Prompt: If you were coming in the fall

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IF you were coming in the fall,
I’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I’d count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen’s land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I’d toss it yonder like a rind,,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

Emily Dickinson

I’m not sure this poem was meant to be sad, but oh, I feel that it is. There’s such yearning here: such desperation. If I knew that we’d be together in eternity, the speaker says, I’d happily die now. But it’s the not knowing how long it will take for the unspoken (and, perhaps, unknown) lover to come that proves the speaker’s undoing: if only she knew when the lover might arrive, she could handle it. What do you do when you’re single, and you don’t know when–or if–that will change?

Today’s prompt: consider life from the perspective of the unknown lover. What if this lover knows about the poet–and knows how long it will take for them to meet? Would the lover wonder whether the poet would wait? Is the lover delaying for a reason?

A month of love poems

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This is a family heirloom–
a vintage Valentine–
that says nothing of love–
or asks you if you’ll be mine.
Would Emily approve 
of such utter lack of words? 
Perhaps–at least–if nothing else–
she would enjoy the birds?

For the month of February, we’ve decided to focus on love poems. Emily Dickinson wrote quite a lot of them. Many of them are about death (surprise!!!). Many are not. Here’s a definition of love to get us started:

LOVE is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.

~Emily Dickinson

This one seems fairly straightforward to me. Love exists before life and persists after death (oh, look, death! She worked it in. Go, Emily, go! Way to stay on brand!). Love is at the beginning of creation–is the cause of creation–and issues forth on our last breaths. Love=eternal. This tiny poem has the feel of an epigram, a wise saying encapsulated in a few well-chosen words. This seems like a good place to start–by defining our terms.

With a Flower

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I HIDE myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too–
And angels know the rest.

I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.

Emily Dickinson

I’ve had a black thumb for a long time.

The first plant I ever killed was a cactus. I have murdered so many gifted aloe plants that my mother-in-law has, I think, stopped trying. Every fall I buy mums and water them diligently for around two weeks before feeling very confident about my mum-raising skills and then consigning them to the trash heap a month later after forgetting to so much as twitch a hose in their direction.

On a whim two Septembers ago, I went to our botanical garden’s daylily sale and bought five plants. This house, when we moved in two years ago, was a completely blank slate: there were no flowers planted anywhere. So, knowing nothing about daylilies, I bought them, popped them in the ground in a circular flower bed in the front of the house, and forgot about them for a good six months. Imagine my surprise when they grew stalks, and the stalks grew buds, and the buds actually flowered. Every single daylily bloomed.

I was so excited, I bought more: roses and azaleas, forsythia, daffodils. Some have bloomed and some haven’t; some I forgot to even put in the ground (sorry, daffodils). But when I get flowers, I wait a day or two and then head outside with scissors–snip snip–to gather buds for vases on the kitchen table. And every time I see my makeshift bouquets, my little heart swells with pride. I did that.

I’ve never given a bouquet away before, but this poem makes me want to. Not for romantic love; but there’s a wonderful reciprocal sort of emotion Dickinson describes when she talks about the “unsuspecting” feeling a pang of loneliness for the gardener. If I give you flowers, I have to like you (remember, I’m not that great at growing things); if you receive them, you might, one hopes, feel a smidgen of affection for me, too.

We hide ourselves in the gifts we give. How important were Valentines to me when I gave them to crushes; how many times I either didn’t receive any back, or got the dreaded “You’re a great friend, Valentine,” I’ll never remember. The idea of the lonely gardener hiding herself in the flowers she gives is touching mostly, I think, because the receiver is unsuspecting–she can’t have told them, then. If I’m putting myself in the poet’s shoes, this is a rollercoaster of emotion; I would be so excited to have grown flowers at all. There’s life in the flowers and death in the cutting; hope in the giving and rejection, unintentional or not, from the unsuspected.

Fire

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“ASHES denote that fire was;
Respect the grayest pile
For the departed creature’s sake
That hovered there awhile.

Fire exists the first in light,
and then consolidates–
Only the chemist can disclose
Into what carbonates.”

Emily Dickinson

Brenna: The first thing I want to say is that I was looking for a poem that would make me feel warm. Fire seemed like a good start. I forgot that this is Dickinson, so the fire is dead. sigh

Pam: You tried, though! That is pretty hilarious. She can turn even fire into a memorial for both dead creature and fire.

Brenna: Right?! I swear. Emily is the original goth girl.

Pam: I would like to say that her rhyme scheme in this poem is absolutely bananas. Consolidate/carbonate? Really, Emily?? You used “carbonate” as end rhyme???

Brenna: Is “carbonate” even a verb?? Or did she just verb it? But this poem. As tortuous as the rhyming of “carbonate” is, it has some cool stuff going on. I love the idea of fire as a creature that is temporarily invoked, that hovers awhile and then leaves. It’s like a wild creature that comes and goes.

