The spry Arms of the Wind

The spry Arms of the Wind
If I could crawl between
I have an errand imminent
To an adjoining Zone—

I should not care to stop
My Process is not long
The Wind could wait without the Gate
Or stroll the Town among.

To ascertain the House
And is the soul at Home
And hold the Wick of mine to it
To light, and then return—

    -Fr802, J1103, back of envelope, early 1864


I first read this poem in a book given to me by a HS student as a gift. It’s called “Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems” and is comprised of reproductions of poems Dickinson wrote down on envelopes and other scraps of paper lying around the house.* It is one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given. I remember first reading the poem at hand on the back of an envelope in that book and feeling stunned by it. I’ll try to say why.

The spry Arms of the Wind
If I could crawl between

In these opening lines I picture Emily herself crawling through the wild winds of time blowing this way and that. I picture a precocious girl running through the legs of giants who are trying to catch her, but who somehow manages to keep her flame lit in all that candle-snuffing wind. The light of the flame is this poem itself.

I have an errand imminent
To an adjoining Zone—

The poet is on an errand to deliver something to one in an adjoining Zone. The adjoining Zone, you might say, is the very one that the reader is in.**  

I should not care to stop

Dickinson is relentless in getting this imminent message across to the reader's zone. It’s possible that this message had a single recipient originally, and I usually think of Sue, since we know she so often was the poem's intended audience. Sue lived in the adjoining house (zone), but to deliver a poem across to her, past prying eyes, and most especially, past Austin’s, must have felt like a difficult game. (Cue theme music to Mission Impossible.) 

But, of course, Dickinson could also mean she is on an errand to visit ANY reader. Part of Dickinson’s genius is that though her poems often were meant for one specific reader, they were also, somehow, meant for any ideal reader. The ideal reader, at this point, now includes me and you. And that's one of the things that wowed me when I first read the poem on the back of that envelope: the very poem I was reading had to get through the spry arms of the wind to get to me, a century and a half later, which is quite a feat, if you think about it, especially for a poet who refused to publish her poetry.***

Dickinson did “not care to stop” trying to get her message across to Sue, and, then, finally, to us. If you think about it, the poems are still working to get that light across. Dickinson still hasn't stopped. She still cares to keep going.

My Process is not long

What does this mean? Well, for one, it probably didn't take that long to write this poem, nor does it take long to read and receive its light. But one gets a sense here, somehow, of her meaning something more; a whole life project, that is, relative to eternity, still a very short process. Life is very short, but in poetry the light may persist on and on.

The Wind could wait without the Gate
Or stroll the Town among.

If Emily is talking to Sue here, this Wind that could “wait without the Gate/ Or stroll the Town among” might well be Austin. Go paint the town red, Austin! Wait outside of the "gate." Hint hint, wink wink. ****

But if she’s talking to us, then Dickinson is using her skill as a poet to set aside any distractions or barriers between us. She’s gatekeeping. Those who she is sending to “town,” which includes the general population, will likely never see the light of this poem. One thinks here of the famous poem, “The soul selects her own society/ then shuts the door.”

To ascertain the House
And is the soul at Home

To ascertain the House, for me, takes this poem out the personal realm (of Sue and co) and into that of an unknown reader. Whose house is this message going to? The poet is still trying to ascertain who's house it is. The poem, in other words, is trying to find you. And once it does, the question she has for us is, “And is the soul at Home?”

Hello?

Well, if the soul is home, and Emily’s candle has found you, she's going to share her light with you.

And hold the Wick of mine to it
To light, and then return—

This is a very romantic, and even sexy, image if it is written to Sue, or some other lover. But its also quite powerful to think of this poem as Emily lighting us up with a poem about...lighting us up. She holds her essence, the gem-like flame of her poetry, up to our essence, and ignites us. Then, almost as if she was never there, a professed nobody, she returns back to her own Zone.

And we are left holding the flame.

What a poem.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Candle Flame by Shan Sheehan

* Here's a New Yorker review of The Envelope poems. I disagree with the author of the review, since he doesn't believe there are any masterpieces among these scraps. Is the poem at hand not a masterpiece? It is in my Zone. Somehow, it seems to me, all, or near all, of Dickinson's poems could justified as masterpieces.

