I asked no other thing —

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

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

               Fr687, J621 1863 (fascicle 32)

It’s always dangerous to reduce Dickinson’s poetry to a prose translation, but for the sake of a starting place, let’s try: “I only asked for one thing, but I didn’t get it. EVERYTHING else was available, everything except that ONE thing. I even offered myself, my own being, for this thing, but that Mighty Merchant, God, just sneered and smiled. How about if I give you Brazil instead, He asked. No, that’s not going to work for me, I said. The Merchant twirled a button, like a slick but bored businessman, and said, “Isn’t there anything else you might like, ma'am?”*

I read this ironically. Would you really expect a Mighty Merchant to give you what your soul truly desired? You’re probably not going to find THAT when you are dealing with a merchant. Merchants are generally out to get the best deal. What’s love got to do with it? Seeing God as a Mighty Merchant is sardonic. It’s like saying that everything from the top down is supply and demand economics. But, alas, in this world it does often seem that way. The powers-that-be are the very opposite of what true divinity should be; i.e. merciful and loving. God here isn’t the antithesis of the world, he IS the world. The Mighty Merchant (if, indeed, you take the Mighty Merchant to be God here) is a pseudonym for “Power”, for might makes right, for law of the jungle. It’s cynical, but hey, spurned love can spin you that way.

I love that button twirling detail. We might twirl a button if we are bored, and in that case it is a dismissive gesture. But we might also do it if we were considering the deal, in which case there's hope. The poem ends without an answer to the plea.

I asked Bing for an image of "God the Mighty Merchant, in striped suit and curled mustache, smiling and twirling a button on his sleeve. He is dealing with Emily Dickinson. Brazil is on the table.  Pre-Raphaelite style."

What is the one thing the Poet wants? One can only speculate, but here’s my best guess. I recently read “Open Me Carefully”, the collection of Emily’s letters and poems written and sent to Susan Huntington Gilbert over a thirty-year span. What a unique love story. Through the mediary of Emily’s brother Austin, who lived next door and was married to Susan, both women were allowed to see each other and continue their ever deepening relationship, from young school girls all the way to the end when Susan helped prepare Emily’s body for the grave. Perhaps Emily and Susan could have gone against societal mores and lived together, but seeing the difficulty that would have been involved in such a relationship in Victorian society, perhaps this nifty arrangement was the next best thing. Seen in that light, it’s a kind of miracle they were able to continue as they did. 

But if Sue was right next door, it must have felt, on some days, as if she was a million miles away. Susan was also, after all, a wife to Austin, a mother of three, a math teacher and a social butterfly.

So, while it could be a number of things, I think it might be Susan that Emily is asking the Mighty Merchant for, the one she’s willing to give her own being for. It’s the one thing she wants and can’t have. Why can’t she have it? It’s not for sale, for one. Even at the cost of one’s self. Everything else is, but not love. And none of those other things count. 

This is a funny poem, with a light touch, so it’s hard to take the pathos in it too seriously. I notice in the letters to Susan that Emily often uses an arch over-the-top tone to convey feelings that really ARE over the top for her, but are also, at the same time, held in check with humor. This poem seems of that kind. I think it is because at some deeper level she did have Sue that she COULD be so funny about not having her.

Also, from early on in the letters, Emily conflates Susan with God in a playful way. Consider this passage from a letter from 1852 when they were both 22. “How vain it seems to write, when one knows how to feel - how much more near and dear to sit beside you, talk with you, hear the tones of your voice - so hard to ‘deny thyself, take up the cross, and follow me -’ give me strength , Susie, write me of hope and love, and of hearts that endured, and great was their reward of ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’” There are many passages like this.

One more argument for Sue as the intended here is that Emily, for the sake of discretion, would have reason to leave her name out of a poem, especially one which is about desire. This move has a curious and serendipitous side effect on the poem. By leaving out the signified, this poem is freed up for the reader. X = deepest desire. What would X be for you?

Part of what makes Dickinson mysterious is that she was protective of her private life, but at the same time was writing for any possible reader. “I dwell in possibility” she wrote. The way in which Dickinson’s deepest desire can dovetail with ours is the result of the alchemical process of poetry. Few poets walk the line between the private and public sphere so adroitly as she does. It's fun to speculate about what the poems meant to her, but in the end I believe Emily left them behind to show us to ourselves.

- /)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. The trouble with summarizing a poem is that it becomes difficult to account for ambiguity, and Dickinson, like a Mighty Merchant herself, trades in ambiguity. In this poem there are a few. One thing I’m unclear about here is whether or not God is offering Brazil to the speaker or if the speaker is offering Brazil to the Merchant. I initially took it the first way. “Look God, if my being is not enough for you, I’ll give you all of Brazil (paradise) for my love.” But other commentaries I looked at took it that it is the Merchant that is offering Brazil, saying “Look, I can give you Brazil, but not the thing you really want.”

I often wonder if Dickinson means for her poems to be so syntactically slippery. But since her poems are so often full of sliding modifiers, I suspect she does. In this case I’m not sure it matters. Though perhaps by making it ambiguous we understand that the poet and God are both dealing in entire countries here. Does it matter which one is offering Brazil? It could be both, but either way, it doesn't do.

Another ambiguity is caused by that dash in the second line. Dashes often aid ambiguity, which is one of many reasons Dickinson deploys them. Here are two ways to read the first two lines, depending on punctuation. "I asked no other thing, no other! Was denied!" Or, you could read it, as I chose to for my prose summary, as "I asked no other thing. No other was denied." It's tempting to read it the former way, because of the pause created by the dash, but it's richer to read it the latter way. Emily gets to keep both possibilities by trading out the punctuation marks for dashes.

