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—
-F928, J880, sheet 14, 1865
Was Emily writing these poems for just anyone? What was the “crumb” this poet earned with her song? What breakfast did these poems “guaranty” her?
These poems, this drawer of roses, an astonishing number of them, mean so much to us, but what do we, in turn, matter to Emily’s day to day life?
Or did Dickinson’s poems have a more pointed audience? Well, we do know that many of Dickinson's poems were given (often with a flower attached) to her friends, and we also know know that the largest majority were given to Emily’s sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson. So I think it's fair to say that some, if not all, did have specific personal intentions.
But the ambiguity remains nevertheless. Is Sue the Lady in this poem then? Or is this Lady here meant to be something, or someone, more divinely ethereal?
The poem works either way. And sometimes I think Emily did too. But mostly I think this was for Sue. I bet this “song” was delivered to her with a red rose to underscore its message. It's implicitly asking, will this rose be shoved into a drawer with the rest? Will you finally come and visit me?
If you read this poem after F925, “The Lady Feeds Her little Bird,” which was written on the sheet before this one, sheet 13, you begin to see a pattern. These poems were meant for a single Lady, one who lived right next door to Emily. This Lady wasn’t like Emily, who preferred to stay in the confines of her own garden. For interminable weeks on end Sue would get caught up in her own family and social life, ignoring her faithful friend (not to mention one of the world's greatest poets). After all, Sue could just look out of her window toward Emily’s, now and then, just offer the merest crumb, and the Bird would be fed breakfast. I can feel the deep sigh in these poems, the pathos.
Another poem in this Lady/Robin “series” is F810:
The Robin for the Crumb
Returns no syllable
But long records the Lady's name
In Silver Chronicle.
The wonder is that Dickinson did just that, she "records," in her poetry, the "silver chronicle" of her adoration for Sue. This chronicle was beautifully enough rendered that it would last long past the lifetimes of the friends.
But the irony is that Dickinson doesn’t record "the Lady’s name.” We just know her has "The Lady" in these poems. What makes the poetry last, perhaps, is in the way it is so deeply personal and yet transcends the personal at once. Would we remember these poems if they all said "Susan" instead of "Lady?" By making it anonymous it includes the general reader. We are all the Bird looking for crumbs from the Lady’s hand. We are all hoping for breakfast, for a break in our fast.
And if we are the Bird, we are also the Lady. If these poems are generalized to include us too, then what are the crumbs we may give to the hungry ghost of the poet? We may give Her our attention. She kept the roses for us by imbuing them with us much beauty and love as her genius could muster.
And if we are the Bird, we are also the Lady. If these poems are generalized to include us too, then what are the crumbs we may give to the hungry ghost of the poet? We may give Her our attention. She kept the roses for us by imbuing them with us much beauty and love as her genius could muster.
***
"The Bird must sing to earn the crumb." Does this line reveal the secret of Emily's Dickinson's vocation? It's like the kid who learns to play guitar to impress the girl. Would Emily ever have become a poet if she hadn't had Sue to show her what a true feast is like, and then, terribly, if she hadn't been strung along by her for the rest of her life with nothing but a crumb here and there?
***
Another irony to this poem is that the majority of the poems we have from Emily Dickinson come from her drawer, not Sue's. She kept a copy for herself. Why? Because they existed for her as objects of attention and beauty beyond their intended use. These "roses in song," kept for us in her own drawer, remain fresh and fragrant, and far from superfluous.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S. One thing about this poem worth considering is where Dickinson places the stanza break. She lets it follow sense rather than form. She could have easily followed traditional form by putting the break after the first verse, but instead she uses the break to split up the ideas of "bird" and "flower." In other words, it functions more like the end of a paragraph than a stanza. I won't go so far as to say that this is a crack of reality in lyric's fault line, but it may be seen from a certain position as seismic. Because if this is a song, then the melody would be broken. The song bird is reduced to prose. The melody is presumed missing.
sic transit
ReplyDeleteNice notes, Adam.
ReplyDeleteThat stanza break makes the poem seem kinda aware of itself, and maybe also what’s wrong with itself. It makes me wonder just how deep the irony goes. A bird that sings for crumbs got turned around at some point. Birds sing to other birds, for love, and pride, and fear. Roses bloom for other roses, even if there’s a go-between, also for love and pride. The Lady’s drawer smacks of artificial selection. The less often She comes, the more natural the Rose becomes.
I suppose you could aim the arrow of the logic in the other direction, and flag merit as the thing that doesn’t fit easily into the natural order of things. In order for a poem to have merit, it needs to do something other than just faithfully reflect the ordinary, humming-along, way of things. Something needs to warp. Someone needs to attempt strained, inter-species communication. You sing for the Lady’s crumbs for the sake of the odd merit it gives the song. It’s a kind of play.
Emily’s life-long Sue obsession is something I trip over. Like, why doesn’t she just take a hint – decades of them – and get over it? She’s so sage. Couldn’t she think her way out of the trap? Move on and write a new poetry of strength and emancipation?
Much food for thought here, Nate. I'm not sure what you mean by the drawer smacking of artificial selection. But I love the idea that the less the Lady comes, the more natural the Rose becomes, if what you mean by this is that the more ED is left solo, the more the poetry blossoms. I think that idea helps answer your later question of why she doesn't get over it. I keep going back to a poem she wrote, F706, which begins,
DeleteI cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf
The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –
Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –
and ends...