**Zones are an intriguing part of Dickinson’s poetic lexicon. A recent poem, Fr794, for instance, speaks of "ethereal Zones.” Think of zones in terms of Dickinson's fixation on circumference. There is a circumference around a burning candle, a zone of light. 

*** Indeed, publishers could be seen as “spry arms” attempting to block the message from getting to the reader. Normally a publisher would aid a poet, but in Dickinson's case, she saw it the other way around. (See Publishing is the auction of the mind of man.)

**** And Austin did "go to town," where he met the married, but free-loving, Mabel Loomis Todd, who became Sue's rival, and later, ironically, Dickinson's biggest champion. It's possible we have Todd to thank for the fact that we have Dickinson's poems at all. Fate is funny.

Notes: This poem is a corollary to Fr322, which is a very deep dive into what that candle means. It's something the angels have labored diligently to light. 

As Sleigh Bells seem in summer

As Sleigh Bells seem in summer
Or Bees, at Christmas show —
So fairy — so fictitious
The individuals do
Repealed from observation —
A Party that we knew —
More distant in an instant
Than Dawn in Timbuctoo.


     Fr801, J981, 1864

Before we move onto the lexical level of this poem, let’s linger inside its lavish music. 

The sound of the opening line has an immortal aura. It reminds me of one of those fragments of Sappho, where the whole poem is alive in one perfect line. 

Let’s zoom in to the interweave of the consonance. The Z sound of “As” repeats in the Z sound of “Bells” and then buzzes again in “Bees” in the following line. The Z sound slides into the S sound of “Sleigh,” which is quickly followed by the little tongue-trip of “L, then hits a “B” sound which bounces us back to the “L” again, which leads us into another Z/S combo, “Bells” and “seem,” and then we get a repeat of S once again with “summer.” With the word “seem” the “M” sound comes into the poem, which is doubled down upon in “summer.” 

Finally the line ends, rhythmically, on a half beat, on the drop into “er,” which sets us up to expect an iambic up beat, but instead we get another down beat of “Or,” in the next line, a break beat, if you will. The two descending beats in a row give us a strong up beat on the word “Bees.” 

That’s a lot of work these consonants are doing to our tongues. You have an abundance of sibilance with that Z>S>Z>S>S combo, you’ve got the bop of a “B” (setting up the B of “Bee” in the second line), and then finally, running underneath of all of this, is the double hum of those mmm sounds. You have a sliding feeling of smooth snake, an ssss feeling, but also an mmm feeling, with something under the surface bubbling up. It hummable and it pops. It’s sinuous and a little sexy. This is the soundscape Dickinson begins with and all of these sonic structures will be picked up in the subsequent lines of this poem.

This audible line presents two things we love: summer and sleigh bells, and proceeds, somehow, to smash them together into one perfect season. Summer AND sleighbells! But alas, we know it’s impossible. For some reason, having to do with the way the seasons work, the two do not belong together.

(This begs a question. Besides the fact that they are for sleds on winter snow, why don’t sleighbells sound right in the summer?)

The sounds of the poem perfectly blend together, but its object and subject are out of season with one another. There’s a disconnect between sound and sense here.

Snow in summer is unsettling. But this idea gets even more strange and disturbing in the next stanza because now we have bees in winter.

The idea of being out of season with someone is one Dickinson has explored before, notably in Fr686. It’s an odd thought. What does it mean to not be of your time?

Brian Wilson, of the Beach Boys, wrote a song about it, “I just wasn't made for these times.” I bring Wilson up because he died today and therefore he's on my mind. But it seems appropriate since we are looking at the musicality of Dickinson's language.  Poetry is song, and though we love words, it is the sounds we love first. The music of both Dickinson and Wilson will ripple into our lives for a long time to come.

I just wasn't made for these times. Brian Wilson. 

Getting back to the poem. In the next line we see that these kinds of seasonal anomalies are described as "Fairy" and "Fictitious." These words have a winking sound, and a subversive meaning. Both words could be seen as a portal into a perfect season. Maybe you can’t have certain things in the real world, but you can still have them in fiction, and you can have them in the realm of fairy magic too, which is the realm of our imaginations.