2. I added this note retroactively. Fr799 goes a ways toward elucidating this poem. Check it out. 

It makes no difference abroad —

It makes no difference abroad —

The Seasons — fit — the same —

The Mornings blossom into Noons —

And split their Pods of Flame —

Wild flowers — kindle in the Woods —

The Brooks slam — all the Day —             [Brooks] brag

No Black bird bates his Banjo —

For passing Calvary —

Auto da Fe — and Judgment —

Are nothing to the Bee —

His separation from His Rose —

To Him — sums Misery —

                       Fr686, J620 1863

In a typical move, Dickinson starts this poem off with an aphorism:

It makes no difference abroad —

The Seasons — fit — the same —

Dickinson packs a lot into this aphorism and the rest of the poem will tease out its possibilities. The poem, as I read it, gathers together around that word "fit". Check out the way the poet emphasizes it by marking it off between dashes. It seems quite fitting.

The word “fit” is, syntactically, doing, at least, double duty here. On one hand it might mean that the seasons fit together in the circular process of time. (For a terrific poem based on THAT idea, take a look at Dickinson’s poem Fr667. ) But it also may mean that the seasons fit each location, both here and "abroad", the same. I think it is useful to keep both senses of the word "fit" in mind while reading the rest of the poem: the seasons fit together with each other and they also fit wherever they are.

So this aphorism might be reminding us that it doesn't matter where you are from, everyone is subject to the process of time. The full import of this will not be clear until we get to the third stanza of this poem where things fitting together will be juxtaposed in stark contrast to things that do NOT fit well together.

The second couplet in the poem is also about the process of time, but here Dickinson scales down from the larger temporal unit, the season, to the smaller one, the day. She extends the aphorism in these lines to the realm of pure poetry…

The Mornings blossom into Noons —

And split their Pods of Flame —

From large to small, everything blossoms. Both the season and the day split their pods into flame. The sun shines brightest in the summer and at noon. It’s the same way both down and up the scale. In the longer seasons of our life we have our summer noons too. In fact every eon blooms, and every second too, if we could only learn to see that fast and slow.

Here we remember that the poem also constitutes a measurement of time. It blossoms and “splits its pod into flame” too. Indeed, it is with this very line that this poem catches fire. 

Dickinson uses the imagery of the day blossoming to transition to flowers in the next line:

Wild flowers — kindle in the Woods —

The season, the morning, the wild flowers in the woods, and, by extension, our wild selves, are (or once were, or soon will be) on fire.

My daughter, Sofia, among flaming flowers --

                                                                  

Then the poem transitions from flowers to brooks, and in so doing we move from seeing images of bright fiery sunrises and flowers to hearing the thunderous sound of slamming water.

The Brooks slam — all the Day —

“Brooks slam” is such a slamming way to put it.  This poem slams us with the feeling that the world is vibrantly but violently alive.

The next lines set us up for the poem’s counterpoint…

No Black bird bates his Banjo —

For passing Calvary —

The word bates means to lessen, and with this word Dickinson brings us a new idea; birds don’t lessen their music for passing Calvary. Calvary is shorthand for the place Jesus was crucified. So the sense is that birds don’t stop their music (nor brooks their slamming, nor flowers their blossoming), even for Christ's dying on the cross. One might choose to read this as proof of an unfeeling universe, in opposition to merciful Christ, but I don't think that's what the poet is getting at. The mentions of Auto da Fe and Judgment in the next stanza do not show Christianity in a merciful light. Rather, the word "passing" clues us in to the fact that nature transcends, in time, any human drama that may now, or then, be unfolding. (We see in F670 that for Dickinson, Calvary was ALWAYS unfolding, for everyone.)

This view of nature's endurance in the face of religion reminds me of Caravaggio's painting "Conversion of Paul the Apostle", where the powerful and foregrounded horse is nonchalantly stepping over the Awestruck Paul.

Why did Dickinson choose a black bird and a banjo I wondered? Why not a lark and a lyre? This question led me to some interesting answers. For one thing there is, following the slamming Brook, the battering sound of the B in the line “No Black bird bates his Banjo”. It has a percussive quality that bounces much like a banjo might. The connection between a black bird’s song and the sound of a banjo was, at first, a surprising one, but then I listened to the black bird’s song in this clip and it wasn’t hard to imagine the “notes” played on the banjo.

Though perhaps there is another reason Dickinson uses the word Banjo. When this poem was written the Civil War was raging, a war fought largely over the issue of slavery. The Black bird playing a banjo (note that the word Black is capitalized, drawing our attention to it) may evoke a black banjo player, since the banjo is an instrument that came to America on slave ships from Africa. With this in mind, these lines feel like an assuring assertion that the music of the black banjo-player will continue unabated despite the tragic consequences of the Civil War and slavery. 

The next lines introduce the idea of religious intolerance into the poem…

Auto da Fe — and Judgment —

Are nothing to the Bee —

Auto da Fe, literally meaning “act of faith”, is a phrase that commonly refers to the burning of a heretic by the Spanish Inquisition. You can see in this pointed detail where doubt begins to darken the doorstep. If there is a worse perversion of "faith" than the Inquisition I'm not sure what it would be. Here we’ve returned to the idea of “fire”, though now it isn’t the ecstatic “flame” of a summer noon and the beautiful “kindle” of flowers we are talking about, but, in sobering counterpoint, fire now refers to the horrific burning of men and women for their beliefs. One kind of flame is extraordinarily beautiful, the other is quite the opposite. We are left to untangle the difference between the two.

None of this matters to the bee, though. The only thing that matters to the bee?

His separation from His Rose —

To Him — sums Misery —

These final lines complicate the poem. A new vector of meaning, the idea of separation from an object of desire, is introduced. The word “separation” hearkens back to “fit” at the beginning of the poem. I read this as saying the seasons may fit in with each other, but we won’t always fit with the seasons. The bee in the winter time is separated from the rose.

