There's a certain Slant of light

One of Dickinson's great gifts in writing poetry is her ability to find language to recreate an experience for the reader. Through word choice and metaphor she creates not merely a description of emotion and the human condition, but she forces the reader to remember-- very literally the reader re-members. Breaking down remember to its elements: "re", as in doing again like repeating or retrail; combined with "member" or actively involving in something. Thus, the audience is transported from reader to actor as Dickinson uses words to cause the audience to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel the very core of emotions-- often at their most raw:

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 of us the Air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows-- hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death
(F 320)

Through this poem, Dickinson creates the experience of depression (and argueably of Seasonal Affective Disorder). She uses strong verbs like "oppresses" and nouns like 'heft", "hurt", "scar" "Despair" and "affliction" to create a stark picture of the soul-wearying, exhausting trial of depression. In this case, the depression renders the speaker incapacitated, which Dickinson describes through synesthesia in the first stanza: "There's a certain slant of light, / ... That oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes" (1, 3-4). This is yet another example of Dickinson's skill in bending language as mere light, ironically which one would expect to be physically light or not wearying, oppresses like the weight of a pipe organ, or the "Cathedral Tunes". Dickinson blends nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs through metaphor into a super-charged metaphor of crushing power, and all this in just the first stanza.

I'll probably take up this poem again later, too. I know I'm saying that a lot, but I will get back to it.

Victory comes late

Victory comes late--
And is held low to freezing lips--
Too rapt with frost
To take it--
How sweet it would have tasted--
Just a Drop--
Was God so economical?
His Table's spread too high for Us--
Unless We dine on Tiptoe--
Crumbs-- fit such little mouths--
Cherries-- suit Robins--
The Eagle's Golden Breakfast strangles-- Them--
God keep His Oath to Sparrows--
Who of little Love-- know how to starve--
(F 195)

This poem is yet another of Dickinson's that directly challenges the all-loving nature of God, and it has many phrases and themes in common with Dickinson's poems "Success is Counted Sweetest" -- written before this poem-- and "I had been hungry, all the years"- written after this poem. The speaker in "Victory comes late" questions the provision of God, who in the first lines seems to finally offer rescue to one past saving.

Much of Dickinson's language emphasizes the mercy or providence just out of reach. The table remains "spread too high for Us" and the speaker strains "on Tiptoe" to reach what seems to be spread so liberally for the taking. Everything is inches beyond reach, within sight and smell but not accessible. Dickinson famously struggled with the faith or religion of her family and peers, and I believe that she had the sights and scents of faith and religion within her range of senses, but a true feeling of God or a real experience seemed to elude her. Then again, this borders on making the poem autobiographical. That said, I think that the tone of frustration and accusation is at least a slight reflection of the poet's attitude toward deity.

The most twisted part of the poem lies in the inversion of values or stereotypes-- an element of parable-- which are found in the last two lines. The speaker scoffs that "God keeps His Oath to Sparrows-- / Who of little Love-- know how to starve", playing off of a biblical passage from the gospel of Luke. The passage reads "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid: you are worth more than many sparrows" (Luke 12:6-7, NIV). Dickinson's poem, when analyzed through the allusion to the biblical passage, reads all the more haunting and brings the poem from a tone of disappointment to that of betrayal. The dying are analagous to the sparrows, and the sparrows die of "little love", meaning God and his economy are-- to the speaker-- beyond "economical" into downright calloused and deceptive.

Interestingly enough, parallels can be drawn between the concept of the sparrow choking on the eagle's meal and the idea of growing ill from partaking of a banquet feast in "I had been hungry all the years". I might return to this at some point.

Surgeons must be very careful

Maybe I'm particularly interested in it because I've been reading a lot of fiction lately that involves medical drama, or maybe I've just watched too many television episodes, but I can't help but find this Dickinson poem to be highly ironic:

Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit-- Life!
(F 156)

This poem is an excellent example of Dickinson's earlier work and its signature paradox written with great irony. The first two lines seem rather ridiculous, for what surgeon would take up the knife without great care? Certainly the Hippocratic Oath has been around for thousands of years, and no good surgeon would take up the delicate and potential lethal tools of the trade without caution. It's a typical Dickinson ploy-- lull the reader into a sense of something common or make the reader feel superior, wondering why on earth a poet or her speaker would bother with such an obvious caution.

