realm of the metaphoric,

The Soul her "Not at Home"
Inscribes upon the Flesh,

Here we are reminded of that odd sense we get when we look at a body in the casket; the flesh is there, but the soul is gone. So this is actual death we are talking about here then, a body without an animating spirit.

What to make of the fact that Emily brings a light touch to all of this? A “Not at Home” sign? That’s practically cute. It would make a funny epitaph. And the rest of this poem is full of lively flourishes too, like the phrase, “a fine aerial gate.” There is nothing morbid in that line. It’s as if the poet, already free from her the weight of her flesh, is feeling giddy. Giddy up! 

The poem itself has a fine aerial gait. 

But at the same time there is, underlining the flourish and humor, a real sadness. First, Emily never quite had the Home she wanted (see the poem written about the same time as this one, Fr891, for a heartbreaking account of this). The soul is “Not at Home," which is another way of saying: homeless.

Also there is that ending,

Beyond the Writ of Touch.

A writ is a formal court order commanding a person to perform a specific action. It serves as a powerful legal directive, often used in emergency situations when no other adequate remedy exists. So "Beyond the Writ of Touch" is a way of saying, I think, beyond the excruciating demand of need. 

So this poem, like much of Dickinson's poetry, is double-sided. It has pain behind its lightness, but also a lightness which runs ahead of its pain. It reminds me of the ending of Fr372, "First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—" It’s so hard to let go. It feels like dying. But once you do, you are free. Is this tragic or joyful? For Dickinson (“me”) it is Majestic.

Majestic is to me beyond
The Majesties of Earth —

There’s an irony here. If you look at the poem before this one in Franklin order, F893, she refers to Sue and herself as Sovereign People. They are Majesty. The reason that the majesty of death is better than the majesty of the earth is merely because the majesty of the earth can’t last, and that's painful. We can’t keep in “touch” with it, not even by writ of court order. And this is especially true if the other won't, or for some reason can't, return our affection. There is a constant tension in Dickinson’s poetry between her passionate love, which she felt so keenly, and the tremendous effort to let go. 

Meanwhile it's great to see Dickinson having...fun? 

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. The poet Peter Gizzi liked the word "Overtakelessness" so much that he used it as a title for a terrific poem.

P.P.S. And speaking of fun, give a listen to the Jeff Tweedy song I mentioned above, "Lou Reed was my Babysitter."

Her sovereign People

Her sovereign People
Nature knows as well
And is as fond of signifying
As if fallible -


    -Fr893, J1139, 1865


This poem is difficult to parse because what does it mean that Nature knows Her sovereign people “as well?” And why would nature be fallible for signifying these people?

It helps to know that this poem was given as a note to Sue Dickinson (L336) with a flower. The heading for the note was “Rare to the Rare.”

There are a number of ways to take this poem, but my best guess here is that Emily and Sue are the sovereign People, and that even Nature “knows” or recognizes them as such, but is fallible for signifying this. Nature should be impartial, but it appears to give special attention to certain people.

Beyond being a love poem, though, I think this poem can be read as cautionary. The key word here is fallible. It can be read as an admonition to not get too caught up in partiality. Emily may have seen herself as fallible for signifying the sovereign, yet also realized that to do so is in our "Nature."

It’s also worth mentioning the flower that came with the poem. 

When Emily sent a note with a flower, the accompanying poem most often pertained to the flower itself. Flowers, like Sue and Emily, are Nature’s sovereign people and we all may be fallible for "signifying them." We are drawn to them, seduced by their beauty and fragrance. I’m reminded here of Whitman from Song of Myself, where he pushes back against the fallibility of seduction:

“Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me."

Emily knew how special she and Sue were, and even though she wasn't wrong, and even Nature would have to agree with her, it still makes her fallible. She's susceptible to a hierarchy of preferences, which in this poem she seems to both accept and find fault with. Both signifying and sovereignty are suspect, and yet, who, besides Walt Whitman, can resist the perfume of the flower?

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. The Rare to the Rare. It's worth comparing this poem to the one just before it in Franklin's ordering, Fr892.

Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die
And are too seldom born—

     -

Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die

Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die
And are too seldom born—


    -Fr892, J1066, 1865


The amazing thing about this poem is that Emily herself could be one of the children of fame it refers to. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. In a kind of mind-bending recursivity, the poem validates itself by still existing.

In the inscrutable mystery of her poems, in their Truth and Beauty, Dickinson, miraculously, seems to still be alive. And it's true that "seldom born" are the poets that have achieved her level of literary fame. 

The achievement of this poem is made even more remarkable in the sense in which it seems to know its own fate. It doesn’t surprise me that Dickinson knew this about herself, but it’s still uncanny. It’s like Babe Ruth pointing to the bleachers in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series  before hitting the game winning home run to deep center field.

