XXIII
“Going to him! Happy letter! Tell him—
Tell him the page I did n’t write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried,
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.
“Tell him it was n’t a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him—No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it,
And then you and I were silenter.~Emily Dickinson
“Tell him night finished before we finished,
And the old clock kept neighing ‘day!’
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended—
What could it hinder so, to say?
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
But if he ask where you are hid
Until to-morrow,—happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!”
There are many strange and interesting things happening in this often-anthologized poem. Why is the entire thing in quotation marks? The speaker is addressing the letter she’s just written, which is fascinating. She’s essentially written a letter to the letter she just wrote, telling it about all the things she hasn’t written.
According to the speaker, the letter she’s just written omits verb and pronoun. In this short poem, she uses forty-four verbs and forty pronouns. I cannot think of another poem that makes such enthusiastic use of the word “it.” Interestingly, the speaker repeatedly refers to herself as “it,” while the letter is always “you.”
This entire poem is about all the things a letter doesn’t say: “the page I didn’t write,” “I only said the syntax,” “Tell him–No.” But the third stanza is where things get especially strange. She has already asked the letter to tell its recipient about the circumstances of its writing. But now she implores the letter to not tell him where it is hidden. How can it tell him where it’s hidden if it’s hidden and he doesn’t know where it is?
I think that what’s happening here over the course of the poem is the gradual conflation of the speaker with the letter–of the writer with her writing. We talk about how writers pour their hearts into their work, and in this case the act seems literal. In writing the letter, the speaker has poured herself out into it, become it. They have almost switched places–she has become “it,” while the letter is a human “you” that can tell, wish, get sleepy, flirt.
There’s something lovely in this notion that the writer becomes the writing, particularly when it comes to letters. It’s an oft-repeated platitude that handwritten letters are more personal, more intimate–and it’s true. We touch them, impart to them warmth, scent, energy, intent. We touch something that someone else then touches. We make something with our naked hands rather than by machine. We make it for one person, and one only. In writing a letter, we send a little fragment of ourselves.
We do not know how our letters will be received (on rare occasions they aren’t). To write them, to send them, to pour ourselves into the creation of them, is an act of trust. The nervousness Dickinson describes is palpable, and it reminds me of the little flip in my stomach every time I slip a letter into that irrevocable brass slot in the post office wall. A little piece of me has gone out into the world, never to return. As soon as the envelope, slim and svelte or bulging with scribbled words and glitter, falls from my fingers, I can no longer control its destiny. Often, as soon as it’s beyond my control, I think of all the things I didn’t say, the things I forgot, the things I wasn’t sure how to articulate in the moment. It’s tempting to want to call the letter back, to explain, to contextualize, to add on and flesh out.
Letter writing seems to be having a bit of a resurgence. Like the slow-food movement, it’s an attempt to be more mindful, more intentional, to slow down and appreciate–above all, to connect. This renaissance is due at least in part to the overwhelm of the internet, with its impersonal emails (Gmail now offers to finish your sentences for you with canned phrases) and shiny social media posts with premade filters that can give your restaurant meal the perfect lighting and your face the perfect makeup. A handwritten letter is not like these things. It is by definition imperfect because it is by definition human. Letters are deeply personal. We touch them, leave skin cells behind on them, lick envelopes. There is something visceral about them. In an age of filters and facebrags, letters are authentic. We send them out into the world, imperfect, and we cannot take them down, take them back, tweak them or revise them once they’ve left our hands.
There is a huge vulnerability in this irrevocability. It’s a vulnerability that modern technology discourages. It’s old-school, like the souls who still write letters. The beauty of Dickinson’s poem is that it’s still as true as the day she wrote it–maybe even truer. When we write a letter, we become that letter. We transform ourselves into words, speak ourselves into being, and then send our minds, hearts, souls, selves winging out across time and distance.
The Emily Project 