Dickinson's strike comes in the last two lines, though. Too quick of a reading could cause one to miss the vital word "culprit" in the fourth line, which would render the second half of the poem as seemingly pointless as the first line-- for of course life exists underneath the incisions. Dickinson's poetry demands careful readings, and skipping that single word in line four completely derails any paradox or irony.

What the poet is pointing out, in her own witty way, is the paradox of the relationship between injury and healing, between disease and restoration. There are at least two paradoxes in the final lines, possibly more: the incision the surgeon makes will cause minor injury but is necessary to enable a true restoration of life; and while the surgeon's attentions might help the body to eventually recover, the body has been restores only to face yet another injury or disease yet again. The life of a virus can cause the death of a person, and the life of one person can plot the downfall and death of another.

The poem seems so innocuous at first glance, but peeling back layers of meaning only compounds the list of paradoxes. All is never as it seems in Dickinson's poetry.

New feet within my garden go

New feet within my garden go--
New fingers stir the sod--
A Troubadour opon the Elm
Betrays the solitude.

New Children play opon the green--
New Weary sleep below--
And still the pensive Spring returns--
And still the punctual snow!
(F 79)

It's really so strange how we can suffer a loss or even a long series of changes in our personal life, and it seems like the whole world should stop moving. And yet everyone else's life goes on the same as ever, as though nothing happened. The season continue, and the earth still turns. Life doesn't stop, even when we think that it should.

It's interesting, to me, how Dickinson personifies spring and snow as "pensive" and "punctual", respectively. Spring is full of thought and consideration as it returns, heavily weighing the decision to bring new life again. Curious enough, while spring considers its return carefully, snow arrives promptly. As with so many of these poems, I'm not sure what this means in the overall context of the poem, but I know Dickinson had a deliberate point in writing it this way.

Now I lay thee down to Sleep

Now I lay thee down to Sleep--
I pray the Lord thy Dust to keep--
And if thou live before thou wake--
I pray the Lord thy Soul to make--
(F 1575)

This poem strikes me as rather sordid-- an example of Dickinson's ability to take the familiar and twist it. It seems to have gothic overtones, though it is not overtly gothic, and it reminds me strongly of something that William Blake might have penned.

She plays off of the children's prayer, which evidently must date back to at least the 1800s and is still used widely today:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

It's a simple prayer to memorize, though no doubt the archaic language leave many children mindlessly reciting something of which they have no understanding. The simplistic and highly consistent rhyme give it a sort of deceptive effect. It seems to soothe and lull in tone, but the language derails and leaves the reader in a far different place than he or she expected. Rather than going to sleep for the night, it opens with what the reader infers must be a death. The first line is only altered from the children's rhyme by the pronoun "thee," making the reader suspect something is amiss but likely thinking little of it until reaching the next line with the strange "dust to keep."

It's interesting that Dickinson inverts the language of the original prayer. The child in the original "Now I lay me down to sleep" willingly offers up the mortal part, formed of the dust of the earth in the biblical tradition, in exchange for safekeeping of the immortal soul. In this strange new version of the prayer, the speaker begs for the preservation of the mortal body and an incarnation of the soul. I still am not sure what to make of the final line and what conclusion Dickinson or the speaker lead the reader to draw. It's something I hope to return to.

We learn in the Retreating

We learn in the Retreating
How vast a one
Was recently among us--
A Perished Sun

Endear in the departure
How doubly more
Than all the Golden presence
It was-- before--
(F 1045)

This poem is yet another of Dickinson's that I have never read until I just happened to turn the page and find it. So much of her 1789+ poems have never really been discussed or read beyond those who actually created the anthology or transcribed her scrawlings from original writing to print.