“Called Shot” by Robert Thom

Another intriguing thing about this poem is that we don't know if it is complete, or unfinished. Thomas Johnson describes it as being a ‘pencilled scrap, a jotting perhaps intended for future use.’ Was it? Or is it complete as is? What do you think? 

There are hundreds of Dickinson lines that would be remembered even if they just came down to us as fragments. Dickinson shares this in common with another of Fame's Girls, Sappho. Sappho's poetry has such an aura to it that the few fragments of it we have feel eternal. 

If it is a fragment, just a beginning, we are left are to wonder what's next.

I found an article online by David Lehman in which he talks about a poetry contest in which poets were asked to use these lines as the first two of a quatrain. Lehman writes,

"While this poem can be read as a complete work, the poet Mitch Sisskind acted on the assumption that it represents the beginning of a poem that Dickinson intended to finish but never did. When The Best American Poetry blog ran an “Emily Starts, You Finish” contest in 2008, Sisskind added these two lines:

Their epitaphs—memorialized—
Cut in water—frozen in stone."

That's a great image, Mitch Sisskind. Anybody else want to give it a try? (minus any help from AI, please.)

Here’s my try,

Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die
And are too seldom born—

Still can’t do what you can do
within some cloud of form.

Okay, now you.

      -/)dam l)eGraff

P.S. All that said about Emily's future fame, my best guess is that this poem was written to Sue and is a declaration of "eternal love" and an acknowledgment of its rareness. I get this idea, in part, because of the poem following this one in the Franklin order. See the next poem.

I learned—at least—what Home could be—

I learned—at least—what Home could be—
How ignorant I had been
Of pretty ways of Covenant—
How awkward at the Hymn

Round our new Fireside—but for this—
This pattern—of the Way—
Whose Memory drowns me, like the Dip
Of a Celestial Sea—

What Mornings in our Garden—guessed—
What Bees—for us—to hum—
With only Birds to interrupt
The Ripple of our Theme—

And Task for Both—
When Play be done—
Your Problem—of the Brain—
And mine—some foolisher effect—
A Ruffle—or a Tune—

The Afternoons—Together spent—
And Twilight—in the Lanes—
Some ministry to poorer lives—
Seen poorest—thro' our gains—

And then Return—and Night—and Home—

And then away to You to pass—
A new—diviner—care—
Till Sunrise take us back to Scene—
Transmuted—Vivider—

This seems a Home—
And Home is not—
But what that Place could be—
Afflicts me—as a Setting Sun—
Where Dawn—knows how to be—



     -Fr891, J944, 1864


I learned—at least—what Home could be—

In that first line we get a lot of information. We can guess from it that the poet met someone, and there was a deep connection, and because of that she at least learned what home could be, which also tells you, in Dickinson’s concise manner, that the relationship is, for whatever reason, over.  It also tells us that before she learned this she had no idea what Home could truly be. Home is a key word for Dickinson. Elsewhere Dickinson declared home to be "the definition of God," and a place of "Infinite power." 

How ignorant I had been

Of pretty ways of Covenant—

Until she met this person she was ignorant of "pretty ways of Covenant." The Home she is talking about is built upon a Covenant, which I take to mean Holy Matrimony. The word "pretty" there is a word that is laced. The picture is pretty, perhaps, because it is a fantasy. It's like that Hemingway line, "Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?"

How awkward at the Hymn

Round our new Fireside—but for this—
This pattern—of the Way—

She just barely got the hint at what the pattern of the relationship would’ve been like if it had continued, just long enough to see that the hymns, which are sung awkwardly at first, would eventually come to be sung in divine harmonies “Round our new fireside.” That line is hot. I think of St. Francis and St. Clare. The legend goes that when the two future saints met and spoke together in the valley, the villagers up above in Assisi could see the smoke of a great bonfire down below.

I like that word “Round” too. By abbreviating “around” into “round,” we have the idea of fullness.

Then she goes on to tell us that the memory of This pattern—of the Way—

…drowns me, like the Dip
Of a Celestial Sea—

Whew. What a dizzying image. The Celestial Sea has dipped down from the sky above and drowned the poet. It’s as if exposure to Paradise killed her by making everything that was “not the Way” suffer in comparison. The image is particularly striking in how it reverses the normal death by drowning. Normally you dip down into the sea to drown. Here the sea of heaven dips into the poet, even as she is reaching up to it.

What Mornings in our Garden—guessed—

The Pattern is spelled out. First, mornings in our garden. At least that’s the guess at what married life with this person would’ve been like. It does sound like an ideal way to start a day.

