Just as He spoke it from his Hands

Just as He spoke it from his Hands
This Edifice remain—
A Turret more, a Turret less
Dishonor his Design—

According as his skill prefer
It perish, or endure—
Content, soe'er, it ornament
His absent character.


         -F953, J848, sheet 20, 1865

A strange poem which empties itself as it goes.

You start with something, "it," being spoken from “his Hands.”

Just as He spoke it from his Hands

It’s an evocative image, Hands that speak, almost biblical. Then you get the edifice itself, and, somehow, it remains. It abides, "just as" when it was created.

This Edifice remain—

“Edifice” is an odd word. It’s a bit empty, like saying "house" instead of "home." The house remains, yes, but what about the home? So, here you have something spoken into existence by his Hands, and what was built remains. But for what?

In the second stanza we will find out that his character is absent from the building. I’m thinking of Dickinson’s line, “Nature is a haunted house.” Somehow, in this poem, creation itself is called into question.

You get more clue into this “absent character” in the next line.

A Turret more, a Turret less
Dishonor his Design—

This edifice turns out to have turrets. This would make it a castle. A castle implies a king, a kingdom, and a whole hierarchy. It also implies protection. Turrets were originally built for guards, so that they could watch out for incoming enemies.

But turrets are ALSO ornamental. This poem plays with both ideas because in the second stanza adding a turret "ornaments" the builder's absent character.

Okay, so we have a structure that is both beautiful (ornamental) and functional (protects), and is "perfectly" made as is. So we need not add any more to what is already there, right?

But hey! Maybe we want to? Maybe we want to add to the design. God is like a busy father then, absent and not listening to our ideas.

Then we get the difficult second stanza:

According as his skill prefer
It perish, or endure— 
Content, soe'er, it ornament
His absent character.

This is a maddening stanza. I have made sense of it in my mind in several different ways, but I don't yet have an elegant solution.*  

My (current) best guess is that whether the Builder wishes his Edifice to Remain is at his discretion. It perishes or endures, according to what his skill prefers. If it goes, it goes, but if it endures then He is content that the edifice ornaments his absent character. 

The poem hinges a bit on the phrase "absent character." Is the emphasis here on "absent" or on "character"? 

Presumably the Builder wants his character to be seen because it is a good. But that word "absent" won't quite let you have that reading. There is something missing from the edifice. It's like a shell without the owner in it. 

So I don't know. 

The edifice shows character, perhaps, but also, more disturbingly, absence. 

In that sense, you may see this very poem as an edifice that points to the Lord's absent character. This poem, from this perspective, is punk, heretical. I take it as a push-back against a Lord of the manner.

If I was going to try to get at this poem from a biographical bent, this is what I would surmise: Emily’s father, Edward Dickinson, was famously controlling about his family and how the house was designed and kept. Remember that Emily lived in this house her whole life. There must’ve been some power dynamics over taste. Like many fathers (and especially back then), Edward Dickinson was a controlling presence, and yet was often absent.

***

That’s one take on the poem. It's a well-considered possibility. But I also can see there is a more surface-way to read this poem too.

This poem could be read as being about the tension between faith in the perfection of divine design and uncertainty about what that design actually means. We might believe that everything has been made according to a divine plan. But we cannot necessarily see that plan. We can only look at the world and try to understand the character of the being who made it. (A bit like a poem with many meanings).

In this interpretation, “Content, soe'er,” might mean that the structure remains content regardless. Its purpose is simply to testify to its creator, whether it perishes or endures. Yet the creator remains absent, leaving us to decide what the testimony means.

***

If you look at the recent batch of poems, and especially the ones that Dickinson wrote on this same piece of paper, sheet 20, you'll see that they all have these kinds of layered meanings in them. All levels of these poems can be useful depending on your needs, but it's worth remembering that, for the careful reader, there is often a more subtle and compelling reading lying in wait below the first. And sometimes that second one is a brazen reversal.

Is this poem more about the perfection of the King's Castle as it seems to be at first, or is it more about the absence inside the house that keeps it from being a home?


               -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

* I was listening to a podcast recently and a mathematician was talking about "style" and how the biggest compliment you could give a mathematician is to say her solution was elegant. This can also be true with Emily Dickinson. Her poems can be compared to difficult-to-solve math problems. An elegant solution to the poem must take account of all the words and their syntax and then present it in a way that is easy to follow. One of the most elegant Dickinson problem solvers I know of, by the way, is Susan Kornfeld, the creator of this blog. Hi, Susan. Thanks for letting us add turrets.

P.S. I picked up an Emily Dickinson Selected Poems at the local Sunnyside Book Swap a couple days ago. The selection had a forward by Billy Collins. I stood at the swap and read the intro and then put the book back for some lucky reader. The biggest takeaway I got from Collins' intro was his observations on the way Dickinson played the Anglo Saxon language off the Latinate for effect in her poems. The current poem at hand is a good example. "Just as he spoke it from his hands" is very Anglo Saxon. But the second line has a very different Latinate sound, "The Edifice remain." It is a subtle clue as to the meaning of the poem for me. The first line is full of substance. The second, like the more flashy and formal Latinate, is emptier. The home, in other words, has become an edifice.  

P.P.S. There are some good notes on this poem in the comments. See below. 

Finite — to fail, but infinite to Venture —

Finite — to fail, but infinite to Venture —
For the one ship that struts the shore
Many's the gallant — overwhelmed Creature
Nodding in Navies nevermore —


           -F952, J847, sheet 20, 1865

I had a teacher at Colorado State University, Dr. Richard Henze, a puckish professor with a gleam in his eye. He liked to read every text against itself, not as a practitioner of Deconstruction or some other critical stance, but simply because he enjoyed discovering the possibilities within a work of literature. It was a fertile ground for learning how to read Emily Dickinson. Her poems so often can be read against themselves. They “dwell in possibility.”

This poem is, for me, a good example of this.

 
Seen from one angle this poem is saying, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” To fail is finite. Failure has an endpoint. You try something, it doesn't work. But to venture is full of infinite chance. The moment you dare to attempt something, you enter a realm of possibility that has no clearly defined limits. The value of acting lies not so much in its outcome, but in the willingness to risk an outcome.

In this interpretation of the poem the strutting ship is the hero that made it against all odds. Rah rah! Go, Navy!

But I think this is missing an essential asymmetry in this poem between the one person who succeeds and the many who risk everything and disappear. At the end of the poem I think Dickinson's sympathy is less with the one who made it and “struts the shore” than it is the many gallant who tried. I think you can read it as a call against taking action.

Finite — to fail, but infinite to Venture —

“Infinite to Venture” is very similar to dwelling "in possibility.” We are dwelling in the infinite possibility of venturing, without actually venturing. It's being open to all possibilities without having to attach to any. It’s not in actually doing the thing where infinity lies, but in the possibilities being left open. To dwell in infinite possibility, then, means to not act.

This is akin to the Tao Te Ching’s “non-action.” From Google: “In the Tao Te Ching, "not acting" or "doing without doing" is known as Wu Wei (无为). It does not mean laziness or sitting completely still. Instead, it means acting in alignment with the natural flow of the universe rather than forcing, fighting, or trying to control outcomes.”

So I would like to venture this Taoist reading as one among the poem's infinite possibilities.

In the Rah Rah version of the poem, the hero is the strutting ship. In the Tao reading of this poem, the emphasis is on noticing instead, as I believe Dickinson does, the "nodding navies nevermore."

Seen in this light, this is an anti-war poem.

For the one ship that struts the shore

A ship strutting is a comical image. The verb “struts” makes the ship seem almost absurdly proud of itself. There is a connotation to the word "strut,"an implied criticism of how we understand success.

Many's the gallant — overwhelmed Creature

Now we turn our attention to the missing ships, the many brave creatures who were overwhelmed.

Gallant is a key word. These aren't cowards. They're courageous and noble. But they have been overwhelmed. The word Creature adds pathos to the scenario. It strips away the glamour of the venture. These are vulnerable creatures subject to forces greater than themselves.

