Do People moulder equally in the Grave…? Hold my beer.

“When I state myself, as the representative of the verse, it does not mean me, but a supposed person.”

“Death—so—the Hyphen of the Sea—” 1454

Do People moulder equally,
They bury, in the Grave?
I do believe a species
As positively live

As I, who testify it
Deny that I—am dead—
And fill my Lungs, for Witness—
From Tanks—above my Head—

I say to you, said Jesus—
That there be standing here—
A Sort, that shall not taste of Death—
If Jesus was sincere—

I need no further Argue—
That statement of the Lord
Is not a controvertible—
He told me, Death was dead— 

  FR391/J432

I included the quotes above because the first is Dickinson stating that she adopts personas in her poetry. The word “persona” was first used in the 17th century, but may or may not have been one Dickinson was familiar with. The second because Dickinson, in many, many of her poems, treats the sea as a kind of burial ground in and of itself. A great article at the Dickinson Electronic Archives examines just this propensity later in her career, writing:

Dickinson began writing poems that referred to the sea, and particularly to the experience or threat of drowning, with increasing frequency.

One of the poems, given as an example, begins: “Drowning is not so pitiful/As the attempt to rise.” Yothers, the author of the article, cites another poem, writing that “this capacity of the sea to engulf the human body and brain appears in another poem from 1863, Fr. 631A (MS H 90). The poem includes the lines: ““The River reaches to my Mouth – / Remember – when the Sea / Swept by my searching eyes – the last – / Themselves were quick – with Thee!”

The point is that like the earth’s surface, the sea’s surface is another division—a metaphorical and symbolic boundary—between living (above) and death (below). But undermining this nice metaphor is the diving bell and the diving suit, which Dickinson—given her love and knowledge of science and her frequent references to sailing and the sea—would certainly have been aware of. She took it as an opportunity to wryly undermine Christian theology. She starts by asking if people moulder differently:

  Do People moulder equally,
  They bury, in the Grave?
  I do believe a species
  As positively live

The initial question mischievously undermines the temptation to read this poem in the manner that some readers do. To wit, the question she asks isn’t: Do some live and some die in the Grave? No. Implicit in the question is that everyone moulders. Period. Do they moulder/rot unequally? Maybe. Possibly. But who cares? They’re dead. They’re mouldering. So there’s that. But then she goes on to say that there’s a “species” who live, but we won’t find them in the Grave, because she’s already eliminated that possibility through her mischievous rhetorical question. A “species” does live.

  As I, who testify it
  Deny that I—am dead—
  And fill my Lungs, for Witness—
  From Tanks—above my Head—

The temptation, including my own, is to treat a passage like this (as in so many of her poems) figuratively—as metaphor or metonymy. For example, does she really mean lungs? What does she mean by Tanks? What does she really mean by above my Head? And yet the quatrain is written with a straightforwardness that clearly describes a diving bell or suit. I see two possibilities. If one wants to read this figuratively, which is possible given Dickinson’s poetics, then the Lungs could be her poetry. Spoken poetry, after all, requires that the lungs be filled. The Tanks could be inspiration or even divine inspiration.

In short, Dickinson could be stating that she lives on in her poetry (a hoary old conceit, just ask Spenser and Shakespeare). Her poetry “testifies” to the denial of death. She writes, “[I] fill my lungs—[behold! or “for Witness” or look at the Tanks]—from Tanks—above my Head—” The Tanks could also mean you, the reader, though this strikes me as pushing the conceit to its limits and beyond. That said, we are, literally, above her Head (Dickinson, being buried). The second way to read this quatrain is to treat Dickinson as assuming a persona (that of the diver) and that she is straightforwardly describing a diving bell or suit. She is speaking to us as a diver who, in the next two quatrains, will use their living burial to troll scripture.

  
  I say to you, said Jesus—
  That there be standing here—
  A Sort, that shall not taste of Death—
  If Jesus was sincere—

Except that’s not quite what Jesus said. According to the King James translators, he said: “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” She could have written: “Some be that shall not taste of Death…” That would have kept the meter. Instead, one can read—”A Sort“—as Dickinson’s sly riposte. Remember that the poem’s opening lines flatly deny that there’s anything other than mouldering in the Grave. Option A is mouldering. Option B is mouldering. There is “a “buried Sort”, however, who don’t moulder. And they are buried at Sea. Viola!

  I need no further Argue—
  That statement of the Lord
  Is not a controvertible—
  He told me, Death was dead— 

Dickinson no longer needs to Argue with the true believers. She’s persuaded. Behold! For Witness! The statement of the Lord truly is incontrovertible. Here I stand, in my diving bell, buried and living where centuries and centuries of men lie dead and mouldering.

For witness what science and engineering have wrought!

The entirety of the poem, read this way, is Dickinson trolling Christian faith. You can almost see her in her diving suit, shrugging: See? Just like he said: Death is dead! The joke is that it isn’t faith but science and engineering that have defeated death, utterly undermining the scripture’s intent. On these terms, in other words, Dickinson will accept Jesus’s words as incontrovertible—but not on faith. (I do think there’s a lot of laughter in Dickinson’s poetry, and possibly more so than any of her 19th century peers.)

Nonetheless, one can also read the conceit as metaphor—ourselves as the “tanks” that give air and lungs to her poetry. But read this way, the deadpan “He told me, Death was dead—” loses its punch and humor. If Dickinson is declaring that she will live on in her poetry, then one wants to read the last line earnestly and devoutly. I have a hard time reading it that way (and the conceit would strike me as uncharacteristically ham-handed). Its colloquial directness suggests a dead-pan delivery. My instinct is to read Dickinson as assuming a persona (as she told Higginson she was wont to do) in order to impishly troll Christian doctrine (“I do not respect doctrines,” she once wrote a Mrs. Joseph Haven to explain her non-attendance at a church service [p. 8 Emily Dickinson’s Poetry, Weisbuch].) It’s as if someone said to her: If you don’t accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior then there will be no afterlife for you. To which she said: Hold my beer.

You cannot put a Fire out

“You can’t put a fire out,” she said so quietly that only Ímah could hear her, and she exhaled. “You can’t. A fire goes and goes, Ímah, and we endlessly give to fire the things that ignite and burn the world. You can’t fold a flood in your pocket, but the wind finds it out, tells the cedar and fells the cedar in wind and water.”

