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Structure And Imagery Patterns In The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson
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Structure And Imagery Patterns In The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson
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STRUCTURE AND IMAGERY PATTERNS
IN THE POETRY OF EMILY DICKINSON
by
Suzanne Marie Wilson
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
August 1959
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
GRADUATE SC HOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS A N G ELES 7, CALIFORNIA
This dissertation, written by
.......Suzanne.. Marie__Wil.son.......
under the direction of h.QT....Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
D ate............................
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE'
- Chafrnmn
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION .................................. 1
II. THE POETRY OF 1862 ........................... 29
III. THE POETRY OF 1 8 5 8 - 1 8 6 1..................... 72
IV. THE POETRY OF 1 8 6 3 - 1 8 6 5 ..................... 118
V. THE POETRY OF 1866-1886 ' 146
VI. CONCLUSION.................................... 175
BIBLIOGRAPHY................................. 189
ii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Since the publication in one volume of one hundred and
fifteen of her poems in 1 8 9 0, Emily Dickinson has received a
good deal of editor:al, scholarly, and critical attention.
The story of the misdirected good intentions of her several
editors appears in a short chapter in the recent definitive
edition of her poems.1 The detailed account of the develop
ment of her reputation remains to be written, although a
useful survey of that subject can be found in Introduction
2
to Emily Dickinson. What is of greatest interest to the
reader primarily concerned with her work as poetry is not
the history of her reputation or the misdeeds of her past
editors but rather the kind of critical attention she has
received.
As is well known by most literary specialists and by
readers of poetry in general, Emily Dickinson herself was an
enigmatic figure. Even to people accustomed to the eccen
tricities of artists, her behavior was unusual and therefore
1Thomas H. Johnson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Cam
bridge, 1955)> PP• xxxix-xlix.
^Henry W. Wells (Chicago, 19^7), pp. 19“25-
a source of curiosity. Most students know that with a very
few exceptions she refused such opportunities to publish as
came her way and that she instructed her sister Lavinia to
destroy all her personal papers and poems after her death.
Most students are also aware that she shut her door on the
world, apparently shunned personal contacts, and suffered in
her later years from nervous exhaustion. If the literature
written about her and her work is any indication, few stu
dents have been able to forget these facts or at least hold
in abeyance the biographical problems they pose in order to
talk about her as a practicing artist. It is interesting to
observe that her peculiarities, preoccupations, and reti
cence resemble in several ways personal characteristics of
Franz Kafka, with whom she could be profitably compared.
Elaborate fabrications could have been constructed about
that writer's personal life had his lifelong friend Max Brod
not provided adequate authoritative information about him.
Emily Dickinson did not have a Max Brod, however. As a con
sequence, her personal life has received much attention and
her poetry has been exploited as a source of biographical
information. Even a hasty survey of the literature written
about her and her work is illuminating in this respect.
Exclusive of the short and fragmentary biographical ac
counts produced by Mabel Loomis Todd, Millicent Todd Bingham
and Martha Dickinson Bianchi, eleven books have been written
3
about this poet since her death. Of these, two are novels
one is the reminiscence of a neighbor who as a child knew
Miss Dickinson,^ one an attempt to formulate her "signifi-
cance, one a combination short biography and "experiment
in critical method";^ three are elaborate biographical spec-
7 ft
ulations, and three are biographies.
The volume devoted to determining Miss Dickinson's sig
nificance is an attempt to place the poet in the main stream
of Catholic poetry. Sister Powers reads the poet's work as
direct self-revelation and concludes that the ideas she
finds in Emily Dickinson's work indicate not merely that she
was dissatisfied with Protestantism as she understood it but
that she was potentially Roman Catholic in her thinking.
O y
Laura Benet, Come Slowly Eden; a Novel about Emily
Dickinson (New York^ 1942); Dorothy Gardner, Eastward in
Eden; the Love Story of Emily Dickinson (New York [1949])•
4
MacGregor Jenkins, Emily Dickinson. Friend and Neigh
bor (Boston, 1930).
5sister Mary James Power, In the Name of the Bee; the
Significance of Emily Dickinson (New York. 1943).
^Henry Wells, Introduction to Emily Dickinson (Chicago,
1947).
7
Rebecca Patterson, The Riddle of Emily Dickinson (Bos
ton, 1951); Josephine Pollitt, Emily Dickinson; the Human
Background of Her Poetry (New York, 1930); Genevieve Taggard,
The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson (New York, 1930).
^George Whicher, This Was a Poet (New York, 1939);
Richard Chase, Emily Dickinson (New York, 1951); Thomas H.
Johnson, Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, 1955)*
4
Most important in Sister Powers’ argument are the assertions
that Miss Dickinson was a contemplative and that she would
have been happy in the religious life:
Contemplation, then, v ; s Emily’s chosen kingdom. And
the key of her kingdom ^ Love. She moved in that king
dom as one lifted up, r she never forgot that she was a
traveler to Infinity.. _n accordance with her aspiration,
she dedicated her jr- ney through time to the singing love
of God, as Sister l^deleva defines poetry. And singing is
three-fold prayer. Recognizing her apartness, the critics
look upon her even today [1943] as the neighbors in Am
herst did in the decades between the sixties and the
eighties--as a "New England Nun." But more significantly,
one of further vision and insight has remarked that she
should have been a Carmelite. And the idea might have
been fact had she been born in or achieved the Catholic
Faith. (p. 57)
The passage shows clearly not only the substance of Sister
Powers' speculations but also, and most important, her ten
dency to blur issues and use language affectively rather
than precisely. For example, if contemplation was Miss
Dickinson's chosen kingdom, art could not have been. Sing
ing the love of God in poetry and living as a contemplative
are two quite different and usually inharmonious activities.
About ten years ago Thomas Merton raised the question of the
incompatibility of poetry and contemplation in an essay he
Q
appended to Figures for an Apocalypse. There he described
what seemed bo him to be the irreconcilable demands of the
two activities:
. . . instead of passing through the sanctuary of his own
soul into the abyss of the infinite actuality of God Him
self, he [the poet] will remain there a moment, only to
9New York, 1947.
5
emerge again into the exterior world of multiple created
things whose variety once more dissipates his energies un
til they are lost in perplexity and distraction. (pp.
108-109)
Merton's statement of his problem provoked considerable
discussion in Catholic periodicals. In 1949 the learned
Carmelite Father Gervase Toelle seemed to settle the ques
tion of the validity of Merton's statement by saying:
The very nature of art, in the first place, demands that
the artist concern himself with the material world of
sense, demands that he attain to the transcendental order
only in the sensible. . . . contact with matter, and
therefore the very nature of art as such, precludes that
alienation from sense, that clean passage from the things
of sense to the things of pure spirit so imperative to in
fused prayer.10
Several readers interested in Merton's problem were not sat
isfied by Father Toelle's explanation. In 1952 a nun put
the substance of the controversy before the English Catholic
philosopher E. I. Watkin. In a private letter of consider
able length, he explained that
Even if the artist or the poet wishes to present forms di
rectly significant of religious truths and pointing so to
speak onwards to the incomprehensible Godhead since by
definition his experience is an experience of significant
forms it cannot coexist with a fully conscious experience
of union with the Godhead exceeding all forms. To that
extent as fully conscious experiences [they] are normally
incompatible. And they are always necessarily incompati
ble as experiences on the same psychological level.11
10"Merton: His Problem and a Solution," Spirit, 16:84,
July 1949.
11In a letter to Mother Helen McHugh, R.S.C.J., May 27,
1952. At present this letter is still in the possession of
Mother McHugh and may be found at San Francisco College for
Women, Love Mountain, San Francisco, California.
He added, however, that
in any case the substance of what is unfortunately termed
contemplative prayer is not the experience of the union
with God but the union itself effected through the will
and in the radical selfhood which is the root and ground
of volition. This substantial prayer-union may be very
high and intimate in souls of an opaque temper or occupied
with other activities without being experienced at all.
Obviously therefore this substantial will union which
alone is essential prayer is perfectly compatible with po
etic (artistic) contemplation.
Clearly the relationship between poetry and contempla
tion is complex and cannot be discussed adequately without
careful definition of terms and copious psychological evi
dence. Sister Powers does not define her terms, and, as is
well known, reliable evidence about Miss Dickinson's inner
life is simply not to be had. By careless handling of ex
tremely complex ideas, Sister Powers makes suspect her many
generalizations and indeed her entire interpretation of Emi
ly Dickinson as a Catholic poet. She expresses in the in
dicative mood what should appear only in the subjunctive
mood and thereby offers misleading ideas to readers trying
to understand Miss Dickinson's work.
The combination biography and critical study by Henry
Wells presents problems different from those encountered in
the work of Sister Powers. Wells is a critic who thinks of
the poet as an inspired seer. His thesis in the biographical
section of his book is that Emily Dickinson was a "seer" and
a "genius" and that what he calls her "genius" enabled her to
overpower neuroticism and create "perfect art." His critical
position and line of argument are clear when he states that
7
Emily's timid bid for fame during her own lifetime was
eclipsed by a group of Cambridge poets— Longfellow, Lowell,
and Holmes--who were either too sane or too feebly mad to
achieve the fine fury virtually requisite in the lyrical
or the poetic imagination. (p. 3 6)
About genius in general and Miss Dickinson's genius in par
ticular he has this to say:
In each creative field genius obviously takes on
slightly different aspects. Whoever possesses it in reli
gion is a seer, or a saint; above all, he is a seer of vi
sions, and such Emily emphatically not only saw but real
ized and expressed. She expressed much of the fervor and
dedication of the saint, much of the insight and penetra-
t'.on of the religious or metaphysical sage. In her we
find that almost unbelievable concentration upon a single
species of creative task, so useful to the race, so char
acteristic of genius, and so painful to the pregnant minds
which bear its burden. The strong bias and personal dis
tortion common in genius, often leading to ascetic severi
ty, one notes in Emily. . . . Pictorially the young Emily
takes her place beside the young Mozart. The genius we
think of as living outside the norm in mind, in conduct,
and possibly in morals. (pp. 3 0-3l)
The last excerpt from Mr. Wells' book is vague and
highly emotional; most important of all, it is dogmatic and
simply ignores a host of alternative explanations for Miss
Dickinson's behavior and her poetry. For instance, all
saints do not see visions. And the question of the poet's
concentration on one species of creative task cannot be at
tributed merely to genius: Perhaps she could not write in
any other form; perhaps the form she chose was indicative
not of her genius but of her limitations.
The critical portion of the book is considerably more
objective than the biographical section. Mr. Wells deals in
some detail with the poet's use of epigrams, light verse, *
and lyrics. But even in a critical discussion he^cannot
seem to avoid extravagance or biographical inference. The
opening section of his chapter "Language of Poetry," for ex
ample, is marred by his way of opening and moving his argu
ment :
Emily Dickinson is one of the foremost masters of poet
ic English since Shakespeare, and in the severe economy of
her speech comparable to Dante. Fascinating as the mean
ing or ideas in her poetry may be, and important as are
her metaphors, verse architecture, rhythm, and euphony, it
is her study of the individual word and her masterly dis
covery of the right word that chiefly defines her distinc
tion. . . . Emily was a worshipper of atoms, and the atoms
from which her imaginative world was built were verbal.
(p. 2 7 6)
And his chapter "Image and Statement" is shot through with
statements such as this one: "Her invisible soul becomes
visible and articulate through imagery" (p. 249). This sort
of critical remark is no more trustworthy than the earlier
discussion of genius and is certainly not helpful to readers
who are trying to see how Miss Dickinson creates the effects
that move Mr. Wells strongly.
The books by Mrs. Patterson, Miss Pollitt, and Miss
Taggard are elaborate biographical reconstructions and con
cern themselves with the mysteries in the poet's private
life. Both Mrs. Patterson and Miss Pollitt underline the
idea, which has now become legend, that Emily Dickinson's
behavior and poetry can be explained as the products of dis
appointment in love. The former writer presents something
of an expose, based on flimsy evidence and considerable con
jecture, of an alleged love affair between Miss Dickinson
and another woman, Kate Anthon. Mrs. Patterson's belief is
9
that Kate Anthon shaped Emily Dickinson's life and that
without her love for Kate, Miss Dickinson would not have
written any poems at all. Miss Pollitt considers a number
of men candidates but decides in favor of Lieutenant Hunt,
the husband of the novelist Helen Hunt. There is no short
age of fiction writing techniques in Miss Pollitt's book,
and her speculation respecting Lieutenant Hunt himself is
imaginative indeed. For example. Miss Pollitt states, with
out benefit of any authoritative illustrations, that
In the spring of 1854 he [Lieut. Hunt] met Emily Dick
inson. She was the most brilliant woman he had ever known.
She had an interesting face, a distinction of personality.
After any conversation with her one kept on thinking about
her, yet not so much about her as about something she had
said. . . . He could talk with her as with a man; though
she was personally pleasing, she did not obtrude her sex.
She was a good listener. She would lift her fiery brown
eyes to his in eager questioning.
Miss Taggard's particular interest is in the mind or
"spiritual existence" of the poet and she writes an account
of Miss Dickinson as a double personality. In the introduc
tion to her book Miss Taggard says that "This book tells the
story < ^ two lives in one person--lives that interlocked,
but did not interfere" (p. xiv). And in her penultimate
chapter, she enumerates a number of the poet's polarities:
In order to embody her opposites, Emily divided herself
(or life divided her; into this and that. She gave her
secret away when she called herself shy and bold. She is
both. And she is everything else by pairs. It was the
logic of a lawyer in her blood, perhaps; the conception of
argument in all things. If she was afraid, she was also
brave. . . . Thus she climbed, from opposite to opposite,
growing by experience thus: by being one thing, and then
the other. Thus no crevice in experience escaped her
thorough method. . . . It was a control of life that
10
depended on spinning everything between two poles....
This is why Emily speaks with the authority of a great po
et ; she is the thunder and lightning of universal humanity.
(pp. 320-321)
Clearly much of Miss Taggard's thesis is the result of spec
ulation. But because of the positive way in which she states
her ideas, the reader is likely to forget that she is offer
ing a personal and not an authoritative interpretation of
Miss Dickinson's life and mind.
The volumes by Miss Taggard and Miss Pollitt appeared
in 1930. Eight years later George Whicher published his bi
ography of Emily Dickinson. His preface contains both a
judgment of the books that appeared in 1930 and a statement
of his own approach:
Since 1930, when two attempts were made, with doubtful
success, to clarify Emily Dickinson's biography, a consid
erable body of fresh evidence has come to light. I hope I
may have used it with effect to terminate the persistent
search for Emily's unknown lover. I have tried to show
conclusively that her love poems are nothing more than the
reverberations in an uncommonly sensitive nature of a de
votion whispered in the heart's chambers, but never out
wardly expressed, save in poetry. Had it been otherwise
we should not have had the poems. The quintessence of the
New England spirit was embodied in Emily Dickinson. She
cannot be rightly understood except in terms of her herit
age.
In those sections of the book in which he discusses her po
etry separately from her life, Dr. Whicher concentrates on
historical considerations such as the influence of New Eng
land speech habits on her syntax or the influence on her
diction and subject matter of such things as her reading in
the Bible and her acquaintance with local newspapers. His
knowledge of New England provincialisms, of the tone and
11
matter of local humorists, and of the books Emily Dickinson
knew and read makes these discussions solid indeed.
The consideration he gives to matters of technique is
also historical in emphasis. In his analyses of her use of
rhyme and meter, his purpose is-to show that Emily Dickinson
knew what she was doing when she wrote irregular verses with
approximate rhymes, that other poets have experimented in a
similar fashion, and that breaking the monotony of regular
meter has long been sanctioned in English poetry. And his
descriptions of her diction and the matter and areas of her
imagery are designed to enable the reader
to see how much of her familiarity with natural objects
supplied her with poetic material, and to make some com-
„ parisons in this respect with other American poets. (p.
253)
Mr. Chase's biography of the poet appeared in 1951- In
one of. the early chapters he disclaimed allegiance to the
Dickinson myth and pointed out, quite fairly, that
besides our own native readiness to make a legendary fig
ure out of Emily Dickinson, one must note in the poet her
self a certain self-conscious, deeply felt necessity to
contribute to her own myth -- a readiness to assume her
part with appropriate flourishes and fitting decor, a ten
dency to play the coquette with her friends, with the cul
ture in which she lived, and with posterity. (p. 7)
Following the lead of Dr. Whicher, Chase found the sources
of Miss Dickinson's "articulate inarticulateness" in her
culture and her relation to it. But the poet's mind and
ideas seem to interest Mr. Chase more than technical analy
ses of her poetry and explanations of her background and
surroundings. He theorizes about her various states of
12
consciousness, uses the poetry as proof of his theory, and
states his belief that
in Emily Dickinson's poetry, taking it by and large, there
is but one major theme, one symbolic act, one incandescent
center of meaning. Expressed in the most general terms,
this theme is the achievement of status through crucial
experiences. The kinds of status our poet imagines are
variously indicated by such favorite words as "queen,"
"royal," "wife," "woman," "poet," "immortal," and "em
press." The kinds of experience which confer status are
love, "marriage," death, poetic expression, and immediate
intuitive experiences which have the redemptive power of
grace. (p. 121)
In short, Mr. Chase's interest is in symbols, not in the
craft of her poetry: "Her poetry was, then, not a mere con
fession of biographical facts thinly concealed by fancy. It
was a large symbolic construction" (p. 152).
Thomas Johnson, Miss Dickinson's most recent ani best
editor, also followed the lead of George Whicher and stated
his thesis in this way:
The person that Emily Dickinson became and the poetry
that she wrote can be understood only within the context
of the Valley traditions which she inherited and the dy
nasty into which she was born. (pp. 6-7)
Johnson does consider Dickinson the artist at some length,
however, and offers valuable explanation of her metrical
patterns and rhyme schemes. He demonstrates, for example,
that
basically all her poems employ meters derived from English
hymnology. They are usually iambic or trochaic, but occa
sionally dactylic. They were metric forms familiar to her
from childhood as'the measures in which Watts' hymns were
composed, (p. 84)
Yet because his primary purpose is to write a biography and
to provide backgrounds for the poet's personality and output,
13
his discussions of her technique are restricted in space and
number of examples and are interrupted by sections of narra
tive .
In all four of these biographies, efforts are made to
analyze and interpret Emily Dickinson's poetry; in only one
of them, Johnson's, is there any consistent effort to evalu
ate her as an artisan working at a craft. In most of the
discussions of her work usually her best poems are chosen as
the only examples, and usually thematic material rather than
technique is emphasized. Worth noting here is the fact that
the two doctoral dissertations written on her poetry are
1 P
centered on theme rather than on craft and that the two
published short studies ostensibly dealing with her art are
13
mainly thematic and biographical. J Mr. Thackrey's extended
article is psychological reconstruction, and his purpose is
14
to prove that Emily Dickinson was a mystic. He phrased
“ I p
Lee B. Copple, "Three Related Themes of Hunger and
Thirst, Homelessness and Obscurity as Symbols of Privation,
Renunciation, and Compensation in the Poems of Emily Dickin
son," unpub. dissertation (Michigan, 1955); Norman Gregor,
"The Luxury of Doubt: A Study of the Relationship between
Imagery and Theme in Emily Dickinson's Poetry," unpub. dis
sertation (New Mexico, 1955)-
■^Ruth McNaughton, The Imagery of Emily Dickinson, Uni
versity of Nebraska Studies, New Series No. 4 (Lincoln,
1949); Donald E. Thackrey, Emily Dickinson's Approach to Po
etry , University of Nebraska Studies, New Series No. 13
(Lincoln, 1954).
■^Before Thackrey advanced it, this thesis was refuted
by Sister Mary Humiliata in her article "Emily Dickinson—
Mystic Poet?" College English, 12:144-149, November 1 9 5 0.
Since Thackrey did not mention her article, one can assume
14
his argument as follows:
Emily Dickinson was able to contemplate and experience as
pects of human existence which ordinarily escape notice.
Furthermore, her concern with religious thought, with
death and immortality, gave her the stimulus to attempt to
comprehend a greater, more complete knowledge than is pos
sible for the rational intelligence. Thus she had both
the capability and incentive to attempt a mystical devel
opment. (p. 34)
Mr. Thackrey was aware that a mystic seeks to transcend sen
suous forms, not linger in them; consequently he explained
Miss Dickinson’s poetry not by advancing evidence but by
presenting as fact mere biographical speculations:
Her intellect and intuitive imagination told her that hu
man communication was unavailing before the greatness of
the universe and the complexity of man's experience within
it. But her emotional nature, her delight in a struggle,
and her unlimited courage bade her make the attempt re
gardless of its futility. As long as her poetry could at
least suggest the infiniteness and wonder of the universe,
she thought the effort was justified. (p. 2 6)
Miss McNaughton’s study is a search for sources of im
agery, recurring images, repeated ideas, and ultimately for
biographical information. She shows that
the chief source of Emily Dickinson's imagery was her
world of everyday experience. Very few of her images are
literary or conventional and, although many are whimsical
to the point of conceit, they are always fresh and ac
curately observed. Nature, in all its aspects, supplies
more images than any other single source. Next in impor
tance are those drawn from the domestic and feminine life
of the household. The religious imagery of the church al
so frequently appears. Other sources less prevalent, but
interesting because of the unique way in which they are
used, are semi-precious stones, legal terminology,
either that he did not read it or that he chose to ignore it.
Also opposed to Thackrey's idea are R. P. Blackmur, The Ex
pense of Greatness (New York, 1940), p. 113* and Yvor Win
ters, In Defense of Reason (New York, 1947), p. 288.
15
geographical names, and the titles of royalty and the no
bility. (p. 1 0)
Not content to point out images and find their sources, and
thereby remain within the confines of demonstrable fact,
Miss McNaughton generalizes about her material and feels
able to make this sort of statement:
Through her experience of nature, Emily Dickinson often
discovered the answers to profound questions. From it,
too, she gained her greatest religious inspiration. (p.
42)
Within the last twenty years, articles which concern
themselves specifically with some approach to Miss Dickinson
as a craftsman have appeared sporadically in learned jour
nals or in books of critical essays. The common lament
voiced in most of these articles is that there has been lit
tle close study of the poetry itself. A remark of R. P.
Blackmur summarizes what seemed to him to be the situation
in 1940:
No poet of anything like her accomplishment has ever im
posed on the reader such varied and continuous labor; and
on few poets beyond the first bloat of reputation has so
little work been d o n e . 1 ^
A few years later Eunice Glenn indicated that little prog
ress had been made:
Consuming interest in the mystery and glamor of her
life is associated with ecstasy over her poetry. She is
idealized by sentiment: there is a halo about her. In
stead of finding the real Emily Dickinson in her poetry,
many try to discover her in speculations about her life.
And the unfortunate result is that there has been very
^ The Expense of Greatness, p. 106.
16
little close study of the poetry itself.1^
As late as 1955 Jay Leyda had this to say:
Though it is consoling to imagine a future generation
of readers who will view Emily Dickinson’s poetry through
no filter of cheap melodrama or of cheaper sentiment, it
is sad that we today receive such a small part of the mind
and art that were put into these poems. It almost per
suades one to surrender wholly to the New Criticism, and
ignore the poet altogether, for every book that imposed a
biographical formula for understanding her poetry can
celled most of the poetry to prove its point.17
The appearance in 1955 of Johnson's definitive edition
of her poems caused many students to hope that some recog
nized scholar or critic of ability would apply himself to
the task of producing an adequate and sizable critical study.
