Poem of the Week 2024/46

Air has no Residence, no Neighbor,

No Ear, no Door,

No Apprehension of Another

Oh, Happy Air!

Ethereal Guest at e'en an Outcast's Pillow –

Essential Host, in Life's faint, wailing Inn,

Later than Light thy Consciousness accost me

Till it depart, persuading Mine –

– Emily Dickinson

Possibly the first science fact that made a huge impression on me was the statement "Air is everywhere". I'm not sure what about it hit my first-grade brain with such force. Perhaps it was just the realization that where I had thought there was Nothing, there was in fact Something, something unseen but ever-present, even unavoidable, something that, without knowing it, I had depended on from the moment of birth..

Dickinson begins this poem with something of that aura (or, we might say, something of that air) of being present & necessary while also absent. Air is disembodied, as the poet implicitly wishes she were: no set residence, so no housekeeping or neighbors; no ears to have to listen to them, no doors either keeping one in or letting other people in (as there's no residence, air is always out, without needing to go out formally through something so mundane as a door). Above all, air has no apprehension of another, and apprehension can mean both understanding or grasping conceptually a person or thing & also anxiety or fear about dealing with a person or thing. The poet is wishing to be cut off from the limitations, the bother, the unpleasantness & boredom, & also the anxieties & fears, of life: free from all that, like the Air; Oh, Happy Air!

But can Air actually be happy? Underlying the conception here is an assumption of consciousness: the poet wishes to be as free as the air, but still, somehow, connected to humanity, or at least the "good" parts of it (like happiness): present, in the "air is everywhere" way; essential to life, but free of its burdens.

The second stanza develops this idea. While the first emphasizes the ways the envied Air is different from people (no set dwelling or irritating neighbors, none of the floating anxieties of existence), the second emphasizes the way Air is deeply connected with human life. In the first line, Air is modified by ethereal, & besides the musical sound of ethereal air, the word suggests something heavenly, floating above the world, yet this almost angelic atmosphere visits, as on a mission of mercy, even the lowliest & most wretched – the outcast of the earth.

In the second line, Air transmutes from Guest to Host, from visitor to provider at Life's faint, wailing Inn. And it's true, Air provides essential sustenance, just as an earthly innkeeper does. The Inn is Life, & we, humanity, are the passing guests, maintained there for a while by Air. But this isn't some bustling, hearty Inn out of a Victorian novel; it's faint & wailing. Faint suggests fading, loss of consciousness, weakness; wailing suggests lamentation, sobbing, anger. The two seem connected: our weakness leads to anger & sorrow. The two adjectives together also suggest both childbirth & death: the weakness of a mother after labor, the crying of her newborn; the loss of consciousness attendant on death, followed by our sorrow at our loss.

The association with death is strengthened in the final lines, in which the poet, realizing that her lot is with humanity & not the air, reflects on her own end: Light is one of the last things left as we lose our grip on existence, & when that goes, when we can no longer see (or, to use a term evoked earlier in this poem, apprehend) the world, we have one more final & most essential thing: breath. Air is breath, & our final exhalation can carry our soul with it, out of our body, into the air. Dickinson uses the intimate form in addressing & personifying this manifestation of air: thy; such is her dependence on, & subsequent intimacy with, this universal element. She talks, as if she were addressing a friend, about thy Consciousness, which suggests both the air's awareness – all along, she has been describing the air as if it had human components, not merely atmospheric – & her own awareness of the world as its light passes from her (as she is the one projecting consciousness onto a non-living gas).

This Consciousness accosts her: that is, it approaches her boldly, as a determined & final messenger. She & the Air, meaning she & her breath, & she & her soul, are tied up with this universal (air is everywhere!) element. The Air comes to receive from the dying poet her last breath. It departs, persuading Mine – meaning it takes her final breath with it, "persuading" it to join itself to Air. The poem ends, significantly, with a dash – beyond the finality of the death described in the final lines, there is an unknown ending, a possible continuation of some sort – nothing so firm & definitive as a period belongs here. The poem floats off, like our final breath.

Throughout, despite her envy of Air's nonhuman qualities, Dickinson gives to Air a certain awareness, & a vital role in human life. In this way Air mirrors our own consciousness; however much we may long to float above the boredom & suffering of life, however tired we are of the constant maintenance it needs, we can never quite imagine the world without our consciousness floating through it, present everywhere.

This is Poem 1060 in the Thomas Johnson edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.