We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.~Emily Dickinson
The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.
A cursory internet search suggests that this may be one of the most often-memed Emily Dickinson poems. This bemuses me because I’m not sure the poem is really so meme-able–it strikes me on first reading as one that sounds like an easy aphorism but holds much more than it appears to, like the enchanted tent the Weasleys use at the Quidditch World Cup.
The first stanza is the straightforward one. We never know what heights we can achieve until we are asked or forced to attain them–we can’t know our true potential until we achieve it, and in that moment, if all goes well, we are nearly limitless. We can achieve great things. So far, extremely meme-able.
But the second stanza complicates things. The general sense of it seems to be that we get in our own ways, that it’s our fear of success that prevents us from succeeding. But what is “the heroism we recite”? Is she talking about the heroic deeds of others that we recount, thinking we will never achieve such greatness? Is she saying that we talk big but don’t deliver? I’m not sure how to read this line.
And what are the cubits about? She’s reverting to old Biblical measurements–but why? For the meter alone? Or as a sly allusion to the heroes of the past, who will always seem higher than ourselves? We “warp” the cubits because we are afraid “to be a king.” Are we afraid of greatness itself? Of power? Of the responsibility success brings?
There’s so much packed into this tiny poem–so many interpretive possibilities. It may look like an easy meme about success on the surface–Don’t get in your own way! Do the thing! You are awesome!–but there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface.
Can we meme poetry? What does this do to it, to our experience of it? To transmogrify a poem into a meme is to encapsulate it, to package it for quick consumption, to suggest that what it contains is easily digestible in one quick gulp. But that feels to me like the exact opposite of what poetry is, what it is meant to do. What do you think?
The Emily Project 