“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.
PoemShape 