Nobody dies in this one!

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Wild nights – Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!


Futile – the winds –
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!


Rowing in Eden –
Ah – the Sea!
Might I but moor – tonight –
In thee!

~Emily Dickinson

I love this one. It’s breathless and brim-full of emotion, and unlike many of the poems we’ve discussed this month, this is actually, irrefutably, undeniably a love poem! She can do it! She can write love poems that are about love!

This is a gorgeous jewel of a poem, and I don’t want to belabor it with a long meditation. I just want to point out what I think is the genius of this poem–it manages to capture both the headiness and the deep, calm comfort of love.

Sentence fragments, syntax, exclamation marks, and Dickinson’s ubiquitous dashes all contribute to the breathless feel. This love is exciting, passionate. The speaker opens with the image of “wild nights,” which sets the tone for the entire poem.

But the love she’s talking about is also profoundly comfortable. A “heart in port” is one at rest. To be “done with the compass” and “done with the chart” further underscores that notion. This speaker is no longer searching. She has found exactly what she wants.

By the end of the poem, the tempest seems to have passed. You can’t row very effectively in the middle of a storm–the waters are calm now. And Eden isn’t likely to be a storm-tossed place. It’s a place where the speaker can moor, drop anchor, rest. The implication is that she’s here to stay.

Of course, this is a Dickinson love poem, so this is all imagined: the “might” is important. She hasn’t achieved this ideal state, she’s only imagining it. Still, she doesn’t throw in anything else to disrupt the envisioned tranquility. Nobody dies! This alone makes “Wild Nights” a strong contender for “Best Dickinson Love Poem that Is Actually a Love Poem.”

Consecration

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PROUD of my broken heart since thou didst break it,
Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,
Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,
Not to partake thy passion, my humility.

Emily Dickinson

Another day, another love poem that may not really be a love poem. The first thing that strikes me about this poem is the repetition: three of the four lines begin with “proud.” Given that this poem is one long sentence, that’s a lot of pride to display in such a short punch of a poem. So what’s the speaker proud of?

Firstly, she’s proud of her broken heart, “since” the unnamed lover broke it. Curious, here, is the double meaning of “since”: is the speaker proud because the lover broke her heart, or is she proud from the period of time since it has been broken?

Secondly, she’s “proud of the pain I did not feel till thee.” Sure, this is pretty self-explanatory, but it’s interesting that this is a new pain. Is she proud because this is the first time her heart has been broken, or because she’s loved deeply enough to have been deeply affected?

Thirdly, the speaker becomes entirely to attached to her rhyme scheme. “Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it” is a line that practically shouts STOP RHYMING THIS POEM. It also requires some unpacking, because the narrator is doing literary gymnastics to fit this line in her scheme. She’s proud of her night, since you, Mr. Ex, are feeding it with moons. Hold up. What?

Not only does this make little sense on first read, it also breaks the scheme set up in the first two lines. You broke my heart – past tense. You hurt my feelings – past tense. “Thou dost slake” – present tense. If the narrator is heartbroken, how is she also being slaked? The idea of being slaked means not just having something to eat or drink, but to have that foodstuff to satisfy a hunger.

But what else could night be hungry for, than light? Here the speaker is telling us that, yes, she might be in the dark, but she’s not bothered. Even though Mr. Ex–or Mr. Never Was–isn’t with her, he’s still giving off enough light to satisfy her thirst. I hate to say it, and perhaps I’m reading this wrong, but here the narrator seems like nothing more than a moth, battering herself against a light that pays her no notice.

The fourth and final line gives us our last break from repetition. No longer is the speaker proud: now, she’s professing her humility! She is entirely too humble to have any hope of passion with this person; perhaps it is her humility which is holding her at length.

The One Where I Get to Quote Tori Amos

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“you sign Prince of Darkness/try squire of dimness”

~Tori Amos, “She’s Your Cocaine”

Part 3: LOVE

V

DOUBT me, my dim companion!
Why, God would be content
With but a fraction of the love
Poured thee without a stint.
The whole of me, forever,
What more the woman can,—
Say quick, that I may dower thee
With last delight I own!


It cannot be my spirit,
For that was thine before;
I ceded all of dust I knew,—
What opulence the more
Had I, a humble maiden,
Whose farthest of degree
Was that she might
Some distant heaven,
Dwell timidly with thee!

~Emily Dickinson

Sometimes Emily Dickinson gets downright sassy with the love poems. As Pam and I were tossing around possibilities for today’s poem a couple of days ago, we realized that there is a whole other category of Dickinsonian love poems we hadn’t yet considered: the insulting ones.

