A modest lot, a fame petite,
~Emily Dickinson
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!
In this poem, Dickinson seems to be arguing that we should be content with what we have. A sailor’s business is sailing, a soldier’s fighting. Anyone who wants more should look elsewhere than their own life.
It’s interesting to read this poem in light of the traditional arguments that Dickinson didn’t want to be famous, that she was an introverted recluse who didn’t seek an audience for her poems. This has always felt like an odd reading to me–why would she write poetry and save it if she had no intention of putting it out into the world?
New reimaginings of Dickinson’s life seem to be challenging the notion of the reclusive poet. Though some of Dickinson’s poems seem to focus on the quiet domestic blisses and the joys of being “nobody,” I can’t help but think that she wanted her words to be read. There’s something hugely ambitious in so much of her poetry. We can probably never know for sure what she was thinking, what she really wanted, but my guess is that it wasn’t as modest or petite as the fate she advocates for in this poem.
The Emily Project 