Tag: perception

Sunrise // Sunset

Pam and BrennaLeave a comment

I ’LL tell you how the sun rose,—
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets, 5
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!”

But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile 10
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars, 15
And led the flock away.

~Emily Dickinson

I’ve read this one many, many times. I like it–it’s a vivid and accurate description of sunrise and sunset. I’ve struggled with what exactly to say about it, since it’s so well-known and seems so straightforward.

Every reading of a poem opens up new possibilities for understanding, and as I sit at my desk in the lean dark hour before sunrise, it occurs to me for the first time that there is an air of the mysterious pervading this seemingly straightforward poem.

Though the speaker begins by declaring that she’ll tell us how the sun rose, her soft exclamation at the end of the second stanza undermines this confidence. She says “That must have been the sun!” as if she’s not entirely sure.

Then, in the next line, she tells us that she doesn’t know how the sun set. She proceeds to tell us exactly how it set. There’s a rich contradiction running through this poem. Does she or doesn’t she know what she’s seeing? In the case of both sunrise and sunset, she tells us that she doesn’t know, but shows us that she does.

What to do with this? Is she just being coy? Or is she saying something here about the human understanding of nature, about our perceptions of reality?

Maybe she’s saying something about the role of the poet, about the power of poetry. She begins by declaring she’ll tell us something, then backpedals to qualify it. She then tells us what she doesn’t know, and proceeds to describe it. Maybe this isn’t a poem about sunrise and sunset–maybe it’s a poem about the power of language to engage the world, to make sense of it, to connect us with the larger universe.

Oriole, Part 1

Pam and BrennaLeave a comment

TO hear an oriole sing
May be a common thing,
Or only a divine.


It is not of the bird
Who sings the same, unheard,
As unto crowd.


The fashion of the ear
Attireth that it hear
In dun or fair.


So whether it be rune,
Or whether it be none,
Is of within;


The “tune is in the tree,”
The sceptic showeth me;
“No, sir! In thee!”

~emily dickinson

This is a weird and wonderful poem. Structurally it’s very different from most Dickinson poems, with its three-line stanzas. The last line of each is markedly shorter than the first two. There is an abrupt, revelatory feel to these short lines, as if Dickinson is demanding that we sit up straight and pay attention because something important is about to be unfolded. The whole thing reads like some obscure ancient riddle.

I think what she’s saying is that the music of birdsong is within each of us–that is, the perception of the song as music. The “only” in the first stanza is interesting. “Or only a divine” sounded to me on the first few readings as if the poet was saying “only” in the sense of “merely,” which feels odd and yet somehow perfectly Dickinsonian, minimizing the divine for some kind of effect. But on about the third reading I wonder if she means “only” in the sense of “purely” or “exclusively.”

This whole poem is like a riddle, the answer of which is different for each person because it is buried deep within ourselves, like our perception of the oriole’s song.