  You cannot put a Fire out—
  A Thing that can ignite
  Can go, itself, without a Fan—
  Upon the slowest night—

  You cannot fold a Flood—
  And put it in a Drawer—
  Because the Winds would find it out—
  And tell your Cedar Floor—

    [J530/FR583]

The opening paragraph above is from WistThistle: Along the Way, the second book in The Isles Quartet. In the first book and in the second book, the main character, Éhto, draws her words from a number of Dickinson’s poems, some less obviously than others. This is a different universe, where there is no Emily Dickinson, but I thought it would be fun to collaborate with her a little. I also thought I would examine the poem.

The first thing I would note are the parallels between this poem and Robert Frost’s later poem, Fire and Ice:

  Some say the world will end in fire,
  Some say in ice.
  From what I’ve tasted of desire
  I hold with those who favor fire.
  But if it had to perish twice,
  I think I know enough of hate
  To say that for destruction ice
  Is also great
  And would suffice.

Frost probably was not thinking of or inspired by Dickinson, but there is a similarity between the two. Dickinson contrasts fire and water, Frost contrasts fire and ice. There is the sense in Dickinson’s poem, that the fire and the water threaten to consume some aspect of her world. Frost makes the assertion directly.

  You cannot put a Fire out—
  A Thing that can ignite
  Can go, itself, without a Fan—
  Upon the slowest night—

[I originally tried writing text over an image—a newer feature of WordPress—but it was a complete disaster (because—Wordpress). So back to text.]

Anyway, as with so many of Dickinson’s poems, we’re given the choice to read her words literally, figuratively and/or as metonymy. For example, is she literally describing Fire and Flood, or are these figuratively referring to something else? Gossip? Grief? Jealousy? Longing? The list could go on and, frankly, any one of these might make sense of the poem. That we can read the poem in so many ways contributes to the poem’s universality. Nonetheless, some of us like to guess at what Dickinson might have actually had in mind. Interestingly, in one version of the poem she wrote “No Man can put a Fire out—”

Unlike the current day, Dickinson was seemingly untroubled by the use of “man” to refer to both men and women, and according to Dickinson scholars sometimes refers to herself (as a poet) using the masculine pronoun. I write seemingly because, according to my reading so far, there’s no record of her having bridled at the use of “Man” to signify humankind. It would probably be anachronistic to think that she would. So why did she settle on “You” rather than “Man”? I don’t really have a good theory except to nevertheless assert that “You” is more universalizing than “Man”. More revealingly, I think, her impulse to use “Man” suggests that she wasn’t addressing someone specific, but that she was using “You” the same way we do—as a sort of universal you that includes ourselves without having to specifically say “I” (which she could have).

So, what is she talking about? If it’s not literally “a fire”, then it’s something like fire. Something that’s troubling her, that won’t let her be, that doesn’t need a fan or a bellows (in the sense of fanning the flames) to keep it going, but that ignites the flammable mind even on the calmest or “slowest night”. She can’t quit thinking about it. One thought leads obsessively to the next like the leaping of a flame. In short, Emily is tossing and turning. Despite the slow night, her thoughts are a conflagration that feeds what it consumes.

  
  You cannot fold a Flood—
  And put it in a Drawer—
  Because the Winds would find it out—
  And tell your Cedar Floor—

In the second stanza she gives us a clue as to what it might be that’s driving her to madness—something that she can put in a Drawer, and that could be a letter or even a poem. If it’s a letter, then perhaps someone has written her something that she can’t set aside, and that sends us back to speculation. Is it gossip, grief, jealousy, longing?—some news or revelation as regards a relationship? Maybe because I’m a poet, and because I know that she’s written poems that seem similar to this—They shut me up in Prose—(specifically about her urge to express herself) I like to think that this poem is a further expression of her need, if not compulsion, to write. She might as well try to “fold a Flood”—referring to the flood of inspiration that drives her poetry. In other words, she could no more silence (fold away) her urge to write, putting it in a Drawer, than “you” could fold away floodwaters. The Winds (the daily knocks of living and life) would find and drive out what is hidden in that drawer. The flood must have its outlet or it will tell (or spill) on the Cedar Floor.

And what does she mean by Cedar Floor? This is very likely a metonymy for the home. In a sense, the floor is your house and your home. Go beyond the floor and you go outside. So, in that sense, if the flame of Dickinson’s relentless thought isn’t given the outlet of poetry (if she’s forced to fold and hide it in a drawer) then these thoughts and emotions will flood her home life. “You” cannot put away the flood (the sheer drama of living) in a drawer and not expect the dam (or something) to break. The “Winds”, life’s vicissitudes, will fill the dam and cause it to rupture (to flood the home) without the outlet of self-expression/poetry.

By “tell your Cedar Floor” she may mean that what remains secretive within the poem will be made stridently “public”—or family knowledge. The flame must speak, if not in poetry then by “telling” its troubles (if that’s what they are) aloud. One can read an implicit warning in the poem: Either let me write my poetry or my need to express my internal emotional state will flood the home—will be made external. It will tell itself to the Cedar Floor in all our rooms. Why cedar? Cedar can be used for flooring but was unlikely flooring in Dickinson’s Amherst. The reference is likely Biblical in origin. Cedar was considered a beautiful and fragrant wood. In that light, what Dickinson may be suggesting (with perhaps an acid tongue) is that the flood of her emotional life, without the outlet of poetry, will disrupt that beauty and fragrance (home life’s equanimity). Allow the wrong wind to move her on a given day and Dickinson will damned well tell your precious cedar equanimity a thing or two, and see how that goes. Wouldn’t you rather I write a poem? I read anger and an implicit threat in the second stanza—and also in the first.

It’s as if someone had said to her—why don’t you put aside your poem and make us some lovely and fragrant pudding? The duties of home life and womanhood will make you forget all this literary fussing of yours. Trust us. To which she dismissively and angrily says: “You cannot put a Fire out….”

But, as I wrote earlier, you can also read this poem as her reaction to a letter she has received and that she can’t stop thinking about. Folding it and putting it away won’t help. The contents threaten to disrupt home and house, her equanimity, but the poem ends without a solution. The poet is beside herself.