They are fun words to say together, and for me tip off a kind of acceptance. “So fairy, so fictitious." You almost want to shimmy back and forth as you say it. It doesn't sound completely heart-broken.

The officious latinate sound of the word "fictitious" sets us up for a very different tone in the next few lines,

The individuals do
Repealed from observation —

The words in this poem go from anglo-saxon in the first few lines to latinate in these, and then back again. The late “latin” influence on the poem is ALSO out of sync, out of time, with its opening Anglo-saxon era. Is this meant to be a disconnect too? 

Another reason that occurs to me that these lines are suddenly latinate is that Latin underlies the language of the law: repeal,party, observation.

If a party is getting “repealed,” then my guess is it is Sue. And her husband, Emily’s brother, Austin, a lawyer by the way, is the one taking her away.

Latin has entered the picture, but then it leaves again, taking along with it the beloved, and we are back with the plaintive anglo-saxon of “Dawn” followed by a word that isn't even English, “Timbuctoo.” It’s as if language is finally going all the way back to its very roots, or at least trying to.

The poem carries the idea of heartbreak in it, but the language is fun: “Distant in an instant,” “So fairy, so fictitious,” “Dawn of Timbuctoo,” "Sleighbells seem in summer."

One would think that fun would be repealed along with the beloved, but the delight in the language belies any heartbreak. You believe heartbreak may be imminent, but you also suspect that at some level the lover is, like the bees, still inside the summer of the poet. Or perhaps, at least, those sleighbells can be heard in the poet’s winter.


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Currier and Ives, 1853

I never saw a Moor

I never saw a Moor
I never saw the Sea –
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be –

I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven –
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given –


    -F800, J1052, early 1864


This poem is mad sneaky. It’s a poem about simple faith that is anything but. 

Let’s start with the comparison. In the first stanza the poet says that though she's never seen a moor or the sea, she knows how heather looks and what a billow is. But how could she know this? It would have to be through the testimony of others, like, for instance, through a description in a novel (moors show up prominently in Wuthering Heights, one of Dickinson’s favorites) or perhaps from a painting. But heaven, which these are compared to in the second stanza, is a different kind of experience. It is beyond any first-person description. It's speculative and subjective. No one knows what heaven looks like. So there is a strange logical disconnect between the first and second stanza.

Let’s look closer at moors and billows for moment. These are rich poetic images. A moor is a wild and untamed region. A billow connotes a chaotic, and even tempestuous rolling of the sea. Together they seem to point toward a mysterious and romantic sense of the sublime. These are earthly symbols of the vast and unknowable, just like God and Heaven are for the spiritual world in the second stanza. Dickinson is drawing a parallel between the natural and the spiritual. It's a comparison, and where there's a comparison there's always a contrast, isn't there? She’s up to something.

First of all, the knowledge of moors and billows is secondhand. It’s “hearsay.” These are things one could easily imagine, but it’s just that, imagination. That’s already a little ironic. Because if the speaker is so sure about those, it’s not really inner certainty, but imagination. There’s a whiff of artifice here.

Here’s where the shift gets bold though. After describing the earthly things she hasn't seen, but sort of knows through description, she jumps to the spiritual: "I never spoke with God / Nor visited in Heaven—"

That’s much more drastic than “I never saw a moor.” And here's the kicker. She follows that with, "Yet certain am I of the spot.”

But wait, she just said she never spoke with God, so where is the certainty coming from? And is heaven really a "spot?" How so? Can it, like a billowing moor, be described?

What if Dickinson is not making a straight declaration of faith, but instead mirroring the form of such declarations in order to question them?

She builds a simple analogy: Just as I know a moor I’ve never seen, I know the heaven I’ve never visited. But this analogy collapses under pressure, because imagining a landscape based on descriptions is not the same as having certainty about metaphysical truth.

So when she says, "Yet certain am I of the spot," it starts to feel overconfident to the point of being satirical. This might be Dickinson's quiet way of saying, “Look how easily we convince ourselves we’re sure of the unseen. Just a few metaphors, a confident tone, and it feels like faith.”