But no extended critical study has appeared, even though in
his edition Johnson has provided students with all the in
formation about the chronology of poems and the condition of
finished and unfinished drafts that they seem likely ever to
have. Discussion of pieces of her work and of the new edi
tion has appeared from time to time in learned journals and
literary reviews, and numerous detailed exegeses of specific
poems have been published in The Explicator, but the need
for extended technical studies of Miss Dickinson's poetry is
plain. The only lengthy investigation of the poet's imagery,
for example, is that by Ruth McNaughton. But her study is
1 f \
Emily Dickinson's Poetry: A Revaluation," Sewanee
Review, 51:574, 1943-
1^"Late Thaw of a Frozen Image," New Republic. 132:22,
February 21, 1955•
17
limited to image areas, repeated images, and is marred by
biographical inference.
The question of how the poet uses her images in her po
ems is never considered by Miss McNaughton. And it is this
question of how that demands a careful investigation of
technique.
Much has been said in recent years about the "biograph
ical fallacy" in interpreting imagery. Wellek and Warren,
for example, say that
the assumption that a poet's imagery is the central con
tribution of his unconscious and that in it, therefore,
the poet speaks as a man, not as an artist, seems in turn,
referable back to floating, not very consistent, assump
tions about how to recognize "sincerity." . . . As for
"sincerity" in a poem: the term seems almost meaningless.
A sincere expression of what? Of the supposed emotional
state out of which it came? Or the state in which the
poem was written? Or a sincere expression of the poem, i.
e., the linguistic construct shaping the author's mind as
he writes? Surely it will have to be the last: the poem
is a sincere expression of the p o e m . - 1 -8
The valuable point made in the quotation is that in his use
of imagery the poet is a poet and cannot be depended upon
for exact personal revelation. The contention in Theory of
Literature is that imagery is a part of an artistic whole, a
poem, and should be approached as such. The image in con
text, then, is what matters. Emily Dickinson, for example,
may use a number of nature images which even the casual
reader is aware of; very little is gained by adding them up
1 O f
Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature
(New York, 19^-9 )> P* 198-
18
for the purpose of biographical generalization. The impor
tant question to be asked is how does she use this or that
image? What is its function in the development of the poem?
Or, better yet, what does this particular image at this par
ticular place in the poem indicate about her methods of com
position?
The fallaciousness of drawing biographical inferences
from the matter of a poet's imagery has also been commented
on in scholarly journals. As early as 19^2, Lillian Hor-
stein discussed the problem in PMLA. Although her remarks
apply specifically to the work of Miss Caroline Spurgeon,
they provide an adequate critique of all imagery studies
that seek to discover in the image biographical information
that cannot be substantiated by other, more objective means:
These basic discrepancies between the established biograph
ical data and the normal inference from Miss Spurgeon's
method of tabulating images constitute one essential cri
tique of the method and warn us not to accept inferences
about unestablished biographical surmises.!9
To Miss Horstein, as to Wellek and Warren, the value of the
image study is its capacity to throw light on an artist's
technique. Although she states that the image study is re
stricted in its usefulness and that to exploit it fully the
ptudent should be aware of its limitations, she also points
but specifically what the imagery study can contribute to
literary criticism:
■ ^ " A n a l y s i s D f imagery: A Critique of Literary Method,"
PMLA, 57:652, September 1942.
19
That the study of Imagery has some usefulness may be
admitted--a study which would include not only themes and
subjects, but also structure and dramatic significance.
Such an investigation as an adjunct to literary criticism
can illuminate the text by deepening our understanding of
the emotions of the dramatic characters created by the au
thor, and may throw into relief the techniques and span of
imaginative interests of the artist; a collection of im
ages may indicate linguistic patterns and the thoughts in
spired by purely verbal associations. (p. 6 3 8)
In the last fifteen years several scholars working with
different genres have produced the kind of image study which
is free of biographical inference and which aims at answer
ing questions of technique. Chief among such studies in the
field of the drama are Wolfgang Clemen's The Development of
20
Shakespeare1s Imagery and Robert Goheen1s The Imagery of
Sophocles' "Antigone."21 Noteworthy in the field of the
novel are two distinguished articles by Barbara Hardy on
22
George Eliot's use of imagery. The most eminent and schol
arly work done in the last twelve years on the use of image
ry in poetry is that of Rosamond Tuve. It is useful to con
sider her work in some detail in order to see clearly both
the purpose and methodology in her books.
Miss Tuve's aim in her formidable voluoie Elizabethan
and Metaphysical Imagery is to provide her reader with in-
*
formation that will enable him to get as close as possible
2 0Cambridge, 1951■
2 1Princeton, 1951*
22,1 Imagery in George Eliot's Last Novels," MLR, 50:6-14,
1955; "The Movement of Disenchantment in George Eliot's Nov
els," RES, 50:256-264, 1954.
20
to the poems of the Elizabethan and Metaphysical periods.
To that end she deals in detail not only with Elizabethan
and Metaphysical images themselves but, most important, with
Elizabethan and Metaphysical criticism. Periodically in her
argument and presentation of evidence she points out that
modem aesthetic theories are not sufficient for an under
standing of the poetry she is dealing with and that histori
cal information of the sort she is providing is necessary.
Miss Tuve herself states her purpose in this way:
Our best modern criticism seems to me to leave little
Lebensraum for Elizabethan poetry, and it is time we ex
amined that function of imagery which is most immediately
concerned in these judgments.
Good poetry will live without being given any room;
nothing has been oftener demonstrated, unless it be that
other fact of literary history, that no one who leaps to
his feet to announce a critical error ever sits down with
out adding some new one. Revolutions in taste are so
harmless in their way that there is no particular reason
to tamper with this one, if that is what it is. But a
curious and interesting aesthetic problem is offered by
the fact that both swings of the pendulum, the admiration
quite as much as the repudiation, seem to depend on ideas
about imagery which differ greatly from those held by the
writers who created the images. To my knowledge, those
writers' ideas upon imagery have never been isolated and
examined; I know of no strict and constant attempt to in
terpret images contemporary with those critical ideas by
their light, and with conscious differentiation between
earlier and modern assumptions about imagery. I should
like to know what difference such an understanding will
make to our actual aesthetic response to those images.
Although she does deal with the image in context, her ap
proach is primarily historical: She wishes the modern read
er to try to see the structure of poems and the function of
2^(Chicago, 1947), p. 8.
21
their imagery as Elizabethans and Jacobeans saw them, not as
the modern critic sees them. Since she believes that the
defining element of an image in the poetry of these periods
is its logical base, she spends a good deal of time present
ing a full account of Renaissance and Ramist logics:
All subtle and probing comment upon the exact logical func
tion which an author may have intended an image to serve
must be set in the historical framework of the logical
training and habits of his day. (p. 2 7 2)
Miss Tuve's book on George Herbert is similar in inten
tion and method to her study of the Elizabethan and Meta
physical poets:
The major purpose of all this is not to study or to il
lustrate critical theories, but to read Herbert. In all
careful reading, however, a theory of criticism is either
implicit or overt, and the first essay concerns itself ex
plicitly with modern criticism, for it tries to put into
practice many ideas denied in the best (or at least the
most vigorous) of that criticism. Notably it tries to put
into practice the idea that a poem is most beautiful and
most meaningful to us when it is read in terms of the tra
dition which gave it birth.
In this study Miss Tuve concentrates on Herbert's liturgical
images and tries to give the reader information about the
history and significance of those figures.
Her purpose in Images and Themes in Five Poems by Mil
ton is to expose and explain the thematic figures which she
believes are at the centers of "L'Allegro," "II Penseroso,"
"The Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "Lycidas,"
and "Comus":
O il
(Chicago, 1952), p. 22.
22
All poems use figurative language, and all say what they
mean through images, but only certain kinds organize them
selves with exquisite economy around great central figura
tive conceptions. It is interesting that all Milton's
longer early poems in English have this character.25
Again, Miss Tuve's aim is not merely to expose these great
figurative conceptions but to provide historical information
that will enable the reader to grasp the figures and their
use as fully as possible. As in Elizabethan and Metaphysical
Imagery and A Reading of George Herbert, she desires to ex
plain to the modern reader the great figurative and rhetori
cal patterns which the Christian Medieval world had passed
on to the Renaissance and Seventeenth Century:
Milton chose no temporary, culture-bound symbols; he
wrote in figures that had held men's feelings and their
concepts of good and evil for two thousand years, or in
images that presented simplest desires and primary human
ideals, or in symbols that spoke through one of the
world's great religions of mysteries and needs that all
religions speak of. (p. 9)
The methods Miss Tuve uses to accomplish her purposes
in these three volumes seem to differ from each other in
many details; certainly her organization of her material in
the three books is nowhere the same. Elizabethan and Meta
physical Imagery, for example, is a single construct that
should be read from beginning to end. Both A Reading of
George Herbert and Images and Themes in Five Poems by Milton
can be read in sections; each essay in both books is de
signed to stand by itself, and no developmental idea is at
2^(Cambridge, 1957)> P-
23
the heart of the arrangement of chapters. These differences
would seem to be basic and would seem to indicate that Miss
Tuve applies a different methodology in each work. The ar
rangement of each book is indeed distinct from that in every
other of the three books, but Miss Tuve's methodology is
much the same in all three. In one way or another she ex
poses the images themselves, their bearing on structure, and,
most important to her, the historical background which gives
life and significance to the images she treats and which de
termines how the poems should be read.
The imagery studies of Wolfgang Clemen, Robert Goheen,
and Barbara Hardy differ considerably from those of Miss
Tuve. All three of these critics are concerned with the
function of the image in the art work, not with supplying
historical information. In his introduction to Clemen's
volume, The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery, J. Dover
Wilson states clearly how Clemen's method differs from that
of Caroline Spurgeon and by implication how it differs from
the historical work of Miss Tuve:
Whereas her [Spurgeon's] method is statistical, his is or
ganic; her aim is to throw light upon the mind of Shake
speare the man, his to elucidate the art of Shakespeare
the poet-dramatist. Thus while she is mainly concerned
with the images of the canon as a whole, classified ac
cording to their content with a view to discovering the
writer's views, interests and tastes; he concentrates upon
the form and significance of particular images or groups
of images in their context of the passages, speech or play
in which they occur. The play above all; for to him "the
fundamental fact" is that "the image is rooted in the to
tality of the play. It has grown in the air of the play;
how does it share its atmosphere or contribute to its ten
or? To what degree is the total effect of the play
24
enhanced and coloured by Images?" Such are the problems
discussed in the pages that follow: technical problems, not
biographical, except in so far as they wonderfully illumi
nate the development of Shakespeare's art. (p. vii)
Clemen concentrates on "the form and significance of partic
ular images or groups of images"; he seeks to expose how
these images or image clusters function in the plays, not
where they came from.
Robert Goheen's work on Antigone is similar in purpose
and method to Clemen's work on Shakespeare: "The major un
dertaking here," Goheen says in his introduction, "is to il
lustrate the workings of dominant images or master tropes in
the Antigone" (p. 3). His emphasis, like Clemen's, is upon
the "workings" or images. Barbara Hardy's discussions of
George Eliot's imagery also emphasize the function of the
images and contain no reference to historical backgrounds:
We find single images and clusters of images which recur
throughout the long narratives, the recurrence acting as a
mnemonic which helps the reader to see the book as a whole,
binding together past and present in anticipation and echo,
and weaving the separate actions by unmistakable but
oblique cross-references. Like Shakespeare's rimning im
ages or like Wagner's motifs these unifying images have
also the function of thematic emphasis, a function which
George Eliot seems to delegate increasingly to these indi
rect methods rather than to the open generalization in her
own voice which she uses so extensively in the earlier
novels.26
It seems, then, that an image study can take one of
three approaches. It can aim at presenting lists of images
classified according to subject matter, at giving historical
^"Imagery in George Eliot's Last Novels," MLR, 50:6,
1955.
background which illuminates the images themselves, or at
considering the images functionally. Ruth McNaughton has
already used the first method on Miss Dickinson's poetry.
If one is to say anything new about that poet's work, he
must use one of the two remaining approaches. Which one he
chooses seems to be a matter of what he wishes to emphasize,
for the two complement rather than neutralize each other.
Since he cannot do everything in one study, the student
should choose an approach consistent with the questions he
asks of his material. And if he wishes to know how the im
ages work in Miss Dickinson's poetry, he should choose the
functional rather than the historical approach.
Miss Dickinson's poetry presents special problems to
the student concerned with function that the work of Shake
speare, Sophocles, and George Eliot does not. Clemen, Go-
heen, and Hardy had large constructs to deal with and could
restrict their studies to the use of imagery in single fab
rics of considerable complexity and length. Miss Dickinson
wrote short poems, not long ones, and she wrote nearly two
thousand poems. Kind and quantity of material as much as a
decision about general approach determine what form the im
agery study takes. In order to deal adequately with the
function of imagery in many short poems, it is necessary to
make divisions in the material and to select examples from
each division. One cannot consider images in context with
out explicating poems, and to explicate individually nearly
26
two thousand poems seems impractical.
Because of the special problems in Miss Dickinson's po
etry, I have divided her work somewhat arbitrarily into four
sections chronologically: 1 8 5 8-1 8 6 1, 1 8 6 2, 1 8 6 3-1 8 6 5, 1 8 6 6-
1886. If Johnson's dating of the poems is accurate, and
doubtless his is as accurate a dating as we probably shall
ever have, the years of Miss Dickinson's greatest productiv
ity are those of 1 8 5 8-1 8 6 5, during which time she wrote
1,066 poems. Since it is impossible to deal with that many
poems at once, the period has been divided into sections.
The purpose of this rather arbitrary division is to deter
mine specifically how Miss Dickinson used imagery in each
period, what her use of imagery in each period tells us
about her structural patterns, and how her use of imagery
and her structural patterns in each period compares or con
trasts with that in other periods.
Within each period I have selected poems for explica
tion that represent the kinds of images she used. In the
poetry of 1 8 6 2, for example, there are many poems in which
the image of elaboration predominates. Since I cannot dis
cuss all the poems of this type that appear in 1 8 6 2, I have
chosen those which seem to represent the group. That there
is a subjective element in choice cannot be denied. But any
discussion that involves selection and arrangement of mate
rial is liable to this charge. If one were dealing with on
ly a single type of image in the poetry of Emily Dickinson,
27
it would be possible to deal with many many examples of the
type. Since the purpose of this study is to expose what
kinds of images Miss Dickinson used and what effect they had
on structure, selection on the basis of representative ex
amples is necessary.
The announcement that Miss Dickinson's poetry seems to
be repetitious in technique does not come as a surprise to
even the casual reader of her poems. That she uses definite
structural patterns within which the image plays a functional
and not a decorative part has never as yet been demonstrated.
In this study I intend to show that there are definite
structure and imagery patterns in her work, that these pat
terns have specific characteristics in each period, and that
these patterns and their rate of incidence indicate two im
portant conclusions that diverge a good deal from assertions
made by such eminent critics as R. P. Blackmur, Thomas John
son, and Yvor Winters. These conclusions are that her
structure and imagery patterns never extended beyond defin
able limits and that she was a conscious, not an instinctive
artist.
As he proceeds through this study, the reader will no
tice many peculiarities of spelling and punctuation in the
transcriptions of Miss Dickinson's poems and may ask himself
if there are errors in copying the text. Since nearly all
the editors prior to Thomas Johnson have consistently
emended the poet's spelling and punctuation or regularized
28
her stanza arrangements in one way or another, and conse
quently have accustomed the public to "corrected" transcrip-
tions^.the reader’s question is entirely justifiable.2^ In
order to assure myself of accuracy in copying, I have checked
my transcriptions carefully with those in the Johnson edi
tion, the most accurate and complete text in print. Through
out the transcriptions the reader will find "it's" used as a
possessive and such peculiarities of spelling as "Bethleem,"
"nescessity," and "gammuts," to name but a few examples.
Since these irregularities appear in the Johnson text, one
assumes they are attributable only to Miss Dickinson.
27
A brief survey of the history of the editions of Miss
Dickinson's poetry is to be found in the introduction to
Thomas Johnson's edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson,
pp. xxxix-xlviii.
CHAPTER II
THE POETRY OP 1862
There are a number of reasons for departing from the
normal chronological order of Miss Dickinson's poetry by
considering the poetry of 1862 before that of the period
1 8 5 8-1 8 6 1. Chief among these is the fact that as a group
the poems of 1862 are technically more uniform and mature
than those to be found in the earlier period. As we shall
see presently, the imagery and structural patterns particu
larly are more consistent and well-developed in the poems of
1862 than in those of the preceding period. Thomas Johnson,
Miss Dickinson's most recent and very able editor, seems to
agree substantially with this judgment, for he states in the
preface to his edition of her poetry that
The quality and terseness and prosodic skill uniformly
present in the poems of 1 8 6 1 -1 8 6 2 bears scant likeness to
the conventionality of theme and treatment in the poems of
1858-1859-1
Analyzing an achieved poetic technique before looking at the
experiments that lead up to it serves to contrast the char
acteristics of the poems in the two periods sharply, and in
a discussion of technique, sharpness of focus and contrast
^The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, 1955)> P- xix.
29
30
are desirable.
Two other considerations make the poetry of 1862 par
ticularly significant. In Johnson's edition there are six
hundred sixty-four poems in the period I8 5O through 1 8 6 2.
Of these, three hundred sixty-six are assigned to the year
1862. Quantitatively this year is the peak of Miss Dickin
son's production; in no other single year did she write so
many poems she wished to keep. And in this year, too, Miss
Dickinson apparently decided she was competent enough as a
poet to deserve professional criticism, for she wrote in
April, of 1862 to Thomas Wentworth Higginson to ask him
whether the poems she had enclosed in her letter were
"alive."
The function of the imagery in approximately two-thirds
of the poems of 1862 is quite uniform. In these poems, the
image serves one of three purposes: it introduces the idea
around which the poem is built, it serves to elaborate or
explore that idea, or it forms part of Miss Dickinson's con
cluding comment on the idea of the poem. Since most of the
poems of this period contain an image which acts as an in
troduction, an elaboration, or a conclusion, it follows that
the structural pattern of most of the poems should consist
of at least the same three parts. Such is indeed the case.
Approximately two-thirds of the poems of 1862 are built on a
simple pattern of introduction, elaboration, and conclusion
and are differentiated from each other in the main by the
31
order In which figured and unfigured lines appear in the
poem and by the particular function the figured or unfigured
lines have. In some poems, for example, Miss Dickinson in
troduces her idea in a figured line; in others she introduces
it in an unfigured one. In some, she draws her conclusion
by means of a figure; in others she simply states her con
clusion directly. Mathematically the number of possible
combinations of these elements is considerable, and Miss
Dickinson uses a good many. Representative examples of
these will be taken up in detail presently, but for the sake
of clarity it is useful at this point to describe briefly
some of the combinations the poet favors and to see an ex
ample of each.
Consider, first of all, poem 502:^
At least--to pray--is left--is left--
Oh Jesus--in the Air--
I know not which thy chamber is--
I'm knocking--everywhere--
Thou settest Earthquake in the South--
And Maelstrom, in the Sea--
Say, Jesus Christ of Nazareth--
Hast thou no Arm for Me?
In this particular combination, the introductory statement
is made in an unfigured line. The developmental section is
figured, as is the conclusion. Poem 613* however, is
p
A figured line is to be understood as one which con
tains an image; an unfigured line is one which contains no
image whatever.
•^The numbering of poems in the Johnson edition is fol
lowed throughout this study.
32
slightly different and represents another combination:
They shut me up in Prose--
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet—
Because they liked me "still"--
Still I Could themself have peeped--
And seen my Brain--go round--
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
' For Treason— in the Pound--
Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Look down upon Captivity--
And laugh--No more have I--
Here Miss Dickinson uses metaphor in the introductory state
ment as she used it in the concluding statement in the pre
vious poem, namely, as the vehicle whereby the statement is
made. And the figures that form the middle section serve as
elaborations of the original metaphor.
A variation of the combination found in the preceding
poem, is clear in number 632. In this variation, the intro
ductory statement with its elaboration is repeated several
times before any conclusion is made:
The Brain--is wider than the Sky—
For— put them side by side--
The one the other will contain
With ease--and You--beside--
The Brain is deeper than the sea~-
For--hold them--Blue to Blue--
The one the other will absorb—
As sponges--Buckets--do—
The Brain is just the weight of God--
For--Heft them— Pound for Pound—
And they will differ--if they do--
As Syllable from Sound—
In this variation the introductory metaphor in each of the
33
first two stanzas is expanded by unfigured lines (stanza one)
and by simile (stanza two), and the conclusion is drawn
through a combination of figured and unfigured lines.
A variation in the sequence of elements common to the
poems seen thus far appears in poem 556. Here Miss Dickin
son rearranges the sequence of elements and elaborates the
conclusion instead of the introductory statement:
The Brain, within its Groove
Rims evenly--and true--
But let a Splinter swerve--
'Twere easier for You--
To put a Current back--
When Floods have slit the Hills--
And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves--
And trodden out the Mills--
The first two lines of this poem put forward the initial
metaphorical statement; the remaining six both expend the
original metaphor and comment on it by means of additional
metaphors.
Within the figured lines themselves Miss Dickinson con
sistently uses one kind of imagery that I choose to call
controlled suggestion. Usually it is composed of one or two
words used adjectivally or substantively. The function of
the image of suggestion is to introduce definite overtones
into a larger image--a metaphor or a simile, for example--by
introducing an adjective or a noun that has several denota
tions and connotations. Sometimes Miss Dickinson reduces
the number of meanings contained in a word by combining it
with another word that eliminates certain meanings. In her
use of the combination "Alabaster Wool" in poem 311# for ex
ample, she eliminates the suggestion of hardness in alabas
ter and leaves those of translucence, whiteness, and uneven
texture. Sometimes she does not restrict the meanings in a
word at all. In the phrase "Leaden Sieves" in the same poem
leaden carries its full weight of suggestion. In all cases,
the image of suggestion charges the line or image in which
it appears and demands much of the sensibilities of the
reader. The type of suggestion I have singled out here is
not the general kind that accompanies all figures of speech;
on the contrary, since some figures in Miss Dickinson's po
etry seem to have a more complex and controlled association
function than others, I have arbitrarily labeled them "sug
gestions" in order to be able to distinguish between the two
Throughout this study, then, the term "suggestion" will be
used consistently to label controlled suggestions, not to
point out general suggestions. In the course of this dis
cussion we shall see how thoroughly suggestion permeates
Miss Dickinson's poetry and what it tells us about the ef
fects she was able to create and the ideas she was able to
express.
It is in her use of suggestion as well as in her use of
sharp longer images that Miss Dickinson most resembles Japa-
4
nese poets, with whom her name is sometimes linked. Like
4
Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese
(Verona, 1957), P* xii.
35
the writers of haiku particularly, she relies on her own
sensibilities and those of the reader for the completion of
suggested associations. In the post-Imagist, post-Pound pe
riod in which enthusiasm for oriental art is widespread, it
is necessary to be quite definite about similarities and
dissimilarities of technique. A brief examination of the
characteristics of Japanese poetry helps to show precisely
in what way her poems can and cannot be said to resemble
those written by the Japanese and by a Western poet admitted
ly much influenced by the Japanese, Ezra Pound.
The most extended and well-documented study in English
of the relationship between literature written in Japanese
and that written in English was published in 1958 hy Earl
Miner.^ Emily Dickinson's name is not mentioned in the in
dex to this volume, and no reference to her or to her work
is made in the text itself. In his treatment of the work of
other Western writers Miner does make a number of observa
tions that are relevant here. For example, when he discusses
the interest of T. E. Hulme and the members of the Poet's
Club in Japanese poetry, particularly haiku, and analyzes
the poetic technique Hulme himself used in a poem such as
"Autumn," Miner says:
The qualities which seem most Japanese are the brevity and
concision of the poem; the concern with objects of nature
as the subject of the poem; . . . the reliance on images
^The Japanese Tradition in English and American Litera
ture (Princeton, 1 9 5 8).