This was a Poet | This, That and Who?

This was a Poet — 
It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings —
And Attar so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door —
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it — before —

Of Pictures, the Discloser —
The Poet — it is He —
Entitles Us — by Contrast —
To ceaseless Poverty —

Of portion — so unconscious —
The Robbing — could not harm —
Himself — to Him — a Fortune —
Exterior — to Time —

[FR 446/J448]

So. I’ve read a second interpretation of this poem, now by Cristanne Miller (the first by Helen Vendler) and both interpretations seem to fudge the final quatrain. Both seem to muddle. The reasons for the confusion, as with many of Dickinson’s more abstruse poems, are the “nonrecoverable deletions” (as Cristanne Miller nicely describes them). Essentially, because of the constraints of form, Dickinson chooses to delete connectives and syntax that would guide a reader’s understanding.

• Aside: I know it’s peak heresy to ask this question, but I do wonder to what degree Dickinson was aware of her poetry’s frequent obscurity. I’ll make the baseline assumption that her poems made perfect sense to her. If you had asked her what she meant by the final quatrain of This was a Poet, she might have looked at you like you were daft. (She didn’t take well to Higginson’s critiques and he learned—quickly—not to offer them.) And that makes me wonder if anyone ever asked her for clarification? She did send many of her poems to friends and relations, especially Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Based on my own lifelong experience as a poet, I’m going to say, No. On the other hand, maybe they didn’t need clarification? They were living in the same town, the same culture, spoke over tea and exchanged letters. We might expect a reader like Susan to fill in the blanks. So the question is this: Was Dickinson knowingly obscure or was she too familiar with her own poetry to recognize its obscurity? To say that she was knowingly obscure strikes me as out and out anachronistic. Poets in the mid 19th century were writing to be understood. Full stop. The 20th century’s infatuation with “pointless obscurity”, as William Logan nicely put it, just wasn’t a thing when Dickinson was writing. Does that mean that Dickinson was too familiar with her own poetry? There’s probably an element of truth to that. Another way of putting is that she might have expected too much from readers other than friends and family. Her syntactic compression/ellipsis/metonymy is part and parcel of her poetic art, but that’s a fine line. I wouldn’t have her poetry any other way, but sometimes, we must admit that her meaning is every reader’s best guess.

  This was a Poet — 
  It is That [poetry]
  Distills amazing sense
  From ordinary Meanings —
  And Attar so immense

My impression is that most readers interpret That as referring to the Poet. This would be Miller’s interpretation and, unless I’m mistaken, Vendler’s. I actually read That as referring not to the poet but to poetry in general. Normally this would be a four line stanza. R.W. Franklin notes that these lines are made four lines in “derivative collections” and Miller prints the poem this way (in her book A Poet’s Grammar). This makes the first line read: This was a Poet — It is That. Printing the poem this way makes it more tempting to associate That with the Poet. But if we print it according to Dickinson’s own lineation, then the assertion This was a Poet stands by itself. The statement is in the past tense and I read it, in a sense, as an epitaph. I read the poem as like a scene in a play. We’re accompanying Dickinson (or the speaker) on a nice afternoon’s walk through the graveyard (actually a thing in Victorian times). As we accompany Dickinson, she pauses at a grave stone we might have overlooked. She says,”This was a Poet.” Recognizing the poet’s grave, she then is reminded of his poetry and says, almost to herself, “It is That, that distills amazing sense from Ordinary meanings”. In her book “Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them”, Miller notes that in his “Letter to a Young Contributor”, Higginson wrote, “Literature is attar of roses, one distilled drop from a million blossoms”. This was the letter that prompted Dickinson to write Higginson and suggests that Dickinson’s own imagery was inspired by Higginson.

  And Attar so immense

  From the familiar species
  That perished by the Door —
  We wonder it was not Ourselves
  Arrested it — before —

  Of Pictures, the Discloser —

That Dickinson uses the word “immense” suggests Higginson’s “million blossoms”. Also worth noting, I think, is the notion that what “perished by the Door” was made into attar. Keep that in the back of your mind. The narrator, standing by the gravestone, next expresses appreciation for the genius of poetry. The poet’s skill is such that she wonders why we don’t ourselves “arrest”/grasp/comprehend what poetry, after the fact, makes self-evident. Poetry is “Of Pictures” (possibly meaning imagery) the “Discloser”. That is, poetry is the art that reveals truth through the language of imagery, archetype, and symbol.

So far, so good. It's the last third of the poem where matters get muddled. [Note: For an interpretation I find more convincing and simpler than my own, be sure to read the comment section; then decide for yourself.]

  The Poet — it is He —
  Entitles Us — by Contrast —
  To ceaseless Poverty —

  Of portion — so unconscious —
  The Robbing — could not harm —
  Himself — to Him — a Fortune —
  Exterior — to Time —

Now, here’s my thought: If we keep in mind that Dickinson, at the very outset of the poem distinguishes between two subjects, the Poet (deceased) and “Poetry”—the That that makes the perished into attar—we have the makings of a contrast. Dickinson even spells it out. “By Contrast—” she writes. The speaker returns our attention to the deceased Poet (after describing poetry’s power). That is, unlike his or her poetry, by contrast, the Poet will not be made into attar. The Poet has perished. It’s possible to break down these lines into three separate assertions:

  The Poet — it is He —
  Entitles Us — by Contrast —
  To ceaseless Poverty —

The death of the Poet, in contrast to his poetry, is a cause of ceaseless Poverty. Ceaseless because his death is final. Dickinson isn’t referring to the The Poet, but to Death. Then she moves on to her next thought:

  Of portion — so unconscious —
  The Robbing — (!)

In a highly compressed fashion, she is accusing Death of thoughtlessness and indifference. Of portion, she says sarcastically, Death is unconscious/thoughtless/indifferent. In other words, she expresses dismay at Death’s indifference to the “portion” that is really being robbed from us—not just a man but a great artist—a Shakespeare, a Keats or a Brontë. She expresses dismay at Death’s indifference to who he robs from us.