What Bees—for us—to hum—

Dickinson gives us a twist in nearly every phrase that makes it fresh. One way you could take the syntax here is that the Bees are humming for the lovers. “What bees for us to hum.” But because Dickinson disrupts the syntax from the normal "What bees to hum for us” to “What bees for us to hum,” you also get the sense that it is the lovers who are causing the bees to hum. To make the “bees hum” has a sexual vibrancy to it. It’s as if all of nature has come alive and is humming due to this great love affair.

With only Birds to interrupt
The Ripple of our Theme—

The theme the two lovers are conversing upon ripples along as easily and merrily as a stream, and the only thing to interrupt it is the birds. The word “Theme” is also a musical term resonating with “Hum,” and “Hymn” before that, and so the birds’ singing to interrupt the lovers’ harmony is almost absurdly over the top.

And Task for Both—
When Play be done—

Another thing interrupting the flow of the morning’s musical conversation is that there are tasks to do. Though I love that the first thing to do is to “play” in the garden. In this ideal world we are playing in the garden in the morning and singing round the fire at night. I'm in.

But what about those tasks? What is this work?

Your Problem—of the Brain—

Well, the task of this ideal lover is a cerebral one. The “brain” descriptor makes you really want to know who Dickinson is talking about. I mean who is more of a brain than Dickinson?! Well, Sue was perhaps. She was supposedly a brilliant mathematician. It could be a math "Problem" we are talking about. Emily once wrote to Sue that the only person she learned more from was Shakespeare. Charles Wadsworth, another possibility here, was a brainy one too. We know Emily was taken with the brilliance of his sermons. Or maybe it was someone else, someone she never wrote about? I feel like this is a mystery which The Prowling Bee, and biographers, will never fully solve. But whoever it was, they really lit Dickinson’s wick, that’s for sure.

If you make “Problem” the object of the sentence instead of the subject, then there may be a little light ribbing in the line, “Your Problem—of the Brain—” Being too brainy might be a problem. Not enough “feeling.” Perhaps we could even say that this is where the "Problem" of the relationship is, why it didn't work out. 

And mine—some foolisher effect—
A Ruffle—or a Tune—

My task, says the poet, is something less brainy, something foolish like a ruffle or a tune. Emily along with her sister Lavinia were known, when they were young, as fashionable, so the ruffle of a dress could be what is meant here, but of course sewing is often a metaphor for poetry too. A ruffle could just as well be a pretty turn of phrase. "A Tune" could be a lyric. This is what Emily does for work. Her poetry, often in common hymn meter, is ripe for music. 

Then after work?

The Afternoons—Together spent—
And Twilight—in the Lanes—

After work, the two come back together and then spend the last of the daylight strolling together down the lanes of the village.

The purity of love on display as the paramours walk the lane becomes…

Some ministry to poorer lives—

Those who are suffering will be lifted up by seeing the two together. The word “ministry” here, along with “covenant,” does put me in mind of Charles Wadsworth, who was a minister. It’s as if the glowing love of the two together is ministering to the lonely souls of the town.

Seen poorest—thro' our gains—

There is a double meaning here depending on how you read the syntax. The most obvious reading is that the people they see along the way appear to be poorer to the lovers because they don’t have what they have, which is each other.

But I think you can take this line another way. The poorest way to see the poor is through gains. Seen poorest—thro' our gains— In other words, to see the poor is harder to do when you are rich. Though this is a secondary reading of the line, I think it is actually closer to Dickinson’s thought. There is an underlying theme in much of Dickinson’s poetry about meeting the poor better through being poor one’s self; we are closer to each other, more Christ-like, in our poverty. (In that sense one could say that Dickinson is actually a better minister for having been miserable, an irony of which I think she was all too aware.)

And then Return—and Night—and Home—

This line is powerful set off by itself, almost breathless: And then Return! And Night! And Home!

It’s so heart-rending as an unfulfilled wish. And so are these next lines...

And then away to You to pass—
A new—diviner—care—

The lovers come together. “And then away to You to pass” sounds awkward at first, but it packs in a lot. First there is the idea of passing to the other person through consummation, but also “away…to pass” gives a sense of dying into one another, to “pass away” into one another. It’s quite breathtaking when the layers reveal themselves. They pass into one another’s “diviner” care just as death brings us into the diviner care of heaven. Dickinson is so sly the way she brings the earthly and heavenly, the sacred and profane, together into one. It’s just beautiful poetry at the end of the day.