The second stanza of this poem reads like any other sweet love poem: “I am yours, all of me, I’m not worthy of you but I love you forever,” etc. etc. etc. Even the second half of the first stanza is fairly typical. There’s nothing especially notable about the sentiment, nothing to make it stand out among a saccharine sea of love poetry. It’s the first few lines–notably the very first one–that set the tone, that color the rest and make them something they wouldn’t be without that damning preamble.

“Doubt me, my dim companion!” The tone sounds at once affronted and, frankly, insulting. It sounds like an astonished interjection, a “how dare you!” from the speaker to her beloved. And “dim.” Dim. That is not flattering. The beloved is too dense to see or understand or appreciate exactly how much he is loved. It’s this first line that makes this a love poem in a rather nontraditional sense. Sure, there are poems about unrequited love, but this one strikes a very particular tone from the get-go. “Doubt” as the very first word in a love poem is telling.

There’s something about “dim companion” that really feels like a zing. The speaker is being condescending. This isn’t the kind of insult you throw out in a blaze of temper without thinking at all. It’s carefully constructed to chip away at its object. “You think you’re so smart. Well, let me tell you, my dim companion.” For a woman confined to as exceptionally narrow a sphere as Dickinson’s, this feels especially significant. “You, you man of the world, you traveler, you educated one, it’s you who’s the unobservant one, you who can’t see what’s right in front of you.” He may think he’s the Prince of Darkness, but really he’s just another squire of dimness who can’t recognize the obvious and can’t appreciate what he’s got.

The “dim companion” epithet also feels to me like it’s really modifying the speaker’s description of herself toward the end of the poem. She’s just a “woman” and a “humble maiden,” and this makes her companion’s dimness even more embarrassing for him. Here’s the speaker, merely a humble maid, and yet she sees so much more than her beloved man of the world.

Then there are the second, third, and fourth lines. “I have lavished so much love on you that God himself would be content with even a little bit of it.” Here’s that classic Dickinson blasphemy–loving the beloved more than God–with a new edge. “You are more demanding than God,” with the implication “but you’re not God, so you have no right to be so demanding. Yet I love you anyway.”

It’s not a happy love poem. This relationship does not seem like it’s on completely solid footing at the moment. Yet there’s something poignantly real about the speaker’s frustration. We’ve all been there–we’ve all loved someone who seemed unable or unwilling to acknowledge or appreciate our affection in the way we wanted them to, whether romantically or otherwise.

There’s a lot to unpack in this poem, but the way the first few lines color the entire thing is fascinating to me. It’s almost as if Dickinson is deconstructing a love poem. Take off the first four lines and it’s just a love poem. With those first four lines, however, it’s something more–a poem that acknowledges both the ecstasy and the utter frustration of love.

I like to see it lap the miles

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Brenna and I were just settling down to a rainy afternoon conversation about a love poem which expresses, well, something less than love, when something marvelous happened. Two worlds intersected.

We are writing a daily blog about Emily Dickinson poems. The Slowdown, U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s daily poetry podcast, features an Emily Dickinson poem today. So, on this rainy day, we invite you to pull up a comfy chair, pop in some earbuds, and close your eyes for five minutes of what amounts to, basically, a guided meditation in poetry.

You can listen to today’s episode of The Slowdown here.

I like to see it lap the Miles—
And lick the Valleys up—
And stop to feed itself at Tanks—
And then—prodigious step

Around a Pile of Mountains—
And supercilious peer
In Shanties—by the sides of Roads—
And then a Quarry pare

To fit its sides
And crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid—hooting stanza—
Then chase itself down Hill—

And neigh like Boanerges—
Then—prompter than a Star
Stop—docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door—

Emily Dickinson

“The Moon is distant from the Sea”

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The Moon is distant from the Sea –
And yet, with Amber Hands –
She leads Him – docile as a Boy –
Along appointed Sands –


He never misses a Degree –
Obedient to Her eye –
He comes just so far – toward the Town –
Just so far – goes away –


Oh, Signor, Thine, the Amber Hand –
And mine – the distant Sea –
Obedient to the least command
Thine eye impose on me –

~Emily Dickinson

I chose this poem in honor of February’s full moon, the Snow Moon. Last night the clouds hung heavy with snow and the light of the moon, amber or otherwise, didn’t touch my little patch of earth. But the moon is still there, irrevocable as the tides, pulling and tugging at consciousness even when invisible.

