An Hour is a Sea

An Hour is a Sea
Between a few, and me--
With them would Harbor be--
(F 898)


Emily Dickinson never fails in her ability to capture in a few words, even in about a sentence and a half or three small lines-- to capture an experience. It's not quite a miniature experience, because the full impact of emotion lies in these lines, rich and overwhelming. Her compression of language is superb, and I feel like I'm gushing as I write this, but her poetry is so rich in expression.


This speaker is full of longing and fear, isolation and maybe even a tinge of depression, yet there is an underlying hope. This "hour of sea" may seem unending. One could liken it to the experience of Santiago in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, when the giant fish has dragged Santiago out into the waves, much farther than he ever expected. There is no land in sight, only the swell of waves and the stars as a guide at night. In ways, the speaker in this poem seems to use the hope of the friends as a map to guide into the harbor, much as Santiago used the starts to navigate until he could see the lights of Havannah.


The moment of safety is not played out in the poem, however. And this lack of a real conclusion casts a little shadow of uncertainty upon the poem. The speaker is aware the harbor exists, but whether he or she will make whatever effort is necessary to reach the harbor-- that is another matter that Dickinson does not answer. Will the persona fall short of the harbor and sink or die at sea? Will he or she even try to reach the harbor? The answer must come from the reader, and the reader's answer will reveal far more about himself or herself than it will reveal about the speaker or the poet.

I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground

Dickinson's poetry is highly notable for its compact or compressed language. Her word choice is exacting, never wasting a syllable in meaning or sound. Wineapple relates a comment Higginson once made regarding good writing: "'There may be years of crowded passion in a word, and half a life in a sentence,' he explained. 'A single word may be a window form which one may perceive all the kingdoms of the earth ... Charge your style with life'" (White Heat, 6). No doubt he immediately recognized this gift in Dickinson's poetry. She did not pick the good words for her poems, but she picked the best word in all cases, which makes it yet more of a miracle that she managed to write at least 1789 poems during her lifetime. They are sharp, exacting, and often demanding writings.

I think it's particularly interesting that Wineapple includes a quote from Dickinson that may explain the motive the poet had in writing. Dickinson writes "I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground-- because I am afraid" (8). Fear is a great paralyzer, but it can also be a great motivator. We do a lot of things, make a lot of choices, because of fear. But only truly successful and great people are able to recognize this fear and address it, much less channel it into something useful.

Perhaps when it was all said and done, part of Dickinson's reluctance to push publication of her poetry was because her poetry was so self-revealing. In the pages of the anthologies of her writing, we find insecurity, doubt, stark fear, questions, and a great longing for what is unknown (and what she possibly believed was unknowable). There is simultaneously peace and riot, joy and pain, surrender and fight. Hardly can she be called a shy door mouse or a total hermit. For all of her isolation, through her writing she fully embraced life and all of the experiences that make up our existence. Dickinson walked into the unknown dark, sometimes with eyes wide and alert and sometimes shut closed in searing trust of what she did not know.