Anyway... there is a distinct play on words here, and Dickinsons thrives on bending language, as my lit professor, Dr Smokewood, likes to call Dickinson's ability to reform language and test its limits. On a very literal level, this poem could be read as a speaker reflecting upon the suddenness of a sunset and how quickly the light passes below the horizon, another day ending abruptly. By extended metaphor, it also describes the sudden loss of one very dear.

It is strange to think that Dickinson wrote this poem in 1865, according to Franklin's dating, which was a full five years before the birth of her beloved nephew, Gib, and thirteen years before his death of typhoid fever at the age of 8 (Wineapple 243-244). In light of the tragedy and suddeness of Gib's death, this poem seems a particularly macabre portent. For Emily Dickinson's brother, Austin, Gib was his dearest child, the "Golden presence" of line seven. Certainly there was a great sense of shock when the child passed, who had been perfectly well and playing in a mud hole with a friend just days before (Wineapple 244).

Dickinson's language describes the acute and stunning weight of grief. There is the perpetual question of "why?", particularly when dealing with unexpected deaths. And certainly, too, sudden death leaves a strong impression of the goodness that does seem to "endear in the departure." This poem represents a strong example of Dickinson's ability to connect with the deeper and often darker human experiences-- her ability not only to put these experiences into words but to recreate, through language, the experience itself.

Some say good night-- at night--

Some say good night-- at night--
I say good night by day
Good bye-- the Going utter me--
Good night, I still reply--

For parting, that is night,
And presence, simply dawn--
Itself, the purple on the hight
Denominated morn.
(F 586)

This poem fascinates me, and I was surprised to find it hiding so impishly among the other poems in Franklin's anthology of Dickinson. Yes, there is a speaker or persona in this poem who narrates it-- an other who is not the poet herself. And yet, I think it shows the depth of feeling and love that Dickinson had for those closest to her.

While she did not have a huge range of friends and people to whom she spoke or even wrote, she was prolific in what letter writing she did. Her language in her letters is practically poetry instead of prose, in its highly charged language and abundance of imagery and exacting phrases. Perhaps all of her poems truly were letters. At any rate, there is a deep connection to others. "Presence, simply dawn" expresses the glorious joy and eagerness that friends brought to Dickinson, as well as the speaker.

I think it is a bit interesting that Dickinson chose night and sunrise as the metaphors in this poem. Humans have no control over nightfall or sunrise, and it implies that Dickinson or at least the speaker has little or no control over the comings and goings of those beloved. Perhaps this could serve as an extended metaphor for death, as though each goodbye could be a literal and not just metaphoric death. Certainly death was not predictable and could strike far too suddenly. This may have enhanced the feeling of "goodbye" as a death and every "hello" as not only a sunrise but as its archetypal plot motif dictates, it could be a rebirth or resurrection. Again, hope tries to eke out some space in this poem, and I think Dickinson and her speaker ardently wish for the next "hello" of a sunrise and its revival of all things new and fresh.

The largest Fire ever known

The largest Fire ever known
Occurs each Afternoon--
Discovered is without surprise
Proceeds without concern--
Consumes and no report to men
An Occidental Town,
Rebuilt another morning
To be burned down again
(F 974)

Dickinson's sunset is a fire, wild and yet steady. Opposites war within this poem, as is typical in her writing. The town is burned completely, and yet it will rise again like the phoenix. Or perhaps the fire will rise again like the phoenix. There is a free license this fire has to burn, and yet it burns within its parameters, so predictable that it is of little concern to men.

She has the gift of the poet to make the reader look at the next sunset and marvel at its intensity and its audacity to ignite the sky so. Her language arrests the reader's attention, mixing clinical words like "discovers", "occurs" and "report" with the highly charged words like "largest fire" and "burned down". Language in the poem follows the progression, using inciting words when describing the fiery sunset, then cooling to a clinical description of the lack of awareness in the middle of this poem, only to flare again in the final lines. Her word choice guides the emotion of the poem, plotting its progression.