                  — could not harm —
  Himself — to Him — a Fortune —
  Exterior — to Time —

Now she moves onto her third thought. And here, if I’m interpreting the poem correctly, Dickinson’s final lines remind me very much of the closing lines to her poem, Because I could not stop for Death:

  Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
  Feels shorter than the Day

There’s that same sense of timelessness—not the timelessness of paradise, but of awareness exiled from time’s rituals—a nothing that is both death and deathless. That is, just as with the narrator in Because I could not stop for Death, the Poet’s centuries feel shorter than the day. The conclusion just as laden with contradiction—but also consistent. According to biographers, Dickinson refused to “accept Christ” (and presumably the afterlife that went along with that) but she also seemed unwilling to accept the death of the soul. This may disappoint some metaphysical naturalists among my readers (and you know who you are) but asking Dickinson, in her era and culture, to throw the soul out with the Christian bathwater, is probably asking too much.

Though Death has robbed us of the Poet, Death cannot rob the Poet of his “Fortune”. The Poet takes what is most precious about him with him (Dickinson was untroubled, according to Vendler, by the use of He/Him in reference to herself as a poet). He takes his creative genius—his Fortune—into that deathless death that is exterior to time. Death can rob us of the poet’s creative genius, but cannot rob the Poet himself. “[Death] could not harm—Himself [the Poet]”. To Him—to himself—the poet’s Fortune is now exterior to time. Yet one is very hesitant to read this as triumphing over Death. Dickinson ends the poem, as with Because I could not stop for Death, with irreconcilable contradiction. She is both deceased and conscious. And that might be part of the point. The contradiction, the dissonance, is part of the tragedy.

• From Vendler’s Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries: “Dickinson here uses a capitalized universalized “he” in reference to the Poet; I follow her reverent practice. She assumes the ungendered nature of the Platonic Idea of the Poet. She would not have said that she meant to exclude, by the pronoun “He,” the women Poets whose works she admired: Elizabeth Barret Browning, George Eliot, and Emily Brontë.” [p. 212-213]

Edit: It’s tempting to read “Exterior — to Time” as the poet’s poetry triumphing over time. In other words, his fortune—his poetry—is exterior to death and time. The problem with this reading is that it seemingly contradicts the speaker’s earlier assertion that He entitles us to “ceaseless poverty”. One has to explain this apparent contradiction. My own way around this is to treat her final lines as a reference to the deceased Poet rather than to His or Her poetry (and Because I could not stop may give us a precedence for such a reading).

Worth mentioning is that she could be describing herself in This was a Poet—commenting on her own death. In this sense, This was a Poet and Because I could not stop for Death can be read as describing the same event—her own death. The former is from the perspective of the living, reflecting on the poet’s death, while the latter is from the perspective of the deceased poet.

I haven’t said much about Vendler or Miller’s interpretations because they’re so different from mine. I don’t know how to summarize their readings (and frankly find them somewhat scattershot and confusing). How exactly does Vendler land on plagiarism, for example? What and where does that come from? Vendler summarizes the closing couplet this way:

“Dickinson points out the degree to which the Poet’s capacity to notice, to notice everything, and then disclose His “Pictures,” makes us notice things too… And third, Dickinson points out the indifference of the Poet to us (or to anyone else), an indifference arising not from self-esteem but from His (to him unconscious) Fortune. He is so unaware of the grace bestowed on Him, of the great “Portion” of wealth He has inherited, that no robbing from his worth can harm Him (plagiarism of His work by others does not affect our recognition of the true Poet). He moves in a world (in Dickinson’s great phrase) “Exterior — to Time — “… He is as unaware of Time (and its obverse, Eternity) as He is of us. [p. 213-214]

So you can see how different our interpretations are. Vendler doesn’t even interpret the poem as being that of a deceased Poet (and this despite describing the opening line as a past-tense epitaph in the very first sentence of her analysis). According to Vendler, if I understand her correctly, Dickinson is describing the archetypal experience(?) of reading poetry. It seems to me that Vendler spends less time interpreting the poem than ‘biographizing’. Miller interprets the poem as Dickinson expressing (for lack of a better term) gender resentment(?). She reads Dickinson as addressing male poets (and not the Platonic Idea of the Poet) in her use of He, and frames the contrast as one of “difference and of strength”.

“As a younger sister of a favored son and as a consciously female poet, however, Dickinson might well differentiate herself with some resentment from the poet who creates unconsciously and with ease, the man of ceaseless, inherited cultural wealth. Evidently during this time when she wrote or at least copied “This was a Poet” for her own safekeeping, the contrast between herself as artist and the world was particularly vivid. In the fascicle where she binds this poem, Dickinson precedes it with two poems on similar differences. In the first, “It would have starved a Gnat — / To live so small as I — ” (612), the speaker brags that she can live on even less that a gnat, and without his privileges to fly to more sustaining places or to die. In the poem immediately preceding “This was a Poet,” the speaker is a “Girl” poet “shut… up in Prose — ” by uncomprehending adults, whom she escapes “easy as a Star” by willing herself to be free (613).  Later in the fascicle Dickinson includes “It was given to me by the Gods” (454), a poem about another “little Girl” far richer with her handful of “Gold” than anyone could guess and richer than anyone else is: “The Difference — made me bold —” she confides. These are poems of difference and of strength, whether these qualities stem from unique starvation or mysterious wealth.” [Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar p. 120-121]

Miller interprets Dickinson’s use of That, in reference to the Poet, as suggesting the poet’s “lack of humanity”.

“The poet’s lack of humanity is further suggested by his peculair invulnerability in the last stanza: “a Fortune — / Exterior — to Time —” is glorious as a description of immortal poems but somewhat mechanical and materialistic as a description of a man. We are poor, capable of “wonder,” within “Time,” while He is alone, “Exterior” to our world, knowable only “by Contrast.” [p. 120]

“The poet/narrator who speaks in Dickinson’s poem considers herself a part of the admiring, ordinary crowd rather than separate from it. Her stance indicates that not all poets share “His” isolation from community.” [p. 121]

So, from Miller, we have a feminist critique based on a reading of He as a specifically gendered reference; and not, as Vendler asserts, a universalized He. It could be argued, in that respect, that Miller’s reading is potentially anachronistic (giving too much weight to the pronoun). Miller’s interpretation is also, arguably, based on reading the first two lines as one (which is not how Dickinson preserved the poem).

