So dense a fuzz

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To hang our head ostensibly,
And subsequent to find
That such was not the posture
Of our immortal mind,

Affords the sly presumption
That, in so dense a fuzz,
You, too, take cobweb attitudes
Upon a plane of gauze!

~Emily Dickinson

This is a tricksy one, and much is unclear. Who is the “you,” the “we”? What Dickinson seems to be saying for certain is that sometimes we “hang our head ostensibly”–we discredit ourselves, or act humble–when what we want is not to be humble, and when we are not feeling humble at all in “our immortal mind.” The “immortal mind” suggests the notion of the higher self, and so I think Dickinson’s message in the first stanza is fairly clear. Sometimes we’re humble when we don’t need or want to be. Sometimes we’re right, dangit.

The second stanza, to me, is best summed up in the phrase “so dense a fuzz.” I’m not sure what exactly Dickinson means with any of the second half of this poem. Line 5 is decently clear–when we know we don’t need to be humble, when we know we’re right, we feel a sly presumption–but what exactly is that presumption? “Cobweb attitudes” and “a plane of gauze” suggest that the opinions of the enigmatic “You” are insubstantial. But what’s the dense fuzz? The internal tug between wanting to be humble and wanting to be right?

Perhaps at 6am on a Friday, I’m just in too dense of a fuzz to make sense of this poem. But maybe this is part of what Dickinson is doing–making the reader doubt herself to prove a point. As I read through this poem, and reread it, I find myself doubting my own ability to parse any sense out of it. Dickinson has planted me squarely in the midst of the dense fuzz that is the syntax and word choice of this poem.

Well-played, Emily, well-played.

Bleak parts, salubrious hours

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To help our bleaker parts
Salubrious hours are given,
Which if they do not fit for earth
Drill silently for heaven.

~Emily Dickinson

Puzzling over this one. I had to look up “salubrious”–it means “healthy” or “health-giving.” What kind of experiences are healthy for “our bleaker parts” and prepare us for heaven rather than earth? This feels like possibly some Puritanical justification of suffering, but I’m not completely sure. This may be because it’s the second day of the school year. The first day was great, but afterwards it hit me just how much I’ve taken on. My bleaker parts could definitely use some help, and I’m not sure my brain is firing on all cylinders. So I’ll leave this poem for now, and go seek out some salubriousness of my own.

Not my favorite

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What soft, cherubic creatures
These gentlewomen are!
One would as soon assault a plush
Or violate a star.

Such dimity convictions,
A horror so refined
Of freckled human nature,
Of Deity ashamed,—

It’s such a common glory,
A fisherman’s degree!
Redemption, brittle lady,
Be so, ashamed of thee.

~Emily Dickinson

Oh, Emily. I’m trying to appreciate this one, but it’s hard.

Dickinson is attacking fashionable ladies, and it’s true, there’s not nothing there to critique. It bothers me, though, that she’s specifically going after other women. There’s something that feels very Jane Austen about this, and not in a pretty way. Dickinson isn’t exactly at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and she’s sniping at those above her. It’s a natural human tendency, I suppose, but there’s something disturbing to me about a woman bound by the conventions of her society attacking other women who are similarly bound–in some ways more so.

It’s pretty scathing to end the way she does. Redemption is ashamed of such “brittle” ladies? I think it’s the sweeping nature of the criticism here that troubles me most. Dickinson paints “gentlewomen” with a broad brush, without acknowledging the constraints that society has place upon them to make them the “soft cherubic creatures” they are. It sounds as if everything is the gentlewomen’s fault, and this just irks me.

I wonder what was going on in Dickinson’s head when she wrote this. It feels like a too-easy jab. She’s usually a little more nuanced, a little more subversive than this. Did something happen to make her particularly tetchy with gentlewomen? There’s no way to know. But I’m going to have to put this one down in the books as “not my favorite” and move on.

You cannot put a fire out

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You cannot put a fire out;
A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
Upon the slowest night.

