word

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

~Emily Dickinson

Who owns a story? Who owns a poem? A play? A piece of music? There’s something very modern about Dickinson’s sensibility in this poem. While old schools of criticism have focused on seeking intrinsic, inviolate meanings in literature, newer ones play with subjectivity, with individual responses.

There is much talk in the writing community about how once a book is in the hands of readers, it no longer belongs solely to the author. Each reader brings to each story a different set of experiences, emotions, perspectives. Stories become not weakened by this, but stronger. They begin to live and breathe, to take on lives of their own. They multiply themselves into myriad visions, and in this way assure their own survival.

The instant a word is spoken, written, it breathes its first breath and comes alive.

Pain

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Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

~Emily Dickinson

I think Dickinson is speaking here about mental and emotional anguish, but when I read this poem, I think first of physical pain. During the times in my life when I’ve experienced the greatest physical agony–recovering from a car accident, recovering from two C-sections–pain has taken on the character Dickinson describes. It seems endless, and it’s impossible to remember what it really felt like not to hurt.

I’ve read this poem over and over–it often catches my eye as I’m leafing through my copy of Dickinson’s poems. The way in which Dickinson elevates pain–“infinite realms,” “enlightened”–makes it almost a revelatory experience. In some ways, I suppose it is. We learn through pain exactly what we are made of. When I read it, though, I think first of those I know who live with chronic illness. The pains I have felt have always passed eventually, but theirs persist, are eternal. I can only imagine, and look to this poem, to try to understand their realities.

bees abashless

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Source: Emily Dickinson Archive, https://www.edickinson.org/editions/1/image_sets/236551

Where every bird is bold to go
And bees abashless play
the foreigner before he knocks
must thrust the tears away–

Reading Dickinson’s poems in her own hand, it’s hard to understand how and why all those pesky punctuation marks and capital letters ended up in the printed versions.

In this poem, Dickinson is of course talking about death, because there has never been a poet more on brand. What’s lovely and poignant, in a multilayered way, about this one is the contrast between birds/bees and the presumably human “foreigner.” Dickinson’s word choice implies that while birds and bees are part of nature and therefore exist comfortably within its cycles of life and death, human animals are different–we get upset about it.

The image of the foreigner thrusting away tears is a touching one, but deeper down there’s another level of tragedy–the fact that we human critters have become so distanced from the natural world that we cannot be bold, cannot play “abashless,” but must always be not only aware of but in fear of our inevitable end.

Words of encouragement

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Read, sweet, how others strove,
Till we are stouter;
What they renounced,
Till we are less afraid;
How many times they bore
The faithful witness,
Till we are helped,
As if a kingdom cared!

Read then of faith
That shone above the fagot;
Clear strains of hymn
The river could not drown;
Brave names of men
And celestial women,
Passed out of record
Into renown!

~Emily Dickinson

There is something rather un-Emily like about this poem. I don’t know if it’s that she usually isn’t trying to buck anybody up, or if it’s the more straightforward voice, or the address at the beginning, which sounds somehow more sonnet-y than usual.

Your prompt is to write some words of encouragement, and put them somewhere to be found and read.

The soul selects her own society

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The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

I’ve known her from an ample nation Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.

~Emily Dickinson

I love how the abruptly shifting line lengths mirror the speaker’s certainty in her own right to do as she pleases. She does not need to humor anyone–her relationships are her own to forge and tend.

I also love Dickinson’s complete disregard for rank and title, for all the trappings of this world. Her voice in this poem recalls Robert Burns’s in his poem “For a’ that”:

Is there, for honest poverty,
That hings his head, an’ a’ that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Our toils obscure, an’ a’ that;
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp;
The man’s the gowd for a’ that,

What tho’ on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin-gray, an’ a’ that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their tinsel show an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that:
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His riband, star, an’ a’ that,
The man o’ independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a’ that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Guid faith he mauna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities, an’ a’ that,
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a’ that,
That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,
May bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet, for a’ that,
That man to man, the warld o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.