36
to bear the meaning of the poem without explanation or ad
ditional comments. (p. 1 0 2)
To Miner, what Hulme and his group learned from the Japanese
was "the imagistic method which enabled the poet to present,
rather than to describe and then moralize--the ut pictura
poesis of Impressionism" (p. 103). Brevity, concision, and
concern with objects of nature as the subject of the poem
are well-known characteristics of Miss Dickinson’s work and
do not require comment. One characteristic mentioned by
Miner in both quotations, the absence of explanatory comment
in both the poem of Hulme and the haiku, does require some
explanation.
Donald Keene's discussion of the use of suggestion in
Japanese poetry is helpful in defining what Miner means by
"explanation or additional comments." Keene points out that
One obvious feature of Japanese poetry, which has been
highly praised by critics, is its power of suggestion. A
really good poem, and this is especially true of haiku,
must be completed by the reader. It is for this reason
that many of their poems seem curiously passive to us, for
the writer does not specify the truth taught him by an ex
perience, nor even in what way it affected him. Thus, for
example, the haiku by Basho (1644-94):
kumo no mine The peaks of clouds
ikutsu kuzurete Have crumbled into fragments--
tsuki no yama The moonlit mountain
A Western poet would probably have added a personal con
clusion, as did D. H. Lawrence in his Moonrise, where he
tells us that the sight made him "sure that beauty is a
thing beyond the grave, that perfect bright experience
never falls to nothingness." But this is what no Japanese
poet would say explicitly; either his poem suggests it, or
i't fails. The verse of Basho’s just quoted has clearly
failed if the reader believes that the poet remained im
passive before the spectacle he describes. Even for read
ers sensitive to the suggestive qualities of the poem, the
37
nature of the truth perceived by Basho in the sudden ap
parition of the moonlit mountain will vary considerably.
Indeed, Basho would have considered the poem faulty, if it
suggested only one experience of truth. What Japanese po
ets have most often sought is to create with a few words,
usually with a few sharp images, the outline of a work
whose details must be supplied by the reader, as in a Jap
anese painting a few strokes of the brush must suggest a
whole world.6
Now, the one quality apparent in Miss Dickinson's poems
that is missing from the haiku of Basho is the attempt to
elaborate an idea and make some conclusion from or comment
about it. The structure and use of imagery in the poems
discussed thus far indicate this. That Miss Dickinson does
not always succeed in being clear in her ideas or elabora
tions is well known to even casual readers of her work. But,
even if the reader who is acquainted with her work only
slightly cannot understand some of her poems, he can see
that she is elaborating an idea, that she is exploring it
and setting it out in some detail. And he can see that she
has a definite feeling about the idea she is exploring.
Sufficient for this point is the fact that she usually at
tempts an explanation, a description, or a conclusion. When
she treats the idea of the frustration of existence, for ex
ample, Miss Dickinson writes:
The Heart asks Pleasure--first--
And then--Excuse from Pain--
And then--those little Anodynes
That deaden suffering--
f l
Japanese Literature (New York, 1955)# PP* 28-29*
38
And then--to go to sleep--
And then--if it ,should be
The will of it1 s' Inquisitor
The privilege to die.
The Japanese priest Fujiwara No Toshinari writes:
In all the world
There is no way whatever.
The stag cries even g
In the most remote mountain.
In the work of Pound we can find an exact imitation of
the Japanese use of the image. Miner points out quite clear
ly, in fact, that Pound found in haiku a structural tech
nique which he labeled "super-position." What Pound meant by
this term Miner explains in detail:
Since his concept of super-pository structure is impor
tant in understanding a technique used in much of his po
etry, it is necessary to consider what he meant by it.
The poem he wrote--"ln a Station of the Metro"--is, again,
The apparition of these faces in a crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
The poem is clearly divided into two parts. One part, the
first here, consists of a relatively straightforward, un-
metaphorical statement. The second part is a sharply de
fined, metaphorical image of light-colored petals on a
moistened, dark bough. In its simplest form, as here, the
connection between the "statement" and the striking image
is one of seemingly simple contrast. There is a discordia
concors, a metaphor which is all the more pleasurable be
cause of the gap which must be imaginatively leaped be
tween the statement and the vivid metaphor. After devis
ing the technique for "In a Station of the Metro," Pound
used the super-pository method, as it may be called, as a
very flexible technique which provides the basic structure
for many passages and poems.
^Miss Dickinson habitually uses an apostrophe in this
particular possessive pronoun.
O
Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese.
p. 8l.
39
The discovery of this technique in a poetic form writ
ten in a language he did not know is one of the insights
of Pound's genius. Haiku are written in three "lines"
(usually not separated as such, however, when written by
the Japanese) of five, seven, and five syllables, and fre
quently are divided by a "cutting word" (kireji), or cae
sura, into seemingly discordant halves. That Pound per
ceived this can only be appreciated properly when one real
izes that this structural division was not perceived, or
at least not discussed in print in English, until 1953,
when Mr. Donald Keene discussed the matter in nearly the
same terms, without reference to Pound, in his excellent
little handbook, Japanese Literature. (pp. 114-115)
None of the examples we have seen so far of Miss Dickinson's
method of handling imagery corresponds to the discordia con-
cors characteristic of both Pound and the haiku poets. The
alternation of unfigured and figured lines Miner speaks of
is certainly to be found in Miss Dickinson's work. But in
the poems considered so far, the figures serve to state, ex
pand, or comment on the subject of the poem, not to under
line that subject by a contrasting image unaccompanied by
any explanatory material.
Since Miss Dickinson's way of handling the image does
not correspond with the "super-position" technique of the
Japanese and of Pound, why does Mr. Rexroth mention her in
the introduction to his book of translation of Japanese po
ems? There he states:
A poetry of sensibility no longer seems as strange as
it did to the first translators. Mallarme, the early
Rilke, Emily Dickinson, various others, deal with experi
ence in similar terms. Also there is a large body of
verse directly influenced by Japanese, and there are the
fine translations of Arthur Waley. (p. xii)
Mr. Rexroth's purpose in his introduction is not to explain
in what specific respects Miss Dickinson's poetry is similar
40
*
"in sensibility" to that of the Japanese. Perhaps he does
not know exactly. Neither is it his purpose to point out,
as Miner did, the significant fact that Mall-arme was in
volved in the fad of Japonisme which lasted in France from
about 1800 to 1 8 7 0, a fad which Theophile and Judith Gautier
encouraged and fostered (p. 6 8).
The characteristics of brevity, conciseness, and con
cern with objects of nature as the subject of the poem are
present in Miss Dickinson's work and the image of "super
position" unaccompanied by explanation is not. But the im
age of suggestion is present, and it is this type of image
that resembles the image of the Japanese and of Pound, and
that gives to her work the quality Mr. Rexroth calls "sensi
bility." The element common to the image of super-position
and that of suggestion is this: in both cases the poet in
dicates an association which the reader must make for him
self. In her use of "Alabaster Wool," a combination already
pointed out, Miss Dickinson does not explain what she means;
she presents the suggestion, moves on, and expects the read
er to effect the "synapse." Either the reader makes the con
nection or he doesn't; either his sensibilities are tuned to
this sort of communication or they are not. The significant
difference between the practice of the Japanese and Pound and
Miss Dickinson is the size and function of the unit that
makes the associations. The Japanese and Pound use the
whole image in a discordia concors; Miss Dickinson uses
41
suggestion and association to charge the image or line which
itself functions within a larger structural organization.
Turning now to the poetry of 1862 and following the se
quence of combinations introduced earlier in this discussion,
it is possible to see in detail how Miss Dickinson uses the
image structurally and how suggestion operates within the
structural pattern itself.
The first and simplest combination introduced earlier
was that in which the introductory statement was made in an
unfigured line. One of the clearest examples of the type is
this short poem:
So glad we are--a Stranger'd deem
'Twas sorry that we were--
For where the Holiday should be
There publishes a Tear--
Nor how ourselves be justified--
Since Grief and Joy are done
So similar--An Optizan
Could not decide between--
The structural divisions of the poem are simple and clear.
In the first two lines Miss Dickinson announces her point;
then she illustrates it in an image in the next two lines.
With the peculiar locution in the fifth line she begins her
commentary and uses an image to illustrate it.
In the first seven lines, the poet has worked over her
antithesis three times. Two of the three combinations in the
poem are simple oppositions: glad-sorry, Grief-Joy. "Holi
day" and "Tear" are not equivalent opposites, however. Of
the two terms, "Tear" in line four is not at all "charged"
or striking since tears commonly appear on faces at
42
appropriate times. "Holiday," on the other hand, is full of
suggestion. Holidays do not appear on faces, but the ex
pressions associated with holidays do--smiles or bright eyes,
for example. By using "Holiday," Miss Dickinson is able to
pack into her image all the facial expressions mentioned
along with the multitude of pleasant particulars associated
with holidays. By using a "loaded" word of this sort in the
elaboration of the initial opposition, the poet is able to
avoid the monotony of a triple uncomplicated repetition of
her point and is able both to exploit the cheerful and happy
emotional associations in holiday and then deny them in
"Tear."
Poem 319 represents another combination which contains
more suggestion than the previous poem and is therefore more
complicated:
The nearest Dream recedes--unrealized~-
The Heaven we chase,
Like the June Bee--before the School Boy,
Invites the Race--
Stoops to an easy Clover--
Dips--evades--tastes— deploys--
Then--to the Royal Clouds
Lifts his light Pinnace--
Heedless of the Boy--
Staring--bewildered--at the mocking sky--
Homesick for the steadfast Honey--
Ah, the Bee flies not
That brews that rare variety!
Instead of stating her point, illustrating it simply, and
making a comment about it, the poet presents her idea in a
figure, moves into a lengthy comparison, and then makes a
brief comment. The extended simile which begins in line two
and ends with line eleven vibrates with movement, is charged
with suggestion, and provides the terms for the commentary,
which she states in an image.
"The nearest Dream" is a "Heaven we chase." Here
"Heaven" has at least two meanings: a theological Heaven or
an experience of happiness which in common parlance is
"heavenly," which promises to be intense as well as perma
nent. As we shall see, the elaboration of the comparison
and the conclusion supports both these meanings and permits
two distinct interpretations of the poem.
The "June Bee" like the "Heaven we chase" is desirable
to the School Boy who wishes to catch it, thinking it is an
object worth possessing, a treasure that will make him happy.
Miss Dickinson emphasizes the permanent value of the Bee to
the boy by the use of "steadfast" coupled to "Honey" in line
eleven and by applying, in the same line, the suggestion of
"Homesick" to the boy's desire. Here we run into some dif
ficulty following the development of the extended figure.
Either the boy has known great happiness before and can be
"Homesick" for it, or he has imagined what great happiness
could be and in that way is "Homesick." An additional prob
lem is present in the merging of the bee and his product as
a single object of desire, a mixing of images that could be
a flaw in the poem. The suggestions in line eleven indicate
that what the boy wants, and by association what "the near
est Dream" and "the Heaven we chase" are, is the happiness
44
the "Bee," the "Dream," and "Heaven" can give: "Honey," in
tense, lasting joy, permanent rest from desire, or both. In
"Honey" itself, of course, is an overtone of The Song of
Songs and in "Homesick," the emotional appetite for rest and
security, is the suggestion of the common Christian idea
that human restlessness of desire is a manifestation of the
longing for God. Thus far, then, we have equivocal imagery,
or suggestion, in "Heaven," "Homesick," and "steadfast
Honey."
In her commentary, the poet points out that "steadfast
Honey" is not to be had; the use of "bewildered" and "the
mocking sky" hint at the same point in the developmental
section itself. Because of the suggestions in the extended
figure and in the concluding comment we have a choice be
tween two interpretations, both acceptable. One is an ex
pression of personal frustration that has a bitter taste:
we dream in vain; there is no lasting happiness to be had,
and we are mocked by our own disappointment and by nature,
who understands better than we do the game of life. The
other is a conventional Christian idea in which the bitter
ness is taken out of the poem: There is no lasting happi
ness in the world for the human being, whose final home is
in Heaven and whose desire can have no rest until death gives
it to him; "steadfast Honey" not brewable by the bee can be
savored only when one is invited by God to an "At Home."
The latter reading makes conventional indeed Miss Dickinson’ s
references to the futility of chasing the bees of happiness
and provides a way of reading the poem that eliminates the
personal wormwood in the alternate reading.
Another example of the poet's way of handling and elab
orating an idea announced in an image is poem 401. Here
complicated suggestion is used in all three structural divi
sions. In the first stanza Miss Dickinson states her point
in two lines charged with overtones and then immediately
slips into images which emphasize and enlarge upon the sug
gestions presented in lines one and two:
What Soft--Cherubic Creatures--
These Gentlewomen are--
One would as soon assault a Plush--
Or violate a Star--
"Soft" as suggestion is in no way limited; all the associa
tions the word has come into play: the softness of human
skin, of an amoeba, of a fabric, of physical unfitness, of
anything at all the reader associates with the word. "Cher
ubic" is somewhat more limited and calls up mental pictures
of the plaster aloofness of religious statuary or of the
blank happy faces of cherubs in religious painting.
The illustrative imagery in lines three and four nar
rows the suggestions in line one immediately by subtracting
some associations and adding others. Consider "Plush" first.
Until the advent of the graduated tax scale and the produc
tion of synthetic fabrics, plush upholstery on over-stuffed
furniture was a definite indication of status and a sort of
epitome of luxurious comfort. Consequently, the word "Plush"
46
has overtones of class, lack of resistance to pressure, and
overweight, as well as a specific denotation that describes
it as a fabric of a certain type. Thus, "Plush" picks up,
limits, and expands the associations in "Soft." "Star" does
the same sort of thing for "Cherubic" by emphasizing the in
organic, distant, and hard, gem-like quality in the appear
ance of that type of heavenly body. The way Miss Dickinson
accomplishes this limitation and expansion is in her use of
"Plush" and "Star" within illustrative comparisons. "As
sault," like "violate," is a double-entendre and carries the
meaning of ravishing a woman as well as of simply making an
onslaught or an unseemly display of force. In either case,
assaulting a "Plush" would seem to be eminently unsatisfac
tory to the attacker because of the overtones already
pointed out of inanimate, automatic yielding and overweight.
Violating a "Star" would seem to be equally without reward
because of the overtones of complete insensitivity and in
difference .
The second stanza elaborates further the limitations of
the ladies in question:
Such Dimity Convictions--
A Horror so refined
Of freckled Human Nature--
Of Deity--ashamed--
Their convictions are "Dimity," both strong and thin as the
corded cotton fabric of that name and frothy as the appear
ance of that material in a bouffant dress or a gathered cur
tain. "Freckled" in line three is also a loaded metaphor.
The visual picture of freckles themselves is presented, of
course, but so is the notion of the freckle as a blemish.
Because of the quick jump from horror of Creation to horror
of the Creator, line four very nearly becomes an image it
self and almost conjures up a picture of God having dinner
in the kitchen while the Gentlewomen entertain formally in
the dining room.
The third stanza is a commentary on the ideas intro
duced and elaborated in the first two stanzas:
It's such a common--Glory--
A Fisherman's--Degree--
Redemption--Brittle Lady--
Be so--ashamed of Thee--
"Redemption" serves as the antecedent of the pronoun in line
one, dominates the stanza, and is itself the summary of all
the particulars and concepts in Christian theology. Because
of the emphasis throughout the poem on social status, the
suggestions in "Degree" are limited to rank only. "Fisher
man" continues the class imagery but in the context suggests
St. Peter rather than an ordinary man who labors at sea.
Poem 324 exemplifies Miss Dickinson's ability to vary
her structure by repeating her introduction and elaboration
a number of times before making her concluding comment. The
first stanza announces the theme and shores it up with il
lustrative imagery:
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—
I keep it staying at Home--
With a Bobolink for a Chorister--
And an Orchard, for a Dome—
48
In the second stanza she repeats this pattern and picks up
for the terms of her comparisons the kind of church service
and architecture particulars used in the first illustration,
thereby binding stanza two to stanza one and underlining
again the first two lines of stanza one:
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice—
I just wear my Wings--
Instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton--sings.
The third stanza continues the enumeration and comparison of
particulars of religious observance and contains a commen
tary on the relative merits of institutional and personal
ritual:
God preaches, a noted Clergyman--
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of going to Heaven, at last--
I'm going, all along.
The "cuteness" in the last stanza is a commonplace in
the less intense poems of Miss Dickinson; in this passage it
is simply a part of consistently playful, though serious,
comparisons. To some readers the fancy and "cuteness" in
the comparisons would still be as offensive as they were to
some nineteenth-century readers. And a few might complain
about the propriety of the last two lines. Yet it is here
that the poet displays how completely she is able to stay
within the initial opposition stated in lines one and two of
stanza one. "Getting to Heaven, at last," achieving beati
tude after death, is conventionally the proper end of insti
tutional religious observance. In her final line, the poet
casts aside not so much public ritual itself as the emphasis
in institutional observance on beatitude as a future experi
ence. For it she substitutes, as she has throughout her
comparison, the vitality of observance charged with personal
insight. The protest and opposition finally stated in "go
ing all along" is directed against grim, dutiful Christian
observance that looks only to the Last Day and ignores the
possibilities of grace. It should be noted here that pan
theism of the Emersonian variety is not her idea in "going
all along"; on the contrary, from the structure and use of
Imagery in the poem, it is clear that Miss Dickinson is
pointing out in a very airy fashion the quite traditional
Protestant idea that awareness of God in his creation is
possible, considerably more desirable than mechanical ob
servance, and in itself constitutes a taste of Heaven, a
"going all along."
Multiple, complex suggestion is noticeably absent in
this poem. Here Miss Dickinson makes her point by stating
it in a simple unfigured opposition, similar to that used in
"So glad we are— a Stranger'd deem," by continuing the oppo
sition in unequivocal figures, and by being playful both in
her choice of particulars for the terms of her comparisons,
and in her breezy unfigured conclusion. Instead of empha
sizing her point by suggestion, as she does in "So glad we
are . . .," she chooses to enliven what could be a series of
monotonous comparisons by being "cute." As a consequence,
50
the poem is light and gay and the seriousness of the idea or
subject of the poem is minimized. As we go along, we shall
see how consistently the poems which rely either upon unfig
ured lines or upon "cuteness" for their effect lack the in
tensity and richness to be found in those which employ com
plicated suggestion and require the full play of the read
er's sensitivity to suggestion.
Poem 640 is an excellent example of yet another way in
which Miss Dickinson can put a poem together by using the
same units we have been discussing. The longest poem we
have seen so far has not exceeded three stanzas. Poem 640
is twelve stanzas long. It falls into sections, however,
and these sections are the size of the poems Miss Dickinson
usually writes. The first three stanzas constitute the
first major division:
I cannot live with You--
It would be Life--
And Life is over there--
Behind the Shelf
The Sexton keeps the Key to--
Putting up
Our Life--His Porcelain--
Like a Cup--
Discarded of the Housewife--
Quaint--or Broke--
A newer Sevres pleases--
Old ones crack--
The introduction is presented in an unfigured line; the
elaboration or explanation extends from line two to the end
of stanza three. The similes and metaphors in the elabora
tion are neat and clear and contain no suggestion.
The next two stanzas constitute section two. The repe
tition in an opposition of the major part of the first line
of the poem in the first line of stanza four effects a bind
ing of sections one and two and thereby serves a purpose
similar to the repetition in "Some Keep the Sabbath going to
Church--":
I could not die--with You—
For one must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down--
You--could not—
And I--Could I stand by
And see You--freeze—
Without my Right of Frost--
Death's privilege?
Stanzas six and seven form another set which has the same
structural and imagery pattern found in sections one and two
Nor could I rise--with You--
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus'--
That new Grace
Grow plain--and foreign
On my homesick Eye--
Except that You than He
Shone closer by--
Miss Dickinson repeats her patterns again in two more
two-stanza sections which continue the point-by-point elabo
ration of the initial statement that the "I" of the poem and
whomever she loves cannot possibly effect a union of lives:
They'd judge Us--How--
For You--served Heaven--You know,
Or sought to--
I could not--
52
Because You saturated Sight--
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise
And were You lost, I would be--
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame--
And were You--saved--
And I--condemned to be
Where you were not--
That self--were Hell to Me--
The weight of the unfigured lines in these last four stanzas
added to the fact that the stanzas themselves are repeti
tious structurally makes these sections rather heavy and
tiresome. In the final stanza, however, Miss Dickinson
«
pulls the poem together in a conclusion and resolution and
shows in the last four lines evidence of the fine compres
sion and heaping up of suggestion we have seen before in
other poems:
So We must meet apart--
You there--I--here--
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are--and Prayer--
And that White Sustenance--
Despair--
In some poems of this period Miss Dickinson dispenses
with imagery almost entirely. But in them she retains the
Structural divisions of statement, elaboration, and conclu
sion. The sermon-type of organization seems to be charac
teristic of almost all the poems of this period; in the un
figured poems this organization makes the construct more of
a sermon than a poem, however. Consider, for example, poem
53
5^3:
I fear a Man of frugal Speech--
I fear a Silent Man--
Haranguer--I can overtake--
Or Babbler--entertain--
■ But He who weigheth--While the Rest--
Expend their furthest pound--
Of this Man— I am wary--
I fear that He is Grand--
The poem is weighted with unfigured lines which the sprink
ling of images and the monotony of rhythm do little to
lighten. This in itself would not be particularly damaging
but added to this is the fact that the sort of bald and not
very moving truism the poet clothed well in "So glad we are
--a Stranger'd deem," is here stripped quite bare and made
uninteresting and trite. A further point to be made about
the poems which are unfigured or only slightly figured is
that they moralize directly. Poem 381 is another example:
A Secret told--
Ceases to be a Secret— then--
A Secret--kept--
That can appal but One--
Better of it--continual be afraid--
Than it--
And Whom you told it to beside--
This poem is better than 54-3 only because the rhythm is
well-managed and because Miss Dickinson has slipped directly
from her introductory statement to her conclusion without
elaborating what is already obvious and has kept the opposi
tions in the conclusion parallel to those in the introduc
tion. The startling explosions of meaning in a poem like
"The nearest Dream ..." are clearly absent here. Poem 543*
54
and those like it, are simply not as distinguished as the
poems in which figures are well used, not because figures
themselves make poetry more "poetic" but because, as Miss
Dickinson generally uses them, figures serve to explore pos
sibilities of meaning and association and therefore contrib
ute to the richness of the construct of which they are a
part.
Another of the many ways in which the poet varies the
order and presentation of the component parts in her usual
structural pattern is visible in poem 318. This particular
variation lacks an explicitly stated final conclusion or
commentary.
The first eight lines form a familiar pattern of intro
duction, elaboration, and conclusion. Line one states the
point in an unfigured line and the imagery employed in lines
three through six is illustrative entirely. In line three,
Miss Dickinson limits the suggestions in "Amethyst" to vio
let or purple color and to the shimmering or glowing effect
I'll tell you how the Sun rose--
A Ribbon at a time--
The Steeples swam in Amethyst--
The news, like Squirrels, ran--
The Hills untied their Bonnets--
The Bobolinks--begun--
Then I said to myself--
"That must have been the Sun"1
But how he set--I know not--
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while—
Till when they reached the other side,
A Dominie in Gray--
Put gently up the evening Bars--
And led the flock away--
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
produced by light on a quartz crystal; by having the stee
ples swim in amethyst, she eliminates the suggestion of hard
ness or brittleness. The simile "The news, like Squirrels,
ran--" picks up the movement in line three and the "Ribbon"
image in line two. The next two lines are also filled with
activity--the hills removing their dark bonnets and the song
birds, so noisy and active that their name is echoic of
their call, beginning to fill what was before the silence of
night. Lines seven and eight form a commentary, and the po
em could well have ended there.