The idea that nature won’t stop its blossoming despite Judgment is, perhaps, a comforting one, but if you are caught up in the tragedy of being persecuted for beliefs, nature may appear quite callous in its indifference. That is the way I read Helen Vendler's and David Preest's takes this poem, each emphasizing nature’s indifference to suffering, rather than nature's triumph over suffering. I think this poem has it both ways. The poet may point us toward the perpetual return of spring, but, being human, she also empathizes with the plight of humanity. You can feel this in the word “brag”, the alternative word Dickinson has for “slam”. “The brooks brag — all the day.” This implies that the brook is rubbing its ebullience in our troubled faces. For any (for the many!) caught up in horrors caused by prejudice, the exuberance of nature might feel like a slap in the face. It may feel as if it is burning us, slamming us.

Perhaps in these final lines the poet is revealing her own ambivalence. She appreciates and takes comfort in time's ever-blooming beauty, despite man's cruelty, but also, like the bee, feels the pain of separation from the rose and summer.

This poem is complex in its ideas, but the music of the language helps everything fit together. Read the poem out loud and listen for all of the consonant blends involving "l" and "r". They trip wonderfully off the tongue and give the poem a kindling energy.

— /)dam Wade I)eGraff

Picking up the thread -- the spider holds a silver ball

I found Prowling Bee the way most people do. Probably the way you did. I was bewildered by an Emily Dickinson poem and I did a web search to help me figure it out.

The thing that drew me into Dickinson’s poetry initially was its music. I often find myself swooning over a line of Dickinson’s poetry. It's very seductive. You fall in love with it. The poems can be a lot of fun too, a constant source of delight. You smile often.

But sometimes they terrify you. If Beauty is the thing that got me hooked, the thing that keeps me going back is the way the poems reveal, bit by bit, glimpses of an ever-elusive Truth. 

Out to sea, fin set free from firmament, I began to read more and more of Emily's work. I got better at reading the poems, but I still found them consistently challenging. Few of the poems are “easy,”

 and even the ones that seem simple are usually deceptively so. Susan Kornfeld’s essays were extremely useful in forming my own relationship to the poems and in helping each one bear its fruit. (An apt metaphor, as Susan is also a first rate gardener.) At first I would only go to Prowling Bee if I was stumped, but eventually I would go every time, just because I enjoyed the writing.

There were other pilgrims that showed up in the comment section, people like PP, Patrick Gillespie, Larry B and the prolific Ann O'nymous. Each of them shined their own light on new facets of the poems I hadn’t considered before. I found myself also adding to the commentary from time to time, going by d scribe. 

D scribe is a handle I gave myself when I was writing weekly newsletters for a music venue in Arvada Colorado called the D Note that I owned with my brothers from 2003 to 2013. This was the work I did before the job I have now, which is teaching English at St. Francis Preparatory school in Queens NY. I also write poetry on occasion, which is another reason I like to read Emily. She’s a great teacher, an absolute master of using form to express content.

After a few years of chronologically reading a poem every day or so, and reading Prowling Bee afterwards, I noticed that Susan was slowing down the rate of her posts. I looked ahead and saw that Fr685 was the last poem on which she had written an essay, her only one from the year 2023. And yet she was still active, commenting on people’s comments, including mine. Why did she stop? And what was I going to do when I got to Fr686? I was going to miss Susan’s reflections. I supposed I would have to wade out in the deep waters of Dickinson’s poetry alone. Good thing Wade is my middle name.

Dickinson’s poetry isn’t an easy nut to crack, but that’s also part of what makes it so enticing. The puzzle of the poem draws you in, again and again. Frustrating, but also enjoyably addictive, the poems tease you with their riddles. It feels to me like there are always JUST enough crumbs in the poems to lead me to the next set of crumbs and, because of Dickinson’s intellectual bravery and fierce kindness, I feel compelled to keep following them. I have a kind of Quixotic faith that these crumbs will, if followed to the end, lead me back, as Dickinson so beautifully puts it, to “the infinite power of Home.”

Sometimes the number of possible readings of a Dickinson poem appears to be infinite. For instance, I’m sure that no two people read the poem that begins “My Life had stood a loaded gun” in exactly the same way. The puzzle of the poem we are trying to piece together is, ultimately, one of a kind, since it is a reflection of a unique reader. You must arrive at your own meaning. But you still want as much help as you can possibly find. Unfortunately, for MOST of Dickinson’s nearly 1800 poems there is NO in-depth analysis at all online, let alone good in-depth analysis. This is why Susan’s blog is such a rare and valuable find. It has become a beacon in the dark for many readers over the last 10 years.

If Dickinson’s poems serve as one of the best guides for the spirit I have yet found, then Susan is one of the best guides I have found to the poems. Take the name, for starters, a serendipitous echo of Emily’s beloved Susan Gilbert Dickinson, her sister in-law. (Have ever letters been written that were more romantic than Emily's to Susan? I can think of only two examples that compare; John Keats to Fanny Brawne, and Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne.) It appears that Susans still haunt Emily, and vice versa, as my favorite book about Dickinson is by a Susan too, Susan Howe. How Susan walks into a room.

Much to my surprise, a few months ago, as I was somewhere deep in the middle of the 29th fascicle (according to Christanne Miller’s ordering of the poems), I received a DM from Susan letting me know that she was, for the most part, finished posting on the blog and asking me if I’d be interested in continuing it. While I was extremely honored that she would ask me, I wasn’t sure I was the best person for the task. I still feel like a novice. My reading of Dickinson’s poetry is not nearly so incisive, nor my writing nearly so concise, as Susan’s is. She is so good at what she does here, making something very difficult look easy.