~Robert Burns

I asked no other thing

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I asked no other thing,
No other was denied.
I offered Being for it;
The mighty merchant smiled.

Brazil? He twirled a button,
Without a glance my way:
“But, madam, is there nothing else
That we can show to-day?”

~Emily Dickinson

One of the superpowers of poetry is its ability to remind us that we are not alone, that no matter how isolated we may feel, there are other human voice speaking to us from across continents, oceans, centuries.

This poem is no exception. Everyone has experienced this–the feeling that the one thing we want is the only thing we can’t have. Brazil? Sure! You can have an entire country! Just not this one thing you really, really want.

At least, in our wanting, we are not alone.

…well.

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What mystery pervades a well!
The water lives so far,
Like neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar.

The grass does not appear afraid;
I often wonder he
Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is dread to me.

Related somehow they may be,—
The sedge stands next the sea,
Where he is floorless, yet of fear
No evidence gives he.

But nature is a stranger yet;
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
Nor simplified her ghost.

To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.

~Emily Dickinson

Dickinson’s description of the well is evocative and powerful. It is a thing of mystery, otherworldly. Words like “afraid,” “dread,” “fear,” “stranger,” “haunted,” and “ghost” paint a vivid picture of the speaker’s visceral response to the well. It is mysterious, terrifying, alien, even though it is part of nature.

Compare this to yesterday’s poem, in which Dickinson uses a well as a metaphor for marriage–marriage is the dropping of a life into a well. What do you think? Are these poems meant to speak to each other?

Well…

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A solemn thing it was, I said,
A woman white to be,
And wear, if God should count me fit,
Her hallowed mystery.

A timid thing to drop a life
Into the purple well,
Too plummetless that it come back
Eternity until.

~Emily Dickinson

“Solemn,” “hallowed,” “mystery”–all words that seem apt in describing marriage. But “timid,” “drop a life,” “plummetless”? Interesting choices. Today’s post goes along with tomorrow’s. In this one, Dickinson uses a well as a metaphor for marriage. In tomorrow’s, her subject is a well itself. What are these two poems saying to each other? See what you think.

And so the night became

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The cricket sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
Their seam the day upon.

The low grass loaded with the dew,
The twilight stood as strangers do
With hat in hand, polite and new,
To stay as if, or go.

A vastness, as a neighbor, came,—
A wisdom without face or name,
A peace, as hemispheres at home,—
And so the night became.

~Emily Dickinson

It’s amazing what you can learn on the interwebs. For example, if you google the first lines of this poem, the first several hits you get are links to videos of people playing this as a song on marimbas. Who knew?

It’s a lovely poem, and does some wonderful things with language. The first line is a conventional sort of opening, but the second begins to work the poem’s magic. “A cricket sang,/And set the sun” can read as, “A cricket sang, and the sun set” or “A cricket sang, and made the sun set.” I love it–this suggestion that the cricket’s tiny melody could be the spell that sings down a star from the sky. The workmen act in a similar way–they leave a “seam” upon the day itself, as if knitting it together, completing it.

The second stanza begins with another conventionally poetic image–“The low grass loaded with the dew”–but then we get some wonderfully Dickinsonian personification. The twilight stands politely waiting. Though we know it is definite, certain, unavoidable, it acts as if we have a choice. It is gentle, reserved.

It makes sense, then, that twilight brings with it wisdom and peace. In the third stanza, it’s compared now not to “strangers” but to “a neighbor.” Though it has neither face nor name, it is familiar, comforting, settling.

I love the way that the first and last lines, taken together, crystallize the entire poem: “A cricket sang,” “And so the night became.”

“truth”

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He preached upon “breadth” till it argued him narrow,—    
The broad are too broad to define:    
And of “truth” until it proclaimed him a liar,—    
The truth never flaunted a sign.    

Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence            
As gold the pyrites would shun.    
What confusion would cover the innocent Jesus    
To meet so enabled a man!

~Emily Dickinson

This one feels timely, and needs no commentary from me.