I've none to tell me to but Thee

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—


Imagine you are Emily Dickinson (or Emily Dickinson is you) and you want to talk to someone who understands you extremely well, better than anyone else, the only one who can. You want to express yourself to them, to tell “you” to them.

I've none to tell me to but Thee

The pronoun “Thee” is often indicative of God, but here it appears to refer to a person. As we see later in the poem, this Thee has a face and lips. One possibility is Emily’s sister-in-law and dearest friend Susan Gilbert. When this poem was written Emily and Sue had been very close friends for 15 years, since they were school girls. To read Emily’s schoolgirl letters to Sue is to read some of the most beautiful love letters ever written. And, some 15 years after this poem was written, Emily would write to Sue, “With the exception of Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than any one living. To say that sincerely is strange praise.” This poem then, if written to Sue, was written in the middle of a decades long, complex and quite fruitful relationship between these two. 

The reason Emily wrote more poems (250+) to Sue than  to anyone else is because Sue understood them better than anyone else did. Like attracts Like. You might even go so far to say that Sue was a kind of co-author of these poems as they appear to be made up of a shared private language.

The thing that brings both you and I into this poem is that Emily had the foresight to create a universal poetry out of this private shared language, another level of communication that transcends the original relationship. She creates a poetry that speaks to us, directly, not just Sue. We have replaced Susan (or whomever) as reader. Emily is telling herself to "Thee," meaning now, "You," and there is no one else she can tell it to.

You are "Thee," but in the alchemy of love poetry, you are also the self, the “me,” because your “I” has transposed itself to become the “I” of the poem. You too know what it is like to need to tell “me” to someone who understands, even if that someone is only an ideal reader, a supposed person. We don't all have Susans after all. (I guess we do though. Hi, Susan Kornfeld! You're our Susan). 

The next line lowers the boom:

So when Thou failest, nobody.

In other words, "When you fail, I have nobody." Is this a guilt trip then? A number of Emily’s poems around this time do have a bit of that quality to them. (See the poem Emily wrote on the same sheet of paper as this one for the nearest example.) Or, is it just fact, minus any judgment? When Thou Failest (to show up, for whatever good reason you may have).

“Failest” often has a double meaning for Dickinson. Think of the famous poem of hers, “I died for beauty” (F488) which has the lines, He questioned softly “Why I failed?” / "For Beauty," I replied —. In that poem the word “fail” takes on a rich meaning. (What does it mean to fail for beauty?) 

In the poem under discussion, she is using the word "fail" in a different way. It’s more emotionally complex here. It has a bite to it, I think, the kind that comes from hurt. One can only imagine how Sue felt when reading these poems. Did it make her pull away more? or less?

It’s still awesome though. Taken as a whole, these poems to Sue can be seen as an attempt to “tell me,” to glean all of the nuanced genius of the poet's self, all the emotional complications of the psyche, all of the courageous loyalty of the heart, all of the deeply considered philosophy, and to "tell" it, which, in poetic terms, means to present it in the loveliest words possible, probably accompanied with a flower.

Dickinson told T.W. Higginson in a letter, “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse- it does not mean -me- but a supposed person.” But I think she's being a bit coy. To “tell me," on the contrary, is to attempt to get as close to a non-supposed person as possible. The tension between the supposed person and the non-supposed person creates the strange alchemy of poetry.

I know that when I write poetry, there is often both an abstract supposed-reader in my mind, and at the same time an actual friend. It's a function of the literary "I." Otherwise, paraphrasing Frank O'hara in his great manifesto on Personism, "Why not just pick up the phone?" 

In the previous commentary I mentioned the fact that Emily kept copies for herself of the poems that she wrote for specific people. Why did she do this? This "copy" is for someone, but who? I think it is meant for the "nobody" mentioned in this line, an anonymous “supposed” person who may read this poem. The copy is, ultimately, addressed to its idealized future reader, You. The private-public face of a poem has a function; a way of bringing the world into the self, and the self to the world. 

But it can be confusing for the reader too. The private and public faces of a poem sometimes point in opposite directions; the poem both masks and reveals. The face of the poem may "spill/ Beyond...Boundary." (!!!)

It was a little tie—

This line is short and curt. It’s a little tie. Speaking of form, its cool how Dickinson forgoes the stanza break you expect after “tie,” which thus ties the two stanzas together. The unique stanzaic-form of this poem goes, 443443 4434443. One more little formal observation is that a dash (like the one that ends the line) may be loosely defined as “a little tie." 

It was a little tie—
It just held Two

These two lines function like a little mini-poem inside the larger one. "The Two" in this case I believe the essential and original Two, are Emily and Sue. But of course as soon as you read the poem then the Two, the new essential Two, is Emily and You.

The tie is the words, the poem, where you meet on the page. 