At any rate, there’s my 2 cents. Spend it how you will.

upinVermont | March 12 2024

I felt a funeral in my brain | Oblivion or Breakthrough?

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

[F340/J280]

This is a fascinating poem simply because so much of its weight and meaning rests entirely on how one interprets the meaning of a handful of words. Each word exists in a sort of splendid isolation that conversely affects the meaning of every other word. To begin with, how does one interpret “sense”? How does one interpret “Plank”, “World”, “Finished” or “knowing” ? How does one interpret “breaking through”. This latter phrase, fascinatingly, appears twice in an alternative draft. Rather than writing “And Finished knowing”, Dickinson wrote “And Got through — knowing”. So, in one draft at least, the conceit of breaking through and getting through appears both in the first and last stanza, arguing that this conceit of break through is something we should be paying attention to. That is, the central conceit of the poem may not be oblivion or defeat, which is understandably how the poem is universally (as far as I know) interpreted (including recently by Vendler), but the opposite. In my usual contrarian way, I read this poem as a grim triumph; and my reasons for doing so are not just internal to the poem but have to do with the poem that follows it in Dickinson’s fascicle.

  I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
  And Mourners to and fro
  Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
  That Sense [sanity] was breaking through - [in the sense of falling into a chasm]

It’s tempting to read “breaking through” in the sense that sanity was “breaking through” the imagined drama of the funeral, but based on the stanza that follows, my hunch is that this would be misreading Dickinson’s meaning and anachronistic. I looked up breakthrough in the Oxford English Dictionary and was surprised that the noun—a breakthrough—doesn’t appear. I had to go to Webster’s where they pinned the noun’s appearance at 1918 and only in the sense of a military “breakthrough”—as in there was a breakthrough of the enemy’s defenses. It wasn’t until 1968 that the modern usage of “a scientific breakthrough” appeared.

What is the “Funeral”? No one seems to be certain. Some speculate that it was dissappointment as regards a love or friendship, while others suggest a spiritual crisis (her rejection of Christian belief and dogma). (Dickinson’s biopgrahper Sewall writes, for instance, that “Reason “breaks” may be a tortured requiem on her hopes for [Samuel] Bowles both to love her and to accept her poetry… [p. 502]) Later in the poem she will describe the footfall of the funeral attendants as creaking across her soul. In that sense, her soul is the floor, the foundation upon which her existence is predicated, and it’s this floor—her soul—that her sanity is breaking through. In other words, not even her soul can support the weight of her suffering. That floor, her soul, gives out and she plunges into nothingness.

  And when they all were seated,
  A Service, like a Drum -
  Kept beating - beating - till I thought
  My mind was going numb - 

This stanza is fairly straightforward, but for modern readers, I think, it does the work of clarifying the meaning of the first stanza. Clearly, Dickinson is describing a sort of mental breakdown, first of sanity, then of awareness. I interpret her ‘mind going numb’ as her failing awareness of anything other than suffering.

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,

The reader is likely meant to interpret the ‘Box’ as a casket (within which lies her “deceased” relationship, beliefs or she herself), but in her numb (touchless) and senseless (visionless) state, the only sense left to her is hearing. Lead would be a highly unlikely metal for heels, being soft and malleable, but I was curious if metal heels, of any kind, were a thing in the 19th century. A not-exhaustive search didn’t turn up anything. Dickinson was likely describing the heavy footfall of the mourners as leaden. Additionally, those carrying a casket are likely to walk in lock-step and their steps will be made heavier by the weight of the corpse within. If the corpse is Dickinson herself—or her mind—then the floor (her soul) is the last creaking stay against her ultimate descent into nothingness—although that begs the question: What exactly is her soul—what does Dickinson consider it?—if it’s the floor on which her being exists, then what falls through? How does she distinguish her soul from her mind? If it’s not her soul tumbling into nothingness, then what is it? But it’s also possible to read too closely and too literally. Her imagery is not static but makes her soul both the floor and the essence that falls through its own being.

  Then Space [existence] - began to toll,

  As all the Heavens were a Bell,
  And Being, but an Ear, 
[All of existence was the bell and I was nothing but the Ear.]
  And I, and Silence, some strange Race
  Wrecked, solitary, here -
[Both Dickinson and silence are, in a sense, banished and alone] 

This stanza is difficult to parse. Cristanne Miller clumps this sort of syndetic writing (the repeated use of conjunctions) under parataxis (in that there are no subordinating conjunctions to guide our understanding). Is each ‘and’ meant to refer Ear, I and Silence back to ‘being’?—or is Dickinson imitating a sort of cumulative madness. My reading is that the latter is the case, but that two different states of being are described. In the first two lines she’s describing her experience consumed by the tolling bell. The second two liken that experience to being banished, wrecked and helplessly alone. She is banished. The Emily Dickinson Lexicon defines Race, among other definitions, as a “Course; journey; progression; steady movement toward a goal; [fig.] life; continued course of existence after death.” So Dickinson could be referring to her experience as a kind of ‘strange journey’. She could also be using “Race” in the sense of not belonging. If this is a spiritual crisis (a rejection of Christian theology) then she’s apt to feel as though she belongs to an altogether different “race” or society—wrecked/ostracized and solitary/alone. The same feeling may apply if her romantic overtures have been rejected. Her strangeness, her identity as an ambitious female poet, also could make her feel like an altogether ostracized “race”—and both interpretations could apply. One gets the sense that she wasn’t the kind of woman men pursued in those days.

  And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
  And I dropped down, and down -
  And hit a World, at every plunge,
  And Finished knowing - then -

And now, as usual with Dickinson’s final stanzas, things get interesting—very interesting. There are two very different ways to read this stanza. I think most, if not all, interpret this stanza as the threatened conclusion to the prior three stanzas. If Dickinson is describing the pain of a lost relationship, for example, then it makes sense to read this stanza as her descent into madness or nothingness. We interpret “plank” as a continuation of the imagery that associated the creaking floor with her soul and we might associate Reason with the Sense or sanity in the first stanza. In other words, her sanity and reason finally give way to madness. Her soul, the floor/plank upon which the funeral takes place, breaks or “breaks through”. She drops down and down. ‘World’, in this sense, might be her memories. In other words, every memory is a “world”. Once she has exhausted those memories, she is “finished knowing”. Even hearing is gone. (Interestingly, one will read that hearing is the last sense to die in a dying patient, but how scientists know this has never been explained.) The loss of her relationship, or hoped for relationship, is like a death to her. Vendler, who apparently can’t bear to kill poor Emily, describes the final lines as “leaving madness for a merciful unconsciousness”. But this poem would hardly be the first to suggest oblivion as the last word.

