Total Slacker--Day Two (36-50)

Well, a slew of fairly minor activities kept me away from this for a week. And I was only part way through my accounts of Day Two. That doesn't bode well. I think I will have to reformat my approach, something I had already anticipated. Let me finish Day Two and see what happens next.

#36 "Snow Flakes"
This might be the only one of her poems formatted like this. I wonder if she considered this a title? Could it be the only titled Dickinson poem? She loves for natural things to wear "slippers". The daintiness of this brings to mind something that's been preoccupying my mind as I read Dickinson. There is a cloying side to her work. Sometimes this is apparent when she falls into cliche, but at other times it seems to spring from some genuinely prudish (or is it girlish?) part of herself. I'll have to think about this more. I am curious to see whether this evolves into something, whether it's something she leaves behind, or whether it simply lives alongside (and possibly even informs) the fiercely imaginative, independent side of her writing.

#37 "Before the ice is in the pools--"
This is a poem that I find exciting because she really works the DELAY: the subject doesn't appear until line 7 and I didn't even realize that "Wonder upon wonder" was the subject at first because it sounds like an exclamation of surprise, like "My goodness" or "Will wonders never cease". But of course Wonder must be what will arrive to her (also this is an odd use of preposition after arrive, but may merely be a common 19th century usage--anyone know?). Is she speaking about "Wonder" as an abstract idea or is the wonder a specific one, some event that will happen or "arrive" before winter? The sense of time is very strange in this poem, because the vantage point looks forward and back at once: by locating us in winter, she forces us to look back with the word "before", and yet she is describing something that "will arrive", something that forces us to look forward. I hear echoes of looking forward to something ahead in "What is only walking/Just a bridge away".

Just as we've been gratified by a subject at the end of the second stanza, she throws us off the scent again with "What we touch the hems of/On a summer's day--". All these relative pronouns pop up in stanzas three and four: two "whats" and a "that which"! Do these refer to Wonder? Is wonder what we touch the hems of on a summer's day? I certainly like that image. However the second half of this poem seems broken off from the first half, adrift. This probably has to do with my total bafflement over the last two lines, which I need help with.

It seems like there's something that "we" (she cozies up to the reader again!) experience in stanza 3, though perhaps only peripherally, because it's just a bridge away and we can only touch the hem of it (something we are subject to? Like a peasant touching or kissing the hem of a royal robe? Or something we desire that is slipping away, like a lover only catching the hem of a dress?). Then we get "That which sings so--speaks so--When there's no one here--" At first I thought this was a denial of the power of subjective experience, i.e. these things in the world still have a voice whether or not we are here to experience them. But as I re-examine, the split between "sing" and "speak" seems to indicate that the human presence, the presence of a receptive mind, makes these things sing--something loftier than speaking for Dickinson I imagine. This line "when there's no one here" reminds me of a wonderful Philip Larkin quote about some of his own poetry. He said: "I am always thrilled by the thought of what places look like when I am not there." Imagination not observation is the power of the poet.

I don't know what to do with the last two lines of this poem because I can't even make sense of the grammar at end "answer me to wear?" And how does this relate to the rest of this poem? I like a lot of this poem, but the end is killing me.

#38 "By such and such an offering"
I like her mocking generalizations... it doesn't add up to much. I bet you would be hard pressed to find someone else (except perhaps Dickens) to write "To Mr. So and So" in a 19th century poem.

#39 "It did not surprise me--"
There are some good things happening in this poem, even if I'm not sure the poem's overall effect is strong. First of all that is a good first line, especially when the decisiveness of the first line is followed up by the faltering second line "So I said--or thought--" (we get the revising voice, clarifying, specifying). Then we get what did not surprise her: the inevitability of the fledgling leaving the nest to search for something greater, "broader forests" and "gayer boughs". And then she writes the deeply ironic and darkly funny: "Breathe in Ear more modern/God's old fashioned vows--". Suddenly the bird takes on human qualities, a technique she uses to prepare us for transferring her ideas about the bird back onto herself: "This was but a Birdling--/What and if it be/One within my bosom/Had departed me?" This question comes across as less absurd because she has already humanized the bird. But knowing the little I do know about Dickinson, that she never moved out of her family home, that (this needs to be fact checked) she only took one trip in her life outside of the immediate area around Amherst (to Washington D.C.), the personal irony is knocking hard in this poem. Dickinson is not surprised to see the bird (a she) leave the nest in search of something greater. There is an understated mockery of the idealism of the bird in lines 7 & 8. Changing location does not change the "old fashioned" self that you present to the world. Dickinson herself will live out the opposite: a life of staid location in which she speaks in a modern, unique voice.