And then there’s that line: “I never spoke with God” This may be the most subversive line in the poem. She doesn’t say “I haven’t heard from God,” she says: “I never spoke with God” That’s active and sounds like a choice. A quiet refusal. A recognition that she hasn’t even attempted direct communion, and yet she’s still “certain.” That undercuts her own claim. It hints at doubt, or at least self-awareness about the constructed nature of belief.

Dickinson seems to be presenting certainty, while at the same time showing us the flimsiness of its scaffolding. It reminds me of the poem a few back in the Franklin order, F797, which begins, “The Definition of Beauty is/ That Definition is none—” That’s another example where Dickinson asserts a logical claim that undoes itself. The definition is that there is no definition. Here too she lures us in with a simple analogy, makes a show of confidence, and then slips in just enough unease (a never-spoken to God, hearsay) to make us wonder, is this faith, or just the shadow of faith made by language?

The tension between belief and suspicion is what makes the poem so deceptively simple and strange.

Let’s end by looking at those given “checks” in the last line. In Christanne Miller’s notes on this poem it states that “the word 'checks' was used colloquially to mean railroad tickets; one gave one’s checks to the conductor.”

With this reading, the poem becomes even more elusive. Dickinson begins with things she hasn’t seen (moor, sea), compares them to things she’s only heard about, heaven, God, and ends with the metaphor of train travel (a la “This train is bound for Glory”) that makes the unknowable seem orderly and ticketed.

But the phrase “as if” is crucial I think. She’s saying, “I know I’m imagining this. I know the ‘ticket’ isn’t real. But the feeling? The feeling is real.”

It’s a confession of belief through metaphor, and a confession that metaphor is the only thing we have.

But for all of the metaphorical construction, I believe the idea of "the feeling being real" is also essential here, especially if you factor in the wildness of moor and billow. Dickinson may be questioning the machinery of belief, the metaphors, but we can't forget that the feeling is still real.

Dickinson doesn’t just interrogate and mock belief, she also professes it. The poem lives in that in-between space where certainty may be built on metaphors (moor, billow, checks) but the inner sensation of faith remains authentic. So when she says, “Yet certain am I of the spot,” she may be showing us the scaffolding of that certainty, but she’s not denying the emotional reality of it. That’s what makes the poem resonate. It doesn't land in sarcasm or skepticism. It hovers in tension.

Moors and billows, after all, don’t represent certainty so much as they represent a feeling of the sublime, a kind of emotional knowing that defies logic. They're the opposite of a “check," no receipt for travel, no structure, just mood.

That contrast might be the real engine of the poem, and of poetry itself. On one hand you have feeling and on the other, faith through metaphor. A poem may depend on both.

Dickinson is showing us that faith isn’t rational, but rather derives from a kind of felt resonance with the world’s mystery, the echo of something wild and vast, like moors and billows, inside the self.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Wuthering Heights, by Robert McGinnis, 1965

All I may, if small,

All I may, if small,
Do it not display
Larger for the Totalness —
’Tis Economy

To bestow a World
And withhold a Star —
Utmost, is Munificence —
Less, tho’ larger, poor.


      -Fr799, J819, sheet 13, early 1864


This was a difficult poem to understand. I read it, blinked, shook my head, and tried again. And again and again. It’s like one of those autostereograms, where you look at a 2 dimensional page, and if you stare long enough, and squint just right, a 3 dimensional object pops out. Most of Dickinson’s poems have some degree of this quality, but some, like this one, take bit more work. 

So I went back and stared longer. Eventually, a cogent reading emerged, like a 3D star, from the page. Once I got it, it seemed obvious. Here is my take, line by line.

All I may, if small

All I have to give, even though it is small…

Do it not display
Larger for the Totalness —

Doesn’t it appear larger for being so total?

’Tis Economy
To bestow a World
And withhold a Star —

It may be economical to give a whole world and keep a star for yourself,

Utmost, is Munificence —

but giving your utmost, everything, is where true munificence (generosity) is.

Less, tho’ larger, poor.

Giving anything less, even if it is actually more than what I have to give, is still poor.