From a structural point of view, the last half of the
poem is particularly significant, for here Miss Dickinson
makes her statement, draws a peaceful picture tied nicely to
the "Ribbon" imagery in the first part of the poem, and
makes no final conclusion. The poem is in no way marred by
this lack of final statement, as would be "The nearest Dream
recedes— unrealized--," for example, because her description
of nightfall contains an indirect suggested conclusion. The
last seven lines of the poem tell a little story which re
sembles a painting and which uses persons to stand for the
play of light at evening time. The "purple stile" empha
sizes the horizontal as well as the vertical effect of night
fall and also echoes "Amethyst" in line three. The phrase
"little Yellow boys and girls" is reminiscent of the image
in line two but supplies the color, broken-line effect, and
direction of movement of the ribbons of light withdrawing or
crawling up over the stile of landscape and houses. Staying
with her use of persons, the poet calls twilight "A Dominie
in Gray--" who, completing the horizontal ribbon imagery be
gun in "stile," puts up "the evening Bars" and takes the
light completely away. Miss Dickinson could have made a
number of comments on this picture but she did not have to.
Her imagery made it for her. The picture of children climb
ing a stile and being met by a Dominie who is gentle when he
drops night and leads his flock back home into light sug
gests, among other things, the Good Shepherd story and is,
in its slow and quiet movement, a kind of benediction urbis
et orbis.
Poem 636 is another example of the combination that
lacks a stated conclusion and consists of an extended elabo
ration of the first line of the poem. This particular ex
ample, unlike "I'll tell you how the Sun rose--," contains
very few images and consists mostly of unfigured lines.
The Way I read a Letter1s--This--
'Tis first--I lock the Door--
And push it with my fingers--next—
For transport it be sure--
Then I go the furthest off
To counteract a knock--
Then draw my little Letter forth
And slowly pick the lock--
Then--glancing narrow, at the Wall--
And narrow at the floor
For firm Conviction of a Mouse
Not exorcised before--
Peruse how infinite I am
To no one that You--know--
And sigh for lack of Heaven--but not
The Heaven God bestow--
The first stanza contains no figures and is a simple account,
in a time sequence, of the first two steps in reading a let
ter. The elliptical fourth line is a direct statement of the
emotional reaction of "I" to steps one and two. Stanza two
contains one figure, in line four; stanzas three and four
contain no figures. "Then" in stanzas two and three serves
to continue the sequence begun in stanza one and makes five
steps in the reading process. The pattern begun in stanza
one of following the step with a statement of reaction is
carried out in stanzas three and four. To some readers of
Miss Dickinson's work, this poem would be quite pleasing:
the rhythm is regular and the logical design in the poem,
along with the economy of language, make the poem a well-
ordered whole. In fact, many editors include this poem in
their anthologies. The point to be considered here is one
of richness, however. When "The Way I read a Letter1s--
This--" is compared with "I'll tell you how the Sun Rose--,"
it is seen to be an inferior example of the type. The lat
ter poem contains all the admirable qualities of the former
but possesses in addition considerable complexity of sugges
tion and technical richness. Again we see, when we compare
various examples of the same type of poem with one another,
that the intensity and richness present in the heavily fig
ured poems are absent in those which rely upon unfigured
58
lines.
Thus far in our consideration of the poetry of 1862 we
have seen how Miss Dickinson was able to write many apparent
ly different poems by varying the way in which she assembled
the same basic components. The next type of poem is far
more interesting than any we have seen before but it con
tains no new component whatever. On the contrary, this type
of poem represents a complicated and systematic use of mul
tiple suggestion within larger images that function as in
troduction, elaboration, or conclusion. Some readers of
Miss Dickinson's poetry do not know exactly why they prefer
a poem such as "The Soul's Superior instants" to "Some Keep
the Sabbath going to Church--," for example. Aside from
matters of personal taste, the reason for this sort of un
knowing preference is to be found in the poet's ability to
effect a double-exposure by her use of consistently parallel
suggestion. George Whicher noticed Miss Dickinson's "double
vision" long ago but made biographical use of his observa
tion :
Her long struggle to face down frustration gave her a cur
ious doubleness of vision, as though her two eyes did not
make one in sight but, bird-like, were focused in opposite
directions, one upon the world of sense and one upon the
world of changeless things. In her mind the two sets of
images were sometimes whimsically blended, sometimes vio
lently contrasted. This doubleness gives her maturest po
etry its peculiar fascination.9
^This Was a Poet; a Critical Biography of Emily Dickin
son (New York, 1939), P* 288.
59
"The Soul's Superior Instants" Is an excellent example of
this "doubleness of vision."
In the first stanza she states her point in an image
that gives both a psychological and a physical impression;
as Miss Dickinson describes it, the experience of the with-
drawal of the "Soul" from the world, of intense personal
solitude and concentration undisturbed and undistracted, is
either mental or physical or both: the pivot word "Alone"
suggests equally well both physical or psychological soli
tude. The elaboration in the second stanza is the same sort
of thing. Physically, she describes withdrawal and a meet
ing; psychologically, she describes the meeting of the mind
with the object of its attention in contemplative withdrawal.
The Soul's Superior instants
Occur to her— alone--
When friend— and Earth's occasion
Have infinite withdrawn--
Or She--Herself— ascended
To too remote a Hight
For lower Recognition
Than Her Omnipotent--
Stanzas three and four contain the commentary and con
tinue the double image:
This Mortal Abolition
Is seldom--but as fair
As Apparition--subject
To Autocratic Air--
Eternity's disclosure
To favorites--a few--
Of the Colossal Substance
Of Immortality
"Mortal Abolition" is a good example of limited suggestion'
that has both physical and psychological interpretations.
"Abolition" itself has many associations, several of which
were current in the middle of the Civil War. By using "Mor
tal," however, Miss Dickinson restricts the meaning of "Abo
lition" either to the separation of the body and soul in
death or to the doing away with the solicitations of the
body. The latter is another way of describing in particu
lars the intense mental solitude of contemplative withdrawal.
Both impressions are present in the phrase and both are
built on in the rest of the poem, although the psychological
one is primary because of the implications of repetition in
"seldom." The overtone of death is underlined in the lan
guage of the last stanza, however, and serves to liken the
contemplative experience to death, a common analogy in reli
gious writing.
In lines two and three of stanza three, she says that
"Mortal Abolition" is "as fair/ As Apparition. ..." Here
she moves deeper into sensuous imagery further made physical
apparently by "Autocratic Air--." Apparition, however, re
fers to the appearance of a ghost, phantom, or mirage and is
both physical and mental in its implications. "Autocratic
Air" is a similar sort of figure: Autocratic commonly de
scribes a type of human behavior and combined with "Air"
makes a kind of personification. The physical-psychological
imagery of solitude and death in the first three stanzas is
maintained in the fourth where the poet presents her
6l
conclusion in a picture similar to that in the description
of the Transfiguration in the New Testament or in the ac
count in the Old Testament of Elias' meeting with God on
Mount Horeb. She presents this meeting with "Immortality"
graphically, without in any way damaging the impression she
has built up of a single individual's psychological experi
ence of religious insight in a solitude purely mental.
Another example of the double-image poem is 303- This
poem involves personal withdrawal as does "The Soul's Supe
rior instants" but uses the imagery of social intercourse
rather than that of physical seclusion. In stanza one she
states her point in a double image and begins her elabora
tion :
The Soul selects her own Society--
Then--shuts the Door--
To her divine Majority--
Present no more--
The first two lines present in the imagery of polite social
custom the physical and psychological withdrawal of the
"Soul" from all solicitation. The second two lines continue
this imagery and through suggestion maintain the idea of the
mental as well as the physical act of seclusion. The im
pression that the withdrawal and consequent rejection of any
and all further invitations are not whims but the result of
a mental decision of consequence is given by the phrase "di
vine Majority." The latter word is a legal and social term
which usually applies to anyone reaching his twenty-first
birthday, at which time he is expected to assume the
62
responsibilities and enjoy the privileges of adulthood.
Consequently, it suggests maturity, fullness of powers, re
liability of judgment. "Majority" limits the numerous sug
gestions in "divine" to these two: the attribution of sa
credness to the right of personal judgment and decision and
to the exercise of that right.
Stanza two is a scene in which the decision announced
and described in stanza one is acted out. Because of her
continuation and manipulation of social imagery, Miss Dick
inson is able to present both the scene and the reaction of
"the Soul" to it at one and the same time:
Unmoved--she notes the Chariots--pausing--
At her low Gate--
Unmoved--an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat--
The juxtaposition of "Chariots" and "low Gate" and of "Em
perors" and "Mat" in combination with "Unmoved" indicate not
simply the imaginative particulars of a scene but the fact
that the offer of higher status, glamor, brilliance of life
or possessions does not move "the Soul" in the slightest,
that there is no point in bothering with the intrusion pro
hibited in stanza one.
In the third stanza the poet moves into direct commen
tary but does not damage the double-image she has built up
in the first two stanzas:
I've known her--from an ample nation--
Choose One--
Then close the Valves of her attention--
Like Stone.
Here she restricts "Society" to "One" and in her use of
"Valves" and "Stone" builds very well on the door image in
stanza one and the "Unmoved" image in stanza two. "Valves,"
it should be pointed out, contains at least two suggestions
or meanings: valves are devices which control flow and they
are also halves or leaves of a folding door. In the lan
guage of social custom, the individual's door is closed to
all uninvited guests; in the language of psychological with
drawal, the "Soul" has closed the valves of susceptibility
to solicitation. "Stone" is the particularly interesting
word here and is an excellent example of free suggestion.
The physical sensations of hard and solid are certainly in
the word as are the psychological overtones of inaccessibil
ity and of being unyielding and invulnerable. The stone of
the tomb door is also suggested and ties up the door images
in stanzas one and three as well as all the images express
ing both the physical and psychological idea of total, im
penetrable withdrawal.
Less than one-third of the poems of this period do not
follow the structural pattern of introduction, elaboration,
and conclusion. These poems seem to be of two types. One
type is the purely descriptive poem; the other is the poem
built entirely on progressive suggestion and association.
Poem 300, for example, is a systematic exploitation of the
many meanings and associations surrounding the word "morn-
"Morning"--means "Milking"--to the Farmer-- 1
Dawn— to the Teneriffe-- 2
Diee--to the Maid-- 3
Morning means just Risk--to the Lover-- 4
Just revelation--to the Beloved-- 5
Epicures--date a Breakfast--by it-- 6
Brides--an Apocalypse-- 7
Worlds--a Flood-- 8
Faint-going Lives--Their lapse from Sighing-- 9
Faith--the Experiment of Our Lord-- 10
The first three lines are unexciting individually but
in combination are pictures continuously charged with move
ment, activity, color, and persons. "Milking" in the first
line brings with it a multitude of earthy particulars--the
chill of early morning; the color of the sky in New England
at milking time; the warmth, pungency, and animal comfort of
the barn, to name but a few. The second line picks up the
time association in "Milking" and crystallizes it in a pic
ture of dawn on the volcano which dominates the largest of
the Canary Islands. The third returns to the homely partic
ular and is an imperative to the cook to begin working on
the vegetables.
In the next two lines, Miss Dickinson announces a new
series of associations and shifts to an obvious and rather
"cute" form of understatement in her use of "just" in combi
nation with the emotional stakes and disappointments of lov
ers. "Epicures" in line six serves to contrast the quality
of the experience of the lovers in line four and five with
that of the gourmet and with that of the "Bride" in line
seven. Miss Dickinson apparently makes a distinction be
tween the experience of the "Beloved" and that of,the
65
"Bride": "Revelation" has unpleasant overtones, whereas
"Apocalypse" carries with it all the associations of St.
John's description of the advent of Heaven on earth. Line
eight uses morning as a kind of revelation of divine power,
as that is displayed in the Noah story. Line nine perhaps
builds by opposition on the fidelity and strength of Noah
and includes all the reluctant and anxious for whom he is a
mirror image. And the last line is conventionally Christian
in its use of the Person and Resurrection of Christ. The
progression of association in this poem is from everyday ac
tivity to emotional insight of varying quality to divine
revelation.
Poem 469> on the other hand, is a "picture poem" and
like a good many of the descriptive poems is an extended
analogy.
The Red-Blaze--is the Morning--
The Violet--is Noon--
The Yellow--Day--is falling--
And after that--is none--
But Miles of sparks— at Evening--
Reveal the Width that burned--
The territory Argent--that
Never yet--consumed--
The equivalences here work differently from those in the
previous poem and begin the fire analogy which is extended
through the whole poem. The images here contain no sugges
tion similar to that found in other poems and consist only
of uncomplicated, sharp, visual pictures.
The well-known and usually anthologized "I like to see
66
it lap the Miles" is another example of the descriptive poem
built on analogy. Here the images, like those in "The Red--
Blaze--is the Morning--," are visual and consistent with one
another as points of comparison between a locomotive and a
horse:
I like to see it lap the Miles
And lick the Valleys up--
And stop to feed itself at Tanks--
And then--prodigious step
Around a Pile of Mountains--
And supercilious peer
In Shanties--by the sides of Roads--
And then a Quarry pare
To fit it's sides
And crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid--hooting stanza--
Then chase itself down Hill--
And neigh like Boanerges--
Then--prompter than a Star
Stop--docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door.
This description is considerably more complex than that in
"The Red--Blaze--is the Morning--," of course. It contains
subordinate figures such as the similes in stanza four and
presents quite detailed pictures. "Prodigious" in stanza
one, "supercilious" in two, "complaining all the while/ In
horrid--hooting stanza--" in three, and "docile" and "omnip
otent" in four, for example, help outline each motion of the
animal. The function of most of the imagery is to present
points in an analogy, however, and the additional images
that appear in the form of similes in stanza four reinforce
the particular point Miss Dickinson is making.
All of Miss Dickinson's descriptive poems are not simply
extended analogies which use imagery pictorially, however.
Some of them employ considerable suggestion. In poem 311,
for example, the poet describes her subject by describing
its activity, the same approach she used in "I like to see it
lap the Miles." But in 311 the poet makes great use of sug
gestion and ignores analogy altogether. The first stanza
begins the description:
It sifts from Leaden Sieves--
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road--
In line one, "Leaden" is broad suggestion and includes the
sensations gray, sluggishness, weight, gloom. All these
meanings and qualities serve to describe and give emotional
dimension to "Sieve," which in turn is a metaphorical de
scription of snowclouds. "Alabaster," on the other hand, is
limited suggestion: Using the word in combination with
"Wool" removes the sensation of hardness and leaves those of
translucence, whiteness, and uneven texture. "The Wrinkles
of the Road" is an interesting image to linger on a moment.
The road suggests journeys and pilgrimages, ways of speaking
of life, which in time produces wrinkles. The word "Wrin
kles" itself suggests the human face which has been marked
by time and experience. Together the words serve to make of
the earth a being whom much travail and time have scarred
and whose visage is being made smooth and relaxed by white,
pure snow. The one release from care usually associated
with winter imagery is, of course, death.
In stanza two Miss Dickinson shifts directly to an ex
tended face image:
It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain--
Unbroken forehead from the East
Unto the East again--
The last two lines of the stanza are a sort of parenthetical
expression, an image of the image, as it were. Stanza three
is another variation of stanza one and contains in the first
three lines an overtone of the comparison to human anatomy
so apparent in stanza two and suggested in stanza one:
It reaches to the Fence--
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces--
It deals Celestial Vail
Fleece can be the covering of a sheep or a type of garment.
Here the snow wraps the rails as a sheep is wrapped in his
skin or as a human being is wrapped in a greatcoat. It sug
gests also the shrouding of the body after death.
Stanza four, logically begun in the last line of stanza
three ("It deals Celestial Vail"), continues the description
of what snow does:
To Stump, and Stack--and Stem--
A Summer's empty Room--
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them--
"Celestial" in the last line of stanza three is suggestion
and includes both the idea of snow as a veil given to the
earth by the heavens according to the laws of nature and the
idea of snow as a divine gift, a mark of ownership or
consecration. In stanza four this veil is "dealt" to stump
and stack and stem, dead reminders in joints, or piles, of
the harvest, or full-blooming time of life. "A Summer's
empty Room--," a parenthetical image like that in stanza two,
continues the notion of lifelessness, of the abdication of a
life-giving occupant, and helps give to "Acres of Joints"
the quality of tombstones, records of the death of the har
vest which would be "recordless, but for them--."
The fifth stanza picks up again the human overtone by
giving wrists to posts:
It ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen
Then stills its Artisans--like Ghosts--
Denying they have been--
Snow decorates the body, as it were, and then covers it com
pletely. The last two lines emphasize the power and finali
ty of the shrouding of the landscape and in the simile "like
Ghosts" brings fully to the surface all the suggested com
parisons of this natural phenomenon with death. "Denying
they have been--" applies to both the shapes or artisans un
der the snow or to human beings whom death has gathered into
obscurity.
We see then that in this descriptive "nature" piece
Miss Dickinson has created a double-image poem similar to
the two discussed previously. The difference between this
poem and the other double-image poems is that here Miss
Dickinson has introduced suggestion into purely descriptive
imagery; in the other two poems discussed she introduced it
70
into images which themselves functioned as introduction,
elaboration, or conclusion.
At this point it is possible to make a number of general
observations about Miss Dickinson's use of imagery in the
poetry of 1862. In the majority of the poems discussed here,
the poet used metaphor or simile as the vehicle whereby she
made an initial statement, then elaborated that statement,
or drew a conclusion from it. Within this structural use of
the image, she used suggestion in several ways, singly or in
combination. She limited suggestion by combining words
which canceled certain associations, she left the suggestion
completely free, or she used consistent multiple suggestion
throughout whole poems and thereby was able to effect a
double-image or double elaboration in one set of terms. In
the poems which did not follow the introduction-elaboration-
conclusion pattern, the poet described an object according
to its activity or drew out implications in a term by list
ing images linked together through suggestion and associa
tion. In the first type, or descriptive poem, she used both
analogy and consistent suggestion and therefore was able to
effect a single extended description by comparison or a
double description similar to that in the double-image poems
of the first group.
What seems to be most apparent here is an extensive and
habitual use of association by suggestion within imagery
used as introduction, elaboration, conclusion or as
description. It is desirable now to examine the early poems
in order to determine how the use of imagery in that group
of poems is like or unlike that in the mature poetry of 1 8 6 2.
CHAPTER III
THE POETRY OF 1 8 5 8 -1 8 6 1
Emily Dickinson began to transcribe and gather her po
etry into packets in 1 8 5 8, when she was twenty-eight years
old. According to the tabulation of Thomas Johnson, Miss
Dickinson assembled fifty-two poems in 1 8 5 8, ninety-four in
l859> sixty-four in i860, and eighty-six in l8 6l. For all
practical purposes these two hundred ninety-six poems are
the early poetry of Emily Dickinson because they represent
consistent poetic activity refined by the finishing process
of packet assembly. In addition to this substantial group
of poems are five poems which form a separate group ante
dating the packet of 1 8 5 8. These poems were written during
the period 1 8 5 0 -1 8 5 4 and represent Miss Dickinson's earliest
poetic efforts. Since they are few in number and are the
unselected residue of the poems she wrote in her youth, it
is valid to consider all of them in some detail before pro
ceeding to the main corpus of the early poetry.
In the introduction to his edition of Miss Dickinson's
poems, Johnson states his opinion of the quality of the pre-
1858 poems quite definitely:
Aside from two valentines, there are only three verses
that can be identified surely as having been written
73
before 1 8 5 8. . . . All are sentimental in tone and common
place in thought. (p. xix)
Although the tone and thought in these poems leave much to
be desired, the structure and the use of imagery in them are
worthy of attention. Consider, for example, poem 1, a val
entine written in I8 5O:
Valentine week 1
Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine, 2
unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine! 3
Oh the Earth was made for lovers, for damsel, and
hopeless swain, 4
For sighing, and gentle whispering, and unity made
of twain. 5
All things do go a courting, in earth, or sea, or air, 6
God hath made nothing single but thee in His world
so fair! 7
The bride, and then the bridegroom, the two, and
then the one, 8
Adam, and Eve, his consort, the moon, and then the sun; 9
The life doth prove the precept, who obey shall
happy be, 10
Who will not serve the sovreign, be hanged on fatal
tree. 11
The high do seek the lowly, the great do seek the
small, 12
None cannot find who seeketh, on this terrestial
ball; 13
The bee doth court the flower, the flower his suit
receives, 14
And they make merry wedding, whose guests are
hundred leaves; 15
The wind doth woo the branches, the branches they
are won, 16
And the father fond demandeth the maiden for his son. 17
The storm doth walk the seashore humming a mournful
tune, 18
The wave with eye so pensive, looketh to see the moon, 19
Their spirits meet together, they make them solemn
vows, 20
No more he singeth mournful, her sadness she doth
lose. 21
The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living
bride, 22
Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide; 23
74
Earth is a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true, 24
And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain
to sue. 25
Now to the application, to the reading of the roll, 26
To bringing thee to justice, and marshalling thy soul: 27
Thou art a human solo, a being cold, and lone, 28
Wilt have no kind companion, thou reap1st what thou
hast sown. 29
Hast never silent hours, and minutes all too long. 30
And a deal of sad reflection, and wailing instead of
song? 31
There's Sarah, and Eliza, and Emeline so fair, 32
And Harriet, and Susan, and she with curling hair I 33
Thine eyes are sadly blinded, but yet thou mayest see 34
Six true, and comely maidens sitting upon the tree; 35
Approach that tree with caution, then up it boldly
climb, 36
And seize the one thou lovest, nor care for space,
or time 1 37
Then bear her to the greenwood, and build for her a
bower, 38
And give her what she asketh, jewel, or bird, or
flower-- 39
And bring the fife, and trumpet, and beat upon the
drum-- 40
And bid the world Goodmorrow, and go to glory home I 4l
After opening the poem with a conventional invocation
to the muses, Miss Dickinson makes her statement in lines
four and five. Lines six through twenty-five form a lengthy
elaboration of lines four and five, and line twenty-six,
"Now to the application . . .," begins the conclusion. The
imagery in the elaboration is allusive, extravagantly and
conventionally pastoral, and lacks entirely the compression
and suggestion characteristic of the 1862 poems. That the
images found in this poem are different in matter and source
from those found in an 1862 poem such as "So glad we are— a
Stranger'd deem" is clear from only a casual comparison.1
1See p. 4l.
75
The significant point here is not the difference between the
two poems but their likeness: in both cases imagery appears
in a similar sequence within a structural pattern limited to
statement, elaboration, and conclusion. In short, imagery
functions structurally in the same way in the earliest poem
attributable to Emily Dickinson as it does in a poem written
during the year of her greatest production.
The proliferation in the first valentine appears in the
p
second also. In the note which follows the valentine of
1852 Johnson points out that
The valentines of the 1 8 5 0's were successful in proportion
to the extravagance and elaborateness of their expression.
Those written by ED [sic] held a special place in the
minds of her contemporaries for their ornate drollery.