So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –
Despair as sustenance. I think Emily MIGHT have given up her poetry for "Life...behind the shelf" with Sue (or Kate, or Charles, or) if she could have, but I'm not so sure. She's going for something even greater, a "newer Sevres," a porcelain that doesn't crack. Despair appears to be the engine. "It's a kind of play" as you say, albeit one that exacted a terrible price, some of the harshest pain ever described by poet.
Still, at the end of the day (of the life) it seems to me that Dickinson's relationship with Sue (whom Dickinson esteemed right up there with Shakespeare as a peer) was an epic relationship.
I know what you mean though. When I read this particular poem, and the one before it, "The Lady feeds her little Bird," part of me wants the Bird to move along! (Another part of me is very glad she did not).
Also, wondering "just how deep the irony goes" is great. One does wonder.
DeleteYeah, Fr706 is a heartbreaker.
DeleteRe the Lady's drawer, I was trying to get at the fact that roses are cultivated, you know, like broccoli, or poodles. In the wild, a flower is all about pollination, and it's been shaped by natural selection to recruit the right kind of pollinators and manage the whole business of plant sex. In a garden, a flower is much about the whimsy of the gardener. She applies the same kind of selection machinery but with reconfigured fitness parameters. Like, maybe compared to bees she's got stronger feelings about pink. So, now instead of the quality of a bloom determined by the reproductive fitness it brings, it's determined by what the Lady wants in her drawer. The Lady's drawer is a metaphor for the willful warping of nature.
Or... The Lady is Nature, and the crumb and drawer are figurations of her ways. That gets us back to the solemn mysticism of Fr919, Be Mine the Doom. And it casts the poetic stance in this poem as a kind of passionate prostration.
I mean, fine, poetry takes pretense. But if a poet chooses sorrow for herself, wouldn't that erode some of the faith you might have in her poetry? Then again, maybe poetry doesn't need a reader's faith.
Rich question: "if a poet chooses sorrow for herself, wouldn't that erode some of the faith you might have in her poetry?" I often wonder this myself. But maybe faith is the wrong word, her sorrow does somehow make her more human and choosing it, brave. I feel connected to her humanity and awed by her implacable courage in the face of Doom. Maybe that's what you mean by, "poetry doesn't need a reader's faith." It needs two things IMO, Truth and Beauty. Faith may be seen as a deterrent to Truth. And Beauty is a no-brainer.
DeleteAgreed. It's more about resonance than faith. (How much do we trust ourselves?)
DeleteSome Lorca I was reading this morning seems apropos:
(Taken and translated from Encrucijada):
Oh, sorrow of sorrow
to sip at the lyrical vein!
Oh, the sorrow of dried-up fountains
and mills with no flour!
Oh, what sorrow to have
no sorrow and go through life
on the colourless grass
of the inconclusive path!
Oh, the deepest sorrow,
the sorrow of joy,
the plough that digs furrows
for the weeping to bear fruit!
In other words, there's no getting away from sorrow. It's not something you choose or decline.
Oh wow. What a poem. Lorca delving under the duende. "what sorrow to have no sorrow and go through life on the colorless grass of the inconclusive path."
DeleteThat word "inconclusive" points us toward the idea of choosing. Choosing to love is tantamount to choosing sorrow. But yeah, if you don't choose love that's an even deeper sorrow "what sorrow to have no sorrow" so I guess you are doomed either way : ) This from Blake, which I read yesterday, from Auguries of Innocence:
It is right it should be so
Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
Interesting. I know Yeats was a big Blake fan. I wonder if he had this poem in mind when he wrote The Cloak, The Boat, and The Shoes. I just did a number on that one - https://miraculousoils.substack.com/p/the-cloak-the-boat-the-shoes. Talk about the weird beauty of sorrow!
DeleteAh, that is an interesting connection. There is a "thread" between the poems. I dig your take on the prosody in the Yeats poem.
DeleteI think the poem is more about us than about Sue. Out of almost 1,800 poems, only about 250 were sent to Sue. This doesn't look like Sue was the primary intended recipient of Emily’s work.
ReplyDeleteIn the first stanza, as I understand it, Emily compares herself to the bird and finds out that the bird is in a better position than she is. The bird sings to make a living; its song has a clear purpose and brings a tangible reward. Emily's "tune", on the other hand, does not have "impetus of Gain— / And impetus of Goal—" Her poems will be widely read only after her death, and she can't be sure even of that. She writes not because she receives anything in return, but despite the absence of any reward, and, at least at times, it feels completely futile; it indeed is "The Service without Hope—" (Fr880).
Another poem I am reminded of is Fr772:
The General Rose―decay―
But this―in Lady’s Drawer
Make Summer―When the Lady lie
In Ceaseless Rosemary―
The rose (poet) appears to be patiently waiting for the Lady to come more often than she does. It is hard not to see this as Sue. Memory isn't as good as the Lady in the flesh, or something like that.
ReplyDeleteI do like the idea, as a future reader, that the rose (poem) is kept in the drawer for us. You do get that sense from F772.
I love the first part of that poem too which clues us into pain as part of the "keeping" process:
Essential Oils―are wrung―
The Attar from the Rose
Be not expressed by Suns―alone―
It is the gift of Screws―