It is better to give everything you have, even if it is small, than to give a lot, but hold back the truly important thing. 

***

I chafe a bit at biographical readings of Dickinson's poems, just because I think they can detract from a poem’s resonance in our own lives, but sometimes they can be helpful. This is, perhaps, the case here. We know this poem was given to Sue, so let’s start there.

This poem reads to me like Fr687,

I asked no other thing —
No other — was denied —
I offered Being — for it —
The Mighty Merchant smiled —

Brazil? He twirled a Button —
Without a glance my way —
“But — Madam — is there nothing else
That We can show — Today”?

In this earlier poem, Emily is offered Brazil but, though an entire country, it isn’t the one thing she really wants, which is all of Sue. Emily offers her whole being, but Sue is holding back the one thing Emily really wants, which is, we assume, her whole being in return. In that poem Emily is saying, I wanted the world, but you just offered Brazil. In this one, the stakes are even larger -you may have given me the whole world, but you kept the star for yourself.  

What I have, it says, may be small, but doesn’t it appear larger for being so total? Meanwhile, you, who have so much to give, are keeping the true thing, the star, for yourself. Both poems seem to say, you are being economical, like a merchant, and bartering, but it's all or nothing I want.

I believe this poem is chiding Sue for holding back. Fr687 does this with a cheeky humor, but this one is more to the point -is not my small gift of my whole Being larger for being total than your large gift is for being partial? 

One wonders if receiving poems like this made Sue retreat even further. And yet, don't we all wish for a love this total? Well, we know Sue was there for Emily at the end, and even made her funeral shroud for her, so perhaps Emily got her star after all.

   -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

The Lovers, by Marc Chagall, 1915

Note: This poem, like many of Dickinson's, can be read in more ways than one. For instance, there is a logically viable reading of the poem I found online which has nearly the opposite meaning from the way that I take it. This other reading extols the wisdom of holding something back when you give. It says that to give a world, but to hold back a small part, a star, is the “utmost, is munificence,” and suggests that true generosity is not in giving recklessly, but rather, giving wisely. The entire poem can be parsed in support of this reading, and it’s compelling. It's a terrific reading, and wise, but I don't think that is what Dickinson is saying here. I believe she is saying the opposite. She’s not praising being economical, but, instead, criticizing it. Love with your whole heart she is telling us.

The Veins of other Flowers

The Veins of other Flowers
The Scarlet Flowers are
Till Nature leisure has for Terms
As "Branch," and "Jugular."

We pass, and she abides.
We conjugate Her Skill
While She creates and federates
Without a syllable.


     -Fr798, J811, sheet 21, 1865


This was a tough poem to “get.”

The first stanza makes a very wonky Yoda-like sentence. “The veins of other Flowers the Scarlet Flowers are, 'till Nature leisure has for Terms as “Branch” and “Jugular.”

Let’s start by trying to put that in a more regular sentence form. “The scarlet flowers are like the veins of other flowers, until Nature has leisure for terms such as "branch" and "jugular."

Why would scarlet flowers be like veins of "other Flowers"? Here’s my best guess for what’s going on here. I think "other Flowers" is referring to humans. Dickinson is saying that if we set terms aside, then human veins, such as the jugular, can be likened to branches of scarlet flowers, and, inversely, branches of scarlet flowers can be seen as jugular veins. If we get beyond "terms," then we can more easily see that humans are like flowers, and flowers, human.

Since Dickinson often sent riddle-like poems along with flowers from her garden as gifts to friends (see Fr726 for a brilliant example of this), it made me wonder what flowers might have possibly accompanied this riddle of a poem. I did some research and I found out that Cardinal Flowers could well have been growing in Dickinson's garden. They fit the criteria; they're scarlet and shaped like a branch, look like jugular veins and are the color of blood.

Cardinal flowers, or a stand of jugular veins? 

The next stanza adds a new dimension to this idea. It starts with a pithy and memorable line:

We pass, and she abides.

This line ends, pointedly, with a period, not a dash. In fact this is a rare Dickinson poem in which there are no dashes. 

