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.

Poem of the Week 2024/33

The Definition of Beauty is

That Definition is none –

Of Heaven, easing Analysis,

Since Heaven and He are one.

– Emily Dickinson

Beauty: it's one of those basic terms that gets invoked frequently as if everyone agrees on what it means, but no one really does & there is no real definition. I've had more than one conversation with people who dislike "modern" music (by which they mean modernist, as in specifically Arnold Schoenberg, who died 73 years ago), in which I am plaintively asked, "But what about beauty?" I explain that I find Schoenberg's music beautiful, an argument which never gets very far (& how could it? we disagree on the meaning of basic terms). I once attended a play about Schoenberg vs Gershwin whose whole argument depended on finding Schoenberg's music "ugly". It was a small artsy theater so the actors lined up to meet us as we left. I made a point of telling the actor at my door that I found Schoenberg's music beautiful & enjoyable. He seemed quite startled but said he was glad to hear I felt that. Once someone countered my Schoenberg with Mozart (whom I also love), & asked again, What about beauty? Apparently you can't genuinely feel both types of sound are beautiful. But when Mozart's music was new it was considered modern & difficult ("too many notes!"), so the net people throw over items with the term beauty differs with time. Perhaps beauty is linked for many to familiarity. And I'm sure we've all heard people say something is beautiful when what they seem to mean is more accurately it is  pretty & pleasing.

Probably the most celebrated attempt in English-language poetry to define Beauty is in Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, with its oracular ending: Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all you need to know. But this doesn't really help, as Truth is perhaps an even more ambiguous term than Beauty. When you find one, you will have found the other, though there still is no good definition for either, which, in the context of Keats's poem, is probably the point. It's even ambiguous, depending on how the editors have punctuated these lines, who is speaking: is it the poem's narrator, swept up, at least for the moment, by his contemplation of the eternally unchanging action depicted on the urn, or is it the urn itself, offering its formal perfections as a kind of solution to those endless problems, How do we live? And what do we live for? (Is Beauty = Truth really all we can know on earth? And is it really all we need to know?) If something that initially strikes us as ugly makes us realize something important about ourselves or the world, does that mean the ugly thing is, in fact, beautiful? Like all the most useful terms, Beauty is, & must be, slippery & capacious.

In her gnomic style, Dickinson deals with this question, forthrightly telling us that there is no definition of Beauty: or, more precisely, as she then proceeds to give a definition in the last two lines, that any definition we come up with will be too limited, too lacking in too much. It's certainly an arresting opening, & seems implicitly in dialogue with Keats's Grecian Urn: Truth doesn't enter into it, & this isn't all we need to know on earth, as Dickinson positions Beauty outside of Earth, in Heaven. Heaven can mean many things, from the upper atmosphere to a religious conception of the dwelling place of God to an unearthly state of bliss (check out the various definitions for the word given in the Emily Dickinson Lexicon), but it clearly means something beyond our world & therefore, to some extent, unknowable by earth-bound mortals, making her attempt at a definition the opposite of the one Keats gives: in the Grecian Urn, beauty is truth, truth beauty, & is all we can or need to know on earth; in  this poem, Beauty is not of our world, & not knowable through our world. In this very short poem, two words are emphasized: Definition appears in each of the first two lines, balanced (& . .  .explained? rebuked?) by the appearance of Heaven in each of the concluding two lines.

After the direct phrasing of the first two lines, the next two become more complicated, which is probably inevitable for any attempt to define Beauty. Of Heaven, the opening phrase, seems to come out of the blue (which is another way of saying from Heaven), & it takes a moment for the phrase to settle in (to the extent that it ever does): what is of Heaven? and what exactly does of convey here? (Again, check the Emily Dickinson Lexicon for this fluid word.) Beauty is born to, linked with, contains, Heaven. The phrase strikes us abruptly & with a fruitful ambiguity, as Dickinson, with her terse, elliptical, & arresting lines, must feel Beauty would: it certainly seems to be the effect she aims for in her work. Beauty's effect is whole & entire; with no need for the breakdown & dissection of analysis. Heaven-born & Heaven-sent, beauty doesn't need analysis, as we feel it when we see it – we just know. Yet the experience of this wholeness can only be conveyed with abrupt & broken phrases (perhaps that is how heavenly things must came to earth). Analysis is eased, unnecessary, but the word conveys more gracefully than would removed or relieved of what is happening here: with a certain lightness, Beauty manifests.

It's arresting that Dickinson refers to Beauty as He, rather than It. Did she want to make Beauty more human, warmer than an It? There is endless, mostly pointless speculation about her sexuality, but we can't rule out her use of He for a romantic, physical, connotation. Or is she, as they would say now, queering the word by making it masculine, when Beauty was often seen as the role & duty of women? Or perhaps she just liked the connection between He / Heaven.