But I thought about it and realized that SOMEONE should do it. And since Susan did ask me, and I owe her, how could I refuse? Plus I liked the idea. I may not be able to limn the poems with the grace that she does, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still be of service to other readers. If I can be even a fraction of the help to others that Susan has been to me, it would be worth the effort. If nothing else, it will give readers something to read against, which may still prove quite useful.


See you in the poems.


Affy,


Adam Wade DeGraff

Dear Readers

It’s no secret that I’ve been exceedingly slow to post new prowling Bee content over the past few years. This dereliction is not due to loss of interest, personal tragedies, or an exciting new career. May I suggest, Reader, that after 685 poems I’m just … ready to be a responder rather than a composer? 

The Prowling Bee was born in 2011 – twelve and a half years ago. Despite having loved Dickinson poems since grade school and taught Dickinson in community college classes, I’d barely begun making my way through the Franklin Reading Edition. My older collections didn’t include the most passionate, difficult, or challenging poems so I was flabbergasted almost daily. When my excitement, wonder, and marginalia started getting out of hand, I began composing my thoughts at the computer rather than the easy chair. This was the beginning of the blog. When I read the wonderful poem ‘Bloom – is Result – to meet a Flower’ (Fr1038) where I encountered ‘the prowling Bee’, I knew that’s what I wanted. To be the Bee.

The Flower, Dickinson writes, must try to ‘escape the prowling Bee’ – it’s part of a flower’s ‘profound / Responsibility’. I take this as the poet’s challenge. Her poems are often elusive, ambiguous and enigmatic. Take the Bloom poem: why should the flower be concerned about a bee?  Any bee worth the honey prowls about the flowers.  In fact, Dickinson writes in an earlier poem (Fr235), ‘The Flower must not blame the Bee – / That seeketh his felicity / too often at her door–’.  

So the Flower is a bit of a tease. But the Bee is up for it. I may be bowing out of the commentaries, but the Bee will prowl on. 

(bit of a drum roll here)

Reader, there is a new Bee! Adam DeGraff! He will be introducing himself in the next post, but many of you have already encountered him in the Comments where he posted under the moniker ‘d Scribe’.  For some years I’ve looked forward to his responses – they are unfailingly insightful and interesting. He addresses the heart as well as the logistics of the poems.  He clearly – and most importantly -- loves Dickinson’s work. I’ve been enriched by his commentary and am thrilled and grateful that he is donning the bee-ish mantle.

Please welcome Adam to the fascinating dance of Bee and Bloom and may he ‘seeketh his felicity’ at the flower’s door for at least a thousand more poems.

As a final note:

Poetry lovers from all walks of life and from all over the world read the Bee. As of today there have been 3.5 million page views and 5077 comments on the 685 poems. Although many of the comments are from readers expressing their appreciation for the Bee project, most are responding to the poems. These comments are the heart of the Bee. They range from discussions of meaning to analysis of poetic forms and techniques to musings about Dickinson herself. Sometimes they grapple with the poems and sometimes they add contextual and biographical information. Some long-time and frequent posters have become part of the Bee family. To you, I give special thanks. I feel we go hand in hand forward. I know Adam feels the same way.

Glee—The great storm is over—

Glee—The great storm is over—
Four—have recovered the Land—
Forty—gone down together—
Into the boiling Sand—

Ring—for the scant Salvation—
Toll—for the bonnie Souls—
Neighbor—and friend—and Bridegroom—
Spinning opon the Shoals—

How they will tell the Story—
When Winter shake the Door—
Till the Children urge—                         [Children ask]
But the Forty—
Did they—come back no more?

Then a silence—suffuse the story—
And a softness—the Teller's eye—
And the Children—no further question—
And only the Sea—reply—
                                                Fr685 (1863)  J619

I picture Dickinson performing this rollicking ballad to an intimate audience that included children. I vaguely remember from long ago studies that poetry readings were fairly popular Victorian entertainments, and that would be particularly true in educated communities such as Amherst.  

This ballad, however, does more than tell a tale: it goes on to describe a setting for and the anticipated response to the tale telling. As the perspective changes, so does the tone – and meter here drives the tone. A bit of scansion reveals how.

The first two stanzas describe a tragedy at sea caused by a ‘great storm’ where four people were saved but forty lost – ‘gone down together – / Into the boiling Sand –’. The lines ring out with dactyls (DA da da) followed by trochees (DA da). Tennyson famously used similar meter in his famous 1854 ballad “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. In Tennyson’s poem the dactylic rhythm suggests the galloping of the horses as they ride to the hell of battle. In Dickinson’s it is the punishing winds and waves that doom the ship and most of its passengers.

 Wreck of the Tally Ho, Josiah Robert Wells, 1887

The third stanza leaves the great storm behind and imagines stormy nights where the survivors or other Tellers describe the tragedy, the children frightened and concerned about the lost Forty. The transition in this stanza from event to the telling of it, is mirrored by Dickinson’s transitions from the forceful dactyl/trochee meter (“How they will tell the Story”) to gentler iambs and anapests – anapests being the opposite of dactyls (da da DA) and ending with plaintive iambs: “Did they – come back no more?”. 

The final stanza’s lines softly rock like the quieted sea in their use of anapest followed by iambs. The whole stanza is sibilant with ‘s’ sounds: The children are silenced, the Teller softened, and the only the Sea replies. And yet, despite its swishing murmurs and rolling crashes, the Sea reveals nothing. 

To live by the sea is to know the Glee (and what an amazing word to start the poem) but also the drowned, the tolling bells. The children soon learn to offer “no further question”.