Nodding in Navies nevermore —

This is a haunting line. Nodding suggests the bodies of sailors bobbing in the water, or the sunken ships rocking beneath the waves. And the word Navies scales up the tragedy. We're no longer imagining a single unlucky voyage but a maritime graveyard, a history of lost ventures. And the word “nevermore,” like it does in Poe’s famous poem The Raven, gives us a sense of finality. These creatures will never return. The stakes were too high.

The repeated N sounds in Nodding in Navies nevermore create a slow, almost hypnotic movement, as if the lost ships are still rocking in the water. It’s chilling.

So what’s Dickinson trying to tell us? The language of courage and adventure can conceal enormous suffering? The one ship on the shore is a poor consolation for the many lost at sea? Venturing is infinite in its possibilities, but those possibilities come at a terrible price?

It is the lost to whom Dickinson gives her attention. I read it as if she is, like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, stopping the sailor before he leaves shore. Instead of venturing upon your ideal, she whispers in his ear, dwell in possibility. 

        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Looking for more Tao of Dickinson I came across an article with this terrific reminder from Santi Tafarella, 

"The Tao of Emily is not the Tao of Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching, for Emily’s Tao includes entering into the Sturm und Drang of passions via the insight that the union and dissolution of opposites is the way of the world, whereas Lao Tzu calls for us to chill our passions via that very same insight."

Unable are the Loved to die

Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity—

Unable they that love—to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.


     -F951, J809, sheet 20, 1865

This poem doesn't mean what I thought it meant. Upon a cursory reading it seemed to have the sweet faith-based belief in the eternal quality of Love. But then I got tripped up on the dash in the second stanza. Let's start with the first stanza though: 

Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity—

This is comforting. You can't die if you are loved, for that love is immortal, "Nay, it is Deity."  If you are loved, it eases the dying. 

But that's only half the equation. How about the dying part? How about the loving part? 

This brings us to the second stanza. Look at the subtle move Dickinson makes.

Unable they that love—to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.

Has a dash in Dickinson a poem ever done so much?

If you read the poem quickly, you miss the dash. The poem is merely sweet: to be loved is to transcend death and to love is to transcend death. 

But the dash in that line that trips us up. It cheekily interrupts the sentence structure that the first stanza set up. "Unable are the loved to die" becomes "Unable they that love—to die." Why did that dash show up to interrupt that sentence? And then you realize it is because that dash is meant to interrupt that sentence for good. That dash is a period. If you stop at the dash, the poem takes on a whole new gravity. Death itself sneaks in the poem at that dash. Dash—Death.

Read the stanza again with a period (or at the very least a comma) where the dash is.

Unable they that love. To die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.

Now the lover is unable not to die. “Unable they that love.” The lover is unable to go on forever, because the one being loved eventually must go. Heartbreak/death is built into the deal. The next sentence then takes on a gigantic weight. “To die for Love reforms Vitality into Divinity.”

To love means a willingness to take on the heartbreak of death, to take on mortality. It is the bravest thing one can do, die for love. This is Divinity a la Christ  And it is this kind of willingness to die for love that "reforms" vitality into divinity. "Reform" is such a perfect word here. It is the ease-of-being-the-loved-one "reforming" into the difficulty-of-being-the-lover.  

When you reform and the vitality of your life is given over to love, then you have the power to make the loved one Immortal. Opening yourself to heartbreak frees love.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Prayer of St. Francis: "For it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Twice had Summer her fair Verdure

Twice had Summer her fair Verdure
Proffered to the Plain—
Twice a Winter's silver Fracture
On the Rivers been—

Two full Autumns for the Squirrel
Bounteous prepared—
Nature, Had'st thou not a Berry
For thy wandering Bird?



       -F950, J836, sheet 19, 1865



I heard Malcolm Guite on the podcast Literary Life recently talking about his new epic ballad, “Gallahad and the Grail.” (4.69 rating on Goodreads!) He was talking about how easy it is to over-determine a poem in the act of “interpreting” it. He made a canny joke, “Lord, lead us not into interpretation.”

So yeah, reminder to self. Sometimes it's best to evade interpretation. The best way to do that is to look at the form, what it is that makes the poem different, and beautiful, formally.

With a poem like this I can take pleasure from it without needing to make sense of it. First there is the sound, the pleasure of words on the tongue. They insist on being read out loud. In fact, this one insisted on being sung. I got out my guitar and a melody immediately presented itself.

This one is SUCH a pleasure to sing. First of all, the rhythm is trochaic, which means each line begins with an emphasized syllable, on a down beat. On top of that the beat you are hitting has a spitting “TW!” sound. The way the sound of “TWICE” opens each couplet of the first stanza, followed by the emphatic “TWO” that begins the final stanza, drives the beat of the song. This emphasis softens considerably when we get to the plaintive final couplet which begins with the softer N sound of Nature, completely changing the tone on the final chordal run.

Another thing this poem does that lends itself to melody are the runs of “feminine” ending rhymes, and especially the repetition of the “er” and “ure” sound. For me that drop in emphasis on the second syllable corresponds to a drop of a note on the musical scale. The melody I gave to this song naturally seemed to descend.

There is also the pleasure of the images. It’s cool imagining Summer personified and proffering “fair Verdure” to the “plain.” And how about that image of a silver fracture on a river?

A third pleasure is in the logical structure. Summer proffers fair verdure which then seems to result in a silver fracture on the frozen river. So the suggestion is, to me, (edging into interpretation now), that Summer is the lover that is offering "fair verdure" and the result is a rejection by winter, leaving one fractured and frozen. It’s a remarkable way to see the progression of summer into winter.

The second stanza does something equally astonishing, but the poetic logic of the poem now says: “Like a squirrel in autumn, I saved and saved for winter, but what did it get me?  Now, alas, it’s spring time and I don’t even have a berry.” I want to interpret that on a personal level too. Like a squirrel in autumn, one invests in someone, invests enough to hopefully get through the tough times together, only to result in spring coming up with no fruit from the relationship. 

It's got to have a personal meaning, right? Because if you are just talking about actual seasons, then it doesn't really make sense, because there are always berries for the birds. The song-bird is the poet and she is searching for sustenance.

In looking at the poetic logic of the poem the meaning begins to become more clear. But there's more, we are sure of it, so we look for clues. That brings us to the next great pleasure in reading a Dickinson poem, the wrestling match with meaning. With Dickinson there is almost always the pleasure of the riddle. It's akin to the pleasure of solving a mystery.

This guessing is precisely where interpretation can start to become, perhaps, too personal. Lord, lead me not into interpretation. So I’ll ask you for yours instead. Here's my first question for you. Why are there two sets of seasons in this poem? And why do we have "Twice" given to us twice, followed by "Two," and then end on zero, on no berry, none? 

Perhaps there is a personal reason for these two sets of seasons for Dickinson? But any biographical interpretation begs a question. How personal are Dickinson’s poems in the end? Did Dickinson intend for her poems to have universal resonance or didn't she? My understanding is that she was able to write in both personal and universal modes simultaneously, and even the most obscure poem is meant, in part, to be for a general audience. Using the word “Twice,” for instance, is meant to invoke a specific meaning for a reader. But what? What is “Twice” doing here then, on a broader level?

Another question. Where is spring in this poem? How come it is missing? 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


P.S. Here's the song as it came out when I picked up my guitar. 

P.P.S. Here's an acrostic written last week by one of my HS students. I thought it put the over-determination problem beautifully. 

Letting

All

Unique 

Readers.

Amusingly

Scholars

Create

How

Readers

Exactly

Imagine

Bright

Excellent

Reading.

Before He comes we weigh the Time!

Before He comes we weigh the Time!
'Tis Heavy and 'tis Light.
When He depart, an Emptiness
Is the prevailing Freight.

      -F949, J834, sheet 19, 1865


The heaviness of emptiness. Or, like Dylan sings, “Sometimes, the silence sounds like thunder.” Or, like Milan Kundera’s great title puts it, “The unbearable lightness of being.”