Dickinson said, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” (And for a poet, what is beauty but poetry?) Clearly she felt an overwhelming & physical sensation when she saw something she considered beautiful, & perhaps this poem's broken & abrupt phrasing conveys how the experience made her feel. She counters Beauty = Truth with Beauty = Heaven. This gives us a different sense from the one in Keats's Ode: Heaven seems more glorious, more ethereal, more ecstatic than Truth, which has something moral & lawful about it – but beyond those implications, does it really offer a definition? Heaven is another slippery term, & ultimately not really more knowable that Truth, which may be Dickinson's point: you know them when you see them. Ultimately, it's all in the eye (or mind, or soul) of the beholder.

This is Poem 988 in the Thomas Johnson edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Poem of the Week 2024/19

An Everywhere of Silver

With Ropes of Sand

To keep it from effacing

The Track called Land.

– Emily Dickinson

The brevity of this poem – barely longer than a haiku, & just as concentrated in its implications – contributes to its force. An Everywhere of Silver: as often with Dickinson, her capitalizations provide emphasis to words that might otherwise not receive full weight. Its an ecstatic image: shining silver, spread all over, covering all. But what is this she's viewing & describing? It's only with the second line that we get a clue: there are ropes of sand. This silver expanse (which might have been moonlight, or a field of flowers) is apparently the ocean, hit by sunlight so that it looks like a molten expanse of silver. Anyone who's been to the seaside, & I honestly don't know if that includes Dickinson or if she's going on imagination & desire here, has seen the waters like that.

But why ropes of sand? As the shore stretches out, it could look like rope, but it could just as easily look like a wall or barrier or the solidity of our earth. Ropes suggest something more tenuous than any of these, some attempt to control something wild, or potentially unruly, like even a domesticated animal. Obviously humanity did not place the sand there, but the word gives the sense that it is somehow related to humanity, something made, held against the vast & gorgeous silver sea. & why are these "ropes" there?

The answer comes in the concluding two lines: To keep it from effacing / The Track called Land. Effacing suggests complete disappearance, & at some subliminal level, the face hidden in the word suggests an erasure of the human face. Land is where the viewer most likely is standing (how else could she see the ropes of sand?). With her characteristically slyly elliptical style, Dickinson, without presenting any obvious humans in this scene, suggests not so much that they don't happen to be present at the moment but that they are swept away into invisibility & even nonexistence by this boundless & regardless Beauty.

Track is an interesting word; as with ropes, it suggests something narrower & more fragile than our usual conception of the massive solid Earth that we live on. The Emily Dickinson Lexicon has an interesting entry for track: the first definition is "Footprints; set of footsteps; trace of passing; marks left behind when one walks on a path; evidence of passing over the ground in a certain direction." Again, the presence of humanity is suggested indirectly, with the suggestion of absence: people were here, but they've passed on (& of course, to pass on is a euphemism for death, & the ocean is often a metaphor for the vast & unknowable life of the universe, & the primal source of life).

Silver is usually found under the earth, or extracted & shaped by humans for their enjoyment or benefit or enrichment. Here Silver is Everywhere; though the poet doesn't mean the word literally – there are narrow barriers keeping it back, however tenuously, from the land – it is metaphorically an erasure of our usual land-based existence. Water is a necessity for life, but the poet never mentions water; it is suggested only by the gorgeous spread of silver, a combination of water & light. The splendor of this view is more than a sumptuous celebration of Nature for the delectation of the human viewer: as with the sensuous allegorical emblems in Spenser, there is a moral message lurking beneath the beauty: a reminder that Nature & what we see as its glories are indifferent to us, that we could disappear & they would go on, that our very admiration of such beauty can wipe us out: with ecstasy comes annihilation.

This is #884 in the Thomas Johnson edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Poem of the Week 2024/14

A Light exists in Spring

Not present on the Year

At any other period –

When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad

On Solitary Fields

That Science cannot overtake

But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,

It shows the furthest Tree

Upon the furthest Slope you know

It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step

Or Noons report away

Without the Formula of sound

It passes and we stay –

A quality of loss

Affecting our Content

As Trade had suddenly encroached

Upon a Sacrament.

– Emily Dickinson

Here we begin with light, a certain light visible only for a liver of the year, in early Spring. It would be the result of atmospheric conditions & so forth, but is treated as a thing-in-itself, not as a result of natural processes: it is described as being present on the Year, as if it were a physical object placed over another object. The light becomes a Color (Dickinson capitalizes both Light & Color, emphasizing them as entities, though of course they are disembodied perceptions of our eyes). Like the Light that is on the Year, the Color stands abroad, as if it is also a separate, physical object rather than an effect of the light (a perceptual manifestation of a natural phenomenon that exists only on the level of photons).

It stands on Solitary Fields – perhaps solitary rather than empty, to give a human, emotional dimension to the separation & isolation of the fields. Presumably there are no other people in evidence, except for the poet, observing the Light & its resultant Color. The second stanza ends with an emphasis on the human observer, & the effects of the light/color are taken as not individual but general: this is what Human Nature feels, looking at this color, not what one particular individual witnesses. Science cannot overtake the Color, we are told: is it too evanescent to be analyzed as part of the spectrum of light? too dependent on a combination of other factors (the time of year, the atmosphere) to be reduced to a standard formula? Dickinson will develop this thought further at the end of the poem.

