Here’s today’s poem: Emily Dickinson’s “Beclouded,” shown below.

“The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.”

Brenna: The first thing that really jumps out at me, beyond the obvious wintriness, is the gendering Dickinson has going on. A flake of snow is “it,” the wind is “him,” and Nature is “her.” As always with Dickinson, there’s this personification of nature, but I think it’s interesting here how she chooses to assign genders. Nature is stereotypically “she,” of course, but that a snowflake is “it” while the wind is “him” strikes me as interesting. Maybe not significant, particularly? Or maybe??

Pam: You know what’s wonderful? That’s not what caught my eye first. I love that we both have completely separate “Aha!” moments when reading this.I think that the gendering is significant! Why assign the wind as male, why assign nature as female, why assign the snowflake as neither?

Brenna: I like how none of the personifications in this poem are particularly flattering. A snowflake is indecisive, the wind is a whiner, and Nature is kind of a hot mess. Or a cold mess. And yet there’s a sense of her relation to all of them, despite the fact that, if these were people you were hanging out with, you might be kind of annoyed.

Pam: There’s also the implication that Nature is not in control here. She’s caught without her diadem, so she wasn’t expecting the snow (what is her tiara, exactly?). Which is a bit odd, for a poem about the weather!

Brenna: Yes! When, in a Dickinson poem, is Nature ever NOT in control?? And “caught without her diadem” is a rather different thing from “caught without pants on.” So what first catches your eye about this one?

Pam: Caught without her EpiPen. Caught without her midi hem. These are very different poems.

Brenna: Caught without her EpiPen is bad news. I mean. All those bees in Dickinson poems.

Pam: The rhyme caught my eye first. Or ears, I suppose! I think she does something very interesting with the rhyme scheme. It comes back on you when you’re not expecting it. “Low” in the first line comes back in the end of the second with “snow” and the end of the fourth with “go.” This has to be deliberate, because she uses the same pattern in the next stanza: middle of line five, “wind;” end of line six, “him;” end of line eight, “diadem.”

Brenna: I did not notice that.

Pam: Three rhyming words per four-line stanza, with the rhyme for the stanza happening first in the middle of that stanza’s first line. It’s odd, right?

Brenna: Thank goodness there is a smart person working on this project.

Pam: Maybe the rhyme scheme is meant to invoke the will-it-or-won’t-it snowflake? Or the wind sounds coming and complaining? And you are the one who caught the pronouns!

Brenna: Okay, if the rhyme is happening where it isn’t expected, maybe that’s mirroring Nature’s failure to expect/anticipate winter. And mirroring her sort-of disheveledness. Though, honestly, caught without your diadem? Not a huge prob. Unless you’re implying that Nature is hugely vain.

Brenna: I love how you always notice the rhyme scheme.

Pam: I love smart sounds in poems!

Brenna: Only semi-related, but do you ever wonder if Dickinson thought all her thoughts in the same meter? I mean, it really is true that you can sing all these poems to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” isn’t it?

Pam: I think you’re absolutely right. All of the agencied characters have problems, don’t they? What if Nature can’t find her diadem because she’s been deposed? Dun dun dunnnnnnn

Brenna: Does agency make one a hot mess? The having to choose, to make do with one’s lot, to get caught unprepared? Nature is deposed!! WHAT WOULD EMILY DO??

Pam: I did not notice the meter. Someone’s going to rescind my degree.

Brenna: LOL

Pam: They’re going to take back my eyeliner and all of my ruffled shirts. No more peasant skirts for you!

Brenna: I mostly notice because when we did “Come Slowly, Eden” in college, everybody made the point of singing ALLLLL the Emily Dickinson poems. Not in performance, of course. But I will never be 100% able to take “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” seriously.

Pam: Part of me thinks: sure, it was the style at the time, it demonstrates mastery, it’s ridiculously hard to do in short poems because you’ve got to be concise. Part of me thinks: why would you do that to yourself, woman?

Brenna: I am really kinda starting to think that her brain just worked in that meter.

Pam: Confession: I have no idea how the melody of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” goes.

Brenna: Now I want to read her letters…..are they in meter??

Pam: 2020: The Letters of Emily Dickinson

Brenna: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LArGlfEVYqM

Pam: God bless. Roll Tide!