Before He comes we weigh the Time!

What does “He” represent in this poem? A lover? God? For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say “Love.” Without Love…

'Tis Heavy and 'tis Light.

This poem, itself, is both heavy and light. It has a heavy subject matter but is short and light. ‘Tis weighty, but sleight. It makes for a jarring contrast, like a jaunty pop song that expresses the deepest longing.

When He depart, an Emptiness
Is the prevailing Freight.

The poem shows the twin sides of anticipation for arrival and grief of departure. They are, in a sense, one in the same.


             -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Occasionally I will pick up an anthology of poetry called The Rattle Bag (edited byTed Hughes and Seamus Heaney) and read a random poem from it. Just after writing this post I seredipitously opened it to the following poem, 

Could mortal lip divine

The undeveloped Freight
Of a delivered syllable
'Twould crumble with the weight.

It's a much later Dickinson poem which I hadn't seen before, but I was struck right away by the similarity to, and difference from, the poem at hand.  It's fascinating the way Dickinson comes back over and over again to the same words and ideas, but with new shades of meaning. The mortal lip divine. 

Spring is the Period

Spring is the Period
Express from God—
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God—


     -F948, J844, sheet 19, 1865


Spring is the Period
Express from God—

The word "Period" is shorthand in Dickinson for the idea that something will come to an end. This is a poem about beginnings, but a reminder of the end is right there at the beginning of the poem. 

“Express” is another word to consider here. It can mean "to send quickly," but also "to communicate what you think and feel." Both meanings are at play. I also think of another definition of the word, which is to remove milk from a mother's breast using pumping in order to be able to feed it to a baby in a bottle. Spring is God’s expressed milk.

This first sentence sets us up for the second longer sentence:

Among the other seasons
Himself abide,

But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God—

Spring is a gift from God says the first sentence, but the second says that none get there without a friendly, but officious meeting with God.

The word interview is derived from the Middle French entrevue (meaning "to see each other"). The term in 1865 would have been used to describe official meetings. Neither of the two most common modern definitions, the job and journalistic interview, existed back then in the way we understand them today.

Why does Dickinson call an encounter with God an interview rather than a meeting or communion? It turns God from an abstract theological presence into something like the top brass of spring, interviewing the natural world before letting it loose.

The word "cordial" has the connotation of being friendly but formal. “None stir abroad / Without a cordial interview / With God.” could merely mean that everything that comes out into the world in spring has a direct encounter with God, but the tone of the words "cordial interview" hint at something more going on. “Cordial," with it's bureaucratic tone, carries some irony. 

“Cordial” can have that slightly too-polite quality. It's warm and friendly, but also perhaps the kind of phrase you'd use about a meeting with someone who has power over you. It might be a stretch, but I can hear a little menace in the understated irony of this word, like in the Godfather: 

"Don Corleone has requested 'a cordial interview' with you before you leave, signore." 

I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit here, but I do think there's a hint of a power dynamic in the poem. 

Mostly though the term "cordial interview" is light and humorous. God is conducting interviews with the things that are about to emerge, the flowers and birds. If, after a long difficult winter, God's going to have a little talk with us in March or April, what does He say? The reader of this poem, along with the birds bees and butterflies, is being interviewed. God asks you, "So, what are your summer plans?"

Or, to quote the poet Mary Oliver, "What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Maybe Dickinson had this kind of cordial in mind as well?

P.S. The phrase "none stir abroad" reminds me that Emily did not go abroad. She stayed at home, like a flower that refused the cordial interview and kept her own company instead.

P.P.S. I like how the emphatic "d" at the end of God seems to be the impetus for the rhyme scheme of this poem. If you've spent much time in church, you've might've heard how preachers like to emphasize that "d" when they say the word "God." In the Midwest, where I grew up, the sound was sometimes given its own syllable. GawDah. 

In this poem we get a great rhyme scheme with that emphatic ending D sound, which acts like a bass drum thud driving the rhythm. 

1 and Duh

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3 

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3

1 and Duh

1 and 2 and 3

1 and Duh

D is an interesting letter, meaning-wise. It is generally thought that the letter started out as an pictogram of "door," and you can see it if you look at the letter. It does look like a door, albeit a hobbit-door. 

But the sound of the letter is more like a door shutting than opening. Thud! If you turn the sound of it way up, like, say, in the word "DeaD," it's scary. It carries a touch of terror when that closing door sound comes so emphatically at the enD.

I made slow Riches but my Gain

I made slow Riches but my Gain

Was steady as the Sun

And every Night, it numbered more

Than the preceding One

All Days, I did not earn the same

But my perceiveless Gain

Inferred the less by Growing than

The Sum that it had grown.

-F947, J843, sheet 19, 1865

This is a poem that seems to be taking measure. It's as if Dickinson looked at her growing body of work, nearly 1000 poems by this point, and marveled. She marks the occasion, of course, with another poem. It's a flex meant to encourage the reader to keep going. She's standing on top of a hard-won mountain and looking at those of us at the bottom, as if to say, come on, you can do it! One step at a time. 

I made slow Riches but my Gain

Was steady as the Sun

This poem seems like investment advice, but the poet's sense of wealth is not the same as the banker's. After all, if a gain is as steady as the sun, what does that mean? What does the sun “gain” in its rotation except for the day itself? What does it gain other than itself, steadily? 

What does this have to do with “slow Riches?" Well, for one thing, if you "slow" down you can better appreciate the day. But also, over the course of a lifetime, you accumulate experience.

And every Night, it numbered more

Than the preceding One

The poet is gaining just by living. She gains Days. And if one is living these days doing the labor of love, then one gains an inner well-being that far surpasses any worldly wealth. 

All Days, I did not earn the same

The more worthwhile your days are then the better the experience of your life will be. If you are paying attention, then slowly, without anyone else (including yourself) perceiving the subtle changes, you will suddenly find you have grown taller, so to speak. 

But my perceiveless Gain

Inferred the less by Growing than

The Sum that it had grown.

There’s a catch 22 here. It’s difficult to perceive growth until after you've grown because how else can one measure? (It's like the job applicant that needs a job so he can list the experience he needs to get the job).

So then this final stanza is reminding us to have faith in the process. It's encouragement to keep going the best one can, a little at a time. Some days will be better than others, but don't worry about it, just keep going. 

This poem is filled with the light of the Sun and love for the reader. We are the beneficiaries of Dickinson's daily diligence. The question is, what will we do with it? Garner our own slow Riches.

-/)dam Wade I)eGraff

Dying! To be afraid of thee

Dying! To be afraid of thee
One must to thine Artillery
Have left exposed a Friend —
Than thine old Arrow is a Shot
Delivered straighter to the Heart
The leaving Love behind.

Not for itself, the Dust is shy,
But, enemy, Beloved be
Thy Batteries divorce.
Fight sternly in a Dying eye
Two Armies, Love and Certainty
And Love and the Reverse.

     

        -F946, J831, sheet 19, 1865

This is a difficult poem, so let's break it down slowly. The first thing I notice here is the use of the possessive pronoun “thine.” It gives the poem an immediate tone. The use of thy and thou was already antiquated in Dickinson’s time, but it was prevalent in the Bible and Shakespeare, which was by far the most popular literature in Dickinson’s America. It has a sense of personal devotion to it, and of the divine.

The second thing I notice is the military language; artillery, arrow, enemy, batteries, fight, army. We are in an epic battle and it involves the heart.

The third thing I take note of is the exclamatory gerund that ushers us into this poem: “Dying!”

This is not a word said in jest. It is a word excruciatingly juxtaposed between life and death. It is death made agonizing. In this poem Dying refers both to an actual death and heartbreak at once. It is the feeling of being inside the process of dying of heartbreak. 

The next thing I notice is syntactical confusion in the first four lines. My first question is, what does the “thee” refer to? It takes some close reading to understand that the “thee” points back to “Dying,” as if Dickinson is personifying not just death, but the act of dying itself. She’s addressing a verb.

And what is she saying to the Agent Of Death? “To be afraid of thee/ One must to thine Artillery/ Have left exposed a Friend.”