The Light/Color continues to be treated as an entity, given an almost physical shape in the poet's vision, existing as a separate part in the landscape. Not only a physical-seeming entity, but one with consciousness: it waits up on the Lawn. (Lawn suggests human habitation in a way that fields does not; people do not actually appear in this poem, but their effects are palpable, as is the Light/Color they're interacting with.) It shows us a Tree on a Slope – both further out than perhaps we would normally look. The Light draws us there, manifesting the Tree & the Slope as objects we are drawn to. The Light/Color almost speaks to you; here the poet reinforces the suggestion that these are not her individual reactions, but ones that any observer would have. Yet the Light/Color, though presented in almost human terms – as something that can speak directly to us – doesn't quite reach that human-like form; it almost speaks, we are on the verge of being told something, but it eludes us, slipping away with distance & time.

Distance & time are made explicit in the next stanza, with Horizons stepping away & Noons reporting away. Again, conceptual entities – the horizon, noontime – are personified as taking physical action: the Horizons step, the Noons report. Stepping, reporting: business-like & efficient! Formula in the third line of the stanza also carries business-like, scientific overtones: sound is a formula, a product of certain scientific/mathematic principles. This is another way for Dickinson to make her point about the Light/Color almost speaking: it exists, it has something to say, but it passes without saying it in words we can understand.

But perhaps the meaning lies not in sentences that can be formulated with words, but in the quality of loss the poet mentions at the beginning of the last stanza: that evanescent, ineffable feeling that strikes us deep inside, "Affecting our Content" as the poet says: Content here refers primarily, I think, to happiness & satisfaction – contentment – but there's also the implication of our "contents", that is, the miscellaneous things we contain. That's the deep level of effect this passing experience has.

The poem closes with a vivid simile: As Trade had suddenly encroached / Upon a Sacrament. Trade brings up the American mercantile world of buying & selling; it connects with the other scientific/business-like terms to oppose one world – the burgeoning world of American capitalism, based on engineering, mathematics, getting & spending – with the solemn world of the Sacraments. For a nineteenth-century New England poet like Dickinson, the memory of the Puritan colonists would never be far away, even as it was being supplanted by a materialistic, profit-driven society. The fleeting Light/Color leaves us behind, with a sense of loss, as solitary as the fields or the single Tree out on a far slope, divided between an inner sense of a solemn manifestation of the Creator/Redeemer – a Sacrament – which is, however, intruded upon by the bustling new world of capitalism, using, exploiting, & changing Nature to spin the wheels of trade.

This poem strikes me as a spring-time equivalent of Dickinson's wintry There's a certain Slant of light: both poems deal with the interior, psychological & spiritual, effects of light upon a landscape.

This is #812 in Thomas H Johnson's edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Poem of the Week 2024/3

Four trees – upon a solitary Acre –

Without Design

Or Order, or Apparent Action –

Maintain –

The Sun – upon a Morning meets them –

The Wind –

No nearer Neighbor – have they –

But God –

The Acre gives them – Place –

They – Him – Attention of Passer by –

Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply –

Or Boy –

What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature –

What Plan

They severally – retard – or further –

Unknown –

– Emily Dickinson

A casual glance takes in an unexceptional sight – an empty lot with a few trees on it – but it soon produces musing contemplation. The acre is solitary, but it must be surrounded by something; whatever that something is (farmland? houses? forest?) it seems separate from the acre, which appears to be uncultivated, mostly bare, even lonely in its non-human solitude. & on the acre, there are four trees, close together, or apart, we don't really know, but they do register as some sort of unit, a group of four. It's a strange number of trees to see: not a forest, not an orchard, just a small number of random trees. One tree would be striking & individual, alone, even majestic, upon an otherwise empty acre; more would be perhaps less noticeable, as we'd see them as a unit – a forest, or a farm – & we probably wouldn't even notice the Acre they were standing on. It's a peculiar & in-between number of trees, & it accentuates the otherwise emptiness of the Acre. The type of tree is not specified; they register not as fruit trees or shade trees or potential lumber but as just . . . trees, an archetypal category of object. They appear to be products of Nature, not ordered or planned or planted by humans, & if there is some design there it is not visible, & possibly non-existent; Dickinson is already entering metaphysical territory with the trees on their solitary acre: what is "Nature" here, & is there any sort of plan to it, divine or happenstance? What do the trees produce, or do? The answer, insofar as there is one, is in a word emphasized by the line break that puts it on its own in the last line of the stanza: they maintain.