But let’s suppose the crisis is spiritual, then that makes an entirely different interpretation possible. A plank can also be “one of the separate articles in a declaration of the principles of a party or cause; as, a plank in the national platform.” This is not a possibility that you will find at the Dickinson Lexicon, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary, this understanding of the word plank appeared in poetry nearly a quarter century before Dickinson wrote this poem, as well as in Newspaper articles going back to 1848. That Dickinson, of all poets, would have been unaware of this meaning of “plank” is unlikely.

• In William Logan’s book Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods, wherein Logan gives I felt a funeral a close reading, he credits Cynthia Griffin with the observation that “a telling emblem from the book Religious Allegories (1848), [shows] a gentleman crossing a plank that bestrides a dark abyss. The man holds a radiant book that must be the Bible, the plank is carved with the word “FAITH” and a shining mansion awaits his crossing.” [p. 260]

If “I felt a funeral in my brain” was prompted by a spiritual crisis, and we know, according to Richard Sewall, that Dickinson was greatly troubled by her refusal to join her peers in declaring Jesus as their Lord and savior. This wasn’t just a figurative refusal. There were repeated calls for her to join the revivals at Amherst.

It is in the sixth letter, written a fortnight later (January 31, 1846), that a New Year’s meditations come to a focus on spiritual matters. Save for a gossipy postscript, the letter, a long one, is entirely given over to religion. Emily confesses to Abiah that she did not become a Christian during the revival of the previous winter in Amherst. She has seen “many who felt there was nothing in religion… melted at once,” and it has been “really wonderful to see how near heaven came to sinful mortals.” Once, “for a short time,” she had known this beatific state herself, when “I felt I had found my savior.” “I never enjoyed.” she wrote, “such perfect peace and happiness.” But “I soon forgot my morning prayer or else it was irksome to me. One by one my old habits returned and I cared less for religion than ever.” At Abiah’s recent announcement that she was close to conversion, Emily “shed many tears.” She herself longs to follow after: “I fell that I shall never by happy without I love Christ.” But midway through the letter she makes a striking admission. a real bit of self-discovery. Putting aside the revival rhetoric, she seems to be speaking her own voice (even to the misspelling):

Perhaps you will not beleive it Dear A., but I attended none of the meetings last winter. I felt that I was so easily excited that I might again be deceived and I dared not trust myself.

This revelation is followed by a long passage on the dreadful thought of Eternity… [p. 381]

Knowing this, the meaning of “plank” takes on a whole new meaning. It’s not just a reference to her soul (which she earlier compared to the creaking floor) but a punning reference to the “plank” of Christian beliefs.

  And then a Plank [an important principle on which the activities of a group... are based] in Reason [her own reasoning or the reasoning of others], broke,
  And I dropped down, and down -
  And hit a World, at every plunge,
  And Finished knowing - then -

What does she mean by “hit a World” in this case? In Dickinson’s poem Bereavement in their death to fell, Dickinson offers us some possibilities. In the line ‘’tis as if Our souls/Absconded‘, she also considers the words World, selves and Sun for souls. In other words, these were all in some sense synonymous. Interestingly, the context is also similar, arguing that this is a sort of Dickinsonian image cluster.

• Certain images seem regularly to have led Shakespeare’s mind along a train of associated ones. Walter Whiter, in his Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeare (1794), showed that flattery suggested dogs, which suggested sweetmeats. The phenomenon was more fully discussed by E. A. Armstrong in his Shakespeare’s Imagination: A Study of the Psychology of Association and Inspiration (1946), and is used by Kenneth Muir as evidence of authorship in his Shakespeare as Collaborator (1960).

So, with that in mind, Dickinson gives us at least two alternate readings for World—soul and self. And in that light, her hitting “a World, at every plunge” might refer to previous selves, or other versions of Emily Dickinson (like the Dickinson who had found her savior) until she finally gets through (got through in one revision of the poem) her “Knowing”. And what does ‘knowing’ mean? As it turns out, ‘knowing’ has a very specific meaning in Christian contexts. Look up the meaning of know and you will read that “knowing God is not simply an intellectual apprehension, but a response of faith and an acceptance of Christ.”

It is he who has made God known ( John 1:18 ).To know Christ is to know God ( John 14:7 ). Eternal life is to know the true God and Jesus Christ ( John 17:3 ). Paul desires to know Christ in his death and resurrection ( Php 3:10 ). Failure to know Jesus as Lord and Messiah ( Acts 2:36 ) resulted in his rejection and crucifixion ( 1 Cor 2:8 ).

To know Christ is to know truth ( John 8:32 ). While this is personal, it is also propositional. Knowledge of the truth ( 1 Tim 2:4 ; 2 Tim 2:25 ; 3:7 ; Titus 1:1 ) is both enlightenment and acceptance of the cognitive aspects of faith.

This knowing, this acceptance of Christ, is precisely what Dickinson could not accept. So, read in this light, what Dickinson might be saying is that the funeral in her brain is the rhetoric of proselytizing that already condemns her as dead to God and comes or threatens to bury her. The good Christians “mourn for her” and their mourning is like an endless treading that threatens to drive Dickinson to madness. Their “service” is like a drum that keeps beating, that won’t leave her in peace or silence. The culture of Christianity surrounding her cajoles, threatens, and proselytizes until she feels her mind going numb. Their insistence is like a drumbeat. Their boots (their own beliefs) are, to Dickinson, leaden. Their step is heavy on her soul and creaks under their weight. The religious imagery continues as she describes all the Heavens as a ringing bell, so pervasive that she feels herself reduced to a tortured ear. In another of her poems, she gives tongues to the bells and, in that sense, the bell is also proselytizing.

• Isaiah 55:3

  “Incline your ear and come to Me.
  Listen, that you may live;
  And I will make an everlasting covenant with you…

• Matthew 13:16-17

  But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.