In order to be afraid of dying, one must lose a Friend in the act. In other words, the fear is in exposing the one you love to your death. If you know that your death will break the heart of someone that loves you (your Friend), then it is much more painful to die. Exposing yourself to love gives death its sting. 

My daughter told me last week in a birthday card that she would be “horrified” to have a different dad than me. This was simultaneously the sweetest thing I've ever heard and terrifying. That paradox sums up the way this poem affects me.

Than thine old Arrow is a Shot
Delivered straighter to the Heart
The leaving Love behind.

These lines make me dizzy with their genius. It’s tough to sum up. First you have to contend with that “Than.” What does "than" modify? I believe it refers to “straighter.” I think these lines are saying that the shot to the heart is straighter “than” it would be otherwise, if love is left behind. (Dickinson’s sophisticated use of grammar sometimes leaves me behind.)

So this is saying, then, that the more you are exposed (to friendship), the quicker the arrow of death hits the center of the Heart. It’s difficult to get at this paradox, but it’s something that can be felt. You grip your literal heart when you think about the pain you feel leaving a loved one when you die, and, worse, that a loved one will feel after you die. The thought itself kills you.

Now that we’ve unraveled some of the syntax and ideas here, at least a little, try going back and re-reading the first six lines out loud, taking note of their tightly controlled meter, form and diction. It’s highly stylized, and yet it could hardly be more authentically felt. 

The next lines keep up the level of difficulty and poetic depth,

Not for itself, the Dust is shy,
But, enemy, Beloved be
Thy Batteries divorce.

The Dust here, I think, is a wry synecdoche of man. Man, made of dust, is shy of love, because love makes death more intense. Without it, death loses its bite and we are no longer so afraid of it. But then, without love, we are just dust!

The highly condensed syntax here goes something like this:

(It’s) Not for itself (for love), that the Dust (the man) is shy, But, (for the) enemy, (Death, because of whom, the) Beloved be (the one that) Thy (Death's) Batteries divorce (from me.)

To put it a little more simply: It’s not for love itself that we are shy, but because the parting from the lover in death will be such an assault. That's what one has to deal with when taken from a Friend in death, and worse, not just being taken from love, but realizing the pain that will be felt by the one left behind.

We feel this more than we understand it intellectually. We feel it in the sound of the words themselves. “Thy Batteries divorce” carries the sense of “battering” and the pain of parting in its plosives: BaTTeries DiVorce.  Also, subtly, the “Thy” here does not feel reverential. It now carries a bit of spit, like the Shakespearean insult. (Shakespeare uses it this way often, like "Thou lily-livered boy" in Macbeth, or, in Twelfth Night, when Sir Toby Belch advises Sir Andrew on how to write a challenge letter to a rival: "If thou 'thou'st' him some thrice, it shall not be amiss." Sir Toby is explicitly telling Sir Andrew to use the word thou as a deliberate insult to provoke a fight.) And finally, "divorce" is such an ugly word in its connotations. We feel all of that in this line, in our gut.

Fight sternly in a Dying eye
Two Armies, Love and Certainty
And Love and the Reverse.

The way Dickinson uses “divorce” to set up the rhyme of “reverse” is, as the kids say, sick.

Okay, we are inside of a “Dying eye" now. There is a fight happening. You might say we are each of us, in some way or another, inside of this dying eye, in a battle-zone, always pushing and pulling toward and away from love in our dance with exposure.

There are two sides. One is going toward the certainty of love. The other is the reverse, going away from the certainty of love. The closer you get to the first, the center of the heart, the more the departure from love, the reverse, is felt. It’s a conundrum that haunts all of us. 

The “Reverse” at the end of this poem is a sliding modifier. It has (at least) two possible referents: Certainty and Love, and there’s a third implied, which is life itself. We want to progress toward love and certainty, but we are always to be met in our advance with that which reverses us from love, which is death. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. In the Christanne Miller collected Dickinson we get a note: "Poem sent to Gertrude Vanderbilt who had recently recovered from a bullet wound, after being shot by her maid's rejected suitor on March 20, 1864." Make of that what you will. 

2. 

I confess that I didn't much care for this book, but I include the cover here because Faulkner achieves the same kind of immediacy in the title that Dickinson does in the first line of this poem.

Good to hide, and hear 'em hunt!

Good to hide, and hear 'em hunt!
Better, to be found,
If one care to, that is,
The Fox fits the Hound—

Good to know, and not tell,
Best, to know and tell,
Can one find the rare Ear
Not too dull—


      -F945, J842, sheet 18, 1865

What an undull poem.

Let’s start with that first line, and the wonderful weirdness of it.

Good to hide, and hear 'em hunt!

If we are talking about an actual Hound and Fox here, then I would presume it would not be so pleasurable to listen to the hounds hunt, even if you were hidden. If the Hound gets you, you’re done. 

Something else is going on. Why would it be good to "hear ‘em hunt?" Dickinson makes being hunted sound down-right pleasurable.

I think this is a meditation on erotic and romantic pursuit. She is recognizing the desire of being desired, and, also, the necessity of evading capture. We have a suitor situation going on here.

Dickinson was reserved and reclusive. She mostly hid from the world. She was a bit like Penelope that way, weaving and unweaving her poems to keep the hounds at bay, until the fitting one, Odysseus, arrived on the scene.

Likewise, in Dickinson's poems she hides from her readers. In a sense, we are all hounds on the hunt for that fox. We are all prowling bees in pursuit of the flower.

In that case then you could say it is we who are the “'em” in “Good to hide, and hear ‘em hunt!”

Funny, right?

Also funny is the use of the word ‘em. You can just hear Emily saying this to her niece Mattie (Susan’s daughter) with whom she was close. Imagine them playing hide and seek with the other cousins. In a closet together Emily whispers in delight, “It’s good to hide and hear ‘em hunt, ain’t it Mattie?”

After that terrific first line Emily goes one better,

Better, to be found,

Better to be found, but then there’s a caveat. It's better to be found by the right hound. We find out at the end of this stanza that it's only a fitting hound that can find the fox. It has to be the right suitor, a dogged Hound as wily as the Fox.  

The next line is great too.

If one care to, that is,

The fox wants the hound to care enough. This is part of why it is so elusive. We have a case of playing hard to get. How much does the caller care? Enough to keep calling? Let's find out.

The next line is the capper,

The Fox fits the Hound—

Not only does the right hunter get the right prey, but the right prey gets the right hunter. The two creatures give each other what they need. The fox's elusiveness intensifies the hound's desire, and the desire, in turn, intensifies and heightens the union.

There is also a very funny pun here on the word “fits." The Fox fits the hound, or, in other words, the Fox has the Hound in fits. 

The second stanza is parallel to the first. They both start by telling us what’s “good.”

Good to know, and not tell,
Best, to know and tell,

Hiding and hearing 'em hunt is good, and, likewise, keeping your secret is good. Being found is better, and, likewise, sharing yourself with someone who genuinely wants to know who you are is better. The hunt is evidence of that desire. There is a pleasure in knowing you are worth pursuing by a hound that is worthy of you.

Can one find the rare Ear
Not too dull—

The way this poem is set up, the Hound and the Ear are one. If the Hound is fitting, or sharp enough (“not too dull”) or, conversely, if the ear is rare enough, or cares enough, then the fox is happy to be caught/ heard. Note that subtle rhyming interplay between "care" in the first stanza and "rare ear" in the second. It is a rare ear that cares enough.

The Ear may be read as that of the reader, whether that was Sue, initially, or you, now. Sue, we know, was an ideal reader for Emily, which is why more poems were given to her than anyone else in Emily’s life. Emily once wrote of Sue that she had learned more from her than anyone else save Shakespeare. The Hound fit the Fox. 

But of course the ear is also that of anyone reading the poem. Emily is telling us, in riddles, who she is. We just have to listen very carefully.

I love this poem because it reminds me that I can't be too dogged in my pursuits, and on the other side of the divide, that I can't be too wily with my secrets.   