Here are a few narrative ballads that Dickinson would probably have been familiar with:

‘The Sands of Dee’, Charles Kingsley, 1850

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834) Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Paul Revere’s Ride, (1860) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Lady of Shalott, (1842) Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sweet – safe – Houses –

 Sweet — safe — Houses —
Glad — gay — Houses —
Sealed so stately tight —
Lids of Steel — on Lids of Marble —
Locking Bare feet out —

Brooks of Plush — in Banks of Satin
Not so softly fall
As the laughter — and the whisper —
From their People Pearl —

No Bald Death — affront their Parlors —
No Bold Sickness come
To deface their Stately Treasures —
Anguish — and the Tomb —

Hum by — in Muffled Coaches —
Lest they — wonder Why —
Any — for the Press of Smiling —
Interrupt — to die —

Fr684 (1863)  J457

Dickinson’s family home might well be considered one of the houses described by this poem: ‘safe’ and ‘Sealed’; quiet and luxurious; and undisturbed by Death, Sickness, Anguish, and the barefoot poor. Ironically, the houses, a metonymy for the wealthy inhabitants, might be ‘safe’, but that includes being safe from the human condition. 

They might be Sweet and Glad and gay, but that requires being sealed off from all unpleasantness. Their laughter might be softer than “Brooks of Plush – in Banks of Satin”, but they live in an oyster’s world – as “People Pearl”. They really don’t know life at all. (‘Pearl’ should probably be read as ‘Purl’: According to the ED Lexicon and other sources, ‘Purl’ means ‘to flow with a murmuring sound’. I hate to lose the image, though, of the oyster shell which, for pearls, really is Plush and Satiny. I suspect Dickinson wanted both meanings: both Pearl and Purl.)

Of course, no house, and particularly one that housed Emily Dickinson is going to be entirely sealed or safe. Nor would it be free of anguish and death, but that’s not for want of trying

Victorian metal grave covers

I like to read ‘Houses’ here as caskets. Fancier and much more expensive than the simple wooden coffin, steel caskets were introduced in the 1840s. Their ‘Lids of Steel’ were designed to permanently seal in the corpse – whose [eye]Lids of Marble” are equally sealed shut.

It’s easy to switch focus back and forth throughout the poem: rich houses, luxurious caskets, nice neighborhood, quiet necropolis. Both exclusive. No Shoes No Service. There is an important difference between the two milieus, however. While the rich are warding off exposure to and admittance of suffering and death, the dead are really dead. They couldn’t step outside their cushy oyster even if they wanted to. On the bright side, they no longer need to worry about Death entering their Parlors or even any ‘Bold Sickness’. 

The poem starts to get a bit difficult in the last line of the third stanza. I track the rest of the poem this way: ‘Anguish – and the Tomb –‘ begins a new sentence (although preceded by a dash and not a period) and is a compound subject for ‘Hum by – in Muffled Coaches’. So you have Muffled Coaches with their grim occupants humming by the houses or caskets of the well-to-do (the poor were buried in simple winding cloth or else in a simple wooden coffin). 

Why are the Coaches muffled? So that the Sweet, safe, Glad, gay Houses do not have to wonder at life being interrupted by death – or rather, why someone in a gay and smiling house party would interrupt the festivities to die. It is a bit difficult to parse this if the ‘they’ is the casket denizens rather than the wealthy in their Houses, but I take the muffling of noise as a courtesy to the dead who are softly whispering and laughing. They, too, ironically, would not appreciate the interruption.

Are ‘Houses’ meant to be seen as caskets? Would Emily Dickinson have pictured life in an important Victorian house as so restricted? I think she did, although, in another irony, she came to embrace the comfortable privacy of a stately but sealed house. And I picture her at the little desk in her room, listening to the ghostly Purl. 

Poetically, the poem has a lot of energy. The initial spondees (two accented syllables) followed by a third accented syllable (in ‘Houses’) and coupled with the alliterations in Sweet / Safe and Glad / Gay give a sprightly emphasis to the first stanza. There are then the tumble-forward trochaic feet (first syllable accented) that dominate the rest of the poem. Dickinson uses a quite a bit of alliteration and this provides a lightness to balance the rather serious social commentary. Even ‘Death’ is softened by ‘Bald’ and Sickness by ‘Bold’. No gruesome or pitying images here.

The poem maintains this balance between a happy meter adorned with charming alliteration until the last five lines. ‘Anguish’ is coupled with ‘the Tomb’, the harsh word signaling a change of mood. And although they ‘Hum’ by, Muffled, they bring the reader up short with the biggest interruption to a soiree possible: dying. It seems a bummer to both the living and the already dead.

 

At leisure is the Soul

At leisure is the Soul
That gets a Staggering Blow—
The Width of Life—before it spreads
Without a thing to do—

It begs you give it Work—
But just the placing Pins—
Or humblest Patchwork—Children do—
To still it’s noisy Hands—                  [To] Help its Vacant Hands –

Fr683  (J618)

I find this poem sad and acutely observant.  Dickinson sketches a young person who, before their life has a chance to develop, suffers a ‘Staggering Blow’. It might have been a death, disaster, disease, or some other devastation. Dickinson limns its extent as ‘The Width of Life’. There is no getting around it, no getting past it. Instead of spreading out, gaining vantage and perspective, gathering experience and skill, the staggered Soul spreads out thinly ‘Without a thing to do –‘.  Life stretches out, barren in its reaches. Any work the person, the Soul, might have undertaken is lost. There is nothing it is called to do.

Simple patchwork quilt
Janet Wickell at The Spruce

Yet the sufferer wants something to fill the time, some sort of Work.  Nothing, however, that demands commitment, creativity, or even much effort. What is wanted is the sort of simple work and projects that a child can do. Dickinson gives two examples, both having to do with sewing: placing pins so hems and seams are held in place while sewing and making simple patchwork quilts. The goal is not the sewing but the quieting of the sufferer’s ‘noisy Hands’. 