The Emily Dickinson Lexicon (EDL) is an excellent on-line resource (maintained by Brigham Young University) for exploring the nuance & ambiguity of her language. Here is what it gives us for maintain: "Keep; continue; hold; preserve." So even more than simply being there, the word suggests that the trees somehow mark something, if only their own existence, & their being exists in time (the word might mean they continue), though the quantity of time is unknown. We don't know how long the trees have been there (long enough to be trees rather than saplings) or how long they will go on being there (will humans cut them down? will they succumb to time & die a natural death?). Like the human observing them, they are given existence as fellow living-things subjected to an unknown timeline, which gives them an odd sort of parity with the human observer. There is a certain dignity in the trees maintaining, rather than just being there, as they take their temporal trip to an unknown terminus. They would exist without the poet's observation, but her observation is making her wonder about the mystery & separateness of their existence: in an essential poetic act, she is remarking them.

The second stanza vividly reinforces the isolated & peculiar circumstances of the trees. There is emphasis & restatement, but the poet keeps circling around the unknown & unknowable meaning or meanings of a sight that has created a suddenly memorable moment. She invokes grand natural forces: the Sun, the Wind. Their existence seems to be separate from that of the trees, instead of part of some web of Nature. The Sun meets them in the morning; it doesn't greet or sustain or warm them, it just comes across them on its diurnal rounds. The Wind, too, sweeps by them, but seems to have its own separate existence from both Sun & the Trees. What we lump together as "Nature" is dissolving here; the large (the Sun, the Wind) seems equal to the small (four random trees) – or is it rather that the small is equal to the large? – & they seem disconnected, though tracking together.. Our four trees, not very significant on a larger scale, here rank with such mighty forces as the Sun & the Wind (Dickinson's use of capitals for such nouns helps embody them, not just as archetypes but also individual entities). The usual scale of value in "Nature" has been destabilized.

In the third stanza, the poet takes a closer look at the Acre. It too is a strangely separate entity, but the trees are rooted in it & the four trees & the solitary acre, though they have a separate existence, also act upon each other. Would the acre register as solitary unless there were these trees on it, making the poet realize how empty or isolated the rest of it is? Would we even notice the acre? Probably not; as the poet tells us, the trees give him (a peculiar & even slightly comic personification of the Acre as male – a lonely male; the earth is usually embodied as female) the Attention of Passer by. The Acre is noticed because the trees are on it, the trees are noticed because there's nothing else on the Acre. The attention is being paid by someone passing through; no one heads to the Acre or the Trees as a destination. This is not some picturesque beauty spot, but a random bit of the world that sparked the poet's attention.

& again our usual hierarchies of value are upended: the first possible passerby mentioned is Shadow. Shadows don't exist without an object that produces them by obstructing light, but whatever that object is here (a bird flying overhead? a cloud? something closer to earth?) it appears only in its insubstantial shadow form. & as the EDL reminds us, a shadow can also be a warning sign, a sign of approaching darkness, a phantom, or the ghost of a dead person. It is an ominous & evocative word, & a foreboding one to mention as a passerby. (Are there spirits unseen by us passing through the moment with us?) We go from this nonembodied & fairly magnificent entity to . . . a squirrel, a small swift little nibbling visitor. & only then we get a mention of a human: a singular in number but general in effect Boy. As the haply reminds us, it is chance that leads someone by this sight (or site), & these three very different visitors – shadow, squirrel, Boy – are equivalent in relation to the Acre & the Trees.

The Boy is presumably one old enough to wander by himself (he too is solitary) but young enough not to be working. Also presumably the passerby is made a boy because in nineteenth-century Amherst boys could wander more freely & with less supervision than girls, but depending on where exactly this Acre is, it is something a girl could come across without violating too many of her contemporary gender norms. & of course a woman – Dickinson herself – did in fact see the Acre & the Trees. (She could certainly have made the whole thing up, but it does seem like the sort of specific world-detail that would set her mind speculating). Specifying a boy is an interesting choice for a woman poet (who has earlier also defined the Acre as male). Perhaps it's meant to evoke the archetypal youth wandering aimlessly through whatever passes for wilderness in his area. Perhaps Dickinson is deliberately making the poem something (allegedly) non-personal & outside of her experience, another alienation device in a poem filled with overturned hierarchies of meaning & existence.

The final stanza essentially recaps the first, as the poet gives another statement of the mystery behind what might seem an ordinary & even insignificant occurrence – I'd say a final statement, but there's nothing final here. We have a summation but not a conclusion, as this sight, four trees randomly on an otherwise empty lot, a sight which clearly made a deep impression on the poet, yields nothing but mystery, no matter how long the image dwells in her mind, or ours. Are the trees part of some plan, Divine or Natural, & if so, do they advance it? or do they slow it down? Here's what the EDL gives us for severally: "Separately; individually; successively; collectively; in turn": we don't know if the trees "act" or "mean" in some larger way outside of their just being there, & we can't even know if they are to be taken as singular or as a group (in the long & large sweep of history, where is the border between us as individuals & us as a city, state, or generation?). The final word, one highlighted, as with maintain in the first stanza, by the line break & by being on its own line, is an emphatic Unknown, & instead of a conventional & final stop shown by a period, the poet concludes with one of her characteristic dashes. The syntax & the potential meanings are as unstable as everything else in the poem; they could go on into eternal ramifications or just drop off the metaphorical cliff. As so often in Dickinson, objects shimmer in a strange unsettled space between the everyday, even the mundane, & the cosmically significant.