-/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A rejoinder to this poem by the great Belle and Sebastian:

"Fox in the snow, where do you go
To find someone that will do?
To tell someone all the truth before it kills you
They listen to your crazy laugh
Before you hang a right
And disappear from sight
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book.
What do they know anyway?
You'll read it in a book tonight."

A Moth the hue of this

A Moth the hue of this
Haunts Candles in Brazil.
Nature's Experience would make
Our Reddest Second pale.

Nature is fond, I sometimes think,
Of Trinkets, as a Girl.

    - F944, J841, sheet 18, 1865


This poem recalls one of Dickinson’s earliest extant poems, F32, written seven years before this one (according to Franklin’s system of dating the poems). In that poem the poet puts a trinket on to be in keeping with the fashion of autumn. 

It’s fascinating to see the threads that Dickinson weaves through her work. In F541 Dickinson wrote about Butterflies in Brazil. In F687 the “Mighty Merchant” offers the poet Brazil in exchange for what she really wants. Trinkets, butterflies and Brazil are all part of Dickinson’s vast Lexicon. They all symbolize something essential to her.

 A Moth the hue of this
Haunts Candles in Brazil.

This poem starts out with a mystery pronoun, “this.” We never find out what "this" is. Does it refer back to the hue of the moth? or to something else? The “this” is hereby elevated to the level of ineffable possibility, just as "It” was in the poem previous to this one, F943.

I’m curious what specific hue it is that Dickinson is comparing to a moth that “haunts Candles in Brazil.” My best guess is that she is referring to the flush of a lover’s skin, because what else would so haunt Dickinson’s Candle?

The idea of a moth haunting a candle is such a brilliant reversal. Normally the moth is drawn to the flame, but here the moth is the trinket, the object of desire. We always assume that it's the moth that is drawn to the flame, but maybe we have it backwards?

Nature's Experience would make
Our Reddest Second pale.

This poem is made up of three distinct, but interconnected couplets. All three are worthy on their own. In this middle phrase we have the amazing idea of a "Reddest Second" of our lives. Not the reddest minute or hour, but the the Reddest Second. Can you recall your Reddest Second? I blush just thinking about it. Dickinson points out to us that this moment, however red it may have been for us, pales in comparison to the full experience of Nature Herself. That is a humbling but awesome thought. 

And yet, 

Nature is fond, I sometimes think,
Of Trinkets, as a Girl.

As below, so above.

This poem appears to be, in part, about the erotic attraction of beauty. There's something almost flirtatious about it. The moth is attracted to the candle; Nature is attracted to beauty; the girl is attracted to ornaments. Everything is being pulled toward beauty. 

A trinket often has the connotation of something of low value, something trivial and frivolous. But hold on. In this poem the stakes are high, life and death. We have the potential perishing of the moth in the flame due and all the human drama this implies. (Maybe those moths haunt the candles because they now ghost moths.)

So, is Natural beauty in this poem being lowered to the level of a trinket? Or, is the trinket being raised to the level of a prime mover? 

        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Meanwhile, what about that red moth from Brazil?

Here's one:

 



And here are a few more incredible moths, all quite stunning examples of Nature's trinkets. 

     

I cannot buy it—'tis not sold—

I cannot buy it—'tis not sold—
There is no other in the World—
Mine was the only one

I was so happy I forgot
To shut the Door And it went out
And I am all alone—

If I could find it Anywhere
I would not mind the journey there
Though it took all my store

But just to look it in the Eye—
"Did'st thou?" "Thou did'st not mean," to say,
Then, turn my Face away.

      -F943, J840, sheet 18, 1865

The language of this poem is that of a classic riddle:

I cannot buy it—'tis not sold—

What is “it?" We are never told the answer to this riddle. We just get “it” repeated four more times. It is repeated so often in this short poem that it becomes conspicuous. What is “It?” It is IT. Dickinson seems to be pointing to the essential but unnamable thing, the IT factor.

The mystery of this poem is a microcosm of the mystery at the heart of much of Dickinson’s poetry. What is “IT?” Is it God? Is it a lover? Is it poetry? You start to wonder if defining “it” isn’t precisely beside the point. The problem of definition is at the root of Dickinson’s poetics.

“It,” in the final stanza, has a face. The poet is looking at “It” in the Eye and then turns her own face away. The word “Eye” leads us to believe it is a human face we are looking at here, and maybe it is, but the singular “Eye” makes us wonder. Still, the “it” is given an Eye and, presumably, a face. “It” moves toward being known in a body. The poem moves in this way from impersonal to personal, toward the final "my Face.”

In the first line we learn, importantly, that this mysterious “It” cannot be bought or sold.

This is worth deep consideration. As a father I can say, without hesitation, that there is literally no amount of money, or anything else, I would trade for my children’s life. The idea of putting a price on them is anathema.

Here I want to suggest a potential connection between this kind of priceless love and the uniquely uncommodifiable property of poetry. Poetry is special, in part, because it generally operates outside of the marketplace. This is especially true of Emily Dickinson, who shied away from publication and fame.

I’ve been reading the novels of Joy Williams, a writer who is a big fan of Dickinson and often reminds me of her. In Williams’ novel “The Quick and The Dead” there is an eight-year-old girl named Emily. From the novel: “Emily didn’t know what pagan was. Possibly she might like to be one. But what she really wanted was to be a triggerman, or a poet. She did not want to work in sales.”

Sounds about right. ("My life had stood a loaded gun.")

There is no other in the World—
Mine was the only one

This is the romantic ideal of there being only one person for you. It’s an ideal seemingly sewn into the seam that binds Dickinson’s poetry together. Who was this “Mine” that was the only one? Maybe we are talking about Sue here, since a copy of this poem was given to her.

But maybe this “Mine,” this “no other in the World” wasn't so much a someone as a something else altogether. It could be, for instance, poetry. A reader commented on the use of “Mine” on the poem before this one, F942, saying that it reminded them of F411, "Mine—by the Right of the White Election!" In other words, it is about vocation. The mystery deepens.

I was so happy I forgot
To shut the Door And it went out

If we are talking about a lover, then this is strange. Is Dickinson saying don’t get so happy with your relationship that you let your lover go out of the house? I don't think so. This sounds more like protect your peace of mind than protect your relationship, doesn’t it?

At any rate the general sense I get here is that you have to stay on guard, which is difficult to do if you get too comfortable and happy.

If I could find it Anywhere
I would not mind the journey there
Though it took all my store

Is “it” beyond place too? It is not (apparently) “Anywhere.”  There is nowhere to “journey” to. So it is beyond place. And, again, it is beyond price, beyond “store.”

But just to look it in the Eye—
"Did'st thou?" "Thou did'st not mean," to say,
Then, turn my Face away.

This is the most difficult part of the poem because of a very odd syntax. If “It” is a relationship, then these lines seem to be saying “Did’st thou” really leave? Because if thou did'st, I believe "Thou dids’t not mean” to, after which the poet forgives and turns away. And maybe that IS what's going on here.

But the way the line fragments is intriguing. 

Thou dids’t not mean,” to say,

seems to be a warning against signifying, against “meaning” itself. “It” doesn’t “mean” anything because meaning, like definition (and price and place and happiness) is a desire outside the realm of "it." When you look for meaning, you risk losing what it is your desire.

The final line, “Then, turn my Face away,” becomes, then, a negation of meaning, which, perhaps, is where one encounters “it.”

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Always Mine!

Always Mine!
No more Vacation!
Term of Light this Day begun!
Failless as the fair rotation
Of the Seasons and the Sun.

Old the Grace, but new the Subjects —
Old, indeed, the East,
Yet upon His Purple Programme
Every Dawn, is first.


     -F942, J839, sheet 18, 1865


There are often several ways to read an Emily Dickinson poem, and sometimes those ways of reading are contradictory. If our goal is to understand the poem, do we try to exhaust the possibilities in the poem and then leave it up to the reader to take it from there? Or do we choose a reading that is meaningful to us? (“Write about what you know”). Do we skew academic or personal? While I understand the dangers of misinterpretations in subjective readings, I’m still inclined to lean in that direction. In a recent post, for instance, Tom Clyde described how a poem resonated with him concerning his mother’s Alzheimer's, a very personal reading, and I found it to be the most meaningful part of his explication.