It’s easy to picture the stunted soul picking at things, rubbing their hands, drumming mindlessly – actions that must soothe, somehow, the deep wounds. Dickinson wrote an alternate phrase: instead of ‘To still it’s noisy Hands –‘, there is ‘To Help its vacant Hands’ –‘.  Both phrases are poignant – and sad.  One seeks to quiet the busy hands, the other to stir the Vacant hands to some sort of activity.

The contrast in word/phrase structure between ‘a Staggering Blow’ and ‘The Width of Life’ is remarkable. The anapestic ‘Staggering’ sounds staggering, especially followed by the strong blow of ‘Blow’. ‘The Width of Life’ follows directly after, and the slow lilt of its iambic syllables grant a terrible spaciousness to the ‘leisure’ that lies ahead.

The first stanza is powerful and concise, containing the ravage of trauma to a spreading soul, with the resulting (and ironic) lifelong ‘leisure’.  The second stanza has the sketch: we see an adult working mindlessly, killing time, distracting their hands with the simplest of tasks. The Hands, however, are more here than work-doers – Dickinson’s poetic subject is ‘the Soul’ and the Hands are the Soul’s hands. It is the Soul begging for work, the Soul whose hands are noisy or, worse, vacant.

Dickinson writes here in a type of hymn meter styled ‘short’: each stanza has three lines with six syllables and one line, the third, with eight. That’s not a lot of syllables in which to pack so much meaning.

Rhyme and alliteration help achieve the poem’s tight weave where nothing should be added and nothing can be removed. Soul, Blow, and do (used twice) give us ‘o’ sounds that lengthen word and  meaning. The first stanza uses Soul, Staggering, and Spreads to use the soft ‘s’ sound to deliver the ‘Blow’. The ‘w’ sounds in Width, Without, and Work almost whisper their meaning, Irony is woven into the very sound of the poem.

So well that I can live without –

 So well that I can live without –

I love thee – then How well is that?

As well as Jesus?

Prove it me

That He – loved Men –

As I – love thee –

                                            Fr682 (1863)  J456

This short love poem is intense – and pretty flippant. The speaker begins by declaring she loves her ‘thee’ so much that she can live without him. Her love stands on its own strength all on its own. Not for her the neediness of wanting to be by her beloved’s side, look into her eyes, stand together outside in the moonlight, exchange all the little signs and proofs that feed love. 

Could this be a poem to ‘Master’? I don’t think so. The Master letters are full of longing; they have a beseeching tone:

Could you come to New England – Would you come to Amherst – Would you like to come – Master? Would it do harm – yet we both fear God – Would Daisy disappoint you – no – she wouldn’t – Sir – it were comfort forever – just to look in your face, while you looked in mine – then I could play in the woods – till Dark – till you take me where sundown cannot find us – and the true keep coming ….” Letter 3, 1861

The letter (as far as we know, never sent – and we don’t really know who Master is, either) does have a bit of playfulness  and a bit of boldness. But Daisy (a nickname Emily at times uses to refer to herself) pleads with Master to come. She needs the comfort of looking in his face.

In contrast, the poem’s speaker is confident and challenging. ‘How well do I love you,’ she asks. ‘As well as Jesus?’ Flippant, yes? And then the challenge: “Prove it me / That He – loved Men – / As I – love thee –“. It’s a good challenge. Her love needs no feeding – it exists ‘without’, and I take that to mean without presence, without letters, without rings and lockets and other tokens. 

And what about Jesus? Can a case be made that he loved (the past tense Dickinson employs here is interesting) Men as much? 

It's different. The Christian New Testament presents Jesus a divine sacrifice: He dies so that humanity might be saved . But there are strings attached to the salvation part. You must be a Christian; you might also have to have been predestined for salvation (this was the Calvinist position Dickinson’s community would be familiar with and generally accept). The point is, there is a heaven for the appropriate believers and there is a hell for the rest. 

Well, it’s a comparison impossible to make between the speaker’s love and the love of Jesus for humanity. After all, she has to only love one person. Plus, it is near to impossible to prove a negative. But the rhetoric is strong and that carries the day. 

Susan Dickinson (from Wikipedia

Could the poem have been written with Sue in mind? Dickinson was becoming used to being ‘without’ her although Sue and Austin – Sue’s husband, Emily’s brother – lived just a hundred yards away. The two women, once passionately inseparable, became much more distant. There was the marriage and Sue’s adjusted role as Mrs. Dickinson; and there was the birth of little Ned in 1861. Some of Dickinson’s other poems point to differences and estrangements, but this poem goes all out for love with no strings attached and no encouragement needed.

Don't put up my Thread & Needle

Don't put up my Thread & Needle –
I'll begin to Sow
When the Birds begin to whistle –
Better stitches – so –

These were bent – my sight got crooked –

When my mind – is plain

I'll do seams – a Queen's endeavor

Would not blush to own –

Hems – too fine for Lady's tracing

To the sightless Knot –

Tucks – of dainty interspersion –

Like a dotted Dot –

Leave  my Needle in the furrow –

Where I put it down –

I can make the zigzag stitches

Straight – when I am strong –

Till then – dreaming I am sewing

Fetch the seam I missed –

Closer – so I – at my sleeping –

Still surmise I stitch –

                                                

                                                Fr681 (1863)  J617

One thing Emily Dickinson is not remembered for is her sewing. She had, however, at least a passing interest in sewing. Naturally she would. Sewing was considered a basic female household skill, a way for womenfolk to benefit the poor, and at the least, a harmless social activity.