They will make love and sleep together in each other’s arms and then they will wake up to start the "pattern of the Way" again the next morning:

Till Sunrise take us back to Scene—
Transmuted—Vivider—

There is a pun in “Scene.” You are back in the scene of life, back in the "play," but also your eyes are open again, you are back to “Seen.” This sets up the idea of “Vivider.” You see, after the night spent together, more vividly in the morning. Also, you are transmuted by sleep and love. Transmuted is a term that largely comes out of the world of alchemy. The idea here is that the two have been transmuted in each other’s arms from base metal into gold.

This seems a Home—
And Home is not—

This turn is heartbreaking. This Home is what Emily wants, and she wants it with this person, but Home is not. There is no real Home for Emily, except for her childhood home, which she never left. But it's not the same thing.

But what that Place could be—
Afflicts me—as a Setting Sun—
Where Dawn—knows how to be—

It could be a golden morning always with love, but instead the poet can only fade into darkness like the setting sun. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Sometimes I put a tune to a poem before I try to understand it. I find a melody that fits that “pattern of the way” (to borrow a phrase from this poem) and sing it over and over again, a dozen times or so, honing in a little more each time to the rhythm, hewing a little closer to the pattern.

That’s what I did with this poem and the way it unfolded was, every time, more and more achingly beautiful. By the time I was done I felt transmuted. Vivider. And I began to truly feel the immensity of Dickinson’s loss.

When you lock in to the “pattern,” the meaning behind the pattern begins to unlock.

A Coffin — is a small Domain

A Coffin — is a small Domain,
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In it diminished Plane.

A Grave — is a restricted Breadth —
Yet ampler than the Sun —
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon

To Him who on its small Repose
Bestows a single Friend —
Circumference without Relief —
Or Estimate — or End —


    -Fr890, J943, 1864

The first stanza is pretty straight forward, though it is made complicated by the word "Paradise." Does Paradise refer to the once living body’s time on earth, or does it point forward to a heavenly Paradise afterward? That’s one of the poignant puzzles of this particular poem. 

Another one is to ask who "He" is in the second stanza? Is it the "Sun" or the "Son" that populates the Seas and looks upon all the Lands? In other words, Christ of Paradise to come? Or is the literal sun of Paradise lost? 

One more problem to solve. Who is the Him in the third stanza? Is it the Sun/Son from the second stanza who is looking upon all of the earth? Or is it the one, the poet, who “Bestows a single friend” upon the grave’s “small repose?” Because of the enjambment (the lack of punctuation) between the second and third stanza, I read it is the latter: the one burying the body sees their friend as more ample than all that the Sun/Son looks upon. In other words, this one in the grave meant more to the poet than all of kingdom-come does.

The lack of “relief” in the penultimate line, then, is the lack of relief from grief felt by the friend mourning the loss. There is no estimate to the love. And there is no end for it, except the grave.  

It’s worth noting that this poem is one of the many that explore the word “circumference” in Dickinson’s poetry. It may be her favorite word. She tells T.W. Higginson in a letter, “My business is Circumference.”

reaching the Circumference in this poem would be a relief because at least it would be an end to the grief. Compare this to the end of the poem preceding it, Fr889, which sees the misery of Being itself, minus love, as infinite. The circumference of our lives, the little grave, we realize, is not an unwelcome one.

On the other hand, look at the largesse of Paradise! This leaves the reader with a pertinent question. Is Paradise lost, or is it yet to be gained? 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


P.S. When researching this poem I came across the following video essay about it by Adrian Fort. I got a kick out of Adrian’s perspective so I transcribed the video for your pleasure here. 

"I am Adrian Fort, and we are here for another poetry discussion. This poetry discussion comes to us by way of Emily Dickinson. This is not one of the better-known, more widely read Emily Dickinson poems. This is somewhat of a niche in the field of Dickinson, but we are going to do it anyway because it’s Emily Dickinson.

Before getting into the discussion, I want to define a key concept: paradox. A paradox is a statement that contradicts itself or that must be both true and untrue at the same time. Paradoxes are quirks in logic that demonstrate how our thinking sometimes goes haywire, even when we use perfectly logical reasoning to get there. But a key part of paradoxes is that they at least sound reasonable. They’re not obvious nonsense, and it’s only upon consideration that we realize their self-defeating logic.

This poem, I think, is a paradox that does not have self-defeating logic, and I’ll get into a little bit about what I mean by that. But when we look at this poem, Emily Dickinson is at times completely impenetrable for a reader, so if this poem doesn’t mean a whole lot to you, don’t worry about it. Get a coffee, grab yourself a cookie, and eventually this poem will make sense to you—at least insofar as it does speak to you.

Here is what I will tell you I believe the poem is talking about. A coffin is a small domain, yet able to contain a citizen of paradise in its diminished plane. Here we’re talking about a coffin being a small thing, but what it contains is vast, is large—it is the actual thing which was alive. People. It contains a person. A coffin contains a person, right?