Dickinson loved this word “abides.” (See Fr654, “Beauty…abides.”) It’s a common theme of Dickinson's poetry, and poetry in general; nature’s permanence versus our impermanence. The idea that nature continues on long after we are gone is a comforting thought.

It’s ironic, though, that we humans, who are just passing through, attempt to control nature through language, through terms and conjugations:

We conjugate Her Skill

We attempt to make ourselves permanent by giving names to things, and perhaps, even, by writing poems.

While She creates and federates
Without a syllable.

Maybe Dickinson is poking a bit of fun at herself here. Syllables are the very building blocks of poetry, but Nature creates and federates (governs) without any need of that.

This poem dovetails beautifully with the last one in the Franklin order, Fr797, which begins with the lines, “The Definition of Beauty is/ That Definition is none—” When we go beyond terms and definitions, it isn’t so difficult to see anew, to see, for instance, the way humans flower and flowers are human, the stuff of life coursing through the veins of both.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Michaelangelo's David exhibits a very prominent jugular vein

The Definition of Beauty is

The Definition of Beauty is
That Definition is none—
Of Heaven, easing Analysis,
Since Heaven and He are one.


   -Fr797, J988, Sheet 61, late 1865

This is a short poem, but there is so much one can say about it.

The first two lines are saying something more than just “beauty cannot be defined.” It’s saying that the definition of beauty is lack of definition. To define anything is to attempt to pin it down, which destroys its true beauty. There’s an irony here, because we appear to be attempting to define this poem, but we'll look later at the ways the poem itself defies any definition.

Can you stay open, like a child, to the beauty in the moment without needing to define it? If you can, that's heaven. But this is radical and perhaps it goes against our very nature. I've thought a lot about why we have the incessant need to think and define. Our brains constantly secrete thought. I'm sure this has something to do, evolutionarily, with survival in the wild. If we are always thinking, always worrying, we have a better chance of staying alive in the wilderness. But at what point does this get in the way of our well being? 

I’ve only ever felt this kind of heavenly beauty in certain rare moments when all thought shuts down and I enter into a trance-like state of sensory bliss. It’s very difficult to describe this state precisely because it's a kind of shutting down of description and one must define to describe. 

But before we head into the mystical, which is where I think Dickinson is going, let's look at this poem philosophically. By removing the definition for what counts as beautiful, we find that everything has the potential to be beautiful. Not because everything is beautiful, necessarily, but because nothing is ruled out by definition. If there’s no fixed standard, then beauty arises in relation, not essence. It’s about how you experience, not what you experience.

So a cracked sidewalk, a withered leaf, a moment of grief, all could be beautiful if you aren't working with a checklist. It’s an anti-aesthetic aesthetic.  

But now I want to try to dig even deeper than the philosophical and enter into the realm of the metaphysical. Bear with me here because I'm trying to get down to something ineffable, and therefore my words are wildly insufficient. 

There seems to be me to be a state of pure being, a place in which true beauty exists simply because of absolute ISNESS.

Defined beauty implies a kind of conditionality: this could be beautiful if… But what Dickinson is reaching for, I believe, is unconditional beauty, beauty as a state of pure presence prior to the judgment implicit in thought.

Let’s slow down and sit inside that. 

If definitions disappear, then beauty doesn’t just become possible in all things, all things become beautiful. Not because we choose to see them that way, but because there’s nothing in the way of their being what they are.

This is what Eastern philosophy might call suchness (Tathātā), or the Christian mystics might call the “cloud of unknowing.” In that space, you don’t see beauty, you are in beauty. You are beauty.

Let’s look at the way the form of this poem echoes its content.

The Definition of Beauty is

That Definition is none—

This formal structure of an equation collapses in on itself. What looks like it’s going to deliver clarity ends up producing a kind of absence. Dickinson’s making a definition that erases itself, which is what the poem is about, subverting definition. She uses the grammar of certainty to create uncertainty, and that reflects her subject.

She does something similar with the dash, which functions here as both a closing of the line and an opening to the next line. It creates a gap where meaning both breaks down and spills forward. This echoes how beauty itself works, something that resists closure.

