I entertained Myself—
At first—a scant nutrition—
An insufficient Loaf—
But grown by slender addings
To so esteemed a size
'Tis sumptuous enough for me—
And almost to suffice
A Robin's famine able—
Red Pilgrim, He and I—
A Berry from our table
Reserve—for charity—
-Fr872, J773, 1864
Deprived of other Banquet
All of us in some way or another have had a banquet taken away. This could be as big as a love of your life leaving you or being fired from a job, or as absurdly small as having the perfect parking spot snagged in front of you. For Emily I suspect it was the loss of a great love.
I entertained Myself—
Left bare, bereft, and yet the poet is still able to entertain herself nonetheless, and sumptuously so, thank you very much.
What does it mean to entertain yourself? Entertainment can mean so many things. Poetry is a kind of entertainment for Emily. Perhaps it wasn’t the feast of great love she once had, but through the poem, in our hands, Emily has made the best use of her great reserves of love. This poem, this entertainment, is a love letter.
I asked my HS students recently to write about what they would do if they knew they were only going to have an hour to live. Most of them said they would like to be surrounded by friends and family. But one student wrote that if she only had an hour left she would watch the sunset. And she wouldn’t take any pictures, she said, because she wanted it “to be only mine.” I thought of this poem. I entertained Myself—
At first—a scant nutrition—
An insufficient Loaf—
This self-entertaining would be difficult at first in lieu of a great feast. When you no longer have enough food, the hunger, in the beginning, seems overwhelming, but eventually you get accustomed to making more of less.
But grown by slender addings
To so esteemed a size
If there was a banquet before, now you picture a few slender slices of bread. That’s all there is left. But these slender slices eventually add up with careful cultivation to plenty. “Slender” is doing extra work here because the word reminds us that the poet herself has grown slender for lack of sustenance.
There is another way to take "slender addings" though. If poetry was the way Dickinson entertained herself, the soul-food that sustained her, then each slender adding is a page. Poem by poem, page by page Dickinson made a feast out of loss.
To so esteemed a size
Each slender poem that was added did amount, in the end, "to so esteemed a size," nearly 2000 astonishing poems.
'Tis sumptuous enough for me—
"Sumptuous" is a sumptuous word and it therefore helps make the poem more sumptuous.
This stanza reminds me of all those other Dickinson poems about robins and crumbs. It’s a favorite subject of hers. If anyone with time on their hands wants a good project, please publish all of these robin poems together as a chapbook. Actually, just make it a book full of all of her bird poems, with one prime section on Robins. This would be a worthwhile labor of love for someone. Thank you in advance.
By aligning herself with the "red pilgrim," Dickinson frames deprivation as a spiritual journey rather than a failure.
And what is shared? A berry, the sweetest portion of the fare.
This poem makes it beautiful to be bare to the bone.
It imagines life not as a banquet regained, but as a shared economy of care. This poem itself is like the berry. This is a berry good poem. It is small, concentrated and sweet. It sustains.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S.
That word "deprived" troubles me. It is deliberately vague, and therefore haunting. Was Dickinson deprived of Susan Gilbert? Of Charles Wadsworth, whom some, including her niece Mattie, believed she loved? Or was the deprivation something broader, a life constrained by gender, by family, by circumstance?
Some readers have speculated about darker possibilities within the Dickinson household, but these remain conjecture. What matters, finally, is not the precise cause of deprivation, but what Dickinson does with it. She transforms her loss into a poem with which to feed others.
Dickinson does not tell us what the banquet was. Love, vocation, marriage, health, God, recognition, bodily safety, simple happiness. That vagueness is not a deficiency, but rather the mechanism by which the poem works.
“Deprived of other Banquet” has a conspicuous absence at its center. The readers must fill it for themselves.
You could say that the poem’s generosity, then, comes from what it withholds. The less a poem insists, the more it gives. The more it names, the less room there is for anyone else to stand inside it.
Dickinson withholds the cause, but it's not because she's being coy. Rather, this is the discipline of care. A good poem wants to be used.
I asked my HS students recently to write about what they would do if they knew they were only going to have an hour to live. Most of them said they would like to be surrounded by friends and family. But one student wrote that if she only had an hour left she would watch the sunset. And she wouldn’t take any pictures, she said, because she wanted it “to be only mine.” I thought of this poem. I entertained Myself—
At first—a scant nutrition—
An insufficient Loaf—
This self-entertaining would be difficult at first in lieu of a great feast. When you no longer have enough food, the hunger, in the beginning, seems overwhelming, but eventually you get accustomed to making more of less.
But grown by slender addings
To so esteemed a size
If there was a banquet before, now you picture a few slender slices of bread. That’s all there is left. But these slender slices eventually add up with careful cultivation to plenty. “Slender” is doing extra work here because the word reminds us that the poet herself has grown slender for lack of sustenance.
There is another way to take "slender addings" though. If poetry was the way Dickinson entertained herself, the soul-food that sustained her, then each slender adding is a page. Poem by poem, page by page Dickinson made a feast out of loss.
To so esteemed a size
Each slender poem that was added did amount, in the end, "to so esteemed a size," nearly 2000 astonishing poems.
'Tis sumptuous enough for me—
"Sumptuous" is a sumptuous word and it therefore helps make the poem more sumptuous.
A great poet’s capacity for beauty is vast. Even scarcity can be made lush.
And almost to suffice
That “almost” is understated. There is no making up, perhaps, for lost love, no matter how exquisitely sumptuous the entertainment. Art does not fully replace what was lost.
And almost to suffice
That “almost” is understated. There is no making up, perhaps, for lost love, no matter how exquisitely sumptuous the entertainment. Art does not fully replace what was lost.
A Robin's famine able—
Red Pilgrim, He and I—
A Berry from our table
Reserve—for charity—
Red Pilgrim, He and I—
A Berry from our table
Reserve—for charity—
This stanza reminds me of all those other Dickinson poems about robins and crumbs. It’s a favorite subject of hers. If anyone with time on their hands wants a good project, please publish all of these robin poems together as a chapbook. Actually, just make it a book full of all of her bird poems, with one prime section on Robins. This would be a worthwhile labor of love for someone. Thank you in advance.
By aligning herself with the "red pilgrim," Dickinson frames deprivation as a spiritual journey rather than a failure.
And what is shared? A berry, the sweetest portion of the fare.
This poem makes it beautiful to be bare to the bone.
It imagines life not as a banquet regained, but as a shared economy of care. This poem itself is like the berry. This is a berry good poem. It is small, concentrated and sweet. It sustains.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S.
That word "deprived" troubles me. It is deliberately vague, and therefore haunting. Was Dickinson deprived of Susan Gilbert? Of Charles Wadsworth, whom some, including her niece Mattie, believed she loved? Or was the deprivation something broader, a life constrained by gender, by family, by circumstance?
Some readers have speculated about darker possibilities within the Dickinson household, but these remain conjecture. What matters, finally, is not the precise cause of deprivation, but what Dickinson does with it. She transforms her loss into a poem with which to feed others.
Dickinson does not tell us what the banquet was. Love, vocation, marriage, health, God, recognition, bodily safety, simple happiness. That vagueness is not a deficiency, but rather the mechanism by which the poem works.
“Deprived of other Banquet” has a conspicuous absence at its center. The readers must fill it for themselves.
You could say that the poem’s generosity, then, comes from what it withholds. The less a poem insists, the more it gives. The more it names, the less room there is for anyone else to stand inside it.
Dickinson withholds the cause, but it's not because she's being coy. Rather, this is the discipline of care. A good poem wants to be used.
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