This is Poem #742 in the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H Johnson.

Poem of the Week 2015/43

The only Ghost I ever saw
Was dressed in Mechlin – so –
He wore no sandal on his foot –
And stepped like flakes of snow –

His Gait – was soundless, like the Bird –
But rapid – like the Roe –
His fashions, quaint, Mosaic –
Or haply, Mistletoe –

His conversation – seldom –
His laughter, like the Breeze –
That dies away in Dimples
Among the pensive Trees –

Our interview – was transient –
Of me, himself was shy –
And God forbid I look behind –
Since that appalling Day!

Emily Dickinson

What is the Mechlin that this ghost is dressed in? It is a type of lace that originated in Mechelen in Flanders. Most definitions single out its delicacy, and at least one specifies that it is generally used in women's clothing (though the article goes on to mention its occasional use in cravats, at least among the British royal family in a period predating Dickinson). But the speaker here merely says the ghost is dressed in Mechlin, which suggests more than a cravat or cuff. The lacy garb may be a reference to the traditionally filmy nature of ghosts. But it's also the first reference in a pattern in which this ghost, specified as male, is described in and surrounded by traditionally feminine terms and comparisons.

He's dressed in lace. His step is light, like a snowflake, even soundless. His walk is compared to a bird's, or to a roe's (a roe is a small deer). The comparison is not to traditionally martial and manly birds like the eagle, but to a little one, soundless on the snow; and not to a stag, much less a bear or lion, but to a small deer, of the sort that is easily startled and rapid when it runs away. He speaks little, and his laughter is compared to a dying breeze gently rustling through the leaves. [T]hat dies away in dimples is a brilliant evocation of how leaves turn and flutter as a gentle, failing wind ripples through them, but it also associates this male ghost with dimples, and pensiveness. His fashions are quaint. He is shy. None of this suggests anything traditionally masculine.

Much attention is paid to the ghost's "fashions". The edition I use (for which see below) capitalizes Mosaic, suggesting a connection to Moses: perhaps the clothes are old-fashioned, even ancient like nomadic draperies, or associated in some way with religious regulations. But other editions have the word as mosaic, suggesting something patched out of small pieces. And capital-M Mosaic doesn't preclude this suggestion, since Dickinson also capitalizes (among other words not usually capitalized) Mistletoe, Breeze, Dimples, and Trees. Mistletoe can play into both interpretations. It is a plant that grows parasitically on certain trees and shrubs, which suggests something connected but disconnected, something partial which can also take over its space, which might be in tune with mosaic. But it is also associated with Christmas (as well as ancient Druidic religious rituals), which might be in tune with the religious implications of Mosaic. The poet mentions sandals rather than the shoes you might expect when the next line brings in snow – do sandals perhaps have a Biblical resonance here, furthering (along with Mosaic and mistletoe) an association between the ghost and traditional religions? When she says, near the end of the poem, God forbid I look behind, is God forbid just an everyday phrase, or does she mean it to sound like a more strictly religious injunction? (Remember that Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt through disobeying the divine command not to look back when fleeing Sodom.)

As ghosts go, this one sounds quite mild-mannered and attractive: he is associated with gentle, even pretty things, and delightful natural phenomena, rather than with moaning torments, hell-fire, and sulfurous damnation. He speaks little, the encounter is fleeting, and he is shy around the poet. So it's a surprise to find the strength of horror present in the last two lines. As discussed above, there is a Biblical intensity underlying what might seem the everyday exaggeration of God forbid I look behind. And she increases the emotion by calling not just the encounter but the entire day of the encounter that appalling Day (complete with exclamation point). The rhymes help mark this break in the emotions we might expect from what seems a gentle ghost. In the earlier quatrains, we have had very regular and complete rhymes on each second and fourth line: so / snow, Roe / Mistletoe, Breeze / Trees. In the final quatrain, we have shy / Day. There's a bit of a visual rhyme there (both are three-letter words ending with a y) and the words chime together. But the lack of the exact rhyme the poem has led us to expect is contextually jarring and marks an emotional disruption.

Appalling is an interesting word here. It conveys something terrible, but with the connotation that this thing has left you sort of stunned and emotionally drained. As the pall in there might tell you, the word derives (via Old French and Latin) from one that means to grow or to make pale. In other words: if you are appalled, you grow as pale as a ghost. Is there a suggestion here that encountering this epicene apparition has not only shocked the poet but made her resemble it in some way? People are, generally, disturbed on an irrational level by variations on gender norms and assumptions: is that what is appalling the poet and making her possibly resemble the ghost? Do his androgynous qualities connect to or startle something in her? Or is her strong reaction owing to the religious implications of the poem: does this strange presence from another world show a connection with or a deviation from the traditional theologies suggested by some of the language?