Dickinson also uses ambiguity in this poem to further this idea. In the lines "Of Heaven, easing Analysis, / Since Heaven and He are one,’ the syntax is ambiguous. "Of Heaven" can modify "Beauty" (Beauty is of Heaven), or it could introduce a new clause, (easing analysis is of Heaven.) Same with “easing Analysis.” Is Heaven easing analysis? Or is the absence of definition what eases analysis? It’s structurally unclear, which underlines the point of the poem. Just as Heaven (and beauty) defy straightforward analysis, these lines defy analysis. They resist parsing the same way their subject resists dissection.

The reader is forced to experience the lines rather than decode them. It's like a divine leak, a trick I'm not sure even Shakespeare could've pulled off so well.

What’s so radical in Dickinson's poem here is that she starts with a linguistic paradox. “The definition of Beauty is / That Definition is none—” But that paradox opens into something beyond thought. The poem performs a shift, from the idea of beauty, to the failure of defining it, to the refusal of analysis, to the merging of Heaven and God, to the unspoken reality behind all appearances.

It’s as if she leads you to the edge of thought, and just as you reach for understanding, lets you fall gently into Presence.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Giovanni Bellini's "St. Francis in the desert." The most beautiful painting in the world?

Notes:


1. The opening structure of this poem is used again in Fr988, but "beauty" is replaced with "melody,"

The Definition of Melody – is
That Definition is none –


2. Check Fr654 out for a deeper dive into Fr797, a poem that says much the same thing, but maybe even more beautifully. It's a favorite.

 
Beauty — be not caused — It Is –
Chase it, and it ceases –
Chase it not, and it abides –

Overtake the Creases

In the Meadow — when the Wind
Runs his fingers thro' it –
Deity will see to it
That You never do it –

The Wind begun to knead the Grass –

The Wind begun to knead the Grass –
As Women do a Dough –
He flung a Hand full at the Plain –
A Hand full at the Sky –
The Leaves unhooked
themselves from Trees –
And started all abroad –
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands –
And throw away the Road –
The Wagons quickened on the Street –
The Thunders gossiped low –
The Lightning showed a Yellow Head –
And then a livid Toe –
The Birds put up the Bars to Nests –
The Cattle flung to Barns –
Then came one drop of Giant Rain –
And then, as if the Hands
That held the Dams – had parted hold –
The Waters Wrecked the Sky –
But overlooked my Father's House –
Just Quartering a Tree –


             -Fr796, J824, 1864


There is a later version of this poem in which the storm becomes even fiercer. Here it is.


The Wind begun to rock the Grass
With threatening Tunes and low-
He threw a Menace at the Earth-
A Menace at the Sky.

The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees-
And started all abroad
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands
And threw away the Road.

The Wagons quickened on the Streets
The Thunder hurried slow-
The Lightning showed a Yellow Beak
And then a livid Claw.

The Birds put up the Bars to Nests-
The Cattle fled to Barns-
There came one drop of Giant Rain
And then as if the Hands

That held the Dams had parted hold
The Waters Wrecked the Sky,
But overlooked my Father's House-
Just quartering a Tree

I see why in the later poem Dickinson got rid of the image of the wind kneading the grass like women knead dough since it’s not a very menacing image and doesn’t really fit with a storm. But I love the idea of the wind kneading the grass and hate to see it go. Sometimes good lines have to go in service to the poem. The new opening lines are pretty good too though. The wind “rocking” the grass with “threatening Tunes” has an anachronistic sense of a heavy metal guitar God.

I also like “The Cattle flung to the barn” in the first poem better than “fled to the barn" in the second. But “fled” carries with it a sense of fear, which, like the double use of the word "menace" adds terror to the poem. Word choices matter.

I love the addition of the Yellow Beak and Livid Claw image to describe lightning. Imagining lightning as a humongous chicken claw is tremendous.

The entire poem, in both versions, is a bravura display of Dickinson’s creative powers. You might even say it is a storm of creativity. The world becomes personified; leaves unhooking themselves from trees, dust scooping itself like Hands, thunder Hurrying “slow,” birds putting up bars on their nests, hands letting dams go, a drop of Giant Rain. It’s both charming and terrifying at once.