#40 "When I count the seeds"
Another poem in which she uses subordination to delay--to underwhelming effect for me.

#41 "I robbed the Woods--"
I love the strangeness of this line--this poem is charming but never goes anywhere significant. It shows her strength at re-framing an action (picking plants) with metaphor.

#42 "A Day! Help ! Help! Another Day!"
I know how you feel, Emily! This is Dickinson at her funniest. I love her when she's funny.

#43 "Could live--did live--"
The power of verbs and verb tenses at the beginning of this poem is remarkable. Verb tense seems to have so much power in many of Dickinson's poems. I don't know exactly why I say that... maybe it's not true. I will investigate tense more. I certainly know that she writes stanzas (not in this poem) that end in past passive participles that seem like past tense verbs until you keep reading into the next stanza. Temporal shifts overwhelm her poems at times. When I have read more, I will try to write something more thought out on this.

#44 "If she had been the Mistletoe"
Another weirdly quaint sounding one that might have sexual undertones?

#45 "There's something quieter than sleep"
Okay... this is the first funeral poem. There will be many iterations of this theme. Here she is actually in the room with a dead body (though knowing Dickinson that "inner room" could doubly allude to the inner self). But the dead boy here is "IT"! She does not see the body as the former person--it is a thing. There is something chilling in her phrase "idle hand"--it shows the strangeness of her perception because it implies that the hand could be something other than idle. I do love the mourning in the middle of the poem, not for the dead, but for her own lack of understanding: "It has a simple gravity I do not understand!" What a great phrase: "simple gravity": the seriousness of death doubles with the dead weight of the corpse. Also the phrase "simple gravity" suggests the contradictory nature of death: it is common and natural yet painfully unique to those who love the dead. The fact that Dickinson writes this indicates that she does, in fact, understand. I almost wonder if this is a poem in which she is trying to capture her younger self experiencing death--the speaker seems to believe in fairies. Of course her older, sophisticated voice is laid over this naive, confused, child's experience. No child would say "prone to periphrasis"... and this is the phrase that gets to the heart of the style of this poem--it is at once frankly descriptive and yet manages to avoid invoking its subject until the second line of the last stanza when the word "dead" shows up. And this in not an old dead person, but perhaps another child or young person "Early dead". But she cannot bear to speak of death and so has to resort to metaphor. Metaphor might be a form of avoidance or euphemism in this poem, but it emanates from an innate sensibility: she is "prone to periphrasis".

#46 "I keep my pledge"
Ah the Bobolink--it will show up a lot. It's a blackbird that is only found in North (and parts of South) America. It is all black but has a white or creamy nape that sometimes extends to its back feathers. The bobolink also shows up in Pale Fire...

#47 "Heart! We will forget him!"
The direct address of the heart...

#48 "Once more, my now bewildered Dove"
I find this cloying for example. "Courage! My brave Columba!" makes me sort of want to strike her.

#49 "I never lost as much but twice"
She is faithful to her dichotomies. She already created the Burglar/Banker split in poem #22 though it was Burglar/Broker there. Once she finds a pairing suitable, she is comfortable using it over and over again. Like early Yeats, she creates her own world of symbols through (over)use.

#50 "I haven't told my garden yet"
Again a poem which avoids invoking death--almost superstitiously, as if uttering the idea would bring death upon her. This poem is precious to be sure, but somehow I find it endearing here, where I found it annoying in #48. Perhaps because I believe that this woman would go out into her garden and talk to it, and I like me a little bit of crazy!