There are many questions, and no definite answers. Like many of Dickinson's poems, this one hovers between the domestic and the apocalyptic. It seems like a charming ghost story suitable for a chilly autumn evening, but the closer we look, the more deeply disturbing and perplexing it becomes. We may end up feeling as if we too have had an encounter with an appealing but unsettling spirit. The poem creates in us a version of the experience it describes.

(As an amusing sidelight on the poem's play with both gender and religion: when I typed epicene above the word-processing system flagged it and suggested only one other alternative as the word I must have intended: Nicene, as in the Nicene Creed. Perhaps Dickinson's deep knowledge anticipated the poetic links made by spellcheck.)

This is from the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson.

Poem of the Week 2015/12

Doom is the House without the Door –
'Tis entered from the Sun –
And then the Ladder's thrown away,
Because Escape – is done –

'Tis varied by the Dream
Of what they do outside –
Where Squirrels play – and Berries die –
And Hemlocks – bow – to God –

Emily Dickinson

This poem radiates between the mundane and the apocalyptic, the former grounded in concrete details of daily life (a house, the sun, the squirrels, berries, hemlocks) and the latter in abstract terms (Doom, Escape, Dream, even God). Oddly the generalized abstractions seem more real than the weirdly specific details, which is perhaps a source of the poem's uneasy power. The poem opens with Doom – doom in general, doom as fate, not an individual's doom. And yet Dickinson's metaphorical definition of doom conveys a sense of domesticity and even intimacy: doom is a house. It's where you live. And you are trapped in there, because, as in a nightmare, there is no door. So how did you get in there? From the Sun (the source of light and life, and frequently a stand-in for God, as in the opening of Book III of Paradise Lost: "Hail holy light. . . "). But not through the rays of light: from a ladder. This may just be part of the poem's use of very literal processes (you aren't just showing up inside this house, you have to have a way to get into it, and a ladder would make sense) combined with intense, surreal images: the ladder is from the Sun. It may also be a reference to, or a reminiscence of, Jacob's vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder from Heaven (Genesis, chapter 28). But here the angels are unmentioned, and the ladder is thrown away, because there is no escape once you're in there. That's the nature of doom. (Is it perhaps also the nature of the version of Christianity prevalent in the poet's nineteenth-century New England? While fewer and fewer believed in the literal nature of the Bible, they were still very much enmeshed in the social behaviors produced by it. But doom seems too harsh a term in this context. It would be a mistake to limit Dickinson's possible meanings just to one thing.)

Perhaps the house without a door may also be seen as the body that holds an individual's consciousness or soul, which could be seen as entering "through the Sun," that is, via God, or another source of generation. And you can't escape from the body you were born into. What happens outside your individual consciousness – that outside where the unspecified they do things – is, in some ways, a Dream. Again, very precise details are subsumed by an abstract state: just as the house and the ladder and the sun are a metaphor for doom, so the squirrels and berries and hemlocks are seen as ultimately unreal, as a Dream. And some strange things are going on: not so much the squirrels playing, but definitely the berries dying – even if that's just a vivid way of summing up the ripening/rotting world of a berry, it's a strikingly strange way of putting it, and the summation of life processes as death is suitable for a poem examining Doom. And then we have the hemlocks, bowing to God. This is most likely a reference to the hemlock tree that was common in New England, and you could easily describe trees bending in the wind (that unseen force!) as bowing to God. But it's also almost impossible for a literary person (for the sort of person who would read this kind of poetry) to hear hemlock, particularly in conjunction with bowing to God, and not to think of the poisonous herb used to kill Socrates for promoting impiety (it's difficult for me to believe that Dickinson wouldn't have been aware of this resonance in the term hemlock; there are plenty of other terms she could have used). On that level the poem's final line seems to be reinforcing such a punishment for free philosophical inquiry: the hemlocks bow to God. But on another evel, the line is rejecting such a punishment: the reader is mistaken if he or she thinks this is the same plant that was used to kill Socrates. We're wrong if we think there is divine punishment in that dream-world outside. As with the ladder, with its possible cryptic reference to Jacob's dream, so the hemlock suggests an evocative episode in humanity's relationship with heavenly authority. The Doom described remains mysterious, perhaps inexplicable, but powerful and inescapable.

I took this from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson. In the years after her death in 1886 several volumes with selections of her work were published; I'm not going to go into her whole publication history (which is actually quite fascinating and entertaining, what with adulterous affairs and family rivalries and separated stashes of increasingly valuable manuscripts) except to note that all those editions tamed Dickinson's poetry by smoothing it out, reducing perceived irregularities, and imposing standard punctuation. Johnson's edition, published in 1955, was the first to publish her work accurately and completely. There is also a more recent edition edited by R W Franklin, which incorporates more current discoveries and thoughts about what Dickinson intended (again: a complicated publication history, which I am mostly gliding over). I haven't seen the Franklin edition but I came across this blog which has several interesting entries comparing the two editions. Another recent book, which I have not seen but which sounds intriguing, is The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson's Envelope Poems, which gives you an idea of what some of Dickinson's manuscripts look like.

