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.~emily dickinson
But bliss is sold just once;
The patent lost
None buy it any more.
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 Emily Project 