If nothing else, this poem gives us new ways of seeing the world. I will likely think of those chicken claws next time I see lightning, and think of the idea of hurrying slow next time I hear thunder. It’s marvelous. But, beyond its fantastical quality, what is this poem saying? At the end of the poem you have a sense of safety amid the storm in “my Father’s House.” Father’s House could be referring to her actual family home, which fits for Dickinson, since she stayed in the safety and comfort of her father's house her whole life. But “My Father’s House” can also be read as a biblical allusion. (John 14:2: “In my Father’s house are many mansions…”)

So what does it mean, then, that the storm “overlooked” the house? A lot depends on this word “overlooked.” Overlooked can mean “ignored" or "bypassed" which is how we generally take it today, or it can mean “looked over,” or "surveyed," which was a more common usage in Dickinson’s day. The difference between the two is huge in terms of the meaning of this poem.

If we take the first meaning, that the storm bypassed the house, it suggests that even in the midst of overwhelming forces, there may be moments of mercy, or meaning, beyond comprehension. The storm is not governed solely by "chance,” but pointedly “overlooked my Father’s House.” That implies something more deliberate than accidental. Even though the storm quarters a tree nearby, the house is spared.
Dickinson is at least entertaining the idea that there is more than randomness in the universe and that some forces may act with purpose, even if inscrutable, and that moments of survival or sparing might not be purely chance.

BUT, if we take “overlooked” to mean “surveyed,” then the storm passed by not because of divine protection, but because of the house’s strength. This shifts the emphasis from grace (the storm chose to spare the house) to preparedness (the house withstood the storm through its own merit).

So which is it? Is there an external force deciding who is spared, or is it an internal resilience? Either way, perhaps Dickinson's deeper point here is that even under threat from overwhelming forces, something grounded, whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually, might hold.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

chicken claw lightning

Truth — is as old as God —

Truth — is as old as God —
His Twin identity
And will endure as long as He
A Co-Eternity —

And perish on the Day
Himself is borne away
From Mansion of the Universe
A lifeless Deity.


    -Fr795, J836, sheet 23, 1854


Truth equals God, and always will. What does that mean? Truth equals God is a kind of tautology that doesn’t tell us much about either one. The truth is God. God is the truth. It doesn’t sound to me like something Dickinson would write.

“Truth” is usually more complicated in Dickinson poems. “Tell the truth but tell it slant,” she writes in a later poem. Is there anything slant in this poem? Perhaps. On one hand you could read the poem as saying that Truth won’t perish until God does. One presumes that this means it will last forever, “Co-eternities.” On the other hand the poem ends with the dark image of a Lifeless Deity. That’s the feeling you are left with, the possibility of a Godless universe.

This poem was attached to a letter to Dr. Josiah Holland, a pious man, and the father of one of Emily’s best friends, Elizabeth Holland. In an earlier letter to the Hollands, we have a hint of Emily’s doubts.

In the letter Emily speaks of having a dream she was with the Hollands and they were picking roses in a lovely garden. But, “though we gathered with all our might, the basket was never full.” There is a sense in this dream of working hard to gather beauty, but never, somehow, being completely fulfilled by this effort.

Then the letter states the following:

“The minister to-day, not our own minister, preached about death and judgment, and what would become of those, meaning Austin and me, who behaved improperly - and somehow the sermon scared me, and father and Vinnie looked very solemn as if the whole was true, and I would not for worlds have them know that I troubled me, but I longed to come to you, and tell you all about it, and learn how to be better. He preached such an awful sermon though, that I didn't much think I should ever see you again until Judgment Day, and then you would not speak to me, according to his story. The subject of perdition seemed to please him, somehow. It seems very solemn to me.”

But perhaps this poem was meant in a less complicated, more straightforward, way, befitting its recipient. We find out from Dr. Holland’s granddaughter, Theodora Van Wagenen Ward, that there was a generational shift in faith experience with her grandfather. She states that Dr. Holland “loved God with the same fervor that his ancestors feared Him.” So perhaps he exemplified that kind of love for Emily.

          -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. I love the way the final word of this poem, Deity, takes up both the "ee" sound of the rhymes in the first stanza and the "ay" sound of the rhymes of the second stanza.