This valentine [1 8 5 2] was sent to William Howland (1822-
1880). . . . Whether he or another sent it to the Republi
can , the purpose of valentine exchanges was carried for
ward: to surprise the sender with a riposte and to keep
up the badinage as long as possible. (p. 5)
The second valentine is long (seventeen stanzas), elaborate,
and playful, but the imagery functions within the structure
as we might expect:
"Sic transit gloria mundi,"
"How doth the busy bee,"
"Dum vivimus vivamus,"
I stay mine enemy I
[1]
Oh "veni, vidi, vicil"
Oh caput cap-a-pie!
And oh "momento mori"
When I am far from thee!
[2]
2
Poem 3 in the Johnson edition.
76
Hurrah for Peter Parley I
Hurrah for Daniel Boon!
Three cheers, sir, for the gentleman
Who first observed the moon!
Peter, put up the sunshine;
Pattie, arrange the stars;
Tell Luna, tea is xvaiting,
And call your brother Mars!
Put down the apple, Adam,
And come away with me,
So shalt thou have a pippin
Prom off my father's tree!
I climb the "Hill of Science,"
I "view the landscape o'er;"
Such transcendental prospect,
I ne'er beheld before!
Unto the Legislature
My country bids me go;
I'll take my indla rubbers,
In case the wind^should blow!
During my education,
It was announced to me
That gravitation, stumbling,
Fell from an apple tree!
The earth upon an axis
Was once supposed to turn,
By way of a gymnastic
In honor of the sun!
It was the brave Columbus,
A sailing o'er the tide,
Who notified the nations
Of where I would reside!
Mortality is fatal--
Gentility is fine,
Rascality, heroic,
Insolvency, sublime!
Our Fathers being weary,
Laid down on Bunker Hill;
And tho' full many a morning,
Yet they are sleeping still,—
[3]
[4]
[51
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
0
* [11]
[12]
The trumpet, sir, shall wake them,
In dreams I see them rise,
Each with a solemn musket
A marching to the skies I
A coward will remain, Sir,
Until the fight is done;
But an immortal hero
Will take his hat, and run!
Good bye, Sir, I am going;
My country calleth me;
Allow me, Sir, at parting,
To wipe my weeping e'e.
In token of our friendship
Accept this "Bonnie Doon,"
And when the hand that plucked it
Hath passed beyond the moon,
The memory of my ashes [17]
Will consolation be;
Then, farewell, Tuscarora,
And farewell, Sir, to thee!
The first section is composed of six stanzas which contain
an elaborate build-up for the statement in lines three and
four of stanza six. The second section extends from stanza
seven through stanza fourteen and is a detailed elaboration
of "the prospect" mentioned in stanza six. The last three
stanzas form a conclusion. In all three sections imagery
helps make the statement, the elaboration, and the conclu
sion. Although the imagery seems consciously opulent and
studiously bright, it functions structurally as it did in
jthe first valentine and as it did later in the major portion
of the poetry of 1 8 6 2.
Poem 2 in the Johnson edition was extracted from a let
ter Emily Dickinson wrote to her brother Austin in 1 8 5 1.
Witty word-play was apparently not her purpose in this poem
77
[13]
[14]
[15]
[1 6]
78
because it is quite short, simple, and clear:
There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin
Never mind silent fields--
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum;
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Lines one through four make the initial statement in vague
imagery. Lines five through twelve extend in somewhat more
concrete imagery the idea in the first four lines. And
lines thirteen and fourteen form a concluding exhortation
dependent for its meaning on the prior section and the ini
tial statement. Here again we find Miss Dickinson using im
agery structurally in a statement-elaboration-conclusion
pattern.
The two remaining poems in this first group of five ex
hibit the same structural characteristics as those we have
seen in 1, 2, and 3- Poem 4, for example, asks a question
through imagery in the first six lines, moves into an elabo
ration in lines seven through ten, and ends with a two-line
pjaculation which binds down the analogy operating in the
prior two sections:
79
On this wondrous sea
Sailing silently,
Ho! Pilot, ho!
Knowest thou the shore
Where no breakers roar--
Where the storm is oer?
In the peaceful west
Many the sails at rest--
The anchors fast--
Thither I pilot thee--
Land Ho! Eternity!
Ashore at last!
The imagery itself functions simply within the large struc
tural units and contains no terms that might be called sug
gestions .
Poem 5 is considerably longer than 4, but its structure
and the function of its imagery differ in no significant way
from the structure and imagery use in the poems that pre
ceded it:
I have a Bird in spring [1]
Which for myself doth sing--
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears--
And as the Rose appears,
Robin is gone.
Yet do I not repine [2]
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown--
Leameth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.
Past in a safer hand [3]
Held in a truer Land
i Are mine--
And though they now depart,
Tell I my doubting heart
They're thine.
80
In a serener Bright, [4]
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
Each little discord here
Removed.
Then will I not repine, [5]
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown
Shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return.
Stanza one announces the topic in predominantly unfigured
language. The single metaphor in this stanza appears in
line three and serves as a qualification of the initial
statement. Stanza two is an elaboration of the topic in the
form of a meditation or reflection which extends through
stanza four. Stanza two is without figures of any sort and
resembles the unfigured stanzas in the elaboration sections
of poem 640, "I cannot live with You--"^ written in 1862.
Stanza three introduces confusion not by moving into imagery,
for such figures as are found there are conventional in ex
pressions of piety, but by shifting from the singular sub
ject "Robin" to the plural "they," and "they’re." Stanza
four, which is undistinguished in imagery and predominantly
unfigured, concludes the meditative section and because of
its generalized imagery and position following the confusion
of topic in stanza three leaves the reader in considerable
doubt as to what the poet is talking about. Stanza five
^See p. 50*
81
returns to the initial topic of the robin for the matter of
the conclusion, and with the exception of the broad sugges
tion in "Bright" (line five) is unfigured. The use of pre
dominantly unfigured language within the statement-elabora-
i 4
tion-conclusion pattern makes this poem resemble poems 543
and 381*^ But the weight of the unfigured lines, the confu
sion introduced into the poem by the movement in stanza
three from the initial topic of the robin to a plural sub
ject, and the undistinguished abstract imagery in stanza
four make this poem considerably inferior in texture to
those later poems.
The function of the imagery in these very early poems
is similar indeed to that found in the 1862 poems: in both
cases the image introduces the idea around which the poem is
built, it serves to elaborate that idea, or it forms all or
part of the poet's concluding commentary on the idea of the
poem. That Miss Dickinson established her structural image
ry pattern early and adhered to it from the time she began
to write poetry until she believed herself to be a formed
poet seems probable. But before any generalization of this
sort can be made with certainty or with precision, the main
corpus of the early poetry must be looked at. Since there
are two hundred ninety-six poems in this group, it is sound
to proceed chronologically a year at a time to see how Miss
4
See p. 53-
^See p. 53.
82
Dickinson used the image structurally and to determine at
what point suggestion makes a significant appearance.
The predominant structural pattern in the poetry of
1858 seems to be that of statement-elaboration-conclusion.
But these fifty-two poems, like those attributed by Johnson
to 1 8 6 2, contain more variation in basic structure than do
the poems of the pre-1 8 5 8 group. In the 1862 group, the
clearest difference between the poems constructed on a sim
ple three-part plan was found to be in the order in which
the figured and unfigured lines appeared and in the function
these particular lines had. In addition, of course, was the
question of the presence or absence of suggestion within the
figured lines themselves. A number of significantly differ
ent variations appeared in the poetry of 1 8 6 2; most of them
are clearly visible in the poems of 1 8 5 8.
The first important variation is that in which the poet
makes her initial statement in an unfigured line. A partic
ularly well-known example of this type is 49:
I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God I
Angels--twice descending
Reimbursed my store--
i Burglar I Banker--Father 1
? I am poor once morel
Here Miss Dickinson makes her statement in an unfigured line
which she qualifies in line two. Lines three and four of
stanza one, and lines one and two of stanza two, are
83
elaborations in figures of the main idea stated in line one
of stanza one. Lines three and four of stanza two form a
conclusion. The elaboration and conclusion both contain
figures and those in the former are built on in the latter:
"Burglar" picks up the figures in lines three and four of
stanza one, "Banker" develops out of the figures in lines
one and two of stanza two, and "Father" is tied to the house
of God image in line four of stanza one. The conjunction of
figures in the first line of the conclusion, a kind of
three-term litany with no responsory, has a startling effect
which has been carefully prepared for in the elaboration im
agery and which, in combination with the last line, binds
the poem together nicely.
Poem 39 is a four-stanza extension of the pattern evi
dent in 49:
It did not surprise me--
So I said--or thought--
She will stir her pinions
And the nest forgot,
Traverse broader forests--
Build in gayer boughs,
Breathe in Ear more modern
God's old fashioned vows--
This was but a Birdling--
What and if it be
One within my bosom
; Had departed me?
i
This was but a story--
What and if indeed
There were just such coffin
In the heart instead?
Line one of stanza one presents the poet's statement in an
unfigured line. In turn this statement is qualified by line
two. The elaboration begins in line three of stanza one and
extends through stanza three. Stanza four is Miss Dickin
son's concluding comment, clearly labeled by the unfigured
"This was but a story--." Stanza three, although part of
the elaboration, seems to be an attempt to create a bridge
between the imagery of the bird's flight into the world out
side the nest and the imagery of the coffin in the conclu
sion. Although the forsaken nest imagery seems to be paral
lel to the coffin imagery in the conclusion, I think it is
not: the nest image contains the suggestions of both empti
ness and fullness, of an empty nest and physical flight to a
fuller life; the coffin image has the notion of the flight
of the soul to its life with God but contains in addition a
physical image of fullness, rigidity, and terrible weight.
The added suggestions in "coffin" are not prepared for in
the poem and disturb the balance of the ideas there. This
passage has the effect of analogy rather than suggestion,
but the analogy is imperfect because of the suggestions, in
tended or not, inhering in the parallel terms.
Poem 33 is yet another example of the first variation.
The same sequence of elements appears in 33 as appeared in
both 39 ("It did not surprise me--") and 49 ("I never lost
as much but twice,"), but within the sequence of 33 Miss
Dickinson uses word-play and compression rather than imagery
to make her point:
85
If recollecting were forgetting,
Then I remember not.
And if forgetting, recollecting,
How near I had forgot.
And if to miss, were merry,
And to mourn, were gay,
How very blithe the fingers
That gathered this, Today 1
In lines one and two the poet makes her statement. Lines
three through six, by means of concisely stated oppositions,
build on the initial substitution of one concept for another.
Clearly lines seven and eight form a conclusion of some sort.
Since the referent for "this" in line eight is nowhere ap
parent, the entire point of the poem is in doubt, and the
reader, on the basis of the oppositions, is able to draw on
ly a vague sort of conclusion by supplying the opposite term
for blithe. Although there are no figures in this poem, the
structural pattern of statement, elaboration, and conclusion
is nevertheless quite apparent and gives every evidence of
having been carefully constructed.
The next variation of consequence in the poetry of 1858
is that in which the poet makes her statement in a figured
line. Poem 8 is an excellent example of the type:
There is a word 1
Which bears a sword 2
Can pierce an armed man-- 3
It hurls it's barbed syllables 4
And is mute again-- 5
But where it fell 6
The saved will tell 7
On patriotic day, 8
Some epauletted Brother 9
Gave his breath away. 10
Wherever runs the breathless sun-- 11
Wherever roams the day-- 12
There is it’s noiseless onset-- 13
There is it's victory I 1 4
Behold the keenest marksman! 15
The most accomplished shot! l6
Time's sublimest target 17
Is a soul "forgot!" 18
Lines one through three make the initial statement of topic
in a personification. The two lines following are descrip
tive and constitute a figured extension of the statement
similar to the qualifying lines evident in poems 39 and 49.
The elaboration proper begins with line six and extends
through line sixteen. In the first section of the elabora
tion (lines six through ten) the battle imagery which served
in the statement is continued into the elaboration and con
tains no suggestion. The second section of the elaboration
(lines eleven through sixteen) effects a generalized exten
sion of the initial statement and relies, as did the first
figure in the poem, on personification. Here again we find
no suggestion, no noticeable complication requiring associa-
tion-synapse from the reader. Lines seventeen and eighteen
form an exclamatory conclusion in which both the "word" per
sonified in the initial metaphor and elaborated through ac
tivity imagery in the middle section and its target, the
forgotten man who took arms to serve, are clearly identified
in an uncomplicated and straightforward fashion.
Poem 7 represents a variation of the type and indicates
that even in the early poetry basic similarities of pattern
exist regardless of apparent differences. This poem is
87
longer and more complex than any we have discussed so far,
but like the long poems of 1 8 6 2, 7 falls into quite clear-
cut sections:
The feet of people walking home 1
With gayer sandals go-- 2
The Crocus--till she rises 3
The Vassal of the snow-- 4
The lips at Hallelujah 5
Long years of practice bore 6
Till bye and bye these Bargemen 7
Walked singing on the shore. 8
Pearls are the Diver's farthings 1
Extorted from the Sea-- 2
Pinions--the Seraph's wagon 3
Pedestrian once--as we-- 4
Night is the morning's Canvas 5
Larceny--legacy-- 6
Death, but our rapt attention 7
To Immortality. 8
My figures fail to tell me 1
How far the Village lies-- 2
Whose peasants are the Angels-- 3
Whose Cantons dot the skies-- 4
My Classics vail their faces-- 5
My faith that Dark adores-- 6
Which from it's solemn abbeys 7
Such resurrection pours. 8
Lines one and two of stanza one announce the topic and con
tain a suggestion comparable to that found in some of the
moderately complicated poems of 1862. "Home" suggests both
a physical and a spiritual home, as did "homesick" in "The
nearest Dream recedes--unrealized--. And "gayer" gives to
"sandals" both color associations and the multitude of men
tal and physical associations that are called up by the men
tion of gaiety, an expression of human joy and light
6See p. 42.
88
heartedness.
The elaboration beginning in line three of stanza one
and extending through line eight of stanza two is the most
noteworthy section structurally: here Miss Dickinson uses a
list of different images to elaborate her initial statement
instead of developing only one set of figures. The first
image in lines three and four of stanza one develop the sug
gestion of release associated in the language of piety with
going home to heaven and God. The figures in lines five
through eight of stanza one also develop this same notion,
and "Bargemen" particularly emphasizes the notion common in
religious expressions of life on earth, with its toil, trou
ble, and difficulty, as a prelude, a journey, a drifting
perhaps to the Promised Land. The next four images, which
constitute the substance of stanza two, extend the notion of
reward implicit in "home" and the idea in "gayer" of the joy
of homecoming. The final image in this sequence, lines
seven and eight of stanza two, ties the poem directly to the
experience of death and thereby narrows all the associations
initially announced in "home" in line one of stanza one to
going home to God, or "immortality."
The final stanza is the poet's commentary on the con
cept she has announced and explored in the first two stanzas.
Here too she uses a list of images to draw her conclusion
instead of developing one set only. After initially revert
ing to the language of human habitation to state the fact
89
that she does not understand the how or where of Immortality,
she moves into the image in line five, which also contains
the idea of the limits of human knowledge. The last three
lines, in yet another image, express once more her personal
lack of comprehension and her willingness to go on faith.
"Dark," of course, has long been used in Christian religious
expressions to stand for the inability of the human being to
understand God. The term contains many suggestions, certain
ly, but predominant among them all are two, one intellectual,
the other emotional: the inability to understand, and the
profound fear which accompanies the inability to understand.
The facing down of this extraordinarily deep fear of relin
quishing the self through faith when one does not have light
enough to see by is, of course, the heart of the Christian
use of the term and accounts for its prevalence in the writ
ings of Christian mystics and in the terminology of all those
who face or have faced this particular type of spiritual an
guish .
The third variation of the statement-elaboration-con-
clusion pattern that appears in the poetry of 1858 is the
repeat pattern we saw first in "Some keep the Sabbath
. . . . "^ In poem 13 we find this pattern developed through
imagery and the use of oppositions. Stanza one announces in
both figured and unfigured lines the idea that most people
^See p. 47.
90
do not look beneath the surface of ordinary experience, that
they assume sleep, for Instance, Is a matter of closed eyes.
The second stanza represents a qualification of the Initial
statement through an opposition:
Sleep is supposed to be
By souls of sanity
The shutting of the eye.
Sleep is the station grand
Down wh', on either hand
The hosts of witness standi
Here Miss Dickinson is building on the two main suggestions
in sleep: physical sleep and the sleep of death. "The
hosts of witness" in stanza two is conventional in the lan
guage of piety, and along with "station" indicates the poet
is again speaking of immortality.
The second element in the repeat pattern begins with
stanza three and includes the one line we find in place of
stanza four:
Morn is supposed to be
By people of degree
The breaking of the Day.
Morn has not occurred I
That shall Aurora be--
East of Eternity--
One with the banner gay--
One is the red array--
That is the break of Day I
The two primary suggestions in morning, natural dawn and the
beginning of life after death, are not both explored in the
second element as they were in the first. Instead, the sec
ond statement of opposition forms a bridge between stanza
91
three. In which one suggestion in morning is presented, and
the conclusion, in which the second appears.
Another example of the repetition type is poem 23,
which is longer than 13 and lacks suggestion entirely:
I had a guinea golden--- 1
I lost it in the sand-- 2
And tho' the sum was simple
3
And pounds were in the land-- 4
Still, had it such a value
5
Unto my frugal eye-- 6
That when I could not find it--
7
I sat me down to sigh. 8
I had a crimson Robin-- 1
Who sang full many a day 2
But when the woods were painted, 3
He, too, did fly away-- 4
Time brought me other Robins--
5
Their ballads were the same-- 6
Still, for my missing Troubadour 7
I kept the "house at hame." 8
I had a star in heaven-- 1
One "Pleiad" was it's name-- 2
And when I was not heeding, 3
It wandered from the same. 4
And tho' the skies are crowded--
5
And all the night ashine-- 6
I do not care about it-- 7
Since none of them are mine. 8
My story has a moral-- 1
I have a missing friend-- 2
"Pleiad" it's name, and Robin, 3
And guinea in the sand. 4
And when this mournful ditty
5
Accompanied with tear-- 6
Shall meet the eye of traitor
7
In country far from here-- 8
Grant that repentance solemn
9
May seize upon his mind-- 10
And he no consolation 11
Beneath the sun may find. 12
In this poem Miss Dickinson tells essentially the same story
three times before explaining to the reader in her
concluding stanza that she is speaking in analogies. Con
sidered separately, each of the stanzas has the statement-
elaboration-conclusion pattern: each begins with a state
ment of topic, contains an elaboration in story form, and
has a conclusion. Within these small units imagery func
tions as it has through all the poems we have seen. "Frugal"
in line six of stanza one, for example, is an integral part
of the conclusion of story one. The metaphor in line three
of stanza two is a necessary part of a statement section;
the personification in line five of the same stanza serves
as elaboration, and the metaphor in line seven helps effect
the conclusion to story two. The sporadic figures found al
so in the third repetition of the story function similarly.
In the final stanza Miss Dickinson uses almost the same pat
tern by summing up all three stories in lines one through
four, skipping further elaboration, and moving directly into
her final remarks.
The purely descriptive poems which form a group of
their own in the poetry of 1862 are missing in that of 1 8 5 8;
their only counterpart is a group of poems combining de
scription and personal reflection. Poem 18, for example, is
a description of obsequies held for summer. Although the
poet uses activity imagery in the poem to describe what she
is talking about, she intrudes herself directly and reflects
briefly on the scene:
93
The Gentian weaves her fringes-^- 1
The Maple's loom is red-- 2
My departing blossoms 3
Obviate parade. 4
A brief, but patient illness-- 1
An hour to prepare, 2
And one below, this morning 3
Is where the angels are-- 4
It was a short procession, 5
The Bobolink was there-- 6
An aged Bee addressed us-- 7
And then we knelt in prayer-- 8
We trust that she was willing-- 9
We ask that we may be. 10
Summer--Sister--Seraph! 11
Let us go with thee I 12
In the name of the Bee-- 1
And of the Butterfly-- 2
And of the Breeze— Amen I 3
Lines one and two of stanza one set the scene and indicate
that Pall is at hand, and lines three and four are a direct
commentary on the importance of the scene to the poet.
Lines one through four of stanza two form another section of
commentary which, by the use of "one" in line three of
stanza two, refers to summer herself, not to "departing
blossoms." The description proper begins again in line five
of stanza two and continues to line nine. In the next four
lines the poet shifts back again to commentary. The parody
of the formula of blessing in the last stanza builds on both
the description and commentary sections: the death imagery
in lines one through four of stanza two becomes funeral im
agery through personification in the description section
following, and stanza three presents the final "In Para-
disum" for summer.
94
Another example of the descriptive poem which the poet
herself enters is 12. The amount of space given to direct
commentary is considerably less in this poem than it was in
1 8, however:
The morns are meeker than they were--
The nuts are getting brown--
The berry's cheek is plumper--
The Rose is out of town.
The Maple wears a gayer scarf--
The field a scarlet gown--
Lest I sh'd be old fashioned
I'll put a trinket on.
Here we have a pictorial type of description similar to that
O
in 469 ("The Red-Blaze--is the Morning--") instead of ac
tivity imagery. The heavy reliance on personification in
the image list makes the poem resemble the imagery in 18
rather than that in 469, however, and the crisp objectivity
characteristic of 469 is clearly absent.
Certainly the poetry Miss Dickinson first gathered into
1
packets in 1858 exhibits more variety of component assembly
than does the pre-1 8 5 8 poetry. We have seen that several
variations of the statement-elaboration-conclusion pattern
are present in 1858 and that the descriptive type of poem is
beginning to appear. Nowhere in this year, however, does
suggestion play as large a part as it does in the poetry of
1 8 6 2. That some suggestion does appear, albeit sporadically,
seems to indicate that the poet was experimenting with this
®See p. 65.
95
type of poetic technique as well as with the possibilities
her apparently habitual three-part structural pattern of
fered. In fact, it is possible to say at this point that
"experiment" in the early work of Miss Dickinson is very
limited; she experiments not with radically different struc
tural patterns and imagery uses but rather with the order in
which figured and non-figured lines can be put together
within a consistently used general plan.
The poetry of 1859 contains all the variations we saw
in 1858 plus one additional one, the list-of-images type
Q
that appeared in the poetry of 1862. Predominant in this
year, however, are the two major variations of the statement-
elaboration-conclusion pattern that are differentiated from
each other in the main only by the way in which the initial
statement is made. Beginning again with the first variation,
we find that the component assembly plan apparent here dif
fers in no way from that common to poems of the type written
in 1858 and in 1 8 6 2. Consider, for instance, poem 6 7, which
is usually anthologized and is generally well-known among
even casual readers of Miss Dickinson's work:
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory
^See pp. 62-64.
96
As he defeated--dying--
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear I
The structure of this poem is simple and clear. In the
first two lines of stanza one, the poet announces her topic
in unfigured language. The next two lines constitute an
elaboration of the topic by means of a figure. The conclu
sion begins with the first line of stanza two and extends,
in one long statement containing images, to the end of the
poem.
Poem 85 is a more interesting example of the type in
that the topic, or "text for the day," is a quotation from
Scripture. In fact, because of the announcement of subject
in this poem through gospel quotation the similarity between
Miss Dickinson's habitual structural pattern and the usual
organization of a sermon is unmistakable. That the direc
tion of the elaboration and the nature of the conclusion di
verge in this poem and in many of Miss Dickinson's poems
from what is expected or usually received from the pulpit is
incidental; structurally the two organizations are the same
and certainly the use of imagery to make or elaborate a
point or to draw a conclusion is familiar both in Scripture
itself and in the commentaries on Scripture characteristic
of Catholic and Protestant religious observance.