I can read this poem in a few different ways. One way you can read it is as an expression of desire for a posthumous union with God after death, waking up into an eternal day. You might also read it as a love poem, a kind of epithalamium for a wedding. I could go through the poem and show how each line supports both of those readings. And that might be helpful to you, especially if you are heaven or marriage-bent.

But what feels most meaningful to me is to read this poem in terms of the eternal now. This is how this poem arrives in me.

It may have an undercurrent of longing in it, a kind of wishful thinking, but it isn’t written in a future tense. It is written with an immediacy of already being in a state of union with Light.

Always Mine!

“Mine” is a possessive word, one which sets off an alarm in my mind. (I once heard “mine” referred to as a “four letter word.” Sometimes I think of the word as a mental landmine, a mindmine.) But if I set my own prejudice aside, something else takes hold, something more child-like, but also very difficult. The poet has achieved something difficult with these words, a feeling of permanent connection. Just reading the two words alone with that emphatic exclamation point gives one a feeling of inclusion in this union.

No more Vacation!

This line takes a minute to process because in order for it to follow from the line before it can’t mean “vacation” the way we usually think of vacation, as a break from work. Vacation here means something closer to a vacating. If something is always yours, then you no longer need to be apart from it. There’s a subtle irony to the word “vacation” here, a kind of vacation from vacations.

There’s also a tremendous relief in the line indicated by that second exclamation point. No more being apart!

Term of Light this Day begun!

That third exclamation point really underscores the poet’s astonishment. If this is a wished for union, the emphasis shows that the poet wishes for it desperately. But again, the poem is very much in the present tense. “This day begun!” As I write this, it is morning. In the morning the day feels full of endless possibility. I read the lines as if I was saying them to myself: “Term of Light this Day begun!” It feels like an ecstatic incantation.

The word “Term” following from the word “vacation” sets us up for the metaphor of “school” that will run through the rest of this poem. We are learning something, along with the poet.

“Term” is an interesting word because it indicates that something will end. (It comes from the latin word for boundary). But we already have a kind of paradox in this poem. If something is “Always,” then how can it have a termination? The crux of this paradox is where I think the power of this poem resides. The next lines will take us even deeper into the dizzying union of the particular with the eternal.

Failless as the fair rotation
Of the Seasons and the Sun.

What a gorgeous set of lines this is. The Term of Light is as failless as the rotation of the seasons (year) or sun (day). In other words, the term of light may end, but it always comes back around again. That’s why it is “Always”.

The poet is waking up to the idea that she will always be waking up, and it begins now, with this morning. “This day begun!”

The word "fair" has a double meaning here too. Fair usually means beautiful in Dickinson's lexicon, but it can also mean "just," and here I think there's a touch of both. Light is balanced with darkness, that's just. But it always comes back around in the morning and that's beautiful.

Old the Grace, but new the Subjects —

"Subjects" has a few meanings here. There is the continued pun with school and the idea of studying new subjects for a new term. But subjects also means selves here (new days, new seasons, new births). Again we remember the resonant term from F935, “harrowing Grace.” The eternal return might not include our subjective self, harrows the self like a farmer harrows wheat, but, if you align yourself with the "Failless" rotation of the sun itself, with Old Grace, then the day is “always” yours. The moment is yours.

Old, indeed, the East,
Yet upon His Purple Programme
Every Dawn, is first.

The first stanza has an interesting trochaic rhythm. If you read it out loud you’ll see how the escalating excitement of the first three exclamatory lines sets up the flow of the next two lines. Also every line ends with a soft “n” sound which gives the sense of the day going on and on.

The rhyme of the second stanza is more clipped. The second stanza is still in a trochaic rhythm, but the second and fourth lines stop short, putting even more emphasis on “East”and “first”. There is a cool pay-off for this in the last line where you get the N sound of ‘dawn,” which was set up in the first stanza, but you also get the new rich rhyme of "first" with its counterpart "East." The old Grace goes on and on, but the subjects are always new, always first. Firstest.

In the poem just before this one on sheet 17 a boy drowns and reaches out in anguish. Meanwhile, over his head is spread water lilies. That’s a similar idea, in a way, to this poem, the eternal return of old grace.

Old, indeed, the East,

This line points to the fact that the sun rises in the east. But the word “East” has a deep set of meanings for Dickinson. In this poem there is, perhaps, an allusion to Eastern philosophy. In Eastern thought (which is older than Western thought,) there is emphasis on the eternal return. Western thought, by contrast, is more about a teleological directive. There is, then, a kind of Eastern ideal in this poem, which can be found in much of Dickinson’s work. In this manner, a poem like this one stands side by side with Dickinson's famous Transcendentalist neighbors Whitman, Emerson, Fuller and Thoreau. 

And yet—every dawn is first.

I think in this line you get a sense of the poem's original impulse. The poet has recovered a child's ability to see the familiar as unprecedented.

That phrase “Purple Programme” is telling. Dickinson imagines the East almost as a headmaster (or, as she would call it, a preceptor) laying out a curriculum. Every morning a new lesson appears on the horizon. And the curriculum never becomes stale and gray because the day's particular presentation is always unique and grand. Purple is a royal color. 

Each morning is the first day of school. Light is the curriculum.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S.

I think of William Blake’s lines,

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the bird as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.

The difference is that Dickinson embraces the binding to joy in the use of the word "mine." That difference may seem small, but I think it points toward an important bridge between two opposing points of view. 

How the Waters closed above Him

How the Waters closed above Him
We shall never know —
How He stretched His Anguish to us
That — is covered too —
Spreads the Pond Her Base of Lilies
Bold above the Boy
Whose unclaimed Hat and Jacket
Sum the History —


       -F941, J923, sheet 17


A boy has drowned. All that is left behind is his hat and jacket. That’s the scenario. It’s what Dickinson does with that scenario that leaves us shaking our heads.

How the Waters closed above Him

What might Dickinson mean by this line? She means, first, the literal experience. She is wondering how the boy experienced the loss of air. But the word choices give us more to consider. Waters closing above one is ominous. It’s as if the water itself has agency and is purposely closing over the boy. Even the plural of Water adds to the effect. She could have, and almost anybody else would have, written it singular: Water. But the plural adds to the feeling of being overwhelmed. And it is also notable that this closing is coming from “above.” In this first line Dickinson may be speaking literally about an actual drowning, but she takes us into the metaphoric realm of the psychological and even the spiritual.

We shall never know —

We can’t ever know what the terrible experience of drowning, or dying, feels like for another. We are each  alone in our suffering.

How He stretched His Anguish to us

I’m reminded here of the Covid pandemic. Over 20 million people died world-wide and many of these people were quarantined and alone, separated from family. Each dying person was surely stretching Anguish out as they were struggling for breath. They must’ve felt so utterly alone in their suffering. I can only imagine the crisis of faith in such a circumstance. 

That — is covered too —

This line is saying that the experience of reaching for help in suffering cannot be known by those on shore, as it is covered up. The word “cover” here adds to the ominous suffocating feeling that the poem evinces. There is a pun here too because the poet is “covering,” like a reporter, the experience of panic. So “cover” has at least three layers here; drowning and being “covered” by water; experience being unknown and “covered” over, and the revelation of the unknowability of another’s experience being “covered” by the poet..

Spreads the Pond Her Base of Lilies

This line is so deeply Dickinsonian in its implications.

It appears that the same force that closed the waters above the boy is now spreading lilies above his head. That phrase from F935 comes back to me here, "harrowing Grace.” Out of terror sprouts beauty. This beauty is, on one hand, unfeeling, and certainly no help to the dying boy. Nature goes on being beautiful in the face of terror which is somehow even more terrifying.