She, and her precious silence, are wrecked and solitary. As a fascinating side note, John Keats so despised the ringing of church bells that he wrote a sonnet on the subject:

  Sonnet. Written In Disgust Of Vulgar Superstition

  The church bells toll a melancholy round,
  Calling the people to some other prayers,
  Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
  More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound.
  Surely the mind of man is closely bound
  In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
  Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,
  And converse high of those with glory crown'd.
  Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp,--
  A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
  That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
  That 'tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
    Into oblivion; -- that fresh flowers will grow,
    And many glories of immortal stamp.

This poem absolutely would have been read and known to Dickinson (note some of the interesting parallels—the drumbeat of Dickinson’s service, the horrid sound of Keats’s sermon; the melancholy round of Keats’s churchbells, the tortuous tolling of Dickinson’s bell; Keat’s damp chill, as from a tomb, and Dickinson’s funeral). Remember, from our previous discussion, that Dickinson put Keats at the top of her reading list during the same year that she wrote I felt a funeral.

  And hit a World, at every plunge,
  And Finished knowing - then -

The poem concludes with grim determination. The plank (the stated beliefs of their and/or her own reasoning) breaks under so much weight. She plunges through untold “Worlds” or selves or beliefs, her own and those of others, until she finally, as she wrote in one revision, gets or “got through”. She is finished with “knowing”—she will not accept Christ. And then the poem ends on the word then. This is where things get even more interesting. When Dickinson placed “I felt a funeral in my brain” in her fascicles, she followed it with ‘Tis so appalling — it exhilarates. Both poems were written the same year, and if we don’t know the reason Dickinson placed these poems next to each other, we know that she did. It is possible, for example to read “then” as leading directly into the next poem, such that both poems can be read as one:

  (...)
  And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
  And I dropped down, and down -
  And hit a World, at every plunge,
  And Finished knowing - then -

  'Tis so appalling — it exhilarates —
  So over Horror, it half Captivates —
  The Soul stares after it, secure —
  A Sepulchre, fears frost, no more —

  To scan a Ghost, is faint —
  But grappling, conquers it —
  How easy, Torment, now —
  Suspense kept sawing so —

  The Truth, is Bald, and Cold —
  But that will hold —
  If any are not sure —
  We show them — prayer —
  But we, who know,
  Stop hoping, now —

  Looking at Death, is Dying —
  Just let go the Breath —
  And not the pillow at your Cheek
  So Slumbereth —  

  Others, Can wrestle —
  Yours, is done —
  And so of Woe, bleak dreaded — come,
  It sets the Fright at liberty —
  And Terror's free —
  Gay, Ghastly, Holiday!

In this case, the word then is a transition to the next poem and the revelation that once the horror is past, the soul can “[stare] after it, secure”. But let’s say that Dickinson did put these two poems together meaning them to be read together. She still does the unexpected. ‘Tis so appalling (as discussed earlier) is more sarcasm, scorn and contempt, than celebration. If one reads ‘Tis so appalling as a companion poem, then I felt a Funeral, in my Brain is Dickinson refusing to accept Christ while ‘Tis so appalling — it exhilarates — is her sarcastic, darkly humorous riposte, saying, Great! “Gay, Ghastly Holiday!” Now what? She has escaped the leaden boots of Christian dogma, to believe in what?

One might object by saying that if these two poems are meant to be read as one, then why not every poem in her fascicle? That’s a fair objection but, conversely, she didn’t just roll the dice. The whole point of the fascicle, after all, was to arrange the poetry. It’s not far-fetched to assert that the reason these two poems are together is that, for Dickinson, they were associated.

Which interpretation do I prefer? If the poem is about a disappointment in love, friendship or her disappointment as an artist, then we’re greeted with a poem that conveys her suffering through analogy with the Christian rituals of burial. Her suffering is like a funeral. The persistence of the suffering and weight of it is like the leaden tread of the mourners. Heaven in her poem is not the heaven of paradise but the remorseless tongue of dogma, the church bell, ostracizing her, rejecting her, driving her to desperate madness. The service meant to offer solace and comfort is a brutal and annihilating drumbeat. Even if Emily Dickinson is not having a spiritual crisis, Emily Dickinson’s imagery is.

Lastly, Sewall credits Ruth Miller with identifying I felt a Cleaving in my Mind— as a variant poem of I felt a funeral.

  I felt a Cleaving in my mind —
    As if my Brain had split —
  I tried to match it, Seam by Seam —
    But could not make them fit —

  The thought behind, I strove to join
    Unto the thought before —
  But Sequence ravelled out of Sound —
    Like Balls — upon a Floor.

[FR867/J937,J992]

Similar themes appear, though without the oppressive Christian rituals. The poem is said to be written in 1864, two years after I felt a funeral. I know I’m treading on sacred ground with leaden heels, but compared to the former, this poem feels more like the product of a doodle taken from one of her envelope poems—as though the conceit occurred to Dickinson and she ran with it. That’s not to say that the poem doesn’t succeed, just that it reads as though it’s eight parts “art” and maybe two parts “autobiography”. The impression is made more so with the revision she later sent to Susan Dickinson:

  The Dust behind I strove to join
  Unto the Disk before —
  But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
  Like Balls upon a Floor —

What I like about the revision is what it reveals as regards Emily the artist and craftsman. She wasn’t just an instinctive genius, but a thinking and discerning artist perfecting her craft. Sure, there is a portion of her poetry that are her letters to the world—but I would argue that a portion are also the product of a craftsman, someone to whom metaphors and analogies came easily, along with the ideas usefully expressed by them. Her first version—”thought behind, I strove to join/Unto the thought before“—effectively communicates the central idea, but “a thought” is an abstract thing. Like any poet/craftsman, she knew that a poem lives or dies in its imagery, its power to evoke through figurative language and the five senses. The fragments of the poem’s thoughts don’t just roll out of reach (her first version), but ravel out of Sound. So, she added specificity to the thoughts. The thought behind becomes dust and the thought before becomes the Disk. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” explains “the dust”, but what is the Disk? Vendler interprets Disk as “the Sun of sunrise”, symbolizing a new beginning, and I think she’s right. She quotes Dickinson’s four line poem “The pattern of the sun”, as evidence for her interpretation:

  The pattern of the sun
  Can fit but him alone
  For sheen must have a Disk
  To be a sun —

So anyway, whereas I felt a funeral reads like a poem arising from a real crisis, I felt a Cleaving reads more like a work of art—to me.