Pam: It is a creature that has also consumed a dead creature! The “departed creature”: is this an animal or a person?

Brenna: Hmm…departed creature…I don’t think it’s necessarily human. Just “animal” in the sense of “alive,” “animate.” It’s sort of demi-god-like. It’s an entity. The specifics don’t necessarily matter. But again, this is Dickinson, so she may be talking about someone who just kicked the bucket.

Pam: So the poem is titled “Fire,” but it’s about ashes and death.

Brenna: It is. EMILY.

Pam: So why call it “Fire”?

Brenna: Well, at the beginning the fire is dead–but then it’s not REALLY dead. It has “carbonated,” whatever the heck that is. It’s as if some kind of alchemy has transpired.

Pam: Because only fire has the power to reduce a creature–what kind of creature doesn’t matter, as you said, because it could be any creature–into ashes. Fire comes from light but it causes the opposite, I suppose.

Brenna: Fire has morphed from heat and light to….something. Ahh, yes. Fire creates death. Peak Emily.

Pam: It’s a devourer. It devours what was and leaves a transmuted other. So it’s death squared?

Brenna: And then it goes, right? I get the sense from this poem that the fire isn’t really dead. It’s just come and gone.

Pam: Death of the soul AND death of the flesh?

Brenna: Fire exists in light (the soul in heaven?). Then it consolidates (soul enters flesh?). Then it carbonates into something else, but only the chemist (God?) can say what that is.

Pam: And who set the fire?

Brenna: God the chemist.

Pam: For such a short poem, we’re coming up with a long list of questions.

Brenna: I think God is the chemist who transforms soul into flesh and then back out of flesh again into some other state that we can’t know.

Pam: This is a poem that makes me wonder about circumstances. Were cremations common? For people, or animals? Did she witness one? Or the aftermath? Did someone’s house burn down? What inspired this?

Brenna: Hmm…she talks so much about conventional burials and tombs. I can’t imagine cremation was common. But this poem is similar in metaphor to yesterday’s, “The White Heat.” Fire is a purifying/purging force that burns away the dross of human nature. So this is a perfect poem for Imbolc/St. Brigid’s Day/Candlemas!

Brenna: I think fire, in her poetic lexicon, is shorthand for divinely-inspired or divinely-accomplished change. Transformation. As far as I can remember, she doesn’t tend to use it so much in the sense of passion. She tends to use the language of storm and cold for that, which is interesting. I think of her description of poetry: “When I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.”

Pam: I did not know that! I’m definitely not a Dickinson scholar.

Brenna: So I think that, for her, fire is not the hot, hot lovin’ metaphor that it is for other poets. It’s about change, transformation, sublimation, growth, alchemy.

Pam: But there’s no gold here! We get ashes.

Brenna: We do get ashes!! But we must respect them!!

A dare:

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DARE you see a soul at the white heat?
Then crouch within the door.
Red is the fire’s common tint;
But when the vivid ore


Has sated flame’s conditions,
Its quivering substance plays
Without a color but the light
Of unanointed blaze.


Least village boasts its blacksmith,
Whose anvil’s even din
Stands symbol for the finer forge
That soundless tugs within,


Refining these impatient ores
With hammer and with blaze,
Until the designated light
Repudiate the forge.

~Emily Dickinson

In the thin darkness before dawn, temperatures plummeted to low single digits here in the north of the South. Before sunrise I bundled up and went outside to break the crust of ice from the chickens’ water. The coming sunrise was a yolk-colored watercolor wash along the horizon, brightening against the lightening sky, and the thin fingernail moon hung high, framed by piercing stars. The cold was so violent it burned, the air sere and searing.

I chose this poem for today simply because it seemed pleasant to think about anything white-hot on a day like today. As I read and reread it, I am first reminded of John Donne’s “Batter my heart, three person’d God” from his Holy Sonnets. Both Donne and Dickinson invoke a creator who makes through violent change, through extreme trial, by pushing the raw material to its limits. The difference is that while Donne begs God to bludgeon him into shape, Dickinson envisions the end of the process as the newly-refined material repudiating the forge.

Here’s where Dickinson gets supremely Dickinsonian. “Repudiate” is a fascinating choice here, with a couple of possible meanings: “to refuse to accept,” or “to reject as untrue or unjust.” Refusing to accept the creator/circumstances of creation is one thing; rejecting them as untrue or unjust is another. They are similar, but there is a significant shade of difference.

As I continue mulling over this poem, the second thing that strikes me is that the current extreme cold is an opposite yet similar metaphor–opposite in temperature, but similar in function. Heat refines in one way, cold in another. I think of how allergists tell people to either wash linens in hot water or seal them in plastic and put them in the freezer to kill dust mites. Heat and cold can both burn. We talk about long-lingering food in freezers as being “freezer-burned.” I think of this line from the poem “Angus McGregor,” by B. D. Pancake: “The hills at thirty below have teeth.” On my drive home this evening, I heard on the news that eight people in the midwest have died from the cold this week. The forge is metaphorical. The forge is real.