On the other hand (the hand of the poet) these lilies are laid out in sympathy. The carefully wrought beauty of this poem is like a pond spreading lilies above the boy. It is an elegy. “Spreads the Pond (Poet) Her Base of Lilies.”

Bold above the Boy

Because the B sound itself is so Bold, we can’t help but notice its preponderance here, Base/Bold/aBove/Boy. It sounds like bubbles coming up from under the water!

The word Bold here is perfect. To be bold can have a positive connotation, as in "to be courageous." Sometimes it can have a negative one though too, as in "to be rude." Both ideas seem to be at play here. Dickinson’s sympathies are with the boy, but her understanding is with the eternal return of nature. The poet seems to be admonishing the Waters though (and maybe herself) for being so bold as to spread beauty in the face of tragedy.

Whose unclaimed Hat and Jacket
Sum the History —

It’s a ghostly image, the hat and jacket left behind. It adds to the uncanny effect of the poem.

There's a symbolic meaning of “hat and jacket” too I think. The things that protect and keep us warm in life go unclaimed in death. Together they “Sum the History.” This is the Sum of what we amounted to in life, the vestments (the attachments) that kept us warm against the impending cold.

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry," wrote Dickinson in a letter. This one is freezing cold. And yet the beautiful lilies boldly remain, for what it's worth, as well as that Hat and Jacket. 

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Monet's Water Lilies

So set it’s Sun in Thee —

So set it’s Sun in Thee —
What Day be dark to me —
What Distance far —
So I the Ships may see —
That touch how seldomly —
Thy Shore?

     — F940, J808, sheet 17, 1865


Adam is on vacation. We are grateful to Tom Clyde for taking up the mantle to write the commentary for F940:

*

Here we have a short poem in six lines, posing a single question.

Yet it contains multitudes.

In one reading of this poem, we stare down into a well of unspoken sadness. The poet seems to be stating that she is fine, FINE I TELL YOU. “What Day be dark to me?”

We suspect, however, that she is full of longing and loneliness, despite her protestations. She
aches for someone who is no longer physically present.

In another reading of the poem, we find ourselves focusing on the power of devotion to transform the world. Love can make dark day light! Love can make that which is far near! Reading the poem in this way teaches us how geographical distance or emotional estrangement might be overcome with the right attitude.

A third way through this poem is to read it with eros in mind. When we listen to it this way we soon discover that it is full of sensual detail, only half-concealed by metaphor, like a dress falling from a shoulder.

These are three possible readings of many.

Somehow, in this single rhetorical question spanning six lines, Dickinson covers a space as large as the globe and as small as the body.

How does she do so much with so few words?

Let’s look more closely, line by line.

*

Dickinson starts us off with a six-syllable fragment. At first we find it hard to get our bearings.

Who is talking to whom?

So set it’s Sun in Thee—

(The apostrophe in “it’s,” by the way, is simply a case of Dickinson’s quirky habit. She writes it
as if it’s a contraction, but in this line it clearly functions as the possessive “its.” So let’s not get hung up on that part.)

We notice first, if we read this first line aloud, how the alliterative “s” sounds in “So” and “set”
and “it’s” and “Sun” are sliding past us as we move forward.

Dickinson launches us into this poem like a vessel sliding into water. Sssss ss sss ss. We only come to rest at the very end of the line, on the soft sand of “Thee.”

So set its Sun in Thee—

Who is talking to whom? Now we know. Importantly, the poet is addressing a “Thee,” not a “You” — that is, she is talking to someone she loves. She is arrested by that person. Has come to rest on that person.

We read on:

So set it's Sun in Thee—
What Day be dark to me—

In line two we find out who the “it” was in line one: it was the “Day.” So the question of the poem begins to emerge…

As long as the sun, which shone on the speaker earlier, now shines on her beloved too, then what day could possibly be dark?

Note that after we rest on the sandy bottom of “Thee” at the end of that first line, the alliteration of the “s” sound now shifts to the alliteration of a “d” sound. From “set it’s Sun” to “Day be dark.”

Also, I don’t know about you, but for me that hard rhyme of “Thee”/“me” helps me hear those “d”s in “Day” and “dark” as little waves, knocking against us.

Yet the underlying logic of these two lines of rhyming six syllables is still, we have to admit, a little obscure.

We understand that the poet, although technically in darkness at her location, does not feel her day is dark on a subjective level. Why? Because she knows that the sun is still setting where someone she loves resides.

But WHY should this mere knowledge lighten her day? After all, she is still not with this other person.

Why should just knowing some atmospheric phenomenon— the rotation of the earth causing a reddening of the horizon at the longitude which marks the location of her beloved — have anything to do with her experience of the sky at her own location?

Is she fooling herself?

Or is she devoted beyond reason?

We might ask out of our own experience: does simply knowing that someone we love is in light… make it light for us? This is an extravagant claim for the power of the imagination.

I mean, let’s think of some examples of how this might work:

● Can we taste M&Ms just because our loved one tastes them?

● Would we feel refreshed just because we happened upon a Facebook Live stream of our loved one swimming?

I would suggest that this is a reach.

Perhaps, though, Dickinson means to imply that, in some inexplicable way, when we love we are the same person as our beloved?

That’s amazing, if true.

*

But how would this transformation, an Ovidian metamorphosis, feel, if this really does occur?

Let’s read on to find out:

What Distance far—

Ok, here in the third line (can you believe we are only at the third line??) we get more on the same theme. And also another “d” word, another little wave against our vessel.

We saw already that time collapses in love. Seeing the sun now makes the fact that I saw it earlier immaterial… because I see it again now with thee.

This third line (“What Distance far—“) makes it clear that, to Dickinson, both time and space are collapsed by love. Distance is no longer “far” at all; you are near to me because you see the same sun.

So far, Dickinson seems to be saying that love makes us… commingled.

Indistinguishable.

Maybe even identical?

Again, is this folly? Wishful thinking? Deep commitment?

We can read it either or both ways.

*

Fourth line:

So I the Ships may see —

Here is where Dickinson begins to explain what sustains her, at last. She sees ships, messengers, passing from her to her beloved. (Maybe actual ships? Or are these “ships” letters, flowers, poems?)

This transit of “ships” is enough to form a kind of connective tissue.

Recall how the poem started with the sound of a ship hitting the water. Sss. Then, with a gentle thud, against the th of “Thee.” Now it seems to be lifting off the sand with this “sh” sound (followed again by the “s” in see as it gains speed).

Next line:

That touch how seldomly—

No matter how infrequently these “ships” — these letters, these missives, these flowers, these poems — reach the one she loves, it is enough. They have transformed time and space and brought her to the only place that matters.

The final line is just two syllables:

Thy Shore?

Isn’t it beautiful, the way that Dickinson connects the metaphor serving as the conclusion of the poem — a fleet of ships sailing “seldomly” but ceaselessly to the beloved — back to the original “Thee” of the first line? “Thee” folds into “Thy.” Not any shore. Thy shore.

And by this addition she deepens it too. Dickinson doesn’t say that ships “seldomly” touch “Thee,” but rather “Thy Shore.” That comforting “sh” sound again, as our ship meets sand.

The poet’s beloved has become a shore, a ground, a grounding. A continual shipping route takes her there in an eternal circle. Time and space are immaterial. We are here.

This ending moves me a lot.

(Aside: My mother, who is 84, currently has dementia. And when she sees me she often says in wonder: “When I am with you, everything makes sense.” She doesn't worry about memories or meals or the schedule for the day. During my visits, she doesn’t worry about a thing. We are together and that is all she needs. It is an incredible honor to be someone’s shore.)

That touch how seldomly—
Thy Shore?

*

Back to the three possible ways through that I mentioned at the beginning.

The first — as a poem containing a deep well of unspoken sadness. Even though Dickinson asserts that these “ships,” following their assigned route from her to her beloved, are enough…she does not quite convince, does she?

The poet is merely seeing these ships disembark. Her role is passive. We can imagine those old black and white film clips of friends and family members frantically waving their handkerchiefs in the air as a passenger ship disembarks. Isn’t the poet alone, even in a crowd, on that metaphorical wharf? We suspect so.