Poem 85 is brief and personal but clearly divisible in
to the three sections found in most of Miss Dickinson's po
ems, figured or unfigured:
97
"They have not chosen me," he said,
"But I have chosen them!"
Brave--Broken hearted statement--
Uttered in Bethleem!
I could not have told it,
But since Jesus dared--
Sovreign! Know a Daisy
Thy dishonor shared!
Lines one and two of stanza one present the "text" and lines
three and four form an elaboration in which the poet attrib
utes to the text itself her conception of Christ's state of
mind. Stanza two forms a conclusion in which the poet
through predominantly unfigured language compares her state
with Jesus'.
As we have seen in the poetry of 1862, Miss Dickinson
often varies what would otherwise be an extremely monotonous
pattern by modifying the way in which the statement, elabo
ration, or conclusion is made or by shuffling her components
to the extent of occasionally leaving out entirely an elabo
ration or a final conclusion. Poem 85 and most of the other
examples of the type we have seen thus far have the full
three-part structure. But in 1859* as in 1 8 6 2, Miss Dickin
son occasionally wrote poems which lacked one component or
another."^ A particularly good example of the poem in which
Miss Dickinson shifts directly from an opening unfigured
Statement into a conclusion is 108, a single quatrain:
10See pp. 54-55.
98
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit--Life I
The function of imagery in this quatrain is in no way dif
ferent from that apparent in the full three-part poems, how
ever. Lines one and two present the initial idea and con
tain no images. The only image in the poem (in line four)
is part and parcel of the conclusion, and without it there
would be no conclusion. Even in the brief early poems image
ry is a completely functional vehicle and not an ornament.
The second major variation of the statement-elaboration-
conclusion pattern in 1859 is that in which the poet pre
sents her topic in an image. Poem 9 8, for example, is rep
resentative of this type and has its counterpart in both the
1858 and 1862 poetry:
One dignity delays for all--
One mitred Afternoon--
None can avoid this purple--
None evade this Crown!
Coach, it insures, and footmen--
Chamber, and state, and throng--
Bells, also, in the village.
As we ride grand along!
What dignified Attendants!
What service when we pause!
How loyally at parting
Their hundred hats they raise!
How pomp surpassing ermine
When simple You, and I,
Present our meek escutscheon
And claim the rank to die!
Miss Dickinson announces her topic in a single figured line.
The rest of stanza one and all of stanzas two and three form
99
an elaboration of the initial line and contain a unified set
of images consistent with that in line one of stanza one.
Stanza four is a conclusion whose imagery is also consistent
with that in the prior two sections. As is usual in the
early poetry, suggestion as I have defined it'1 ' ' * ' plays no part
in this poem.
In 80 we find a light use of suggestion, a new topic,
and another consistent set of metaphors. Structurally the
poem is identical to 98 and the counterparts of both in 1858
and 1 8 6 2:
Our lives are Swiss —
So still— so Cool —
The Alps neglect their Curtains
And we look farther on I
Italy stands the other sidel
While like a guard between—
The solemn Alps —
The siren Alps
Forever intervene I
In the first two lines Miss Dickinson makes a statement and
qualifies it; in the next two she presents the elaboration,
and in the second stanza she draws her conclusion. "Swiss"
in line one is broad suggestion which the poet limits immed
iately in line two.
All the poems of this year are not as deficient in sug
gestion as those we have considered thus far, however. Poem
6 3, an example of the repeat pattern apparent in both 1858
and 1 8 6 3> employs considerable suggestion:
11 See pp. 33-34.
100
If pain for peace prepares
Lo, what "Augustan" years
Our feet await 1
If springs from winter rise,
Can the Anemones
Be reckoned up?
If night stands first--then noon
To gird us for the sun,
What gaze!
When from a thousand skies
On our developed eyes
Noons blaze I
With the exception of "Augustan" in stanza one, suggestion
is confined to the imagery in the third and fourth stanzas.
The dark-night figure the poet builds on in those stanzas
has been used before^ and the night-noon metaphors for life
and life after death have been prepared for in the first two
stanzas, which employ oppositions. The suggestions here
lack the subtlety and complexity apparent in the mature po
etry, but they are suggestions and indicate that in 1859 as
in 1858 Miss Dickinson was still using this tool rather
sporadically.
The descriptive poems of this year are also similar to
their counterparts in 1858 and like them combine description
and personal reflection. Poem 91, for example, relies on
activity imagery in the descriptive section:
So bashful when I spied her!
So pretty--so ashamed!
So hidden in her leaflets
Lest anybody find--
12See p. 87.
101
So breathless till I passed her--
So helpless when I turned
And bore her struggling, blushing
Her simple haunts beyond!
The matter of the imagery creates a sentimental picture
through personification of the response of a flower to being
plucked. The poet does not let the description stand alone,
however, and adds a final stanza of commentary which is as
coy as the descriptive section:
For whom I robbed the Dingle--
For whom betrayed the Dell--
Many, will doubtless ask me,
But I shall never tell!
In 140 Miss Dickinson uses a list-of-images technique
instead of description through activity:
The imagery of the descriptive section is uncomplicated and
without suggestion. The commentary has the same character
istics and represents the poet's answer to the question put
to Jesus by Nicodemus of how rebirth can occur. Like their
counterparts in 1 8 5 8, these poems lack the objectivity and
An altered look about the hills--
A Tyrian light the village fills--
A wider sunrise in the morn--
A deeper twilight on the lawn--
A print of a vermillion foot--
A purple finger on the slope--
A flippant fly upon the pane--
A spider at his trade again--
An added strut in Chanticleer--
A flower expected everywhere--
An axe shrill singing in the woods--
Fern odors on untravelled roads--
All this and more I cannot tell--
A furtive look you know as well--
And Nicodemus' Mystery
Receives it's annual reply!
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
1
2
3
4
richness of the descriptive poems of 1862 and indicate that
102
the poet has not as yet perfected the nature vignette which
becomes prominent in the later poetry.
The one new variation of the statement-elaboration-con-
ciusion pattern apparent in the 1859 group is the list-of-
images type that re-appears in l862.1^’ The 1859 example,
poem 1 3 5> lacks careful progressive association through sug
gestion, however:
Water, is taught by thirst.
Land— by the Oceans passed.
Transport--by throe--
Peace--by it's battles told--
Love, by Memorial Mold--
Birds, by the Snow.
The progression in the order of the statements is not from
the particular to the general, as it was in poem 300 ("'Morn
ing' --means 'Milking'--to the Farmer--") but from the par
ticular to the general and back to the particular again.
Consequently, we have here six repetitions of the idea that
learning is a result of privation in which the particulars
in lines one, two, and six ("Water," "Land," "Birds") serve
as a frame for the abstractions in lines three, four, and
five ("Transport," "Peace," "Love").
The variations characteristic of 1 8 5 8, 1859> and 1862
appear also in i860. Noticeable in i860, however, is a
slightly more consistent use of suggestion in some of the
three major variations of the statement-elaboration-conclu-
sion pattern. Poem 1 6 5, for instance, has the structural
1^See pp.. 65 ff. "^See p. 64.
103
characteristics common to the majority of poems in which
Miss Dickinson makes her initial statement in an unfigured
line:
A Wounded Deer--leaps highest--
I've heard the Hunter tell--
'Tis but the Extasy of death--
And then the Brake, is still!
The Smitten Rock that gushes!
The trampled Steel that springs!
A Cheek is always redder
Just where the Hectic stings!
Mirth is the Mail of Anguish--
In which it Cautious Arm,
Lest anybod^spy the blood
And "you're hurt" exclaim!
Lines one and two of stanza one contain the statement, the
rest of stanza one and all of stanza two form the elabora
tion section, and stanza three is a conclusion. The large
blocks of imagery in the elaboration and conclusion function
as they have throughout all the poems of the type. Within
the elaboration section, however, there is greater sugges
tion than is common in the poems written before i860. "The
Smitten Rock that gushes!" for example, is a direct refer
ence to Moses finding water in the desert. But "Smitten"
also has both physical and psychological meanings which in
clude not simply the notion of being struck or broken but
also that of being hurt or deeply moved. "Trampled" is the
same sort of thing and means crushed or hurt. "Hectic" in
line four of stanza two has multiple meanings also. The im
mediate one is that of fever, intense or brief. Another
certainly is that of being agitated or mentally distracted.
104
This latter meaning corresponds to the overtones of mental
pain in "Smitten" and "trampled" and gives to the elabora
tion imagery a psychological emphasis which is crystallized
in the initial concluding metaphor.
Miss Dickinson was not systematic in her use of sugges
tion, however, and in i860 we find poems of the type of 165
which contain no suggestion at all. Poem 193> for example,
is only lightly figured and requires of the reader no associ-
ation-synapse at all:
I shall know why--when Time is over--
And I have ceased to wonder why--
Christ will explain each separate anguish
In the fair schoolroom of the sky--
He will tell me what "Peter" promised--
And I--for wonder at his woe--
I shall forget the drop of Anguish
That scalds me now--that scalds me now!
Lines one and two of stanza one present the topic, lines
three and four contain the elaboration, and stanza two is
the conclusion. There is only one image in the elaboration
(line four, stanza one), and that is quite simple and “
straightforward. The metaphorical expression in stanza two
is also uncomplicated and in combination with the unfigured
lines makes the poem resemble the predominantly unfigured
poems in 1 8 6 2.
The poems in which Miss Dickinson makes her initial
statement in a figure show more consistent use of suggestion
than those using an unfigured line for the same purpose. Po
em 1 8 5, for example, is only a statement in a single quatrain:
105
"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see--
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
The pivot word here is "see," which has both physical and in
tellectual meanings: the seeing of the eye and the seeing
of the mind. The unlimited suggestion in this word gives to
the whole statement a charge and a meaning which the quali
fication in lines three and four builds on for its effect.
The more fully developed 211 also contains images with
multiple meanings and overtones which noticeably enrich the
texture of the poem:
Come slowly--EdenI
Lips unused to Thee--
Bashful--sip thy Jessamines--
As the fainting Bee--
Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums--
Counts his nectars--
Enters--and is lost in Balms.
Line one makes the initial statement, and lines two and
three of stanza one are a brief conclusion which is elabo
rated in line four of stanza one and all of stanza two.
"Eden" in line one has many meanings and associations. Pre
dominant, certainly, is the idea of happiness. But behind
this idea are all the particulars, concepts, and associations
found in the Old Testament account of Adam and Eve in Para
dise. In both the elaboration and the conclusion the poet
picks up the garden associations of Eden and uses them in
such a way that they themselves have heavy suggestion. Jes
samine, for example, is a tropical shrub which is quite
106
beautiful to look at and which produces waxy blossoms having
a heavily sensuous and penetrating odor. "Fainting" in line
four is a double suggestion and includes both fainting from
the pressure of physical or mental distress or from an over
dose of pleasure. "Balms" functions similarly and includes
the ideas of pleasant fragrance, of what produces that fra
grance, and of being soothed physically or mentally. Be
cause the simile of the bee applies to the synecdoche in
line two of stanza one, the overtones of extreme pleasure in
the elaboration are emphasized and consequently become fig
ures describing ecstatic human release and pleasurable ful
fillment .
Although suggestion appears in the poetry of i860 in a
slightly more complicated form than it did in any year prior
to i8 6 0, it is impossible to make any sort of a case for
suggestion comparable to that in 1 8 6 2. Some structural vari
ations in i860 show no suggestion at all, while some contain
relatively heavy suggestion. In contrast to the second vari
ation of the statement-elaboration-conclusion pattern, the
poems of the third variation and of the descriptive type show
no suggestion whatever in i860. Poem 1 6 2, a severely con
densed example of the repeat variation apparent in 1 8 5 8,
I8 5 9, and 1 8 6 2, is representative of the type both in its
structure and in its lack of suggestion: the figures are
simple metaphors and require no association-synapse of any
sort:
107
My River runs to thee--
Blue Seal Wilt welcome me?
My River waits reply--
Oh Sea--look graciously--
I'll fetch thee Brooks
Prom spotted nooks--
Say--Sea--Take Me 1
The same can be said of 173* an extended description in ac
tivity imagery of the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into
a butterfly:
A fuzzy fellow, without feet, [1]
Yet doth exceeding run!
Of velvet, in his Countenance,
And his Complexion, dun I
Sometime, he dwelleth in the grass! [2]
Sometime, upon a bough,
From which he doth descend in plush
Upon the Passer-by!
All this in summer. [3]
But when winds alarm the Forest Folk,
He taketh Damask Residence--
And struts in sewing silk!
Then, finer than a Lady, [4]
Emerges in the spring!
A Feather on each shoulder!
You'd scarce recognize him!
By Men, yclept Caterpillar! [5]
By me! But who am I,
To tell the pretty secret
Of the Butterfly!
Characteristically without equivocal suggestion imagery,
this poem is also normal as an example of the early descrip
tive type in having a commentary tacked on to it. In con
trast to 173 is 204, however, in which the absence of per
sonal comment is noticeable and indicates that the poet is
moving in the direction of the nature vignette:
108
A slash of Blue--
A sweep of Gray--
Some scarlet patches on the way,
Compose an Evening Sky--
A little purple--slipped between--
Some Ruby Trowsers hurried on—
A Wave of Gold--
A Bank of Day--
This just makes out the Morning Sky.
As we shall see presently, the poetry of l86l differs
from that written earlier in only one significant respect:
Emily Dickinson begins to use suggestion as a major imagery
technique in one type of her heavily figured poems. No oth
er difference seems to be significant; the statement-elabo-
ration-conclusion pattern predominates as usual and the major
variations persist throughout the year.
Beginning again with the first variation in which the
poet announces her topic in an unfigured line, we find fully
developed examples identical in structure and imagery func
tion to those of the type found in both the early and mature
poetry. Poem 241, for instance, contains all the elements
of the variation:
I like a look of Agony,
Because I know it's true—
Men do not sham Convulsion,
Nor simulate, a Throe--
The Eyes glaze once--and that is Death--
Impossible to feign
The Beads upon the Forehead
By homely Anguish strung.
The topic is announced in lines one and two of stanza one,
the elaboration is made in lines three and four of stanza
one and in line one of stanza two, and tIqp concluding
109
commentary Is stated in the last three lines of stanza two.
This poem is not heavily figured and suggestion clearly plays
no part whatever in the single image contained in the poem.
Poem 288 is structurally identical to 241:
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you--Nobody--too?
Then there1s a pair of us 1
Don't tell! they'd banish us--you know!
How dreary--to be--Somebody!
How public--like a Frog--
To tell your name--the livelong June--
To an admiring Bog!
The only structural difference between the two poems is this:
in 241 the elaboration section spans the stanza break and is
composed of three lines; in 288 the elaboration stops at the
stanza break and is composed of two lines. This difference
does not seem to be particularly important; indeed, its very
insignificance serves to emphasize the fact that structural
ly speaking Miss Dickinson wrote the same poem again and
again.
The examples of the second variation that appear in l86l
are also clearly related structurally to each other and to
their counterparts both in the earlier and in the mature po
etry. It is in this group of l86l poems that we find Miss
Dickinson using rich suggestion comparable to that found in
1862, however. Significant in this respect is the fact that
of the many poems written in l86l the best known and most-
often anthologized selections are examples of the second
variation and contain considerable complex suggestion.
110
Let us look first at 249. In stanza one Miss Dickinson
states her topic in charged imagery:
Wild Nights--Wild Nights 1
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury I
"Wild" in lines one and three bears with it all the sugges
tions and meanings that adhere to that word. Certainly pre
dominant are the ideas of break-down of control and of prim
itive, orgiastic, violent behavior as well as those of de
light to the point of distraction, recklessness, and com
plete self-abandonment to passion. The combination of "Wild"
with "Nights" does not limit the meanings in the adjective
at all. Only when Miss Dickinson places the whole phrase in
the full statement of topic in lines two, three, and four
does she emphasize by "thee" and "luxury" the suggestions
and associations particularly applicable to physical love.
The elaboration extends through all of stanza two and
the first two lines of stanza three:
Futile--the Winds--
To a Heart in port--
Done with the Compass--
Done with the Chart I
Rowing in Eden--
Ah, the Seal
Might I but moor--Tonight--
In Thee 1
Stanza two, with the exception of the synecdoche in line two,
is unfigured, but lines one and two of stanza two are fig
ured and contain multiple suggestion. "Rowing in Eden--" is
Ill
reminiscent of 211, "Come slowly--Eden. Like the use of
the term in that poem "Eden" here is free suggestion which
contains a host of particulars, all converging on the notion
of perfect, intense happiness. In 249 "Eden" is also a
bridge word which sums up the notions of extreme delight and
abandonment in "Wild Nights," the idea of enjoyment of the
things offering the most physical comfort and satisfaction
in "luxury," and the statements of fulfillment in stanza two,
and points to the matter of the conclusion. Line two of
stanza three is an exclamation of pleasure and appreciation
and sums up the experience described in both the elaboration
and the introductory statement.
The concluding exclamation also contains suggestion in
"moor," which has a physical meaning of being held secure by
a tangible connection and a psychological meaning, by meta
phorical extension, of being completely secure, safe, and
united with the source of safety and security. The sexual
meaning apparent in the poem caused Col. Higginson some
trepidation; Johnson points out in his note to the poem that
Higginson was disturbed about publishing the poem and wrote
to Mrs. Todd in 1891 that "one poem only I dread a little to
print--that wonderful 'Wild Nights,' --lest the malignant
read into it more than that virgin recluse ever dreamed of
putting there . . ." (p. 180). What Miss Dickinson "dreamed
■^See p. 105.
112
of putting there" no one but Miss Dickinson knows; the sug
gestions in the poem are there, whether she intended them or
not.
Another example of the second variation is 2 5 8:
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--
Stanza one presents the topic of the poem, stanza two elabo
rates it, and stanzas three and four contain a conclusion
which is also elaborated. In line three of stanza one we
find suggestion in both "oppresses" and "Heft." Oppression
can be physical or mental and since there is no qualifying
term with "oppresses," we have here unlimited or free sug
gestion. The two major meanings in "Heft" are those of
weight and importance. Church music can be physically or
mentally weighty and oppressive, and consequently "Heft" is
also free suggestion. "Heavenly Hurt" in the elaboration in
stanza two picks up the double suggestions in stanza one.
One can be hurt physically as well as mentally and there are
113
pains which are "Heavenly" in a double sense: they give ex
treme pleasure or they stem from a spiritual source. Lines
two, three, and four limit the suggestions in stanza one and
in line one of stanza two, however, by centering this par
ticular experience of pain internally, in the mind, "Where
the Meanings, are--."
In the conclusion proper, the psychological suggestion
made important in stanza two is extended and the pain is
named. The terms "Seal" and "imperial" suggest that the
giver of pain is a royal official of some sort; by combining
these suggestions with the previous notion of spiritual an
guish in "Heavenly Hurt" Miss Dickinson intimates that the
source of this kind of pain is God. In line four of stanza
two she names Him directly by employing a scriptural figure.
The elaboration in stanza four is also heavily figured.
Lines one and two employ personification rather than sugges
tion, however, and lines three and four contain an uncharged
simile.
When we turn to the repeat variation of the statement-
elaboration-conclusion pattern we find no suggestion compar
able to that in the second variation. Consider, for example,
244:
It is easy to work when the soul is at play--
But when the soul is in pain--
The hearing him put his playthings up
Makes work difficult--then--
114
It is simple, to ache in the Bone, or the Rind--
But Gimblets— among the nerve--
Mangle daintier--terribler--
Like a Panther in the Glove--
Here the poet announces her topic in a metaphor in line one
and moves directly into a commentary which continues the
matter of the initial metaphor and depends for its sense on
the qualification in line two. Stanza two repeats this pat
tern but varies the order and type of the figured and unfig
ured lines: line one is unfigured, lines two and three em
ploy metaphor, and line four is a simile. The imagery of
the poem is simple, direct, and contains no suggestion at
all. The same can be said of another example of this pat
tern, 277:
What if I say I shall not wait!
What if I burst the fleshly Gate--
And pass escaped--to thee 1
What if I file this Mortal--off--
See where it hurt me--That's enough--
And step in Liberty I
They cannot take me--any more!
Dungeons can call--and Guns implore—
Unmeaning--now--to me--
As laughter--was--an hour ago--
Or Laces--or a Travelling Show--
Or who died--yesterday!
In this poem Miss Dickinson returns to the usual order of
her repeat-type variation and presents her topic twice and
elaborates it each time before making her commentary. The
idea of the poem is initially announced in an unfigured line
which is elaborated by a metaphor conventional in the lan
guage of piety. The idea is repeated in a figure in stanza
115
uwo and elaborated in simple metaphor. The conclusion em
ploys personification in stanza three and uncomplicated sim
ile in stanza four.
The descriptive poems of l86l also lack significant or
complex suggestion. In 232, for example, the poet uses sim
ple activity imagery and personification:
The Sun--.1ust touched the Morning-- 1
The Morning--Happy thing-- 2
Supposed that He had come to dwell-- 3
And Life would all be Spring 1 4
She felt herself supremer-- 1
A Raised--Etherial Thing! 2
Henceforth--for Her--What Holiday1 . 3
Meanwhile--Her wheeling King-- 4
Trailed--slow--along the Orchards-- 5
His haughty--spangled Hems-- 6
Leaving a new nescessityl 7
The want of Diadems 1 8
The Morning--fluttered--staggered-- 1
Felt feebly--for Her Crown-- 2
Her unannointed forehead-- 3
Henceforth--Her only One I 4
To be sure, we can point to "Holiday" and "Diadems" and call
them free suggestions, but the pointing is not really impor
tant since the poet does not weave these sporadic sugges
tions tightly into the texture of the poem.
Poem 228, an example of the pictorial type of descrip
tive poem, lacks even unimportant controlled suggestion.
Here the poet relies once again upon simple personification,
metaphor, and simile to paint the picture:
Blazing in Fold and quenching in Purple 1
Leaping like Leopards to the Sky 2
Then ah' the feet of the old Horizon 3
Laying her spotted Face to die 4
Stooping as low as the Otter's Window 5
116
Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn
Kissing her Bonnet to the Meadow
And the Juggler of Day is gone
6
7
8
That Miss Dickinson used the image structurally in the
early poetry in much the same way as she did in that of 1862
seems to be quite evident at this point: throughout the
early period she used figured lines to introduce a topic,
elaborate it, draw a conclusion from it or to describe an
object. In the poems of the statement-elaboration-conclu-
sion pattern she consistently used the same major structural
variations in the early period as she did in 1 8 6 2; in the
early poems of the description-commentary type and in the
later ones of description without commentary she habitually
used activity and pictorial imagery to delineate her subject,
as she did in 1862. That she did not use suggestion in the
early poems as she did in those of 1862 is equally evident.
In the pre-1 8 5 8 poems suggestion is non-existent, and in
those of 1 8 5 8, i859> and i860 it is sporadic. Only when we
reach l86l do we find her using suggestion consistently in
one type of poem, and even there it does not approach the
complex and rich suggestion technique in the double-image
poems of 1 8 6 2.
What we seem to see here, then, is an apprenticeship
period in which Miss Dickinson established her general
structural pattern with its several distinct variations,
experimented with the order in which figured and unfigured
lines could be assembled within the pattern, and began to
employ association techniques in addition to the directly
comparative ones offered by metaphor and simile. What re
mains to be seen is how she handled imagery and structure in
the years after 1862 and how the characteristics of her
practice there compare or contrast with those evident in the
early period and in 1862 itself.