It is telling that Dickinson begins the poem with a dare: “Dare you see a soul at the white heat?” Can you handle bearing witness to the process of creation?

the shadow of a flame

“Deadly sweet”

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LXIII


TALK with prudence to a beggar
Of “Potosi” and the mines!
Reverently to the hungry
Of your viands and your wines!


Cautious, hint to any captive
You have passed enfranchised feet!
Anecdotes of air in dungeons
Have sometimes proved deadly sweet!

~Emily Dickinson

This is another Dickinson poem that feels sharply prescient. In the age of social media’s many brags, humble and otherwise, we’re periodically reminded by scary stories of stalkers and trolls that we share at our own risk. But we also share at the risk of others. Coming off the holiday season, I am reminded of all the people for whom the holidays are hard, and how much harder our constant oversharing must make the experience. I think of the trendily matte Christmas cards with their professional photographs of smiling families in color-coordinated outfits and wonder what the effect is on people without families, or people whose families make the holidays a torment rather than a joy.

Today the polar vortex blasts in, carving a swath through the continent and plunging the American South to sub-Arctic temperatures. People joke about the cold, shudder in a pleasant mixture of dread and anticipation (freezing outside but warm inside–sweaters, hot chocolate, fireplaces). How many people don’t have anything good to anticipate? How often do we long for cold (it will kill the viruses!), snow (it’s so pretty!), winter storms (a day off from work/school!) without imagining what pain that pleasure will bring for some?

Dickinson uses Potosí, a massive and once highly-productive silver mine run by the Spanish in what is now Bolivia, as an example of vast riches. The mine’s history is also one of exploitation and slavery, and I wonder how much she knew about this. The miners were as much prisoners as the captives she mentions at the end of the poem.

In the thin cold days of winter, this poem is a reminder to think outside ourselves, beyond our own experiences, and consider the impact of our messages on others.

Possibility

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CV
THE GRAVE my little cottage is,
Where, keeping house for thee,
I make my parlor orderly,
And lay the marble tea,
For two divided, briefly,
A cycle, it may be,
Till everlasting life unite
In strong society.

~Emily Dickinson

Today’s poem contains a clue to our next idea for a creative collaboration (hint: it’s not a funeral parlor). It’s funny and magical and wondrous how one creative endeavor often begets another. We’re kicking around ideas for an exciting new project. Watch this space…

The Snow

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It sifts from Leaden Sieves –
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road –

It makes an even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain –
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again –

It reaches to the Fence –
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces –
It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack – and Stem –
A Summer’s empty Room –
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them –

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen –
Then stills it’s Artisans – like Ghosts –
Denying they have been –

Emily Dickinson

As I write this, my portion of North Alabama is lying still under a winter weather advisory. No, really. We don’t know how to drive in snow–we rarely get it, we don’t have snowplows, we don’t always have salt for the roads–so folks who don’t have to go out are probably avoiding travel. Schools, universities, businesses–there are lots of closures set up for tomorrow already.

We’re predicted to get about 2.5″ of snow.

This snow is not going to do what the snow in the poem above does. The snow in the poem above has agency; it shifts, powders, and fills. It reaches, wraps, deals, ruffles, and stills.

We’ll be lucky if our snow simply sticks, but it’s so much fun–for someone who, admittedly, hasn’t seen a lot of snow–to imagine a snow like the one above. A snow that blankets everything. A snow that fills the ruts in the road. A snow that covers farmland. A snow that puts a sheet of thick cotton batting over every available surface.

The end of this poem, the stilling of artisans like ghosts, is that moment when the snowflakes have finished and the snow remains, untouched. The end of this poem feels like the gasp you might have if you looked out and saw that spectacle–even the poem can’t finish its last sentence. Where’s the final period?

Usually when we get snow predictions, they bust. Cities north and south and east and west will get a few inches, and we’ll grumble loudly instead. The temperature is dropping, and supposedly, the changeover from drizzle to snow will happen in a few hours. Plenty of time for snow to pick some active verbs and go to work–

“Those who ne’er succeed”

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Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.


Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory


As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

~Emily Dickinson

Far more astute people than I have said a hundred million things about this poem, as it’s one of Dickinson’s best-known pieces, one of the infinitely anthologized. I chose this one today because of a conversation I had yesterday with my brother. (Hi, Will!) I’m not going to try to get academic with it, but instead tease out some thoughts and connections it’s raising for me.

