The one that could repeat the summer day Were greater than itself, though he Minutest of mankind might be. And who could reproduce the sun, At period of going down— The lingering and the stain, I mean— When Orient has been outgrown, And Occident becomes unknown, His name remain.
What a feat it would be–to repeat a summer day. To do so would be to command time, to seize it, slow it, make it stop and circle back. These warm indolent days of summer can seem at once eternal and all too fleeting. Dickinson imagines the power of the person who could achieve this feat–capturing the fleeting beauty at its peak.
Your prompt–following Dickinson’s example, write a short poem in which you imagine an impossible power and its use.
BLAZING in gold and quenching in purple, Leaping like leopards to the sky, Then at the feet of the old horizon Laying her spotted face, to die;
Stooping as low as the otter’s window, Touching the roof and tinting the barn, Kissing her bonnet to the meadow,– And the juggler of day is gone!
Emily Dickinson
Prompt: look at the many ways Dickinson describes the sun. It’s a leopard and an otter; it’s actively doing lots of things: blazing, quenching, stooping, tinting, etc. What other animals can you use to describe the sun? What other things does it do?
Such a small yet fascinating poem. The first thing we read, that unwieldy first line, mimics the length of the shadow on the lawn. This line is twelve syllables, while the remaining three lines have only eight syllables each. They are all perfectly matched, the last two even rhyming in a true rhyme with “grass” and “pass.” I love when poems do this–when their structure somehow mirrors their subject matter. “Presentiment” itself is a long, unwieldy word, and perhaps presentiment itself is an unwieldy, awkward thing–what do we do with our presentiments, if we have them? What do we make of them? How do they affect us? Are they even real?
I’m not sure why the grass is startled. Doesn’t it know to expect the passing darkness? It’s not as if it’s never happened before or will never happen again. The very notion of presentiment being connected to the setting of the sun is strange–of course the sun goes down. It does this every day. It’s not a presentiment if we know it’s going to happen.
But Dickinson is, of course, dealing in metaphor. Presentiment is symbolized by that long shadow, the stretching shade that tells us that something else, something different, is on its way. Darkness follows light.
In the final line, “darkness is about to pass.” This is a rich choice of words. On the one hand, darkness is about to pass over–it’s about to happen. But on the other hand, the choice of “pass” conveys a sense of motion, a certainty that, no matter what, the darkness is not forever. This, too, shall pass.
Where ships of purple gently toss On seas of daffodil, Fantastic sailors mingle, And then–the wharf is still.
Emily Dickinson
This one is short and sweet, and above all else, I can see it. We’re watching a sunset, and the sun is just a slit of yellow over the horizon; purple is descending. In the last fading sunlight, long shapes of color thin out and change hues and, at last, disappear.
For today’s prompt, consider answering the following question in your own way, in your own poem: how else is a sunset like a body of water? What kind of feelings do the two evoke?
A sloop of amber slips away Upon an ether sea, And wrecks in peace a purple tar, The son of ecstasy.
~Emily Dickinson
Yesterday evening, grimed with sweat and smoke from an afternoon of picking up and installing new hives, I sat on the grass in front of the newly-homed colonies of honeybees as the half-moon hung overhead and the sunset splashed amber and purple across the western sky. I love these liminal times best, the moments when day is becoming evening and evening is becoming night. Bees, I think, are liminal creatures. They trace thin golden paths through the ether between life and death–they are so fragile individually, yet as a group they are strong. They persist.
There is something vital about a hive in a way that no other creatures can emulate. Bees hum, zoom, dive, buzz, sing and vibrate life, spilling it out in wild trajectories through the still air. They dance the winds, trace the edge of sight and possibility. They are so tiny, yet so wildly, fiercely, abundantly alive.
Yesterday afternoon, in the beeyard, I watched, rapt, as the beekeeper pointed out two-day-old larvae, four-day-old, six. And then he pointed to an opening cell and said, with all the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning at the top of the stairs, “Look!”
A brand-new adult bee was hatching from her cell, the front of her head just showing, wriggling with life. I have never seen that before. I cannot explain the power in that moment, that instant of transformation from shapeless grub to complex insect, from needy little soft squishy thing to shining, valiant warrior-girl. What will she become? Will she guard the hive? tend the babies? wait on her queen? How long will she live? Not long, doubtless. A worker bee’s life is short. And yet that brief existence will bolster the eternity of the hive (here’s hoping…beekeeping is notoriously tetchy).
It is in these liminal spaces, these in-between moments, whether the setting of the sun or the hatching of a bee, that magic resides. It is there for the finding, if you wait, if you look. Catch it, and you too will be wrecked by the peace of it, in the most beautiful way.
Getting caught up on a zillion neglected things this Memorial Day weekend, so today’s post is just a poem and the sun setting over the Alleghenies. Here’s to sun-filled days and starry nights!
THIS is the land the sunset washes, These are the banks of the Yellow Sea; Where it rose, or whither it rushes, These are the western mystery! Night after night her purple traffic Strews the landing with opal bales; Merchantmen poise upon horizons, Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.
fairy sails at sunset in the foothills of the Alleghenies
This immediately strikes me as a rare gem of a Dickinson poem. It is thoroughly lovely and in-the-moment, with nary a mention of buzzing flies or someone’s funeral (though I suppose the “western mystery,” the going-down-place of the sun, could be connected to death–but you know what, I’m going to stick with the prettiness this time and not read too much into it).
The phrase “the land the sunset washes” is gorgeously descriptive, and I love how light becomes water in this poem–it “washes” across the landscape. If I’m reading this right, the “Yellow Sea” is also the light in its entirety. This whole poem is one tiny, perfect, jewel-like description of a single moment–but also the eternal recurrence, “night after night,” of sunset.
There is something wonderfully profligate (to use the word in a Dickinson kind of way) about how, despite the very short length of this poem, she strews it lavishly with lush descriptions that are at once immediately evocative and yet at time a bit elusive. “Where,” “whither,” “mystery,” “vanish”–while the sensory details are precise and shimmering, painting a vivid picture, and at the same time the thrust of the poem is toward mystery, the unknown–magic.
One of the things about Dickinson’s poetry that never ceases to delight and astonish me is the way she packs so much meaning into so few words. How is this tiny poem about sunset in all its glorious specificity, and the vast mystery of, well, pretty much everything? How does she do it?? There is magic at work here, clearly.
I love, love, love that she ends the poem with “fairy sails.” The prosaic ships of merchantmen are transformed in the golden light to fae craft that work their own magic, dipping and vanishing.
As I read and re-read the poem, it strikes me that Dickinson is both describing an almost alchemical process, and also performing word-alchemy herself–light to water, water to light. This idea has set roots in my brain, and I’m wondering now–what would happen in my own writing if, the next time I described some elemental force (like air) I described it in terms of a completely different elemental force (like fire). What would happen to my language? How much richer would it grow?
So, here’s a bonus prompt, if you’ve made it this far through my raptures of delight: describe an element using the descriptive language suited to a different element. What happens if you write about earth as if it is water, fire as if it is air?
The Emily Project 