Also, she acknowledges that they “seldomly” touch the shore of the beloved. Has there been a slow-down in shipping? Have there been storms? Accidents at sea? There is the implication of an untold story there — of a loss and falling-off from some better state of affairs.

Finally, when she mentions the “Dark,” we sense that the poet has a visceral sense of that dark. It is not a stranger to her, even while she says she banishes it. Nor is “Distance far” a stranger to her. Read this way, the poem feels harrowing. It seems to invoke the power of the imagination as a plea for relief.

*

As for our second way through — as a tribute to the devotion of a lover — this way emphasizes the poet’s act of will.

Read this way, the entire poem is a defiant question posed in the face of doubt. Oh yeah? She seems to be saying. Watch me.

She will be there at the dock watching those ships depart… her cheeks flushed in the wind, her eyes just as bright as ever, lit by her unfading love for her beloved. We can admire the irrational and metamorphic power of love. Dante’s Beatrice. Marcel’s Albertine.

*

Finally, how about the erotic reading of this poem?

I left this for last because it hit me last. On my tenth or twentieth reading, I suddenly I heard it.

So set it’s Sun in Thee—

The sun is setting in the beloved. Not over. Not on or about. In.

This is an intimate preposition for Dickinson to use. From this first line of the poem we are somewhere very personal, quiet, between the lover and the loved one.

There’s dark. There’s distance. But they are banished.

And then the last three lines of the poem have a hushed tone. They sound almost like a seduction.

So I the Ships may see—
That touch how seldomly—
Thy Shore?

Sh — ss — th — ss — th — sh.

Read these lines aloud to hear their undeniable sensuality, full of soft combinations of consonants.

Next there’s the choice of the verb “touch” in the second to last line. These same ships, which the lover saw off, now touch the beloved.

That touch how seldomly—

The erotic charge of that “seldomly,” which can be read as increasing the anticipation.

But, most of all, the gorgeous two-word ending, “Thy Shore.”

I cannot read this, now, without thinking of the shore as the body, the softness of somebody’s skin. What happens when we touch another and land on his or her shore?

There is a thrill knowing that a letter or a poem reached someone we love, partly because we know that person now holds it in their hands. And the same goes for the recipient, knowing that it began its journey in another’s room, desk, bed. No wonder people used to perfume the pages of the letters they sent.

*

This poem contains multitudes.

Eat your heart out, Walt.

        

        -Tom Clyde

A ship leaving port in 1911, closer to Dickinson's time than to ours

Impossibility, like Wine

Impossibility, like Wine
Exhilarates the Man
Who tastes it; Possibility
Is flavorless—Combine

A Chance's faintest Tincture
And in the former Dram
Enchantment makes ingredient
As certainly as Doom—
'

     — F939, J838, sheet 17, 1865


Adam is on vacation and Tom Clyde has generously stepped in to write the commentary for F939:

*

Enjambment is the name for the poetic technique of continuing a sentence (or phrase) from one line to the next without any intervening punctuation. Think of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Whew. Finally a period.

In this poem Dickinson uses this technique of enjambment on every line but one (the sixth), breaking her sentences in unusual places.

In doing so, she creates a kind of halting, even stuttering, quality to our reading experience. The sentences seem to rotate in the light, glinting and flashing and producing a series of surprises.

We know that Dickinson’s repeated use of this technique of enjambment isn’t accidental. For she is nothing if not meticulous in her craft, choosing meter, rhymes, slant rhymes, Latinate words, Germanic words, alliteration, assonance — any and all of it — for maximum impact. My sense is that she chose to use repeated enjambment in this poem because it provided the best way for her to convey her theme: the step-by-step, endlessly surprising, iterative process by which we evaluate what is possible for us in this life.

*

Let’s start at the beginning and work through the lines one by one.

At the end of the first line, a reader may, for a moment, think Dickinson has already presented the crux of the poem:

Impossibility, like Wine

Two unlikely things, joined!

An abstract concept — impossibility— and a material object — wine. Is this a poem about how the internal and the external worlds meet, then? Is this comparison the riddle we will spend the rest of the poem working out?

*

But then our eyes drop down and we read the following line.

Exhilarates the Man

There, with that striking capital “E,” Dickinson gives us a verb that makes us realize she is still completing the sentence; there’s more to the thought than we first thought.

It turns out that Dickinson wants us to notice how impossibility “exhilarates” a person. That’s right — just as wine does.

As we surmised from the first line, impossibility and wine are two things which are unlikely to be paired. But their pairing has nothing to do with them having similarities in and of themselves. It has to do with the effect they have on a person (namely, exhilaration).

*

And then, at the end of this line two, she does it again! Another enjambment — and the sentence surprises us with a new turn.

Exhilarates the Man
Who tastes it;

Ok. “”Who tastes it.” Now we have finally got the full import of the sentence, broken up as it is over three lines of poetry. The man who tastes impossibility is exhilarated, and it is an involuntary reaction, like getting drunk on wine.

After these two enjambments, which as we have seen also functioned as two false endings, we come to our first punctuation, a semicolon.

*

After the semicolon, on the same line, Dickinson tacks on a new word: “Possibility.” Which of course begins a new enjambed sentence!

Who tastes it; Possibility
Is flavorless —

Ok, ok. We get it. Our mind readjusts our frame on the poem once again. Now we come to understand that “impossibility” is being compared not so much to “wine” (that was only Dickinson’s preliminary point, to establish their similar effect). Rather, it is being compared to — contrasted with — “possibility.”

Tasty, “exhilarating” Impossibility vs. “flavorless” (dull?) Possibility.

But wait… possibility isn't dull. Where is she taking us now?

*

And the enjambments continue with with the word “Combine” tacked on to the end of that same line:

Is flavorless — Combine

“Combine,” Dickinson orders us. Combine what?.

She skips down, more than merely a line, but now all the way to the beginning of a new stanza.

We have arrived at enjambment number four:

— Combine
A Chance's faintest Tincture

Ah-ha! Now we are being instructed to do something. We must combine a tincture of chance with our existing imagination.

And in the former Dram

This sixth line is the only one in the entire poem that is not enjambed, not halting or stuttering. “And in the former Dram“ doesn't wrap around from the line above, and it could stand as the beginning of its own sentence.

Why would Dickinson offer up that phrase about the “Dram” so cleanly? Perhaps it is because this is exactly the medicine that the poem offers to the reader.

A dram is a shot of whisky or spirits. So Dickinson is conjuring the image of drinking again, but this time it is a more sober experience, existing firmly in the realm of possibility. This time it seems less involuntary too, less Dionysian. A dram suggests a deliberate, almost medicinal, taking of spirits.

We keep reading:

Enchantment makes ingredient
As certainly as Doom—

By the last line, after all these stuttering steps (I count six, at least, in the full poem), we have come to realize that although “Impossibility” may instantly exhilarate, “Possibility” is more complicated, and often more lasting in its effect. An encounter with possibility leads us through a series of steps:

First, it adds a flavorless “tincture” to our imagination.

Second, this becomes a kind of “enchantment” in our head.

Third, this state of “enchantment” creates a bona fide new “ingredient” (note that the move from tincture to ingredient is not just a quantitative but a qualitative change). It might be thought of as medicinal.

And, step four, this new ingredient is experienced as “certainly” as we experience the sensation of “Doom.”

Doom works on our fears. Chance works on our hopes. But both are based on the consideration of real-world consequences.

*

Reading it through with these steps in mind, it strikes me that this poem functions as a kind of recipe for getting yourself motivated.

Add one tincture of chance and then wait 30 seconds...

You now have enchantment.

Which, when mixed, gives you… a special ingredient.

You know the one. It tells you that the idea of yours… is so crazy it just might work!

What you do now is up to you.

The way I read it, this marvelous little poem is extremely encouraging. It seems to give us a step-by-step recipe for success.

Don’t just glug the impossible! Dickinson is cautioning us. Instead, mix up some of that real stuff, the possible.

             -Tom Clyde