This is yet another in the category of “Is It a Love Poem??” It easily could be, but the “Signor” could be God as easily as the beloved. Rather than comment on that, I want to focus instead on the gender reversal in this poem.

Dickinson begins with the Moon as “She” and the sea as “Him.” The moon has for thousands of years been associated with the feminine, so there’s nothing surprising her. The interesting thing happens in the third stanza–the female speaker takes the place of the masculine sea, and “Signor,” whoever he is, takes on the feminine role of the moon. I love this kind of gender-bending; it happens occasionally in Dickinson’s poems, and while I don’t know what exactly it means, I find it fascinating.

If we go with a religious reading, there’s precedent for this, of course, in descriptions of God as not only a masculine force, but also a mother bird gathering her chicks under the nurturing shelter of her wings. But why the gender reversal partway through the poem?

Maybe it’s because, in any sustained relationship, socially-constructed notions of gender have to blur from time to time. No one can be the sole nurturer; no one can be the sole protector. Our roles wax and wane over the cycles of time like the phases of the moon. Roles that are stereotypically “feminine” can and should be played by both partners in a relationship, and so should the stereotypically “masculine” ones. I can’t know if Dickinson was thinking anything along these lines, but the fact that she so easily compares the influence of the masculine (God, the beloved) to a feminine power (the moon) is suggestive.

There are so many interesting features in this poem–the gorgeous evocations of the moon’s amber light, the poignancy of the repeated emphasis on the impossible distance between the speaker and the object of her devotion, the sheer beauty of Dickinson’s language. No matter how you read it, it’s a lovely poem to read under the light of the full moon.

XI: I’ve got an arrow here

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I’VE got an arrow here;
Loving the hand that sent it,
I the dart revere.

Fell, they will say, in “skirmish”!
Vanquished, my soul will know,
By but a simple arrow
Sped by an archer’s bow.

Emily Dickinson

Easy allusions to Cupid aside, the thing that strikes me first about this poem is the action: somebody has shot an arrow, right? So why is the person who shot it relegated to only one line?

In the first stanza, the speaker has an arrow, she loves the hand that sent it, and she reveres the dart. In the second stanza, she imagines that other people will say that she has died in battle; her soul will be vanquished.

That’s a lot of time to spend on somebody who received Cupid’s arrow, and very little time spent on Cupid himself. Who shot this arrow? Why? We have to imagine that the narrator is responsive, because she’s already imagining falling (actually, literally) for the person who shot it. But she tells us nothing at all about this person.

If this doesn’t scream one-sided-romance, I don’t know what does. I’m imagining the narrator peeking out a window, furiously scribbling, “You don’t know what you do to me!” And, of course, Cupid has no idea. The speaker doesn’t tell us that he took careful aim, or that he even hit his target.

Prompt: Loyalty

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SPLIT the lark and you’ll find the music,
Bulb after bulb, in silver rolled,
Scantily dealt to the summer morning,
Saved for your ears when lutes be old.

Loose the flood, you shall find it patent,
Gush after gush, reserved for you;
Scarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas,
Now, do you doubt that your bird was true?

Emily Dickinson

Continuing in the fashion of is-this-a-love-poem poems: is this a love poem? It seems more like an I-told-you-so poem. The speaker is telling an unnamed person that music can be found inside a lark, if you split it open. The music is described beautifully–“bulb after bulb, in silver rolled”–and it persists in memory even after the lark is gone. Consider, too, what happens if we unleash a flood: it does what floods do! It floods!

The speaker then closes with an address, referring to the unnamed as a “sceptic Thomas”–slightly off from the usual “doubting Thomas” that I’m used to hearing, but the meaning is the same. Thomas, who refused to believe that the risen Jesus was, in fact, the risen Jesus, until he could feel the wounds from the cross, inspires the narrator’s own doubter: where does the lark’s music really come from? What happens if I open this dam and let the water out?

The speaker in this poem is, I believe, the lark, but that’s a discussion for another day. What I find far more interesting is the idea of questioning how a thing works, and then destroying it to find its source: and, of course, losing the thing in the process.

For today’s prompt, consider some natural phenomenon that seems magical, and which you might be able to slice through to suss out its mysteries. What happens then? What do you learn, or keep, or not?

SNAP

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XXXII


HE put the belt around my life,—
I heard the buckle snap,
And turned away, imperial,
My lifetime folding up
Deliberate, as a duke would do
A kingdom’s title-deed,—
Henceforth a dedicated sort,
A member of the cloud.