    During her younger years Dickinson was a member of Amherst's Sewing Society, both a benevolent and a social group. She was, however, not an enthusiastic member. We know this from a letter she wrote a girlhood friend when Dickinson was twenty:

The sewing Society has commenced again – and held its first meeting last week – now all the poor will be helped – the cold warmed – the warm cooled – the hungry fed – the thirsty attended to – the ragged clothes – and this suffering – tumbled down world will be helped to it's feet again – which will be quite pleasant to all. I dont attend – notwithstanding my high approbation – which must puzzle the public exceedingly. I am already set down as one of those brands almost consumed – and my hardheartedness gets me many prayers.

                        - Letter to Jane Humphrey, January, 1850 

Dickinson's tone in this letter is lighthearted, flippant, even. Her idea that she might be considered 'one of those brands almost consumed' reminds me of old folks shaking their heads at twenty-somethings and muttering, 'Live fast, die young.' While 'brand' can mean both a persona and a product identifier (and, at the time she wrote this, the mark inflicted on slaves – although I do not believe there is a shadow of that meaning in the poem), Dickinson uses its earliest meaning here: a piece of burning wood. She is amused that by avoiding the sewing society she is marked as a fast liver, a fire brand with not much stick left. But at least that assessment gets her many prayers.

Notwithstanding her expressed lack of interest, sewing is central to this poem. One can read it as the speaker's straightforward bit of instruction to a friend or family member to keep her sewing things handy until she has recovered enough from some unnamed ailment and can see better. This reading makes sense biographically. Within a year of writing the poem, Dickinson was spending months in Boston under an ophthalmologist's care. The doctor severely restricted her time outdoors, her reading, and her writing. Dickinson herself referred to this period as being in jail, or in Siberia. She was terrified of not being able to read again.

Example of pintucks:
from Historical Sewing
https://historicalsewing.com/
pintucks-the-old-fashioned-way

    But the terror isn't evident in this poem. The speaker begins optimistically: her sewing materials shouldn't be put away because she'll be using them again come spring – and with better results. In the second stanza she explains that her vision was 'crooked' but when her mind is 'plain', that is, clearer, she will be able to sew seams a Queen would be proud of. She goes on: her Hems will be so neatly done that they can't be seen, can't be traced back to their tiny and nearly invisible knots. The 'Tucks' she mentions are pintucks, which are narrow little folds sewn into place. Those stitches will be smaller than dots – 'Like a dotted Dot'.

    The speaker specifies that her sewing needle should be left in the seam where she put it down. Although her stitches had become 'zigzag', she claims she can make them straight again.

   The last stanza suggests a real passion for sewing in that the speaker wants a piece she was working on, one with a missed seam, placed near her while she sleeps so she can at least dream that she is sewing. This does not sound like Jane Humphrey's pen pal!

So let's read the poem a different way! But let's keep the vision crisis, the dim light, the restricted reading and writing.

It is hard to miss the 'Sow' in the first stanza that early editors 'corrected' to 'Sew'. But 'Sow' is important. The first stanza ends with 'so' as if to reinforce the word. Additionally, Dickinson makes reference to the agricultural 'Sow' in the fourth stanza where she specifies her needle should be left in the 'furrow' where she had put it down as if it were a hoe in between rows of radishes. Perhaps she wants her pencil left in the pages where she left off so she can work on any 'zigzag' lines when she once again has the vision and strength.

    How else might sewing and sowing be alike? Poetry is the link. Poetry stitches words, thoughts, and images together. A good poet, like Dickinson!, sews with straight sight, writes with strength, dreams of lines and images, longs to write. More literally, Dickinson physically stitched groupings of her poetry into little booklets we call 'fascicles'. Agriculturally, poetry sows and plants seeds; and tends and prunes words until the poem is shapely and bears fruit.

   The weaving together of sewing, sowing, and poetry seems almost effortless. The pain is there to be seen but it isn't powerfully felt. We wait for spring, we are confident, like the speaker, that she will pick up where she left off, that even while sleeping she is still dreaming. The poem itself is an answer to the question of return. We see ourselves that, yes, her hems are too fine for Lady's tracings.

The poem alternates trochaic tetrameter with trochaic trimeter – not the iambic meters Dickinson more typically uses. I'm also struck by all the important words that begin with 'S': Sow, stitches, so, seams, sightless, straight, strong, sleeping, surmise, stitch. In the last stanza there is an extra abundance of 's' sounds: sewing, seam, missed, closer, so, sleeping, still, surmise, stitch. I think it is the smoothness of the 's' sounds that help the poem glide over the difficult time Dickinson alludes to. There are only two harsh-sounding words in the poem: crooked and zigzag. Yet their harshness is in regards to the stitches rather than the hopes.

     

    

Triumph – may be of several kinds –

Triumph – may be of several kinds – There’s Triumph in the Room When that Old Imperator – Death – By Faith – be overcome –

There’s Triumph of the finer mind

When Truth – affronted long –

Advance unmoved – to Her Supreme –

Her God – Her only Throng –

A Triumph – when Temptation’s Bribe

Be slowly handed back –

One eye opon the Heaven renounced –

And One – opon the Rack –

Severer Triumph – by Himself

Experienced – who pass

Acquitted – from that Naked Bar –

Jehovah’s Countenance –

Fr 680 (1863)  J455

You can go back and forth in this poem as to whether Dickinson is meaning ‘triumphs’ to be pomp and circumstance or rather victories and conquests. I’m going to go with the victory theme but consider it somewhat sauced up by celebratory recognitions. 

The first type of Triumph is victory over Death. Dickinson’s peers would be familiar with the Christian Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15) where Paul explains that the body is like a seed – the seed must ‘die’ to become a plant. Just so, our body must transform, via death, from corruptible flesh into a celestial body: “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (15:44). And so, Paul concludes: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (15:55). With Faith’s help, the victory – the Triumph – belongs to the dead believer.