People are all we really have. People are our entire reality, for the most part, right? Some of us are hermits, but even a hermit like Emily Dickinson is able to talk about a citizen of paradise—paradise being the next world. That citizen of paradise is contained in this little box.

Then we get: a grave is restricted breadth. It’s a small thing, a restricted breadth, yet ampler than the sun and all the seas he populates and lands he looks upon. To him who on its small repose bestows a single friend, circumference without relief or estimate or end.

So this part of the poem, as opposed to the first part of the poem, is talking about the great big thing that a grave is. A grave contains a coffin. A coffin is a small thing. A grave is dug exclusively for a coffin—it is meant to fit the coffin. It is a small thing that contains a large thing. The grave is a small thing that contains the large thing.

That is the paradox here. But I don’t think it has to be self-defeating logic, because it is literal versus idea, right? The literal thing—the literal coffin, the literal grave—is a small thing, but what it contains is so very large, is so very important. The grave, the coffin—they are small little things. The grave, the coffin contain everything that matters. The grave, the coffin contain everything there is to be had.

So this is a paradox, but it is not necessarily self-defeating, and this is the brilliance of Emily Dickinson.

So what is a paradox? A paradox is self-defeating, but if you include that self-defeating mechanism in a completely different type of reading, then you contain the original thesis. So a paradox is essentially thesis and counter-thesis in one idea, right?

Here we have the thesis that a grave and a coffin are both small things. We have the counter-thesis that the thing inside that little bitty thing is a great big thing. But when you dichotomize literal from literary—literal little thing, literary great big thing—the paradox can stand.

Emily Dickinson is my favorite poet. Emily Dickinson is able to do these things because these things exist in almost an astral plane, right? Emily Dickinson is able to create an entire world that is the literary. Emily Dickinson creates an entire existence outside of life.

It is difficult, I think, to reconcile this type of genius in today’s world. So one of the examples that I always like to give when speaking about true genius: Isaac Newton. Brilliant guy, right? Sort of a loner, kind of crazy.

Isaac Newton lived in a world where the plague was breaking out, and he had gotten into an argument with his friend over whether or not you could really try—I think it was track, don’t call me out on it, I’m not a math guy—track where the moon would be. The plague breaks out, both of these gentlemen are confined inside their own places, and basically on a dare, on a whim, on a “oh yeah, I bet I can,” Isaac Newton invents differentiated calculus—maybe that’s not the right term, again, I’m not a math guy—but decides yeah, you can figure that out with equations, and I’m going to invent a math. And he did it.

That type of brilliance, that type of genius, is something that is difficult for us in today’s world to really grapple with.

Emily Dickinson exists in that same space. Now, Emily Dickinson did not revolutionize physics, did not single-handedly craft a math, okay, I get it. What I mean is that everything Isaac Newton would have done to create a math was so mystifyingly cerebral that I don’t think many people have those tools. I think we are entering a world where fewer and fewer people will have those tools, because of what is necessary there.

It is so necessary to create that astral plane in your mind. Basically, each time you sit down to do that work, you have to invest some parabolic number of minutes or hours re-entering that space. So Isaac Newton starts making this math, has to take a sleep, wakes up, and in order to refine his place, to re-establish where he left off, he doesn’t just sit down and do it. He doesn’t just walk through the door. One does not simply recreate math.

He has to go through his notes and retrace those mental steps. Einstein was very good at this as well. Einstein, however, used what were known as thought experiments as shortcuts. So when he was thinking about the speed of light, one of the things he did was imagine he was on a train traveling at the speed of light—Jesse James style, hanging onto the top of the train—and he turns on a flashlight. What happens?

That’s a really useful shortcut. You still have to get back in that place, and that is what is, to me, so mystifying about 1,775 poems from Emily Dickinson.

Now, I started this off by saying maybe this poem won’t make any sense to you the first time you read it. That’s fine. It is sort of like Shakespeare and William Faulkner in the way that it helps to read Emily Dickinson out loud—but for different reasons. With Faulkner and Shakespeare, it’s the employment of the language itself. With Emily Dickinson, it is all of those dashes that screw you. Some of the line breaks screw you. A lot of what’s going on in Emily Dickinson screws you.

So to reclaim the place, reading it out loud is sort of like Einstein’s thought experiments, in that it is a cerebral shortcut. You are undermining the work it takes to silently read the words on the page, and you are short-circuiting the mental fatigue it takes to get there.

And here’s the thing: I might be absolutely wrong about what this poem is about. It might be that one of these line breaks that I’ve misinterpreted, one of these dashes that I sped right through, changes the entire composition of one or more of these stanzas. So I could be completely wrong here. I don’t know. I can’t say."

