Yellow squares

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A door just opened on a street—
I, lost, was passing by—
An instant’s width of warmth disclosed,
And wealth, and company.


The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by,—
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.

~Emily Dickinson

One of my favorite parts of a beach vacation is the night walk along the shore. One one side is the Atlantic, its ceaseless rush and tumble, the dark waves blended seamlessly into the dark night so that the air might be ocean and the ocean air. There is no marking, in the blackness, where one ends and the other begins, but through them, currents and creatures writhe. Who can say what wends its way through the darkness?

On the other side, up the slight slant of the dunes, stand the houses, small and brave in the face of the slowly devouring sea. At night, their outlines, too, fade into sky, into darkness, and only the lights from their windows are visible, yellow squares against the blackness.

The sea is so cold, so vast, and the wind feels as if it blows through me. Those little golden squares remind me where I come from–or at least, where I’m stopping right now, on my way from the first darkness to the last.

Short but sweet

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How still the bells in steeples stand.
Till, swollen with the sky,
They leap upon their silver feet
In frantic melody!

~Emily Dickinson

It’s been a very long day, so I’m going to file this one under “Let’s Not Overthink It and Just Enjoy the Poem” and call it a day. Have a wonderful weekend!

To meme or not to meme?

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We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.


The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.

~Emily Dickinson

A cursory internet search suggests that this may be one of the most often-memed Emily Dickinson poems. This bemuses me because I’m not sure the poem is really so meme-able–it strikes me on first reading as one that sounds like an easy aphorism but holds much more than it appears to, like the enchanted tent the Weasleys use at the Quidditch World Cup.

The first stanza is the straightforward one. We never know what heights we can achieve until we are asked or forced to attain them–we can’t know our true potential until we achieve it, and in that moment, if all goes well, we are nearly limitless. We can achieve great things. So far, extremely meme-able.

But the second stanza complicates things. The general sense of it seems to be that we get in our own ways, that it’s our fear of success that prevents us from succeeding. But what is “the heroism we recite”? Is she talking about the heroic deeds of others that we recount, thinking we will never achieve such greatness? Is she saying that we talk big but don’t deliver? I’m not sure how to read this line.

And what are the cubits about? She’s reverting to old Biblical measurements–but why? For the meter alone? Or as a sly allusion to the heroes of the past, who will always seem higher than ourselves? We “warp” the cubits because we are afraid “to be a king.” Are we afraid of greatness itself? Of power? Of the responsibility success brings?

There’s so much packed into this tiny poem–so many interpretive possibilities. It may look like an easy meme about success on the surface–Don’t get in your own way! Do the thing! You are awesome!–but there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface.

Can we meme poetry? What does this do to it, to our experience of it? To transmogrify a poem into a meme is to encapsulate it, to package it for quick consumption, to suggest that what it contains is easily digestible in one quick gulp. But that feels to me like the exact opposite of what poetry is, what it is meant to do. What do you think?

‘Tis harder knowing…

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While I was fearing it, it came,
But came with less of fear,
Because that fearing it so long
Had almost made it dear.
There is a fitting a dismay,
A fitting a despair.
’T is harder knowing it is due,
Than knowing it is here.
The trying on the utmost,
The morning it is new,
Is terribler than wearing it
A whole existence through.

~Emily Dickinson

I don’t know, Emily…

I mean, I can see what she’s saying. We can become used to the idea of something dreaded via long anticipation. It can become familiar, almost comfortable. There is a difference between the shock of sudden calamity and its long, inevitable approach.

But I don’t know. Is this healthy, this getting used to awfulness? There’s something horribly resigned about the idea. The phrase “had almost made it dear” combined with the repetition of “fitting” makes me wonder if the speaker of the poem is one of those people who loves her grief, who clings to it as if it is loss that makes her who she is. We’ve all known them–those people who love their privation, who boast of how awful things are for them. Is this what Dickinson is saying? Is she speaking for herself? I don’t know.

It’s so hard to know anything, really, about this poet. She died nearly a hundred years before I was born. We know her through fragments–the back of a recipe here, an envelope there. How do you reconstruct a life?

Bliss/abyss

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Is bliss, then, such abyss
I must not put my foot amiss
For fear I spoil my shoe?


I ’d rather suit my foot
Than save my boot,
For yet to buy another pair
Is possible
At any fair.


But bliss is sold just once;
The patent lost
None buy it any more.

~emily dickinson

The structure of this one is unusual–a three-line stanza followed by a five-line stanza and then another three-line stanza. What is Dickinson doing? She has such a distinctive poetic style, such a strongly Dickinsonian voice, that people joke you can sing most of her poems to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” The meter and rhythm are unmistakable.

So when she veers so sharply from her accustomed rhyme and rhythm and meter, what is she doing? What are we meant to think of this? Is she experimenting? Is the abrupt shift in meter and rhythm meant to clue us in to some hidden secret of the poem?

We’re almost halfway through the year, and sometimes I think that with each additional poem of Dickinson’s that I read and respond to, I’m getting farther away from understanding her.

The mystery of a face

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A face devoid of love or grace,
A hateful, hard, successful face,
A face with which a stone
Would feel as thoroughly at ease
As were they old acquaintances,—
First time together thrown.

~Emily Dickinson

What a description–not even a complete sentence, yet thoroughly damning. The juxtaposition of “hateful” and “hard” with “successful” is especially interesting. I wonder who she’s talking about…did she have someone specific in mind, someone she knew? Was it a face glimpsed in passing on a street? Or is it merely a face imagined?

Your prompt: write a description of the person behind the face Dickinson is describing. Does the poet see that person as they are, or is there more behind that hard facade?

Truth?

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The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.


If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her,
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?


Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be.
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.

~emily dickinson

I love the idea of a volcano with pink projects. I wonder, though–is Dickinson right? Is it really not in human nature to keep secrets? My first reaction is yes, absolutely. We can’t keep secrets.

But then I think of all the secrets that we do keep. Yes, we often blab when we shouldn’t–but then, too often we remain silent when the truth would be a saving grace.

Maybe it’s not that we can’t keep secrets, but that we’re not good at knowing which ones to tell and which to keep…

Rusty ammunition

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The past is such a curious creature,
To look her in the face
A transport may reward us,
Or a disgrace.


Unarmed if any meet her,
I charge him, fly!
Her rusty ammunition
Might yet reply!

~emily dickinson

What a weird little poem! The meter is what strikes me first–it’s mixed-up, the last lines of both stanzas coming short and abrupt on the heels of the more typical longer lines before. The first line of the poem is noticeably, awkwardly longer than any of the rest, too, giving the whole poem a choppy feel.

Is this what Dickinson is going for? She’s delving into the past–into our experience of it from the present, and the ways in which it can either affirm or negate us. Perhaps she’s set up this awkward pacing to echo the hesitance with which the speaker approaches the idea of the past, or her own past in particular.

In the first stanza, the speaker begins with the positive–past memories may reward us with happiness. But in the last line of the stanza, she presents an alternative–the past may be a disgrace. It’s the second notion she sticks with for the entirety of the second stanza, elaborating that the past is dangerous. You must approach it with caution, armed against whatever you may find. The past may be gone, but it’s still potent–it still has the power to wound via “rusty ammunition.”

The description of the past in this poem makes it sound like an adversary–it’s described in militant terms. The past is not necessarily our ally. The poem’s final image calls to mind, for me, a grizzled, at least slightly mad old Civil War veteran sitting on his porch, yelling at kids to get off his lawn while balancing an ancient firearm across his knees. Is it loaded? Maybe not. Maybe. Does it work? Do you want to find out?