I often feel like a member of some eclectic diaspora, constantly searching for my people. I have been fortunate to find a few of them over the past decades. I’m especially fortunate to have some of them in my actual biological family. My siblings are both makers, creators, one an artist/writer/crafter, the other a writer/artist/actor. We all dabble in various creative endeavors while committing the bulk of our time to one. My sister is an artist, my brother and I are writers. As another one of my people, my writer-friend and colleague Kelsey has said, “We are made of making.”

There is, of course, infinite joy inherent in the creative process. We all love what we do. We seek to carve out time for creative pursuits amidst the busyness of life as partners, parents, employees, activists, friends, family members, students, volunteers, and generally productive members of society. But I wonder how many of us there are who dream of making our creative pursuits our careers, our true life’s work.

It’s hard, and this was the gist of my conversation yesterday with Will. It often kind of sucks. Recently I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic, and while I loved what she says, I have a LOT of questions about the position from which she says it. Gilbert argues that we should create for the sheer joy of creating, that we shouldn’t care about success or acclaim or income or any of that. Which is all good stuff. BUT.

It seems to me that it is very, very easy to say these things from a position of privilege–the privilege that comes with economic security, with acclaim, with a TED talk, with a following of millions of adoring fans ready to validate your every word. Yes, there are haters (always, always, and it seems to me that these are definitely not my diaspora people–these are the people who consume and criticize without making), but overall, to be a bestselling author seems like a pretty okay gig. I mean, I’m guessing that Gilbert isn’t stressing about how she’s going to budget for daycare when the transmission just died. She’s not wondering if she’s ever going to have the rare and beautiful privilege of making a living doing what she loves. She’s definitely not wondering if anyone other than her mom is ever going to read her stuff.

In recent months I’ve read a number of Twitter threads by published writers warning the rest of us in great detail that being published isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, that it’s hard, that it’s harder than not being published, and that the rest of us should all beware. Implicit in many of these cautionary tales is the notion that unpublished writers are completely naive and think that life will suddenly become perfect with publication, and that we should stop complaining already and realize that our lives are so much better than those of the published.

This, it seems to me, is bunk. Doubtless many people are laboring under the impression that publication is a magic pill. However, I maintain that there are many of us who have been around long enough to realize that life is not perfect, that nothing is, but that achieving our major professional goal would actually not be a totally horrible thing.

It’s so easy, from the privileged position of the successful, to tell others what they should do, want, even think. I am reminded of Tolkien’s elves, how they occasionally seem just a tiny bit wistful when they look at humans and ponder the beauty of our brave fragility in the face of certain death. There are things the immortal will never understand. The rest of us labor on, looking up toward that rarefied atmosphere and dreaming.

So I believe that Dickinson is right. Those of us who have not achieved a certain measure of worldly success have a completely different perspective from those who have. And I think that once you achieve that success, you may be able to look back and recall what it was like before, but you cannot truly feel what it is like to have never succeeded. Once you cross that bridge, there is no crossing back. You can’t un-succeed. Sure, you can stop trying and fade into obscurity, but you can’t undo the fact of having achieved what you have. You can remember how you felt, but you cannot know what it is like to have never succeeded.

So here’s my ask. (If you’ve read this far, I am hopeful that you are one of my diaspora peeps.) Should I “make it,” should I publish books and make a career as a writer, and then wax rhapsodic about how much harder my life is than that of the unsuccessful, and tell you that you have no idea, and inform you how much better off you are than I, please kick me in the shins. Thanks.

XXVI: The brain within its groove

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THE BRAIN within its groove
Runs evenly and true;
But let a splinter swerve,
’T were easier for you
To put the water back
When floods have slit the hills,
And scooped a turnpike for themselves,
And blotted out the mills!

Some days I just cannot be a person.

Today was one of those days. I wasted hours–I’m not exaggerating here–sitting in my chair, reading unimportant nonsense on my phone.

I could have been reading one of the many books in my to-read pile. I could have been grading papers. I could have been finishing the poem I started yesterday. or I could have started something else. And when Brenna asked me if I’d had any writing time lately, I answered truthfully, but I was pretty ashamed when I said no.

My brain was not within its groove today.

I’m not sure what causes these days. They happen more often than I’d like to admit. And the poem is right: when these swerves happen, it would be easier to reverse a flood than to get my brain back on track. Every little thing is an inconvenience. I need to take a shower, but I also need to organize papers, but I can’t grade them because I have to readjust point categories, but even if I graded them I have to add categories to Blackboard before I can record them, and I have two loads of clean laundry to fold, and I haven’t done anything worthwhile all day, and I’m useless, and I have phone calls to make, and a thousand other things to do, so I sit in my chair and do none of them.

These days seem impossible: and then one thing changes. We went to visit friends tonight, and played games for over four hours. My brain is back on its track. And even if I don’t have a planned game date the next time my brain swerves, at least I can remember that the poem fails to tell you one thing: yes, it’s hard to get back on track, but it can be done.