Such is the Force of Happiness—

Such is the Force of Happiness—
The Least—can lift a Ton
Assisted by its stimulus—

Who Misery—sustain—
No Sinew can afford—
The Cargo of Themselves—
Too infinite for Consciousness'
Slow capabilities.

     -Fr889, J787, Fascicle 39, 1864


This is the last poem of the 40 fascicles that Emily Dickinson left behind.* We (mostly Susan) have commented on every one of the 800 plus poems in these 40 fascicles, a feat that has taken 15 years. It’s quite an accomplishment I think, and yet the blog is still only half way through the 1775 poems of the oeuvre. We have another 900 non-fascicle poems to go. Diving this deep into the poems really makes clear just how prolific, and awesome, Emily Dickinson was, and still is. 

It's worth noting that there hasn't been a poem yet that we couldn't find plenty to write about. Sometimes I still don't get it, but trust her so much as a source of poetry that I know it's my problem, not hers. 

So many gems.

Part of the wonderful advantage of the fascicles is being able to watch the development from poem to poem as Dickinson laid them out in books she sewed together herself. For instance, in this poem we have the word “capability,” which is, since we have just recently read it, reminiscent of the word “capacity” in the poem previous to this one, Fr888. She's thinking about the capacity and capability of consciousness itself. (No cap, as the kids say.) You can watch the ideas develop when you read the fascicles, see words get picked up and looked at from all sides.

This poem is the end of a fascicle that has been wrestling with selfhood in the midst of tragic loss. The conclusion appears bleak. The last few poems have the poet questioning Being itself. Fr887 sums it up: “to die/ Is Nature's only Pharmacy/ For Being's Malady—”

This final poem in the fascicle starts off with a seemingly optimistic claim. The least bit of happiness can lift a ton. A little goes a long way. We see this idea played out in Dickinson’s poems often. In the poem before this one, Fr888, for instance, we get this: “Content of fading/ Is enough for me —/ Her least attention raise on me —”

The first stanza of this final poem is, like the lover's attention, short lived:

Such is the Force of Happiness—
The Least—can lift a Ton
Assisted by its stimulus—

Another reading of this poem, by the poet Alex Cory, is that with the stimulus of happiness the least of us can lift a ton.  This reading gets at "As you do unto the least of these, you do unto  me" idea. In other words, the happiness you spread to the least will lift them up a ton.

Though that's a lot of happiness, a ton is still finite. There was a finite amount of happiness, even if it was a whole ton. But the other side of the equation, in the more heavily-weighted second stanza, is the "Misery" of self alone. The weight of this Misery feels... infinite. 

The Cargo of Themselves—
(is) Too infinite for Consciousness'
Slow capabilities.

The misery felt in the weight of the “cargo” being carried by the self feels infinite. There's an overwhelming feeling of futility. Consciousness is bottomless, and, without love, endlessly painful.

But there is a catch of sorts. Dickinson writes,

Who Misery—sustain—
No Sinew can afford—

First of all, note that it doesn’t say “who sustains misery.” It’s “who Misery sustain.” There is something about misery that sustains poetry. We saw this idea play out in Fr887: "When she (Nature) had put away Her Work/ My own had just begun—"

Likewise in Fr706 Dickinson writes of the “white sustenance Despair.” Misery and despair can help sustain an artist, but, ironically, it’s not sustainable. “Consciousness’ slow capability” can’t handle it. "No sinew can afford" to take on all that weight. What's a girl to do?

Buckle down. With steel-eyed resolve and the diligent work of her poetry, Dickinson was able, through her misery, to sustain herself. The poems, seen in this slant light, are all the more remarkable for existing at all. Their presence, and the force of their beauty, are a living proof that all is not lost. Dickinson doesn't just sustain herself through a Herculean battle against depression, but, by doing so, in an act of service, helps sustain us. In Fr887 Dickinson writes, 

Severer Service of myself
I—hastened to demand
To fill the awful Vacuum
Your life had left behind—

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


*Mabel Loomis Todd ordered these fascicles, and this fascicle, according to her system, is number 39. But, according to Franklin’s ordering this one would be the 40th. The problem is Franklin didn't reorder the fascicles, just the poems. So we have two different tracking systems. According to Franklin though, this is the last poem in the last fascicle, and, therefore, this poem the final one preserved in this way. It’s all guess work.)