CHAPTER IV
THE POETRY OP 1 8 6 3 -1 8 6 5
The creative drive which caused Emily Dickinson to
write three hundred sixty-six poems in 1862 apparently con
tinued through the years 1 8 6 3-1 8 6 5. According to the dating
and tabulation of Thomas Johnson, the poet wrote one hundred
forty-one poems in 1 8 6 3, one hundred seventy-four in 1864,
and eighty-five in 1 8 6 5. In the years following 1865 Miss
Dickinson wrote an average of twenty-nine poems a year.
Since the period 1 8 6 3 -1 8 6 5 seems to represent both a contin
uation and a tapering off of the creative activity of 1 8 6 2,
it is necessary to see whether at this point in her poetic
development Miss Dickinson adhered to or departed from the
structure and imagery patterns she used consistently in the
earlier periods. Particularly important, of course, is the
question of the extent of the poet's use of suggestion in
the poetry of 1 8 6 3-1 8 6 5.
In 1863 we find no new structure or imagery patterns of
any sort; as in the prior two periods, the statement-elabo-
ration-conclusion type of poem predominates and appears in a
number of variations quite familiar by this time. Beginning
with the one in which the poet makes her initial statement
118
119
in an unfigured line, we find by examining some examples
that their component assembly plan differs in no significant
way from that common to poems of the type written in earlier
years. Number 6 8 6, for instance, is typical of 1863 and yet
could have been written in almost any previous year, so sim
ilar is it in structure and imagery to other examples we
have seen thus far:
They say that "Time assuages"--
Time never did assuage--
An actual suffering strengthens
As Sinews do, with age--
Time is a Test of Trouble--
But not a Remedy--
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no Malady--
The "text for the day" is announced in the first line and
the elaboration is begun in the second line. Proceeding by
means of opposition, the poet continues her elaboration
through line four and uses a simile to underscore her point.
The whole of stanza two forms a conclusion or commentary in
which Miss Dickinson gives her own definition of time. The
conclusion contains more figures than the elaboration and is
in fact heavily metaphorical. But the imagery of illness in
the conclusion is closely tied to the idea of mitigating
pain in both the statement and elaboration and serves to
bind together the initial statement about time, the opposi
tion in the elaboration, and the final definition or commen
tary. The imagery in this poem is clear, uncomplicated, and
without any "inner charge" or suggestion whatever.
• ■ 120
Poem 7^6 is similar to 686 and differs from it only
slightly in the order and manner in which the components are
assembled:
Never for Society
He shall seek in vain--
Who His own acquaintance
Cultivate--Of Men
Wiser Men may weary--
But the Man within
Never knew Satiety--
Better entertain
Than could Border Ballad--
Or Biscayan Hymn--
Neither introduction
Need You--unto Him--
Here the poet makes her statement in four lines instead of
in one and moves immediately into her commentary. Instead
of elaborating or drawing out her initial idea she elabo
rates her conclusion: lines two through four of stanza two
extend the first half of the conclusion presented in lines
four through six of stanza one and line one of stanza two.
The final two lines of the poem, which contain the other
half of the commentary are, of course, without elaboration
of any sort whatever. The predominance of unfigured lan
guage in this poem makes it rather heavy, "preachy," and
similar in tone and effect to 5^-3> written in 1 8 6 2.^
When we look at the poems of the second variation,
those in which the initial statement is made in a figure, we
find structural repetitions comparable to those apparent in
1See p. 53-
121
the first variation. Consider, for example, the well-known
712:
Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality.
We slowly drove--He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility--
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess--in the Ring--
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--
We passed the Setting Sun--
Or rather--He passed Us--
The Dews drew quivering and chill--
For only Gossamer, my Gown--
My Tippet--only Tulle--
We paused before House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice--in the Ground--
Since then--'tis Centuries--and yet
Feels shorter than the Day :.
I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity--
Structurally this poem follows the pattern of the type as we
have seen it manifested in both the early poetry and the po
etry of 1862: Miss Dickinson presents her idea in a figure,
extends or elaborates it, and draws a conclusion from it.
In 712 specifically the topic is announced in the first four
lines of stanza one, extended and elaborated through stanzas
two, three, four, and five, and commented upon in the final
stanza. The imagery in this poem functions as it does in
nearly all others of the type we have seen but lacks the
122
complication to be found in other poems of the type written
prior to it. The important figures occur in the statement
and in the first part of the elaboration. Once the reader
absorbs this set of images, the rest of the figures in the
poem appear consistent and uncomplex. The use of suggestion
in this poem is fragmentary and nearly non-existent: "Gaz
ing" in line three of stanza three is the only instance of
suggestion in the poem and is simply another form of the
personification that permeates the entire construct.
Another particularly well-known of Miss Dickinson's- po
ems, 754, is quite similar in structure and imagery use to
712:
My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--
In Corners--till a Day
The Owner passed--identified--
And carried Me away--
And now We roam in Sovreign Woods--
And now We hunt the Doe--
And every time I speak for Him--
The Mountains straight reply--
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow--
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it's pleasure through--
And when at Night--Our good Day done--
I guard My Master's Head--
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow--to have shared--
To foe of His--I'm deadly foe--
None stir the second time--
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye--
Or an emphatic Thumb--
123
Though I than He--may longer live
He longer must--than I--
For I have but the power to kill,
Without the power to die--
Stanza one presents the idea that the "I" of the poem felt
only potentially meaningful as a human being until her "own
er" claimed her. This idea is elaborated in stanzas two
through five and commented upon in stanza six. The initial
images are continued through the poem, like those in 712,
and provide the matter for the conclusion. Suggestion here,
like that found in 712, is relatively unimportant: only two
instances are apparent in the poem (line three of stanza one
and lines three and four of stanza five) and these are both
unimpressive and not particularly complicated in effect.
All the poems of the second variation are not as lack
ing in suggestion as 712 and 75^> however. Poem 772, for
example, is built on the pattern common to the prior two po
ems but contains more suggestion than they do:
The hallowing of Pain
Like hallowing of Heaven,
Obtains at a corporeal cost--
The Summit is not given
To Him who strives severe
At middle of the Hill--
But He who has achieved the Top--
All--is the price of A11--
Miss Dickinson announces her topic in the first three lines,
elaborates it in the last line of stanza one and lines one
through three of stanza two, and comments upon it in the fi
nal line of stanza two. "Hallowing" in lines one and two of
stanza one has multiple meanings which are in no way limited.
124
As a consequence, both the Ideas of making sacred or holy
and venerating as sacred or holy apply. When put together
with the idea in the peculiarly constructed third line, in
which an active verb without a subject appears where a pas
sive one is called for, the full statement of topic is seen
to be that not only going through the sanctifying process,
making holy, is costly but that even regarding pain or heav
en as holy has a price.
Because of the charge in the first element, the second
one takes on an added dimension: "The Summit" stands both
for the achievement of sanctification through pain and unity
with the object of veneration. The conclusion underscores
both suggestions by excluding neither of them. By her use
of suggestion in this poem, then, Miss Dickinson makes and
illustrates the point that simply honoring a value is as
binding, purging, and costly as deliberately committing one
self completely to that value.
The repetition variation we saw in both the early poet
ry and the poetry of 1862 appears also in 1 8 6 3. Consider,
for example, poem 745:
Renunciation--is a piercing Virtue--
The letting go
A Presence--for an Expectation--
Not now--
The putting out of Eyes--
Just Sunrise--
Lest Day--
Day's Great Progenitor--
Outvie
Renunciation--is the Choosing
Against itself—
Itself to justify
125
Unto itself--
When larger function--
Make that appear--
Smaller--that Covered Vision--Here--
In line one the poet announces her topic which she then
elaborates in a series of images. Lines ten through sixteen
constitute a type of conclusion through repetition, for in
them the poet crystallizes and states fully the ideas she
has built up through her initial statement and its elabora
tion. The list of images in the elaboration contains within
itself no progression, however; on the contrary, after the
poet has qualified in lines two and three the statement in
line one, she uses images not to explore this qualification
further but to reformulate it in figures. The conclusion
simply restates in predominantly unfigured language the
initial statement and its first qualification.
Poem 793 is a fully developed example of the variation
in which the poet repeats her introduction and elaboration a
number of times before moving into a final conclusion:
Grief is a Mouse--
And chooses Wainscot in the Breast
For His Shy House--
And baffles quest--
Grief is a Thief--quick startled--
Pricks His Ear--report to hear
Of that Vast Dark--
That swept His Being--back--
Grief is a Juggler--boldest at the Play--
Lest if He flinch--the eye that way
Pounce on His Bruises--One--say--or Three--
Grief is a Gourmand--spare His luxury--
126
Best Brief is Tongueless--before He'll tell--
Burn Him in the Public Square--
His Ashes--will
Possibly--if they refuse--How then know--
Since a Rack couldn't coax a syllable--now
The initial statement is made in a metaphor which is elabo
rated in imagery. In the second stanza, the topic is pre
sented in a personification which is also elaborated through
imagery. Line one of stanza three presents yet another rep
etition in personification whose elaboration makes of the
eye seeing the bruises of the juggler an unidentified preda
tory creature of some sort. The fourth repetition in line
four of stanza three is highly compressed and also employs
personification. Each of these repetitions explores one
particular meaning of grief; together they present, in order,
the ideas that he who grieves hides his grief, is alert to
any bit of information that might help him understand what
moved him, is deceptive and indicates no weakness, and last
ly is eaten up by his grief. The notion that he who grieves
hides his grief is repeated twice in the repetition section
(in stanzas one and three) and is made by the poet to be the
substance of the conclusion, which is also introduced in a
personification but elaborated in predominantly unfigured
language. Although the movement of the ideas in this poem
is rather complex, the function of the imagery is not; as in
all the examples of the type we have seen, the image is a
vehicle whereby a statement is made, elaborated, or com
mented upon.
127
When we turn to the descriptive poems of 1863 we find
the same structural patterns and imagery uses we have seen
in the earlier groups. Poem 790, for example, is descrip
tion by activity:
Nature--the Gentlest Mother is,
Impatient of no Child--
The feeblest--or the waywardest--
Her Admonition mild--
In Forest--and the Hill--
By Traveller--be heard--
Restraining Rampant Squirrel--
Or too impetuous Bird--
How fair Her Conversation--
A Summer Afternoon--
Her Household--Her Assembly--
And when the Sun go down--
Her Voice among the Aisles
Incite the timid prayer
Of the minutest Cricket--
The most unworthy Flower--
When all the Children sleep--
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light Her lamps--
Then bending from the Sky--
With infinite Affection--
And infiniter Care--
Her Golden finger on Her lip--
Wills Silence--Everywhere--
There is nothing complicated about the structure and use of
imagery in this poem. Miss Dickinson announces her topic in
the initial metaphor in line one of stanza one and then
moves directly into her description of the workings of moth
er nature. The most significant characteristic of this poem
is its lack of controlled suggestion. The figures found in
the; poem are consistent with the first metaphor and the
128
reader is not required to supply associations at any point:
what the poet has to say here she spells out.
The absence of suggestion in this poem and in those of
the repetition variation is somewhat surprising. By 1863
Miss Dickinson had succeeded in creating many intense, rich
poems whose outstanding quality was complex suggestion.
Certainly in the poetry of 1862 we found suggestion operat
ing strongly. The examples we have seen of the major varia
tions of 1863 are simply not comparable in intensity of sug
gestion to those in 1862. This fact seems to indicate that
although association had become a major technique by 1 8 6 3,
the poet did not develop it at the expense of other tech
niques, did not value it above all other techniques, and did
not prefer it to uncharged metaphors and similes or even to
completely unfigured verses.
The poetry of 1864 exhibits the same full spectrum of
structure and imagery patterns apparent in the earlier
groups. As we shall see presently, all the major variations
appear in this year and within the variations themselves the
use of suggestion continues to be fitful. Beginning once
again with the first variation of the statement-elaboration-
conclusion pattern in which the poet makes her statement of
topic in an unfigured line, we find more examples of pattern
repetition. Poem 932, for example, contains no new elements
whatever and simply repeats techniques used in many prior
poems:
129
My best Acquaintances are those
With Whom I spoke no Word--
The Stars that stated come to Town
Esteemed Me never rude
Although to their Celestial Call
I failed to make reply--
My constant--reverential Face
Sufficient Courtesy.
In lines one and two the poet introduces her topic by means
of a simple unfigured statement. The elaboration section
extends from line three through line six, and the conclusion
appears in lines seven and eight. Ths^personification in
the elaboration is uncomplicated and clear. Suggestion ap
pears in "Celestial Call" in line five and is unlimited: in
this particular phrase "Celestial" carries both spiritual
and physical meanings. Because of the double meaning in the
phrase the conclusion is double in its reference and indi
cates that the reverence and courtesy of the "I" of the poem
are for the stars as heavenly bodies, as natural objects,
and for them as representations of a spiritual power. The
astute charging of the elaboration image here allows the po
et to salute both the visible and invisible heavens without
having to become philosophically or theologically specific.
Another example of this variation is poem 9^-7:
Of Tolling Bell I ask the cause?
"A Soul has gone to Heaven"
I'm answered in a lonesome tone--
Is Heaven then a Prison?
That Bells should ring till all should know
A Soul had gone to Heaven
Would seem to me the more the way
A Good News should be given.
The poet asks a question in unfigured language in line one,
130
offers the answer and another query in the elaboration sec
tion (lines two through four of stanza one), and presents
her commentary in the four lines of stanza two. Imagery is
relatively unimportant in this poem; what there is of it
functions quite according to pattern: the metaphor in line
four of stanza one is clear and simple, as is the attribu
tion in "lonesome" of a state of mind to a tone of voice.
When we turn to the poems of the second variation in
1864, we see more repetitions/ Poem 937> for example, is
characteristic of the type:
I felt a Cleaving in my Mind--
As if my Brain had split--
I tried to match it--Seam by Seam--
But could not make them fit.
The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before--
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls--upon a Floor.
In the first two lines of stanza one the poet presents her
topic in a figure. Lines three and four of stanza one con
stitute a brief elaboration, and stanza two is commentary.
Most of the imagery in this poem is clear and uncomplicated,
but the term "Sound" in the figures in the final two lines
is difficult. It would seem to be completely unlimited in
that it stands with no qualifying word which eliminates cer
tain meanings. In the context of the conclusion, however,
only the meanings referring to an auditory sensation or to
the vibrations causing it are at all reasonable. Yet even
these do not really make good sense unless the reader takes
131
another mental step and sees that the poet must be speaking
of the auditory senses as avenues to the brain and therefore
as conduits of Intelligibility. Since the brain of the "I"
in the poem has been split or damaged in a violent thorough
going way, it cannot any longer interpret or deal with in
formation presented to it by the senses. In that context,
"Sound" stands not simply for the auditory sensation or for
what causes it but for audition as potential intelligibili
ty. The "Sequence" or meaning coming to the mind through
hearing "ravels out" and "I" can no more deal with it or
control it through understanding than she can deal with
balls rolling in every direction on a floor. As in other
instances of complex suggestion-association we have seen,
the burden of comprehension here is on the reader, who must
effect the synapse between Emily Dickinson's image and the
particular meaning she seems to be using in the context.
Although Emily Dickinson sometimes uses complex sugges
tions in the second variation of 1864, she does not always
do so. Poem 976, for example, is heavily figured throughout
but contains no suggestions of any consequence:
Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
"Dissolve" says Death--The Spirit "Sir
I have another Trust ["] -- [sic]
Death doubts it--Argues from the Ground--
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.
In the first two lines of stanza one the poet makes her
132
initial statement in a figure. She elaborates what she
means by "Dialogue" by describing one in lines three and
four of stanza one and line one of stanza two. In the last
three lines of stanza two she comments on the dialogue and
presents its conclusion or outcome. None of the figures
here is unclear: the initial personification extends
through the elaboration into the conclusion where it is
shored up further by the use of an image of human clothing,
an overcoat, to stand for the shuffling off of the body by
the "Spirit" when death occurs.
When we look at some examples of the repetition varia
tion, we find slightly more suggestion than we have seen
thus far in the poems of this year. Consider, for instance,
827:
The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.
The Only Shows I see--
Tomorrow and Today--
Perchance Eternity--
The Only One I meet
Is God--The Only Street--
Existence--This traversed
If Other News there be--
Or Admirabler Show--
I'll tell it You--
Here "Immortality" is made to be a news service, "Tomorrow
and Today" and "Perchance Eternity" are called "Shows,"
"God" is "The Only One I meet," and "Existence" is a street.
All these abstractions are unlimited suggestions which call
133
up an almost infinite series of associations in the mind of
the reader. Both terms in each metaphor are abstractions,
the suggestions in both terms are unlimited, and the partic
ular effect of these comparisons is achieved through a con
sistent matching of philosophical or theological terms with
those of a commonplace or day-to-day nature. Although the
mixing of one order of human experience with another creates
the illusion that "News," "Shows," and "one" are particu
lars, these terms themselves are charged with a host of sug
gestions and Miss Dickinson leaves the reader free to make
any combination of associations called up in his mind by
either or both terms in each comparison.
Poem 967 is somewhat different from 827 and relies on
direct metaphorical illustration rather than upon sugges
tion :
Pain--expands the Time--
Ages coil within
The minute Circumference
Of a single Brain--
Pain contracts--the Time--
Occupied with Shot
Gammuts of Eternities
Are as they were not--
Although the poem is clearly of the repetition type that
proceeds by opposition, it has no stated conclusion. Ap
parently the poet felt that she had explored the two possi
bilities in the pain-time relationship and that presenting
her paradox was sufficient. In line one of stanza one she
states one possibility and illustrates it with a three-line
134
figure; in line one of stanza two she announces its opposite
and illustrates that with a three-line figure. The matter
of the imagery is rather unusual and startling but the func
tion of the figures is clearly quite usual in Miss Dickin
son's poetry and without complication of any sort.
Much the same thing can be said of the descriptive po
etry of 1864. If we consider the type in which Miss Dickin
son describes her subject according to its activity or the
activity going on around it, we find nothing new. Poem 975>
for example, is simple, clear-cut, and familiar in pattern:
The Mountain sat upon the Plain
In his tremendous Chair--
His observation omnifold,
His inquest, everywhere--
The Seasons played around his knees
Like Children round a sire--
Grandfather of the Days is He
Of Dawn, the Ancestor--
Here the poet presents her subject in a personification and
fills in some details of grandfather mountain's activities.
The initial picture is further developed by the presentation
in the first two lines of stanza two of the activities of
the seasons. The last two lines, although somewhat super
fluous because of the work done by the imagery in the poem,
present the poet's commentary on the scene.
Descriptive poems of the painting rather than the ac
tivity type are also present in 1864. Poem 916 is a repre
sentative example and indicates that in poems of this pat
tern Miss Dickinson sometimes wishes to add a direct
135
commentary to her sketch of a particular subject:
His Feet are shot with Gauze--
His Helmet, is of Gold,
His Breast, a Single Onyx
With Chrysophras, inlaid.
His Labor is a Chant--
His Idleness--a Tune--
Oh, for a Bee's experience
Of Clovers, and of Noon I
Stanza one is directly pictorial and concentrates on the
physical appearance of the bee. The first two lines of
stanza two, although speaking of the bee's activity, do not
describe what he does but what the poet considers to be the
distinctive quality of his "Labor" and "Idleness." Conse
quently, in those two lines she labels the characteristics
of activity rather than presenting that activity directly.
In these six lines of description the poet uses some sugges
tion. "Chant" and "Tune" are both unlimited in their asso
ciations and have pleasant and joyful connotations, "Chant"
being traditionally a word standing for a song of celebra
tion and "Tune" carrying with its meaning of harmony a
strong overtone of delightful, balanced tonality. The final
two lines of stanza two form the poet's commentary and con
tain suggestion in "Noon," which stands not only for a time
of day but also for the most intense part of the day, the
moment of greatest power.
The presence of commentary in a descriptive poem in
1864 would seem to be rather surprising since we have seen
the poet working toward the nature vignette in her early
136
period and achieving it in 1 8 6 2. The fact that we have here
what seems to be a "throw-back" simply indicates, as does
the presence of sporadic rather than systematic suggestion,
that Miss Dickinson apparently did not prefer one manner of
expression to another and that apparently she did not value
aesthetically one type of description more than another.
When we turn to the poetry of 1 8 6 5, we find sporadic
suggestion, more repetitions of structure and imagery pat
terns, and evidence that Miss Dickinson was still experiment
ing with component assembly plans. Poem 1026, like others
of its type, begins with an unfigured introduction of topic:
The Dying need but little, Dear,
A Glass of Water's all,
A Flower's unobtrusive Face
To punctuate the Wall,
A Fan, perhaps, a Friend's Regret
And Certainty that one
No color in the Rainbow
Perceive, when you are gone.
After she has announced her point, the poet does not move
through an elaboration to a definitely stated conclusion.
There is no third section in this poem structurally compar
able to the conclusion or commentary lines in others of the
type. Miss Dickinson manages to give the effect of a con
clusion, however, by ordering her imagery in a value se
quence: she mentions first a glass of water, then a flower,
a fan, a friend's regret, and finally the certainty that
someone is profoundly and irreparably bereaved. This tech
nique of imagery progression is not new, certainly: we saw
137
It developed to a high level of suggestion complexity in po-
2 3
em 3 0 0, and we noticed it operating even in description.
That poem 1026 has a number of figures is obvious.
But, as we have seen repeatedly, Miss Dickinson sometimes
chose not to use any figures at all in her poems: from the
earliest period through the year of greatest production,
1 8 6 2, unfigured and nearly unfigured poems have stood con
sistently side by side with heavily figured ones. In 1 8 6 5*
three years after she was able to write a complex poem like
"The Soul's Superior instants" and a few months before she
was to write "Further in Summer than the Birds," Miss Dick
inson wrote 1 0 6l:
Three Weeks passed since I had seen Her--
Some Disease had vext
'Twas with Text and Village Singing
I beheld Her next ----
And a Company--our pleasure
To discourse alone--
Gracious now to me as any--
Gracious unto none--
Borne without dissent of Either
; To the Parish night--
Of the Separated Parties
Which be out of sight?
The structural pattern in this poem is quite normal for the
first variation: in line one the poet announces her topic,
qualifies it in line two, elaborates it further in lines
three and four of stanza one, all of stanza two, and lines
one and two of stanza three, and comments upon it in the
2See p. 64. ^See p. 54.
138
final two lines of the poem. Nowhere in this poem is there
any use of sugges-tion imagery. In fact, there is little im
agery of any kind. In this poem the poet relies on direct
statement and introduces no subtleties or intricacies of
meaning whatever.
When we look at examples of the second variation, we do
not find any unfigured poems comparable to those in the
first variation group. Poem 985* for example, is heavily
figured and employs suggestion:
The Missing All, prevented Me
From missing minor Things.
If nothing larger than a World's
Departure from a Hinge
Or Sun's extinction, be observed
'Twas not so large that I
Could lift my Forehead from my work
For Curiosity.
Here the poet states her subject in a figure and moves di
rectly into a conclusion which she elaborates by means of
figures. "The Mis’ sing All" in line one is a good example of
unlimited suggestion. "All" is an abstraction that stands
for just about anything or everything, and "Missing" in no
way limits the meaning area or indicates which particular
"All" the poet is speaking of. The litotes in "minor
Things" such as the world coming to an end as a door falls
off its hinges or the sun becoming extinct emphasizes the
significance attached to "The Missing All" but in no way
particularizes that term. When the reader has finished this
poem, he is aware of how important that "All" is to the "I"
of the poem but he has no clear idea what that "All" is
139
which gives rise to the remarkable frame of mind reflected
in the elaborated conclusion. Part of the main point, then,
is vague, perhaps deliberately so: Miss Dickinson is often
coy in her poetry, as we have seen. The particular use of
unlimited suggestion we find in this poem does seem to have
a positive function, however. The poet conceals the spe
cific nature of the "All," to be sure, and perhaps tantal
izes the reader a bit, but it should be noticed that hiding
the nature of "The Missing All" enables the poet to concen
trate on the effect of deprivation rather than on the cause.