It just held Two, nor those it held

“Nor those it held.” That tie has been broken, by "Thee," by Sue (or Kate or Charles or You), so now it no longer holds Two. 

It just held Two, nor those it held
Since Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled
Beyond my Boundary—

You have to like the surrealism in the line, “Somewhere thy sweet Face has spilled.” I wonder how Dalí would paint this line?

Another formal observation: look at the way the three lines enjamb; the sound of the lines together has a sense of spilling out from the comma after "Two." It has the illusion of spilling out beyond the boundary. 

The word “Boundary,” is worth stopping to ponder too. Dickinson wrote (in another letter to Higginson,) “My Business is Circumference.” You will see this concept explored, in one way or another, in many of Dickinson’s poems. Suffice to say, when she talks about Boundaries, she means business.

If things were opposite—and Me
And Me it were—that ebbed from Thee

In the second stanza she’s saying, basically, I’m different from you, because I care more. I’m more dependable, more loyal. If I wandered away from you, I’d come back when you really needed me. Where you failed, I would have succeeded.

It's not just what she "tells" us here, but also the way she says it that really makes it sparkle,  the silver bow she ties around the parcel. 

She is telling of herself. This is who she is. Loyal to a fault. And she's also telling Thee that she is being held accountable to be there for her in turn. 

It’s telling that she doubles down on the “Me” in this second stanza. There is an implicit extra emphasis on that second "Me" of the stanza. The sense I get is, "Let Me tell Thee who Me is: Me is not Thee, because I would never do to Thee what Thou art doing to Me."

And Me it were—that ebbed from Thee
On some unanswering Shore—

(In my mind I hear a rhyme of Poe's "Plutonium Shore" in "unansweing Shore" here. It may be coincidence, but The Raven was published in 1845, and was widely known, so it may well be an unconscious borrowing.) 

The “unanswering Shore” line leads David Preest to the conclusion that this poem may have been written for Kate Anthon, because Kate was in Europe at the time it was written and therefore unavailable to Emily. Or if you are a Charles Wadsworth proponent, you might see "Unanswering Shore" as pointing to Wadsworth's move to the West Coast. When it comes to biographical takes, I tend to most often read Sue as "Thee," but it is worth saying that there are different possibilities. I love the mystery. It adds a layer of intrigue to these poems.

The metaphor works for any relationship though. The beloved has become the Ocean, and the lover, represented by the land, can't hear the Ocean for some reason. So the Shore says to the Ocean, keep trying to reach me. Keep asking.

Would'st Thou seek so—just say

If I don’t answer you the first time, then its just because I didn't properly hear you. Please just ask again, and I’ll come running. I can relate. Dickinson takes it into epic poetic terms here though. The land is ebbing away from the ocean (reversing the usual perspective of the ocean ebbing from the land), and the Ocean, losing the land. Call again, says the poet. 

Would'st Thou seek so—just say
That I the Answer may pursue
Unto the lips it eddied through—

The Shore is now pursuing the receding ocean so it can hear what it has to say.

But look at the way it happens. If we are following the metaphor, then the water of the ocean, even as it is ebbing away, eddies back to shore, calling back to it. “Eddied” is a great verb here. An Eddy is a current of water running contrary to the main current. This counter-current creates a circular motion, like a tide-pool. (Whitman, Dickinson's contemporary, uses the metaphor of words eddying out too. He also has the great line about the crooked inviting fingers of the sea.)

The poet says she will follow the eddying pleas of the receding ocean straight to Her lips. The lip of the Ocean (one pictures the edge of the wave) is not just the place from which speech comes, but also where the kiss happens. The lips of the Shore who “tells me” to the Ocean, meets the lips of the Ocean who “tells me" to the Shore. The meet in the middle, expressed as a kiss. There, the ear becomes the mouth, the mouth the ear, the “Me” becomes an “Us.”

So—overtaking Thee—

The ocean is being overtaken by the land. The tide has risen. The wave has come back to shore. Or rather, to follow the weird inversion of the metaphor, the Shore has come back to the wave. The two are drawn together in a kiss. When the “Me” overtakes “the Thee,” then both are gone. There is only “Us” left.

It's possible to think of going out to kiss the Ocean as meaning "death by drowning." The "Me" is overtaken in the overtaking of "Thee."

At core this poem appears to be bemoaning the loss of "Us," and blaming its failure on "Thee." Is this fair to "Thee?" That’s up in the air. Emily’s focused on where the Ocean and the Shore may come back together again.

Finally, one last formal thing. Note the way that extra line of tetrameter in the second stanza, the final 4 of the 4434443, suspends the final rhyme. This makes the poem feel subtly breathless, which gives the sense of the effort in the overtaking; the undertaking of the overtaking.


     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S.

“I have seen it. What?
Eternity. It is the sun
Matched by the sea”

-Arthur Rimbaud