An Everywhere of Silver
With Ropes of Sand
To keep it from effacing
The Track called Land.
-F931, J884, Sheet 15, 1865
Because of the clues of “sand” and “land” we know that descriptor in the first line, "Everywhere of Silver," refers to the sea. Dickinson could have easily written “Everywhere of Ocean,” but by saying “Everywhere of Silver” she takes it beyond any name. Instead she turns the ocean into a ubiquitous substance that is luminous and precious.
Silver is reflective. When you look at a moonlit sea you see a continuous sheet of shimmering light. That fits the word "Everywhere." The ocean ceases to be an object and becomes a field of radiance spreading across the horizon. Silver becomes the color of something whose edges are hard to locate.
Silver is liquid, fluid, whereas "Land" is fixed and narrowly defined as a "Track." Dickinson gives the sea a glowing expansiveness that overwhelms all distinctions. Silver is not warm and earthy like gold. It feels cool and mysterious.
"Everything of Silver" makes it seem less like a body of water and more like a dazzling force, which makes the fragile survival of the "Track called Land" feel astonishing. The poem marvels at how this boundless shining infinity is prevented from erasing land protected by nothing more than "ropes of sand."
Now let's consider the word "Track." “Everywhere” is limitless, but a "Track" is narrow. Dickinson compresses the world as we know it into something resembling a path, a way through something larger. If the sea is "Everywhere," then land is a path cut through the immensity.
But a track can also be defined as a mark left behind, like an animal’s footprint. Calling land a "track" makes it seem less like a permanent continent and more like a temporary mark on the surface of existence. Compared to the ocean's "Everywhere," land becomes merely a trace. A track is something that can be erased by the wind or waves, so the verb "effacing" becomes meaningful. You don't normally think of a continent being effaced, but you can easily imagine this little trace we happen to call "land" being effaced.
Silver is liquid, fluid, whereas "Land" is fixed and narrowly defined as a "Track." Dickinson gives the sea a glowing expansiveness that overwhelms all distinctions. Silver is not warm and earthy like gold. It feels cool and mysterious.
"Everything of Silver" makes it seem less like a body of water and more like a dazzling force, which makes the fragile survival of the "Track called Land" feel astonishing. The poem marvels at how this boundless shining infinity is prevented from erasing land protected by nothing more than "ropes of sand."
Now let's consider the word "Track." “Everywhere” is limitless, but a "Track" is narrow. Dickinson compresses the world as we know it into something resembling a path, a way through something larger. If the sea is "Everywhere," then land is a path cut through the immensity.
But a track can also be defined as a mark left behind, like an animal’s footprint. Calling land a "track" makes it seem less like a permanent continent and more like a temporary mark on the surface of existence. Compared to the ocean's "Everywhere," land becomes merely a trace. A track is something that can be erased by the wind or waves, so the verb "effacing" becomes meaningful. You don't normally think of a continent being effaced, but you can easily imagine this little trace we happen to call "land" being effaced.
In this poem Dickinson reverses the hierarchy. What we experience as the substantial world is, from a larger perspective, only a fleeting mark against a much greater reality.
The poem's awe comes from the imbalance. In the infinite silver expanse the track somehow persists.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
The poem's awe comes from the imbalance. In the infinite silver expanse the track somehow persists.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S.
This poem reminds me of one we looked at recently, F926, which gives a similar sense of being precariously balanced on a track amidst an overwhelming Everywhere. “I stepped from Plank to Plank…The Stars about my Head/ I felt about my Feet the Sea.”
P.P.S.
The longer Adam lets this one sit, the more I read into that pause.
ReplyDeleteAn Everywhere of Silver
With Ropes of Sand
To keep it from effacing
The Track called Land.
It just seems so matter of fact: The ocean is huge and silvery. There isn’t much land. All we have to protect us from the land-effacing vastness of the ocean are flimsy ropes of sand. That’s it. I mean, it’s got an emotional charge, for sure. But it’s naked matter-of-factuality. Nowhere to go. Sea on all sides. So pause.
I think the sequence of poems leading up to this one give that pause heft. Scrolling back to Fr925, there are two interwoven through-lines. The pathos (and heroic ecstasy) of asymmetrical lovin’. The abyss outside (and within) asymmetrical lovin’.
Starting at Fr925:
The Lady feeds Her little Bird
...
The *Gulf* between the Hand and Her
And crumbless and afar
And fainting, on Her yellow Knee
Fall softly, and adore—
Fr926
I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the *Sea*.
Fr927
Each Second is the last
Perhaps, recalls the Man
Just measuring unconsciousness
The *Sea and Spar* between.
Fr928
The Bird must sing to earn the Crumb
What merit have the Tune
No Breakfast if it guaranty
The Rose content may bloom
To gain renown of Lady's Drawer
But if the Lady come
But once a *Century*, the Rose
Superfluous become—
Fr929
I've none to tell me to but Thee
So when Thou failest, nobody.
It was a little tie—
It just held Two, nor those it held
Since Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled
*Beyond my Boundary*—
If things were opposite—and Me
And Me it were—that *ebbed* from Thee
On some unanswering *Shore*—
Would'st Thou seek so—just say
That I the Answer may pursue
Unto the lips it *eddied* through—
So—overtaking Thee—
Fr930
The Poets light but Lamps—
Themselves—go out—
The Wicks they stimulate—
If vital Light
Inhere as do the Suns—
Each Age a Lens
Disseminating their
*Circumference*—
Fr931. Is the resolution – the poet is resolves into the vastness of the ocean, and the Truth of the vastness of the ocean. Her location is effaced. (Those ropes of sand never had a chance.)
It's terrific that you read the pause in posts here as synonymous with the pause before the land's effacement by the silver of everywhere. The reason for the pause, on my part, is that I've been traipsing around the Pacific Northwest on vacation. Part of that vacation was making improvisatory music with some friends in Port Townsend WA. This poem came up and was discussed among us, just because it was still on my mind, and therefore the phrase "an everywhere of silver" started showing up over and over again in the lyrics of the songs we were making up. I guess the pause started working on me, which makes me want to pause more often to let the poems "sink in."
ReplyDeleteYour sequential reading here is persuasive. It takes me back to the sea on the stem poem we looked at together, F849,
By my Window have I for Scenery
Just a Sea — with a Stem —
Here the track is the stem and is all but overwhelmed.
Ooo. That adds to the drama. Sometimes Emily lets you read it backwards to come back to solid ground. This time the track was effaced by eternity. Circumference dynamited the bridge. No way home.
ReplyDeleteGlad you're having some fun. (But I was into the idea of you turning your poem-takes into performance art.)
I'll keep that in mind.
Delete