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 —
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.
An Hour is a Sea, what a wonderful expression!!! Besides its meaning in the context of this poem, it is also a very wonderful expression about the value of time and the great possibilities that it can offer if we use it efficiently!!!! Emily has so many gifts for us!!!
ReplyDeleteThis poem is bemoaning absence, so I think "an hour is a Sea" means that time feels huge because it is miserable. But I like the way you spin it. An hour can be seen as a Sea in terms of possibility too. That's actually inspiring.
DeleteThank you very much!! I liked your analysis very much!! Yes of course I understand that in the context of the poem the meaning of this phrase is completely different. But I like the phrase per se and I will try to use it in my dailly life:
ReplyDelete- What's the point of starting this task now, the night will fall in an hour and you won't be able to see. Start tommorow morning
- Well, an hour is a sea, my friend!!
When i first read this poem I actually found it very humdrum. I thought Emily has covered this ground before and there's nothing new to learn. But how very wrong I was. Thank you for opening my eyes to the richnes of the line an hour is a sea ( never mind the context). I think its a mantra I will keep repeating to myself. I find It's kind of changing my life slowly and surely. Thats the power of great poetry and great interpretation and i get all that on this blog. Many thanks.
DeleteThis blog is truly a treasure in plain sight and I am so happy that I discovered it. And if we consider for how many years it exists, it is a miracle. I Think they should collect all these analysis of the poems and create a volume or many volumes. It is so great material that it is a pity to get lost after 20 or 30 years in the internet.
DeleteS, I agree that this poem didn't strike me until Harry zeroed in on the phrase "An Hour is a Sea." It's a strange irony that her cry of anguish becomes the basis for a mantra of possibility. I can totally imagine this mantra changing one "slowly and surely." I think the mantra of "Zero at the bone" has done that for me too. In both cases it is a phrase used in a kind of negative sense by Dickinson (longing in an hour and fear at the bone) that has become a kind of emancipation, turning into the endless potential of an hour and the bliss found closer to the bone. Yet somehow that irony is in keeping.
DeleteThank you Harry for the kind words. It would be terrific to see the blog as a book some day, come what may.
Yes. My wife unexpectedly had an hour "to kill" yesterday. I suggested that she think of that hour as a sea. She ended up finding some nice outfits at a thrift store. Good catch in the sea of an hour, angler!
ReplyDeleteAnother phrase I took from Dickinson that I use differently from her is "zero at the bone." I use it to mean getting down to pure being...
Yes, "zero at the bone" is also a very beautiful expression. It reminds me of Eliot's phrase in the Little Gidding Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero summer? For some reason I like very much these uses of "zero"
DeleteYes, a very wide open word with a beautiful sound. Another good example is in Sylvia Plath's poem "The Rabbit Catcher" where she calls the rabbit traps "Zeros, shutting on nothing."
DeleteWowww, very beautiful example, very interesting image, Plath is great!!
DeleteI went back to read what Einstein and Newton had said about time( No Im not a student of physics). Einstein has said somewhere that Time passes differently for observers in motion, making it a personal experience rather than a universal constant. Shakespeare has said something along the same lines in I think As you like it. But Emily's an hour is a sea is just so beautiful in it's simplicity.
ReplyDeleteS, I think this is the Shakespeare reference you made? It’s Rosalind, pretending to be the boy Ganymede, instructing Orlando about time and love…
DeleteROSALIND
I pray you, what is't o'clock?
ORLANDO
You should ask me what time o' day: there's no clock in the forest.
ROSALIND
Then there is no true lover in the forest; else sighing every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of Time as well as a clock.
ORLANDO
And why not the swift foot of Time? had not that been as proper?
ROSALIND
By no means, sir: Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal and who he stands still withal.
ORLANDO
I prithee, who doth he trot withal?
ROSALIND
Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is
solemnized: if the interim be but a se'nnight, Time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven year.
ORLANDO
Who ambles Time withal?
ROSALIND
With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath not the gout, for the one sleeps easily because
he cannot study, and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain, the one lacking the burden of lean
and wasteful learning, the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury; these Time ambles withal.
ORLANDO
Who doth he gallop withal?
ROSALIND
With a thief to the gallows, for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.
ORLANDO
Who stays it still withal?
ROSALIND
With lawyers in the vacation, for they sleep between term and term and then they perceive not how Time moves.
Yes this one. Thanks Tom. Great reading these lines again
DeleteProust also...“An hour is not just an hour, it is a vessel full of perfumes, sounds, plans and atmospheres.”
ReplyDeleteI love Proust soooo much, I try to read a few pages of him every night. I don't always manage to do it of course, but I try. I also read As you like it about two months ago, but I don't remember that reference hehehhehehe. I suppose I must be more careful while reading
DeleteIt doesn't surprise me that there would be such crossover between Dickinson and Proust. I'm a a big fan too, as is Tom C who sometimes comments here. I love that Marcel sees an hour as a vessel, while Emily sees it as a sea.
DeleteSpending an hour with either is good sailing.
Another poem that this one brings to mind is “As if the Sea should part” (F720).
ReplyDeleteAs if the Sea should part
And show a further Sea —
And that — a further — and the Three
But a presumption be —
Of Periods of Seas —
Unvisited of Shores —
Themselves the Verge of Seas to be —
Eternity — is Those —
This is a Sea that is no mere Hour but a sea “Unvisited of Shores” — an Eternity. Lots of thrifting to be done in that period.
This poem, F720, kind of blows my mind every time I get to that third line “And that — a further…” I never sea that third sea coming, and no matter how many times I read it I get shocked all over again!
And then all three of those a mere “presumption”! It’s the best description of eternity I have ever encountered.
(Except, yeah, maybe Proust on the eternity that opens up, the cratering of habit and vanishing of time itself, when his mom doesn’t come upstairs to kiss the young Marcel goodnight. That is how time is FELT.)
About this poem, what picture do you imagine, one sea after another, or one sea inside and below the other? I am not a native English speaker and the word "part" in the first line triggered me a little hahahahahaaa I would like to hear your opinion, since you know english better than me and you have much more experience with Dickinson's poetry
DeleteI see each sea parting, and a new sea inside. The tension between the “parting,” which suggests moving lines, definition, on the one hand, and then the vastness, shorelessness, of the objects that are parting and emerging, on the other, is, I think, what makes the poem so effective. It isn’t easy to visualize because it is true in a way that reaches past (reaches around? through? before?) logic and even imagination. That’s how I would describe my way of visualizing it: something akin to a zen koan in its power to provoke us. Dickinson does this so deftly and so often! I recommend reading the commentary on the Prowling Bee for that one too (F720).
DeleteThank you very much for your response, I will definetely read the commentary!!
Delete"Lots of thrifting to be done in that period." Ha. And that hour of sea is perfect to describe the wished for kiss from Marcel's mama. And the endless "parting" too.
DeleteTo bring the discussion of F720 full circle, this from Blake,
DeleteTo see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
Again, we've gone astray from Emily's woe, but whatever, I prefer the endless wild flower thrift.
Very beautiful poem indeed!!! Very impressive
ReplyDelete