You cannot fold a flood
And put it in a drawer,—
Because the winds would find it out,
And tell your cedar floor.

~Emily Dickinson

This is an odd one. The first stanza seems fairly self-explanatory. Fire is powerful. It can spark seemingly without warning, and once it gets going, it can be impossible for humans to stop. Fire here could be a metaphor for all sorts of things that are uncontrollable by human beings.

The second stanza begins in the same vein–just as you can’t control fire, you can’t control water. A flood is wild, something that cannot be folded up and put away.

Then it gets weird. You can’t control a flood because “the winds would find it out”? “And tell your cedar floor”?? Umm…..

I think what Dickinson is really talking about here is trying to control language. Once something is put into words, it’s out there in the world. It cannot be taken back. If you try to control a word once it’s been spoken, you can’t. I’m reminded of this Dickinson poem:

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

~Emily Dickinson

Words take on lives of their own. Once said, they cannot be unsaid. While the last line of this poem feels contrived–this whole “cedar floor” business sounds as if it’s trying too hard to match rhyme and rhythm–the point is a powerful one.

Enough?

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A modest lot, a fame petite,
A brief campaign of sting and sweet
Is plenty! Is enough!
A sailor’s business is the shore,
A soldier’s—balls. Who asketh more
Must seek the neighboring life!

~Emily Dickinson

The multiple exclamations make me wonder if the lady doth protest too much. Does Dickinson really feel this way–is this what she really wants–“A modest lot, a fame petite”? It almost feels as if she’s trying to convince herself. With the lines about sailor and soldier, the seeker seems to be reminding the listener (perhaps herself?) to stay in her own lane, not to ask for anything but what she’s been given–a very New England Puritanical philosophy. The last line, while it can read as a caution, could also be a challenge. Don’t like what you’ve been allotted? Go elsewhere! Strive! Break all the boundaries and seek the life you really want!

It’s strange how little we know about Emily Dickinson’s motivations–how little is certain. Recent scholarship is upending the notion of the reclusive lovelorn spinster too shy to show her poetry to the world. The old infantilizing view of Dickinson held sway for so long–generations of American schoolchildren were raised on it. How is it possible that the motivations of someone who lived such a comparatively short time ago are so mysterious?

I wonder what Dickinson would say if she could see us now. I suspect she would laugh.

Storm

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It struck me every day
The lightning was as new
As if the cloud that instant slit
And let the fire through.

It burned me in the night, 5
It blistered in my dream;
It sickened fresh upon my sight
With every morning’s beam.

I thought that storm was brief,—
The maddest, quickest by; 10
But Nature lost the date of this,
And left it in the sky.

~Emily Dickinson
Image via pexels.com
https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-photography-of-boat-on-water-during-sunset-1118874/

I like this poem, but I’m not sure what to say about it, as my brain is pretty fried from a week of faculty meetings and prepping to teach five different courses starting this week, so I’m just going to leave this here for your enjoyment. Whatever your storms are, I hope they pass and are not left in the sky indefinitely.

Recipe for a rose

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A sepal, petal, and a thorn
Upon a common summer’s morn,
A flash of dew, a bee or two,
A breeze
A caper in the trees,—
And I ’m a rose!

~Emily Dickinson
Image via Pexels.com.

This is a small and charming poem. Dickinson seems to be laying out the recipe for making a rose. All the usual parts are required–but there’s more. A rose is made of more than itself. In order for it to really be a rose, the rest of nature is required–water, air, other living things. What’s really lovely about this poem is Dickinson’s characteristically evocative language–“a flash of dew,” “a caper in the trees”–and how she interrupts her own meter in the fifth line.

These things are all that are required, according to the poet, to become a rose. There’s one more thing, though, that she doesn’t mention but rather demonstrates–a rich and lively imagination.

The wealthy fly

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I envy seas whereon he rides,
I envy spokes of wheels
Of chariots that him convey,
I envy speechless hills

That gaze upon his journey; 5
How easy all can see
What is forbidden utterly
As heaven, unto me!