Poem of the Week 2014/14

National Poetry Month begins tomorrow, but we're getting a jump on it with this poem, which begins the theme for this month: poets writing about other poets. And as a reminder: we live in a commercial culture, and any art that doesn't make a lot of money for corporate interests is increasingly marginalized (or simply declared "dead" by people who never paid attention to it anyway). But we all know that the margins are where the interesting things mostly happen. If you think someone is doing good work, or keeping the good work of the past alive, support that person by buying their books. If I've posted a poem that interests you, I hope you will go to Amazon, or the publisher, or your local independent bookstore, or wherever, and buy the book.

Emily Dickinson's Defunct

She used to
pack poems
in her hip pocket.
Under all the
gray old lady
clothes she was
dressed for action.
She had hair,
imagine,
in certain places, and
believe me,
she smelled human
on a hot summer day.
Stalking snakes
or counting
the thousand motes
in sunlight
she walked just
like an Indian.
She was New England's
favorite daughter,
she could pray
like the devil.
She was a
two-fisted woman,
this babe.
All the flies
just stood around
and buzzed
when she died.

Marilyn Nelson [Waniek]*

Contemporary American poet Marilyn Nelson cleverly adjusts our view of Emily Dickinson, who lived from 1830 to 1886 – prime pioneer woman days. She situates Dickinson in her habitat, New England, and simultaneously reminds us of New England's Puritan past, its influence on Dickinson, and her differences from it with a few deft lines: "She was New England's / favorite daughter, / she could pray / like the devil." Nelson emphasizes Dickinson's physicality (her body hair, her sweat: imagine, the poet orders, and emphasizes the word by placing it alone on its line) and her attachment to the natural world (the snakes – see Dickinson's A narrow fellow in the grass or Sweet is the swamp with its secrets; the motes in the sunlight; walking "like an Indian," that is, like someone who lives completely immersed in the natural world and can track his or her way through it; and at the end of the poem, stately use is made of I heard a fly buzz – when I died –). Dickinson's attachment to the natural world is well known as a feature of her poetry, but her physicality is less often considered; even the speculation on her sexual nature tends towards the theoretic and subliminal.

Given the common view of Dickinson (though perhaps less common than it once was, as her poetry becomes better known in more accurate editions – there was nothing resembling an edition that printed the poems as she wrote them until Thomas H. Johnson's in 1955 – and as critical views evolve and change) as the fey, reclusive woman in white, subject to odd fancies, it's really, really funny to think of her as "a two-fisted woman, / this babe." But those lines also capture something deeply true about Dickinson: she really was a two-fisted woman where it counts, in the only way that still matters to us about this long-dead woman: in her spirit, which was manifested in her aesthetic sense – she had to be aware that her way of writing poetry was not that of her time and place, and that it was in fact the type of art that has to create its own audience and its own posterity, as Proust puts it. Yet instead of trying to write in the style of her time, with more regular rhyme and meter (perhaps she knew such a style was not her gift, and therefore not to be attempted by her) she persisted in writing in her idiosyncratic style, and in preserving what she wrote, despite little expectation that she would be published in her lifetime, or even after.

* Marilyn Nelson wrote under the name Marilyn Nelson Waniek from 1978 to 1995, and she appears under that name in the anthology from which I took this poem, Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans Since 1945, edited by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton. But if you're looking for her books, you may find them under Marilyn Nelson.

Poem of the Week 2013/2

There’s a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons –

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –

We can find no scar,

But internal difference,

Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –

‘Tis the Seal Despair –

An imperial affliction

Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –

Shadows – hold their breath –

When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance

On the look of Death –

Emily Dickinson

This is #258 in the Thomas H. Johnson edition of the Dickinson's Complete Poems. It's one of my favorites. Have you seen such a slanting winter light? If so, you have probably felt as I did that Dickinson has captured an evanescent and deeply interior moment in words that would forever after cling to the phenomenon. She subtly sanctifies the language and the landscape with references to cathedrals, Heaven, Death ("the Seal Despair" could come straight from the Book of Revelations). Yet the light is actually the most substantial element in the landscape; it's compared, not to cathedrals, or even cathedral tunes, but the heft of cathedral tunes (that strange significance taken on by echoing mighty music in some vaulted holy place). She describes not Heaven, but Heavenly hurt, which leaves no outward sign, only an internal importance so deep it can't be put into words (the "internal difference" and the "Meanings" are all unspecified, as if even Dickinson can only hope we find an echo of them in our own experience). Shadows, already by nature insubstantial, become even less of a presence as they "hold their breath"; and we see not Death itself, or even the look of Death, but the distance of the look of Death. Perhaps the most important distancing, as the poem moves inexorably from painful internal enlightenment towards Death, is of whatever the imperial* power is that sends this affliction – whoever or whatever this power is, it manifests itself only by effects, often sublime but also painful, and is felt mostly as an absence.