Amherst MA
Amherst Manuscript # 421
Amherst – Amherst Manuscript # 421 – The pattern of the sun – asc:7785 – p. 1

FR401/J365 | Me & Vendler on Dickinson’s Dare you see a Soul at the “White Heat”?

Reading poem 401 and Vendler’s three page, close reading provoked me to write another post. Vendler’s reading is one of those curious examples where she manages to go on at length without ever actually interpreting the poem. If the poem were a car, she would tell, through many attendant examples drawn from her voluminous literary knowledge, that the wheels were, in fact, round, that it had a steering wheel, headlights and brake lights, and then move on to the next automobile. Vendler writes at the outset: “To show, in verse, a soul passing through flame, and beyond it to the “White Heat” of incandescence, is a daunting undertaking.” To which I’d respond: “Yes, and?” And the “and” never shows up. Whenever Vendler gets into the etymology of words it’s usually a sign that she isn’t sure of what to say, so she’s going to throw glitter in the reader’s eye. It’s an impressive way to state the obvious. She’ll write of the final quatrain:

To compose an ending for her second, allegorical insight, Dickinson introduces three unexpected new insights. The first is that the Ores (with their initial admixture of dross) have been “impatient” to be purified. “Patient” comes from the Latin patior, to “suffer”; and in her use of “impatience,” Dickinson asserts that  the Ores were not merely passively undergoing the Forge’s assaultive procedures, but rather longing for their completion.” [p. 182]

In other words, an incredibly long-winded and pedantic way of explaining that “impatient”, in case you didn’t know, means “impatient”. At any rate, she spends all three pages spinning words like this.  The closest she comes to actually interpreting the poem (which she beautifully does in other poems) is in the final paragraph. She writes:

“Dickinson’s refashioning of the Christian narrative of God’s chastening purgation of the soul takes it into an entirely personal and secular sphere. Yet, paradoxically, the Bible remains the only location in which the poet can find sufficiently evocative symbols for her interior development.” [p. 183]

Yes, and? But that’s where Vendler leaves it. So let’s see if we can find out what Dickinson might have had in mind when writing the poem. What does she, possibly, mean?

Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?
Then crouch within the door —
Red — is the Fire's common tint —
But when the vivid Ore

Has vanquished Flame's conditions,
It quivers from the Forge
Without a color, but the light
Of unanointed Blaze.

Least Village has its Blacksmith
Whose Anvil's even ring
Stands symbol for the finer Forge
That soundless tugs — within —

Refining these impatient Ores
With Hammer, and with Blaze
Until the Designated Light
Repudiate the Forge —

As with other of her poems, this one has the feeling of defiance and argument, as though she were responding to (or feeling challenged by) something someone else has written or said. Nearly all of Shakespeare’s Sonnets have that feeling, as if between each of them there was a missing letter full of accusation and argument. To what might Dickinson have been responding?

My Dear Emily,

Honestly! Why do you persist in your determination to avoid Christian society? Some several weeks, I am sure, have passed since I or anyone have been so fortunate as to be graced by your presence! Surely tell us what keeps you so aloof? What ailment or, if not ailment, then what self-afflicted absorption so needlessly sequesters you? The Minister was in a White Heat this last Sunday! Why, you should have been there to see how he shook our little institution to the very foundations. You might have thought his words the hammer, the podium his anvil and we the ore set ablaze in the fine forge of our church. I do not think I overstate but that everyone set forth that day as fine a Christian as has ever been—our annointed souls ringing with the minister’s anvil. Why you insist on your vexatious and un-Christian quandaries will ever be a puzzlement to me.

Yours in Christ,

Victoria

To which Dickinson, much peeved, replied: “Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?” You want to see a soul at white heat? I’ll show you a soul at white heat. From that furious question, beginning with “Dare” (in which I can’t help but hear—How dare you?), I read Dickinson’s poem as a defense of her isolation and life as a free-thinking poet.

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) was one of the more prominent freethinkers of his time. He was known as the “Great Agnostic”. Ingersoll, a lawyer, an orator and a Civil War veteran, is famous for his skeptical approaches to popular religious beliefs. He would speak in public about orthodox views and would often poke fun at them. Guests would pay $1 to hear him speak (equivalent to $30 in 2022).^[4] Ingersoll was the leader of the American Secular Union, successor organization to the National Liberal League. [Wikipedia 10/14/23]

Then “crouch by the door”, she says. And that door I interpret as being to her bedroom (or writing room). She writes that red is the “common tint”. I read that as referring to the common Christian notion of purgation. By contrast, her own inspiration (heated in the forge of her imagination ) comes out of the forge without being colored by any dogma or theology. Her imagination and reasoning is “the light/Of unanointed Blaze”. I read ananointed as referring to her spiritual beliefs (reflected in her poetry) as being without the stamp of Christian theological approval.

Least Village has its Blacksmith
Whose Anvil's even ring
Stands symbol for the finer Forge
That soundless tugs — within —

Refining these impatient Ores
With Hammer, and with Blaze

These lines I read as her equating the Blacksmith with the poet and free thinker—herself. The least village, she writes, has its poet whose anvil (the paper on which she writes) stands as a symbol for a “finer forge”—a rational spirituality rather than the ordinary color of Christian dogma. The poet’s pursuit of a spirituality founded in reason soundlessly tugs within, refining “these impatient Ores” (her spiritual quest for answers) with a poet’s “hammer” and “blaze” (pen and inspiration).

Until the Designated Light
Repudiate the Forge —

Until the poem, which is the “Designated Light”, repudiates (transcends) the forge. In other words, DIckinson’s poetry makes real, makes manifest, the imagined and in doing so transcends what’s merely imagined within the forge and during the forging. The poem, by existing, repudiates the notion that her beliefs are purely imaginary. They are the real embodiment of her spirituality. These poems, in other words, are her bid for true immortality. They are her Designated Light. In some ways, in my opinion, this poem is possibly Dickinson’s most profound statement of her faith in her poetry—and her choice to write poetry.

Up in Vermont | October 14 2023

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