I envy nests of sparrows
That dot his distant eaves, 10
The wealthy fly upon his pane,
The happy, happy leaves

That just abroad his window
Have summer’s leave to be,
The earrings of Pizarro 15
Could not obtain for me.

I envy light that wakes him,
And bells that boldly ring
To tell him it is noon abroad,—
Myself his noon could bring, 20

Yet interdict my blossom
And abrogate my bee,
Lest noon in everlasting night
Drop Gabriel and me.

~Emily Dickinson

Ah, unrequited love. The first five stanzas follow a distinct pattern–the speaker envies anything and everything that is close to her beloved. There is a definite undertone of Shakespeare’s balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet here, with Romeo’s longing to be a glove on Juliet’s hand so that he could be close to her. Dickinson, of course, gets more extensive and unexpected in her wishes–the fly outside the beloved’s window is “wealthy.”

Unlike Romeo, however, the speaker of this poem ends her expressions of longing with a surprising twist–after suggesting that she could make her beloved happy, she asks in the final stanza that it not be so, “Lest noon in everlasting night/ Drop Gabriel and me.” After stanzas of unrequited longing, she switches gears. There is something very Puritanical about this–don’t let me be happy, because if I am happy then I could become unhappy, and that would be worse. The “noon” of a relationship between them might end in “everlasting night.”

This poem, though it feels very conventional on the surface, seems to be riffing on and playing with older poetic conventions. Dickinson expands the metaphors for love to the prosaic and even slightly distasteful (Oh, that I were a fly upon his windowpane…). She also turns the poem on its head in the final stanza. I’m reminded of the cliché that “it is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.” Dickinson suggests here that it’s better to have loved but never been requited than to have loved and lost. Or maybe she feels she’s lost before she’s even begun.

We wondered at our blindness

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Her final summer was it,
And yet we guessed it not;
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded her, we thought

A further force of life 5
Developed from within,—
When Death lit all the shortness up,
And made the hurry plain.

We wondered at our blindness,—
When nothing was to see 10
But her Carrara guide-post,—
At our stupidity,

When, duller than our dulness,
The busy darling lay,
So busy was she, finishing, 15
So leisurely were we!

~Emily Dickinson

What strikes me most strongly about this poem is the contrast. There are layers of it–contrasts between life and death, busyness and inactivity–but particularly the contrast between knowing and not-knowing.

“We guessed it not”–the speaker, speaking for a collective “we,” repeatedly returns to the notion that “we” didn’t know what was coming, but implies that the now-deceased did. Words like “stupidity” and “duller than our dulness” underscore and even levy judgment on this not-knowing. While the subject of the poem apparently knew she was dying and used this knowledge as impetus to achieve more than ever, more lovingly than ever, those around her failed to notice the cause of her activity.

How could they have known she was dying, particularly if she was so active to the last? I think that at least part of what this poem is teasing out is the common experience of blaming ourselves in the wake of a dear one’s passing. If only we had known, we should have seen it coming, we should have behaved differently…a thousand regrets and what-ifs crop up by which we torment ourselves.

Often Dickinson writes from the perspective of the deceased. Here, the dead woman isn’t really the point of the poem–it’s the way in which those who survive her are doubly wounded by her passing.We

summer sounds

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Farther in summer than the birds,
Pathetic from the grass,
A minor nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive mass.

No ordinance is seen, 5
So gradual the grace,
A pensive custom it becomes,
Enlarging loneliness.

Antiquest felt at noon
When August, burning low, 10
Calls forth this spectral canticle,
Repose to typify.

Remit as yet no grace,
No furrow on the glow,
Yet a druidic difference 15
Enhances nature now.

~Emily Dickinson

The crickets’ song in this poem begins as “pathetic,” “minor,” “unobtrusive.” By the end of the poem, however, it has become “pensive,” “spectral,” even “druidic.” The humble cricket-song takes on magical and mythological significance.

Your prompt is to take one of the sounds of summer and magnify it, tease out all its meanings and correspondences. What is it on the surface, and what lies beneath?