The second stanza describes a second sort of Triumph – that of Truth when she prevails at last (oh, may it be so!) Truth has long been ‘affronted’ by, if not bare lies, then by, say, fake news. Satan, that old Deceiver, can be very tempting. But the real Triumph is earned by the ‘finer mind’ who steadfastly advances Truth to “Her Supreme”. The implication is that if you latch on to what is True you find your Supreme, your God. Truth seems to be unique to the individual. Or perhaps, an individual might grab hold of a corner of truth and that might be enough to find God.

(I like that Truth is female – which in a sort of knee-jerk way puts falsities into the male section of the gender spectrum). 

 I find it interesting that Dickinson chooses the mind here as the route to God. While Dickinson is often intellectual about faith and belief and truth, in other poems she is visceral and emotional. I’m reminded of “Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?” (Fr401) and “He fumbles at your Soul” (Fr477). She can also be moved to God by something in Nature and the external world: Spring or, a slant of light, or bees and birds, or the sky. But perhaps all of these things are part of the divine tapestry. The important thing is to recognize a truth and advance it.

The third stanza adopts something of a wry tone. It certainly is a Triumph of judgment and prudence when a would-be sinner gives the Bribe back (slowly, though; slowly!). Dickinson sketches the scene: the sinner is poised between Heaven and Hell: One eye sees beautiful Heaven, Paradise, with all its wonders. The other sees the tortures of Hell, the rack and, no doubt, the Lake of Fire. Taking the Bribe would be to renounce that lovely Heaven and end up in Hell. It doesn’t seem a difficult choice, does it? Yet that Bribe was somewhat grudgingly returned. 

Dickinson’s use of “Rack” for Hell is just a fun choice, rhyming so nicely with ‘back’. The rhythm of the last two lines is fun, too: “One eye opon the Heaven renounced – / And One – opon the Rack”.  Readers, these lines are tickling my brain like crazy. I think there’s an old saying with the same structure. It goes something like “With one eye/hand… on …. and the other …..” Does this ring a bell for anyone?

The final stanza switches from the female to the male. This “Himself” has experienced the most rigorous and demanding trial: appearing before Jehovah at that final reckoning. To pass acquitted, moving on to eternal salvation, is the greatest Triumph of all. I can read ‘Naked Bar’ in two ways: first that the petitioner comes to the bar naked: reputation, wealth, family, and all the other ways we clothe ourselves for the world must be left behind. Jehovah will acquit us or damn us based on the bare soul. The other way to read it is that the petitioner must encounter God directly. His Countenance is not masked or otherwise screened or hidden. To stand before the glory of God and pass is Triumph indeed.

The poem is written in quatrains of alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. One thing that caught my eye is all the T’s: Triumph (5), Throng, Truth, and Temptation’s. The poem may be read as a reflection on salvation – which in Christianity is possible because Jesus, part of a divine trinity, died as a blood sacrifice so that believers might be saved. Jesus was crucified and all those T’s call the cross to mind.

When Night is almost done –

When Night is almost done – 

And Sunrise grows so near 

That We can touch the Spaces – 

It’s time to smooth the Hair – 

And get the Dimples ready – 

And wonder We could care 

For that Old – faded Midnight – 

That frightened – but an Hour – 

                                     FR 679 (1863) J347 

 

This is a delightful poem no matter how many times and in how many ways you read it. The meter and diction are simple and common. This is not a flashy, hair-on-the-neck-rising Dickinson poem, but one presenting a disarming metaphor of Night and Sunrise. It’s imagery is feminine and fresh. Probably all the great poets devote lines to the welcome transformation of Night into Day at Sunrise, but have any of them ever advised the reader to prepare for the event by primping? 

There are several ways one might read the poem and its symbolism. 

 In the first and simplest, the poem is a rather literal sketch of morning ritual. During the dark of night we sleep and dream and sometimes those dreams are frightening or disturbing. When the sun comes up, the dreams and fears fade and it’s time to do the hair, warm up the smile, and wind up that positive attitude. We gain daylight confidence as the world becomes tangible. We can now see what is around us, recognize things and the space between things. We can reach and grasp, unlike in the dark where we grope and fumble. 

A second reading speaks to the human condition and mythos. Two realms, light and dark, comprise our lives. Every day involves a journey towards night with its dark dreamings. Each night brings us back to where Sunrise illuminates the world. Light is consciousness – we recognize and can ‘touch the Spaces’, whereas night’s darkness is the realm of the subconscious. We cannot touch anything in its dark mysteries. This cycle between dark and light continues throughout our lives. Its rhythms and imagery pervade our myths and stories. The Underworld is sketched as dark while Heaven is filled with light. No wonder we fix our hair and make a smile: these small gestures are transitional acts of faith that light follows dark as surely as spring follows winter. 

A third reading is a teaching metaphor on how to face death. We fear the dimming of the light of life and we particularly fear our final Midnight. But Dickinson reminds us that Sunrise comes, that we had nothing to be afraid of, that night/death is but a doorway into Sunrise – life beyond death. We experience a different existence, one palpable and real; even Space is real. As this transitional moment approaches, it’s time to fix ourselves up and be ready. 

I like this third reading and note that Dickinson does not have us praying or repenting or calling out to God. Instead, she keeps the light touch. We ready ourselves to meet our Maker by patting the hair and going full-dimple smile. 

Dickinson could have written this in iambic pentameter rather than iambic trimeter for a more stately effect. But the hair and dimple instructions are just too playful and the short lines underscore that. They also create a clever irony in the gravity of the topic (if readings two or three are taken) and its poetic treatment.