Yet not too far to come at call,
And do the little toils
That make the circuit of the rest,
And deal occasional smiles
To lives that stoop to notice mine
And kindly ask it in,—
Whose invitation, knew you not
For whom I must decline?

~Emily Dickinson

In a cursory search for information on this poem, what I’ve discovered is that, though it’s included among Dickinson’s love poems, interpretations seem to identify it as a poem about either the speaker’s devotion to God, or her devotion to her poetic calling. If it’s not a love poem, what is it doing with the other love poems?

This is an interesting example of the significance of context. Because I was thinking of it as a love poem, surrounded as it is in my text by love poems under the heading “LOVE,” I assumed this was a love poem and proceeded accordingly in my reading of it.

It’s a pretty terrible love poem.

The images are of constraint, ignoring, condescension. My 21st-century sensibility protests, “Nobody puts Emily in a corner–or in a belt–whatever!!” It’s not a love poem, I suppose, so much as a poem of devotion. But that devotion is enforced rather than chosen, and no matter how you read it, the “he” doesn’t come out looking so good.

It’s hard to separate my own knowledge and cultural context from this poem. Frankly, “he” sounds like an abuser. The speaker gets snapped into a belt, constrained, controlled. Her lifetime is folded up, she does little toils, she declines invitations because of “him.”

There is a strange sort of elitism in the speaker’s role, however constrained. She is “a member of the cloud.” This sense of a rarefied role–how sincere is it? How tongue-in-cheek? She declines a specific identity in the first stanza, identifying herself as “a dedicated sort.”

This is a strange, strange poem, and the more I read it and delve into it, the stranger it becomes. No matter how I read it, it feels deeply problematic. This one is definitely in the category of “love poems that probably aren’t actually love poems.”

X. A charm invests a face

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A CHARM invests a face
Imperfectly beheld,–
The lady dare not lift her veil
For fear it be dispelled.

But peers beyond her mesh,
And wishes, and denies,–
Lest interview annul a want
That image satisfies.

Emily Dickinson

This, to me, reads like the love poem version of “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”

It’s also refreshingly honest. “A CHARM invests a face / Imperfectly beheld”: you’re darn right it does. This isn’t love at first sight, precisely; maybe it’s more like infatuation at first sight. This is the feeling you might have when you see someone attractive across the room, but you don’t know anything about them–and you don’t really want them to see you, either.

There’s a bit of a mystique about crushing on someone from afar. It’s middle school (and high school) all over again. It’s staring at somebody across a sweaty gym floor during a Valentine’s dance. You’re building up a teenage love story in your head without really knowing the other person, and it’s safe, too–you don’t have to get to know them, and you don’t have to let them know you, either.

It’s the “denies” part of the poem that seals it. Yes, the lady is looking and wishing, but she knows the whole time that she’s not going to do anything about this person who has captivated her. What happens if you talk to the boy across the gym floor? What if he turns out to be a jerk? What if he doesn’t like you? What if he’s just plain annoying? Better, says our speaker, to be satisfied with looking. At least then, you can’t be let down.

Our speaker doesn’t say it, but you can’t let the other person down, either, if you never try to speak. The narrator seems to be building this little love story as a warning against being let down by somebody else–but it’s a very safe thing for the narrator, too, to remain silent. Nothing risked, nothing gained, right? And this way, there’s no fear of rejection. If you never speak up, they can never turn you down.

I => You

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XX


I have no life but this,
To lead it here;
Nor any death, but lest
Dispelled from there;


Nor tie to earths to come,
Nor action new,
Except through this extent,
The realm of you.

~Emily Dickinson

This reads like a classic description of an obsessive love. Without the beloved, the speaker is nothing, has nothing, not life, not death, not anything after that. The beloved is an entire realm through which the speaker experiences everything. This definitely seems like a new love and not a relationship that’s well-established.

One of the interesting things about this poem, to me, is that unlike other Dickinson love poems, this one doesn’t convey a clear emotion–rather, a state. We don’t get a sense of whether or not the speaker views any of this as good or bad–it simply is, without judgment.

This is also not Dickinson’s typical “Yellow Rose of Texas” meter. The lines are shorter than her usual ones, and every even-numbered line is shorter than the one before it.

What I like most about this poem, though, is the cleverness of its construction. It begins with “I” and ends with “you,” demonstrating through its very language and structure how the lover has become subsumed into the beloved.