*I am reminded of Milton's frequent punning in Paradise Lost on imperial/empyreal

the undeniable sexiness of Stephanie Blythe

The San Francisco Performances season opened last Thursday with an all-American recital by Stephanie Blythe. I think everyone there had an outstanding time, including Blythe and her accompanist, Warren Jones.

As with Blythe’s last appearance at SFP, texts for the songs were not available until after they were performed, with the added twist that SFP staffers simply could not find the printed brochures, which led to some frantic last-minute photocopying before intermission. You’d think this would make it simple to follow Blythe’s expressed wish that, since she cares about the words and works hard to make them clear, and since all these songs are in English, we let her see our attentive eyes rather than the tops of our heads as we follow along in the program. Nonetheless there were several audience members who apparently printed the notes beforehand and accordingly were able to rustle them loudly while Blythe was singing, which is kind of a triumph of the human spirit, I guess.

The first set was 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson, set by the late James Legg. Blythe and Jones first took turns reading the poems aloud to us, since Dickinson can be elusive and of course we had no texts to consult. Blythe, not surprisingly, was more effective at this recitation than Jones, who had a tendency to bang on odd words and sometimes slip into a “poetry” voice. Then they performed the set. I like it very much (and I also liked the idea of reciting the poems first), and usually I’m not crazy about Dickinson set to music – her strong and eccentric rhythm tends to swamp all else, including sometimes her meaning – often I find that I’ve swept through pages of Dickinson, led compulsively onward by her beat, until I suddenly come to and realize that I have only the vaguest idea of what she’s been saying. Reading her is like eating salted nuts; you start by savoring one or two and then before you know it you’ve eaten the whole bowl and you wonder when that happened.

Anyway Legg’s set is very attractive (I like it more than Copland’s more famous set, I think), ranging from the somber to the comic, not always as expected, and if any musical accompaniment by its nature limits the implications of Dickinson’s poems, at least Legg’s implications are always thoughtful and appropriate and if they’re sometimes surprising to me that is a plus.

After a few days of unexpectedly heavy rains it was quite hot last Thursday, and it was uncomfortably warm in Herbst Theater. Blythe completed the Dickinson set and introduced Samuel Barber’s Three Songs, explaining that the texts are all from James Joyce’s early collection Chamber Music, the punning title of which refers to an incident during an early recitation when Joyce’s hostess excused herself mid-poem to use the chamber pot. Then Blythe dabbed with her handkerchief at her face and asked, “Is anyone else hot? I’m sweating my bazooms off up here. [Pinteresque/vaudevillian pause] ‘Bazooms’ are what you call a mezzo-soprano’s breasts.” This made us all laugh, of course. “Recitals with Stephanie are always an adventure,” announced Jones. Indeed!

Jones had his chance to shine solo after intermission, when he played several Joplin rags for us (the Peacherine Rag and the Magnetic Rag). The second-half songs were all Tin Pan Alley numbers. In the past few years I’ve noticed a happy trend of including songs from what is now usually referred to as the “American Songbook,” meaning the more sophisticated later works by Gershwin, Porter, Arlen, and suchlike composers. Blythe gave us earlier songs, which I’ve never heard in recital outside of Bolcom and Morris performances that were specifically dedicated to this repertory, genuine Tin Pan Alley numbers that are comparatively less sophisticated but are also delightful and funny and sly and moving and whose charmingly jingley-jangley moon-June-spoon rhymes are part of their appeal.

Blythe’s beautiful Wagnerian voice suited the songs perfectly, which should be surprising but isn’t really; the concert made me think of a German-American beer hall culture where Wagner excerpts would mingle with popular tunes. Blythe is an ample woman, a good-humored generous performer of broad appeal. Her tone was perfect in these songs,* neither overly operatic nor condescendingly campy. Her vamping was perfectly judged, and how often can you say that?

She and Jones brought out everything there was to bring out in these songs, which was quite a lot; highlights included a magnificently enraged After You’ve Gone and a hilariously dirty If You Don’t Want My Peaches. She definitely has a last of the red-hot mezzos thing going on, and would have given Sophie Tucker and Mae West a run for their money if she’d been around then. When I think back on this concert I will probably imagine Blythe in one of those broad-brimmed hats with a fancy walking stick that those ladies favored.

The encore was Foster’s Beautiful Dreamer, so exquisitely and movingly sung that our giddy mood was turned on a dime to reflective tears.

*the songs: Coax Me (Sterling and Von Tilzer), Ask Her While the Band Is Playing (Herbert and MacDonough), If I Had a Talking Picture of You (Henderson, Brown, and DeSylva), After You’ve Gone (Creamer and Tlayton), and If You Don’t Want My Peaches, You’d Be Surprised, What’ll I Do?, and I Love a Piano (Irving Berlin)