'Twould ease — a Butterfly —

'Twould ease — a Butterfly —
Elate — a Bee —
Thou'rt neither —
Neither — thy capacity —

But, Blossom, were I,
I would rather be
Thy moment
Than a Bee's Eternity —

Content of fading
Is enough for me —
Fade I unto Divinity —

And Dying — Lifetime —
Ample as the Eye —
Her least attention raise on me —


      -Fr888, J682, fascicle 39, 1864


This is a very slippery poem. Who is the flower in this equation and who the bee and butterfly? What "capacity" does the bee and butterfly have, in representational human terms, that the blossom doesn't? Who is Her at the end of the poem? Is it the Ample eye that of the bee and butterfly or of the flower? Does that ample eye belong to the adorer or adored? There is a lot to work out. How you work it out will color your reading of the poem, which will in turn reflect you.

Here’s my reading, this time.

In the first stanza we have the idea that a flower eases and elates the bee and the butterfly, but does not have their capacity, which I take to mean, cannot fly away.

I think of Emily at home, able to ease and elate (relating to the two ends of poetry, Truth and Beauty) through her poetry, but self-restricted to her home. 

In the second stanza she says she would rather be “Thy” singular moment, meaning the blossom's, than that of the eternal prowler, the bee. There are some sexual politics here perhaps; the feminine is often depicted as rooted, while the bees, and the butterflies, root around.  Who does "Thy" refer to? David Preest thinks Emily is talking to herself here, and that makes the most sense to me too. But there are other possibilities.

By the third stanza the poet has become the blossom, accepting that she is fading and that her glory is behind her.

Content of fading
Is enough for me —

The next line is a beauty:

Fade I unto Divinity

There is an acceptance of death here in the satisfaction of knowing that you were, for a moment, that full blossom visited by the nectar-seeking bee, and, for a time, could be the easeful place to rest for the butterfly. Being content with this, one can fade into the divine, which means, I suppose, resting in peace.

And Dying — Lifetime —
Ample as the Eye —
Her least attention raise on me —

In dying, though, there’s the memory of a Lifetime, ample as the eye that saw it all. And in that ample eye, what is most precious is just the least moment of attention from “Her” ample eye.

It’s a poem that accepts that the one glance is not only "enough," it's more than enough, it's "ample." The flower as it is fading is all gratitude.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. This Tanya Tucker song comes to mind:

Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on?

Could it be a faded rose from days gone by?

And did I hear you say he was a-meetin' you here today

To take you to his mansion in the sky?

Severer Service of myself

Severer Service of myself
I—hastened to demand
To fill the awful Vacuum
Your life had left behind—

I worried Nature with my Wheels
When Hers had ceased to run—
When she had put away Her Work
My own had just begun.

I strove to weary Brain and Bone—
To harass to fatigue
The glittering Retinue of nerves—
Vitality to clog

To some dull comfort Those obtain
Who put a Head away
They knew the Hair to—
And forget the color of the Day—

Affliction would not be appeased—
The Darkness braced as firm
As all my stratagem had been
The Midnight to confirm—

No Drug for Consciousness—can be—
Alternative to die
Is Nature's only Pharmacy
For Being's Malady—


    -Fr887, J786, fascicle 39, 1864
 
I saw a musical last night at my daughter’s school called PROM. One of the characters had a mother who was a control freak. The daughter, tired of feeling controlled, says to her mother, “making your life perfect isn’t going to bring Dad back.”

That’s what I imagine the first stanza of this poem is getting at:

Severer Service of myself
I—hastened to demand
To fill the awful Vacuum
Your life had left behind—

When I stop to realize that writing poetry is the “severer service” that a poet would demand of herself, I’m reminded, once again, that these poems are meant to be a service. Dickinson was writing these poems as a service to the reader. (She couldn't possibly have foreseen just how far her service would extend.) It would follow then that this poem itself is meant to be of service. The question is, how?

Let's circle back to that question. Suffice to say, she was serious about it, severe. This helps explain why she was so prolific during the early 1860s. The general thought is that the uptick in poems during this time was a kind of therapy for the poet, a way of working through a painful trauma she experienced in 1862. And that must be true, no doubt, but there are less exacting ways to do that. You can write it in prose for one thing. Poetry is work meant for the ears of others. The take-away here, though, is that the processing of pain and work are one in the same. It's all one art. (See Elizabeth Bishop's masterpiece One Art for another beautiful example of this axiom at work.)

Taking the wisdom gleaned from her process and wrapping it up in beautifully-constructed aphoristic poems is what Emily Dickinson decides to do to be of service. This is what she feels she has left in the wake of her loss. It is her "single spade" (to borrow the image from the poem before this one in the fascicle). The deeper she reaches into the recesses of her own mind and heart, the deeper she reaches into ours, revealing us to ourselves through her hyper-specific lens. A poem like this one extends beyond aphorism though. It is more cri de coeur. 

The next stanza, which stays in the same vein, gets a little more esoteric.

I worried Nature with my Wheels
When Hers had ceased to run—
When she had put away Her Work
My own had just begun.

The idea of "worrying nature" is abstract, but I get what it means. But the idea of Nature’s wheels no longer running leaves me perplexed. Nature’s wheels are always running, right? So what does Dickinson mean by Nature here? It says Nature had put away its work. Okay well we know someone (a lover?) has left the poet bereft, in an "awful vacuum." So is it the poet’s own Nature that has stopped Work? And if so, then what happens when Nature is gone? Who, or what, is running the self? Who is writing the poem? What's the causal relationship in "When she (Nature) had put away Her Work/ My own had just begin"? Does the loss of Nature enable and fuel the work of the poet? 

The further question this begs for me is whether or not the art feeds the pain or the pain feeds the art? 

(See what just happened to me there? Dickinson's idea of Nature putting away its work is so charged it got my wheels spinning. Suddenly I’m thinking about questions that get down to core beliefs. She's wily like that.) 

Let's move on:

I strove to weary Brain and Bone—
To harass to fatigue
The glittering Retinue of nerves—
Vitality to clog

This stanza lets us know that her desire to serve is not just out of a kindness, but also out of the need to wear herself out, so she can disappear more quickly. She’s killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. 

This poem, and the one before it in Fascicle 39, are among Dickinson’s darkest. It would even seem this poem was written to exacerbate the dark, “to harass to fatigue”.

Note the lack of the normal dash in that line. Sometimes Dickinson puts a dash where you would least suspect it. This time though she doesn’t put one where you would most expect it. In this case the lack of a dash shows us that the poet isn’t giving herself pause. She’s trying to over-work herself to quiet the “glittering retinue of nerves.” What a phrase that is. We know that these nerves are feeling great pain, but that adjective “glittering” gives us a sense of the shining brilliance that comes from this pain. That brilliance can be seen in the very line itself.

To some dull comfort Those obtain
Who put a Head away
They knew the Hair to—

The “head” the poet puts away is her both her lover's and her own. She doesn’t want to think anymore. The startling and heartbreaking part is that the head the poet is putting away is attached to the “hair" that "They knew." Suddenly the abstraction of “head” becomes very concrete with that “hair.” 

A lock of Emily's hair

That hair is the once living symbol of the physical intimacy between the poet and the beloved. 

And forget the color of the Day—

Since the lover has gone away, the dead hair may keep its hue, but the color has drained from the poet’s day. Not just gone, but she’s forgotten it.

Affliction would not be appeased—
The Darkness braced as firm
As all my stratagem had been
The Midnight to confirm—

There is no appeasement here. This line starkly says it, "affliction would not be appeased." The darkness is so firm and secure that every stratagem, every cure, every piece of friendly advice followed, every avenue tried, only confirms that it is an absolute midnight of the soul. Here in this midnight darkness there is, presumably, not even the light of moon and stars. The thing that confirms the hopeless state is the fact that every strategy has been tried. 

No Drug for Consciousness—can be—
Alternative to die
Is Nature's only Pharmacy
For Being's Malady—

It's slightly difficult to follow the syntax here, but I think it goes something like this, "No drug for (putting us out of) consciousness can be (an) alternative to die (because to die) is nature's only pharmacy for Being's Malady." 

That idea is intense because it makes Being itself seem like the blame here, as if it were an inherently deadly disease which no drug could cure. But wait. Elsewhere Dickinson writes of Being as ecstasy, and in fact she has done so in this very fascicle (Fr874). The reason why Being and Consciousness are absolute hell, now, in this moment of expression, is because of grief. When you are in great psychic pain the whole world is colored by it, or, as the case may be here, discolored. If it is bad enough, only death can take the pain away.

These last two poems in the fascicle are painful. If you love Dickinson, then you hate seeing her at rock bottom, and, even, perhaps, suicidal. 

This brings us back to the question of the poem's worth to the reader. I think there is worth in an honest reckoning of despair. It is oddly reassuring to us. She feels us, at our lowest, and because she is so naked and blunt in her own hopelessness, we feel sympathy with her. This poem brings us into sympathy. There is something useful in that. It's severe, but it's of service. 

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

 

P.S. The final stanza reiterates the message of drugs being of no use that we saw in Fr886, the poem immediately preceding this one in fascicle 39:

I tried...
In Cups of artificial Drowse
To steep its shape away —

P.P.S. I happened to be listening to the Rolling Stones' song "Dear Doctor" as I wrote this. The lyrics echoed this poem neatly. The jar is the poem:

"Oh help me, please doctor, I'm damaged
There's a pain where there once was a heart
It's sleepin', it's a beatin'
Can't ya please tear it out, and preserve it
Right there in that jar?"