And effect rather than cause is the stated topic of the po
em. Through unlimited suggestion, therefore, Miss Dickinson
is able to keep her poem in balance and concentrated on the
topic.
Poem 1049, a fully developed example of the second var
iation, is also generously figured but lacks suggestion:
Pain has but one Acquaintance
And that is Death--
Each one unto the other
Society enough.
Pain is the Junior Party
By just a Second's right--
Death tenderly assists Him
And then absconds from Sight.
Lines one and two of stanza one introduce the topic in per
sonification, lines three and four of stanza one form a
brief elaboration section which builds on the imagery in the
introduction, and stanza four is a conclusion which also
uses figures of the same order as those found in the first'
two sections.
The repeat variation shows the same inconsistency in
the use of suggestion apparent in the second, variation. Po
em 1 0 5 2, for instance, is constructed on the repetition plan
but contains no controlled suggestion:
I never saw a Moor--
I never saw the Sea--
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be.
I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven--
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given--
The first stanza presents the point that the "I" of the poem
possesses knowledge which does not demand empirical demon
stration. The terms in which this idea is presented are
particular and concrete. The second stanza repeats the same
idea but uses theological abstractions in combination with a
simile employing a particular. The progression in the order
of terms, from the particular to the abstract, serves to
make of the last stanza a conclusion as well as a repetition.
The imagery here presents no association problems, and is
thoroughly clear.
Poem 1048, on the other hand, is heavily figured and
contains suggestion. The structure of the poem is similar
indeed to 1052 but since there is no progression in the
terms comparable to that found in 1052, 1048 has no section
that might be labeled a conclusion:
141
Reportless Subjects, to the Quick
Continual addressed--
But foreign as the Dialect
of Danes, unto the rest.
Reportless Measures, to the Ear
Susceptlve--stimulus--
But like an Oriental Tale
To others, fabulous--
"Reportless Subjects" in line one is an instance of unlim
ited suggestion. The noun "Subjects" is itself completely
broad in its reference and "Reportless" does nothing to tie
down what the poet is talking about. All the meanings of
both terms are carried in the phrase, and since nothing in
the rest of stanza one gives any hint as to what the poet is
speaking of, the reader is left completely up in the air, as
it were, and consequently free to read anything he likes in
to the phrase. "Quick" is also an instance of unlimited
suggestion: within the first two lines all the denotations
of the term fit. The following two lines limit the term,
however: since "the rest" seem to be alive instead of dead,
the meaning of the living, as in the quick and the dead,
does not fit. Consequently, the term is limited by its con
text and stands only for those who are sensitive and percep
tive. "Reportless Measures" in stanza two is the same sort
of thing as "Reportless Subjects" in stanza one. Since the
poet is apparently using these broad terms to make the point
that those who are perceptive or sensitive are able to live
more rich emotional lives than those who are not, it is pos
sible that the poet deliberately left the terms vague, as
142
^ 4 5
she did in 932 and 985 in order not to have to become spe
cific and mention exactly what intuitions or emotions she
was talking about. What she intended is, of course, a mat
ter only for speculation. What she actually did was to use
suggestion so broadly that she used it vaguely and left her
reader drifting.
Although there are no examples of the pictorial de
scriptive type of poem in 1 8 6 5, the examples to be found of
the activity type do not differ significantly from their
counterparts in prior years. Number 9 8 6, for example, is a
well-known poem of the type and is based on description by
activity interrupted by commentary:
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides--
You may have met Him--did you not
His notice sudden is--
The Grass divides as with a Comb--
A spotted shaft is seen--
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on--
He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn--
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot--
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone--
Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me--
I feel for them a transport
of Cordiality--
4
See p. 129. ^See p. 138.
143
But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone--
Stanza one introduces the "narrow Fellow" and stanza two de
scribes his manner of moving in the grass. Although stanza
three includes a description of his favorite haunts and
brings "I" directly into the poem, its major purpose seems
to be to describe and summarize in an image the rapid way a
snake moves (line eight). In stanza four "I" again appears
in order to comment on the snake, who as yet in the poem
seems neither attractive nor repulsive. Lines three and
four of stanza five crystallize in an image the fright of
"I" by making both the snake and his activities cause "tight
er breathing" and a feeling Miss Dickinson describes very
accurately as "Zero at the Bone--."
At this point in our discussion of Miss Dickinson's use
of imagery in her poems a number of important points seem
clear. Most obvious, of course, is the fact that in 1 8 6 3-
1865 she repeated basic structural patterns apparent both in
the early period and in the poems of 1 8 6 2. That she felt
free to experiment with the component assembly of her major
variations also seems to be the case and indicates that by
1865 she had not finished experimenting or tinkering with
her combinations. The sporadic use of suggestion in the po
ems of 1863-1865 and the complete absence of the double
image poem which appeared in 1862 would seem to indicate one
of three things: that the poet had not finished her imagery
experiments, that the intensity of her creative drive had
diminished after 1 8 6 2, or that she simply did not value a
complex intense poem more than a simple perhaps unfigured
one. The first of these alternatives is altogether possible
but not particularly probable. There are no new imagery
techniques whatever in the poetry of 1 8 6 3-1 8 6 5. Therefore,
if she ceased to use controlled suggestion as intensely as
she had in 1862 in order to experiment with new imagery
techniques, she did not produce any new variations. The
second possibility is more probable than the first. Al
though her numerical production considered year by year or
as a mean average was larger in 1863-1865 than it was ever
to be again, that production cannot compare with the flood
of poems in 1 8 6 2. In 1862 alone she wrote three hundred
sixty-six poems; in the three years 1863-1865 she wrote a
total of four hundred. What at first glance seems to be a
continuation of the creative effort of 1862 in the 1863-1865
period seems after second thoughts and considerable evidence
to be more properly a tapering off of intensity. The ab
sence in 1863-1865 of systematic multiple suggestion such as
that found in the double-image poems of 1862 and the pres
ence there of what amounts to sporadic suggestion would seem
to support such a generalization.
Of the three possibilities the last is by far the most
obviously true. Throughout the period 1863-1865 Miss
Dickinson wrote figured and unfigured examples of all the
major variations she had established in her early period.
Sometimes she used controlled suggestion in her figured po
ems and sometimes she did not. Nowhere did she use it in as
complex a way as she did in 1862. The conclusion that she
did not discriminate aesthetically between one Imagery tech
nique and another seems to be called for by the evidence.
CHAPTER V
THE POETRY OP 1866-1886
During the last twenty years of her life Emily Dickin
son wrote five hundred eighty-nine poems. This number con
sidered by itself would seem to be rather impressive; but
when we remember that she wrote two hundred eighty-six poems
during the years 1858-1 8 6 1, three hundred sixty-six in 1 8 6 2,
and four hundred in the period 1863-1 8 6 5, we see that the
sum represents a great dropping off in productivity. Al
though Miss Dickinson wrote fewer poems during the last
twenty years of her life than she had written during the
seven-year period 1 8 5 8-1 8 6 5^ she continued to write the same
types of poems conspicuous in that period. In fact, as we
shall see presently, she simply repeated in the late poetry
some of the basic variations in structure and imagery pat
tern we have seen in the earlier years. Conspicuous by its
absence in the late poetry is the double-image poem which ap
peared in 1862 and which depends on a systematic exploita
tion of what I have before defined as controlled suggestion
imagery.1 As we shall see, suggestion imagery is not used a
"^See pp. 33 ff.
146
147
great deal in the period 1866-1886. Since we have found it
helpful in this study to proceed chronologically in some pe
riods and according to types of poems in others, it is use
ful when exploring the five hundred eighty-nine poems of the
late period to combine both approaches by considering types
first and then by examining in detail the characteristics of
a group of poems written during the last two years of the
poet's life.
Beginning again with the first variation of the state-
ment-elaboration-conclusion type of poem in which the poet
makes her initial statement in an unfigured line, we find
that representatives of the variation are to be found
throughout the years 1866-1 8 8 6. Poem 1106, for instance, a
clear example of the type, was written in 1 8 6 7:
We do not know the time we lose--
The awful moment is
And takes it's fundamental place
Among the certainties--
A firm appearance still inflates
The card--the chance--the friend--
The spectre of solidities
Whose substances are sand--
Here the poet announces in the first line that we do not un
derstand time or value it properly. She elaborates this
idea in lines two, three, and four by pointing out that our
moment-to-moment experiences are significant whether or not
we look at them that way. The second stanza is a conclusion
in the form of a contrast: "A firm appearance," an object
of one sort or another, a situation, a person, seems to be
148
important because it is tangible, but tangibles of this sort
are "spectres of solidities," illusions, which are not real
ly very important. The imagery in this poem presents no
special difficulty. In the elaboration, "The awful moment"
is placed "Among the certainties" as if it were a tangible,
as if it were a jar that could be placed with other jars on
a shelf. In the conclusion, "spectre" is limited in its
meaning extension by "substances" and stands there simply as
the figure of illusion.
Poem 1162, written late in 1 8 7 0, is another example of
the first variation and is completely unfigured:
The Life we have is very great.
The Life that we shall see
Surpasses it, we know, because
It is Infinity.
But when all Space has been beheld
And all Dominion shown
The smallest Human Heart's extent
Reduces it to none.
In the first line of the poem, Miss Dickinson states her
point quite clearly: the life we have as alive human beings
is quite wonderful and special. She elaborates this idea in
lines two through four by comparing the life in this world
with that expected in the next. Here she seems to be as
senting to the doctrine that life in this world is a poor
second to immortality. But in her conclusion, which in
cludes lines five through eight, she reverses the position
she took up in the elaboration and states that even the ex
perience of lumen gloriae cannot compare in any way with
alive human experience. It is possible, of course, to read
149
"Human Heart’s extent" as a figure standing for the ability
of the human being to feel and respond. Because the figure
of the human heart has been used in this way for a very long
time, however, it seems to me to have the effect of a con
ventional speech form rather than that of a figure.
Poem 1332, written in 1874, is yet another example of
the first variation:
Floss wont save you from an Abyss
But a Rope will--
Notwithstanding a Rope for a Souvenir
Is not beautiful--
But I tell you every step is a Trough--
And every stop a Well--
Now will you have the Rope or the Floss?
Prices reasonable--
In this poem Miss Dickinson makes her initial statement,
that a silk thread is not as good as a rope when one is con
fronted by an abyss, in the first two lines of stanza one
and qualifies it briefly in lines three and four. Lines one
and two of stanza form an elaboration which employs simple
metaphor, and lines three and four provide an unfigured con
clusion. The pattern of statement-elaboration-conclusion is
fully developed here, and as usual the figures are not deco
rative but functional. Suggestion plays no part whatever in
this poem; the metaphors in the elaboration are unequivocal
and uncomplicated.
Two more examples will suffice to show that the first
variation appeared consistently throughout the late poetry.
That the poet was still using this variation during the two-
150
year period prior to her death will be seen when we consider
the last twelve poems she wrote. The first of the two ex
amples is 1459; written in 1 8 7 9:
Belshazzar had a Letter--
He never had but one--
Belshazzar's Correspondent
Concluded and begun
In that immortal Copy
The Conscience of us all
Can read without it's Glasses
On Revelation's Wall--
Miss Dickinson announces that she is going to talk about
Belshazzar's letter in the first line. As we might expect
by now, she elaborates her topic briefly in line two and
comments upon it in lines three through eight. The figures
in this poem allude to the account of Belshazzar's feast in
the fifth chapter of Daniel. According to that account of
the incident, Belshazzar saw both the writing ("Mane, Thecel,
Phares") and the hand that wrote. Since he did not know
what the writing meant or whose hand wrote, he called Daniel
to interpret the writing and identify the writer. The poet
does not simply allude to this biblical tale; she assumes
her reader is familiar with it and understands the moral it
contains. "Belshazzar's Correspondent," as Daniel points
out in his conversation with that king, is God, who has
weighed Belshazzar's merits, found him wanting, and written
on the wall to warn him. Through her statement of topic,
and her use of Imagery which alludes to the interpretation
of the letter incident in Daniel, Miss Dickinson centers the
reader's attention on the moral of the story, the act of
151
interpretation, and insists that no one can possibly misread
the message. Of course, she presumes in her reader a knowl
edge of Scripture and a "Conscience" trained to respect or
at least recognize Christian doctrine. Although the imagery
in this poem is allusive and dependent for its effect on the
reader's familiarity with the Old Testament, it is without
complication and simply serves as the vehicle whereby the
poet makes her commentary on the topic of Belshazzar's let
ter introduced in line one.
The resemblance of the statement-elaboration-conclusion
pattern to the sermon type of organization is particularly
apparent in poem 1492, written in 1880, in which Miss Dick
inson quotes a text from I Corinthians, elaborates it, and
comments upon it:
"And with what body do they come?"--
Then they do come--RejoiceI
What Door--What Hour--Run--run--My Soul I
Illuminate the House'.
"Body!" Then real--a Face and Eyes--
To know that it is them!
Paul knew the Man that knew the News--
He passed through Bethlehem--
In this poem the elaboration extends from line two of stanza
one through line two of stanza two; the conclusion appears
in the final two lines of stanza two. If we consider "My
Soul!" in line three of stanza one to be merely an exclama
tion, then there are no figures at all in either the intro
duction or the elaboration; if Miss Dickinson is enjoining
the soul to make haste and prepare for the Last Day, then
152
the elaboration is figured lightly and simply. The conclu
sion is allusive, conventionally Christian, and Miss Dickin
son asserts with it the authority of Scripture: in the last
two lines she refers both to the conversion of St. Paul and
to the public life of Christ and thereby concludes that the
dead do return to life at the Resurrection, regardless of
when that remarkable event will take place, because "it's in
the Book," as it were. Aside from the problem of following
the allusions, there are no difficulties or complexities
whatever in the poem: it is predominantly unfigured and
lacks entirely equivocal imagery of any sort.
Turning now to the examples of the second variation, we
again find pattern repetition but no new imagery techniques
whatever. Poem IO6 7, written early in 1886, is a fully de
veloped example of the type in which the poet makes her
statement of topic in a figured line:
Except the smaller size
No lives are round--
These--hurry to a sphere
And show and end--
The larger--slower grow
And later hang--
The Summers of Hesperides
Are long.
Lines one and two contain the introduction of topic, that
only small lives have the perfection of a sphere, lines
three through six present the elaboration of the topic, and
lines seven and eight constitute a conclusion. In the in
troductory section Miss Dickinson makes a simple metaphori
cal statement which is quite general: "round" suggests an
almost infinite number of particulars. In the elaboration
section where the poet contrasts the maturation of "smaller"
and "larger" lives, she becomes gradually more specific in
her imagery: the activity described in lines three and four
could apply to raindrops on a waxed surface, to oil poured
into a substance which will not unite with it chemically, or
to fruit ripening, to name but a few possibilities; the ac
tivity described in lines five and six applies specifically
only to maturing fruit. The conclusion ties the imagery
down completely and makes of the poem an analogy between the
maturation of a life and that of an apple which must hang on
a stem and whose shape is far from perfect. The allusion to
"Hesperides" serves to place the maturation of a "larger"
life in a special context. The term stands either for the
nymphs protecting the garden when golden apples grew or for
the garden itself. Although both possibilities are sug
gested by the term, the context seems to limit the meaning
to the garden itself: in the garden of Hesperides, accord
ing to Greek mythology, grew the golden apples given as a
wedding present by Gaea, Mother Earth, to Hera, goddess of
women and marriage. Even though they were not perfect
spheres, the apples were precious, had been carefully tended,
and were significant enough objects to be a suitable wedding
present for a very important person. "Larger" lives, there
fore, partake of these qualities, require considerable trou
ble and attention, and are liable to be somewhat out of
154
shape, as It were, because of the time they have spent hang
ing , maturing.
Poem ll8l is another example of the type and was writ
ten in 1 8 7 1:
When I hoped I feared--
Since I hoped I dared
Everywhere alone
As a Church remain--
Spectre cannot harm--
Serpent cannot charm--
He deposes Doom
Who hath suffered him--
Here the poet announces in the first four lines the idea
that although hope engenders fear, it also begets self-reli
ance. She elaborates this idea in figures in lines five and
six and comments upon it in lines seven and eight. The sim
ile in the statement is without complication, but the fig
ures in the.conclusion are examples of both free and limited
suggestion. "Spectre," for example, is both an apparition
and any object of fear or dread--a person, a situation, or
an event possibly. By using free association here, the poet
is able to make the point that dread or fear, regardless of
the form either takes, no longer has any effect on the "I"
of the poem. "Serpent," however, is limited suggestion; be
cause of the combination of "serpent" and "charm" the refer
ence to an ordinary snake is eliminated and the term is made
to stand for Satan. As a consequence, the notion of invul
nerability presented in "Spectre cannot harm--" is empha
sized and full preparation is made for the final summation
in the last two lines of the poem.
155
Poem 1263, written in 1873* is also a fully developed
example of the second variation:
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry--
This Travel may the poorest take
Without offence of Toll--
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.
Here the poet makes her initial statement of topic in the
first four lines of the poem. Lines five and six elaborate
the topic, and lines seven and eight form a commentary. The
imagery in this poem is extremely simple and clear: in the
first four lines we find uncomplicated similes, and in the
conclusion we see a metaphor that requires no association-
synapse of any kind from the reader. The idea the poet is
working with here, that the human being can live deeply and
intensely through books and poetry comes through without any
difficulty or complication of figure whatever.
Moving now into the latter half of the twenty-year pe
riod 1866-1 8 8 6, we find more examples of the second varia
tion according to the same structural plan we have seen be
fore in earlier poems. One of the poems from 1 8 7 8, number
1434, is quite familiar in its pattern and contains no com
ponents we have not seen before:
Go not too near a House of Rose--
The depredation of a Breeze
Or inundation of a Dew
Alarm it's walls away--
Nor try to tie the Butterfly,
Nor climb the Bars of Ecstasy,
156
In insecurity to lie
Is Joy's insuring quality.
The poet seems to make her initial statement in line one and
to begin to elaborate it in line two. The elaboration of
the initial statement extends only through line four, howev
er. Lines five and six are properly part of the topic
statement, and we see, after we have read the entire poem,
that Miss Dickinson makes part of her introductory statement
in line one, elaborates it briefly, completes that statement,
and then moves into her conclusion. In the initial four-
line section, Miss Dickinson is pointing out that the beau
tiful, fragile, and vulnerable object should not be ap
proached for fear of destroying it. Line five, which con
tinues the initial statement, picks up this notion and re
states it in another particular; line six moves the whole
idea framework of the poem from the world of beautiful ob
jects to that one which includes all objects, experiences,
or sensations producing ecstasy in the human being. This
generalization is brought about by the unlimited suggestion
in "Bars of Ecstasy." The conclusion simply sums up in un
figured language the injunction apparent in the first six
lines that it is unsound to grab and clutch at anything one
finds tremendously attractive and desirable.
The last example of the type we need consider here, po
em 1535 * was written in l88l and differs from its counter
parts in that the poet proceeds from her initial statement
of topic directly into her conclusion:
The Life that tied too tight escapes
Will ever after run
With prudential look behind
And spectres of the Rein--
The Horse that scents the living Grass
And sees the Pastures smile
Will be retaken with a shot
If he is caught at all--
The poet introduces in the first four lines of the poem the
idea that living with great restraint is not sound and leads
to a revolt which is liable to be permanent; in the final
four lines she makes a commentary upon this idea by saying
that severe restraint is unnatural and stultifying and that
once a free natural life has been experienced, it is not
given up voluntarily, if at all. The analogy in the poem of
a human being and a horse breaking from constraint to run
free and live according to natural desire is not a difficult
one to see or to follow and is quite without complication or
equivocation of any sort.
For some reason known only to herself Miss Dickinson
dropped the repetition and list-of-images variations of the
statement-elaboration-conclusion pattern in the late poetry
and restricted herself to repeating the two variations we
have considered. She did not drop the descriptive poem,
however. In the period 1866-1886 the nature vignette pre
dominates, although instances of description followed by
commentary are also to be found in this group.
Poem 1224, written in 1 8 7 2, is a good example of the
descriptive poem in which the poet uses activity imagery
without adding directly stated commentary:
158
Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush
I hear the level Bee--
A Jar across the Flowers goes
Their Velvet Masonry
Withstands until the sweet Assault
Their Chivalry consumes--
While He, victorious tilts away
To vanquish other Blooms.
In the first two lines of this poem, Miss Dickinson intro
duces her subject; she then describes what happens when the
bee she has heard approaches a flower, enters it, and leaves
to go to another flower. Within the activity images them
selves are several instances of suggestion. "Plush" in line
one, for example, is limited in its suggestion and brings to
mind only the soft pliable fabric with its long pile, which,
when placed on tracks, would muffle the sound of wheels.
"Jar" in line three is also limited; the meaning in the word
of a harsh, grating sound does not fit because of the de
scription in line one of the sound of the bee. Here "Jar"
is confined in meaning and stands only for the vibration set
up by the bee's arrival. From line one of stanza one
through line four of stanza two Miss Dickinson uses the lan
guage of attack and pictures the bee as a ravisher of flow
ers. "Masonry," for example, stands not only for the thing
made but also for the material out of which it is made. The
notion of firm unyielding resistance in the term is canceled
by "Velvet," however, and consequently the petals of the
flower are pictured as firm but yielding and soft. These,
the poet says, withstand or resist the entrance of the bee
159
until "the sweet Assault/ Their Chivalry consumes--."
"Chivalry" here is limited in meaning and stands for a code
of behavior or a system of principles. The sweetness of the
bee's assault destroys the flower's principles, as it were,
and the bee is able to take the flower's nectar and fly on
to ravish "other Blooms."
Miss Dickinson seems to be fond of the picture of the
bee and the flower, for she uses it again, in 1 8 7 5; as the
subject of another descriptive poem, 1339:
A Bee his burnished Carriage
Drove boldly to a Rose--
Combinedly alighting--
Himself--his Carriage was--
The Rose received his visit
With frank tranquility
Witholding not a Crescent
To his Cupidity--
Their Moment consummated--
Remained for him--to flee--
Remained for her--of rapture
But the humility.
The imagery in this poem is considerably less charged than
that in 1224; Miss Dickinson spells out what she has to say
directly in an unfigured line or in a clear, simple metaphor.
Both poems are descriptions according to activity but one is
considerably more condensed, subtle, and complex than the
other. In 1224, for instance, the poet uses one charged
line to indicate the arrival of the bee; in 1339 she uses
four lines which are explicit and detailed to do the same
job. She uses four lines in 1339 to describe the manner in
which the rose receives the bee and three in 1229- And in
1339 she writes four lines compared to two in 1224 to relate
160
the parting of the bee and flower. In 1339 she attends more
carefully to the rose's state of mind, as it were, than she
does in 1224 by mentioning that the flower welcomes the bee
frankly and has left after her moment of rapture only "hu
mility." In 1224 she seems intent on sketching without
metaphorical elaboration only the bare details of the en
counter of flower and bee.
Perhaps one of the best known of Miss Dickinson's late
poems is 1463, "A Route of Evanescence," written in 1879-
In this poem Miss Dickinson uses a list of activity images
containing no event or time sequence to describe the visit
of a hummingbird to flowers. Since the images are visual
and contain no sequence, their effect is pictorial and the
reader need only see them; to follow the sequence and under
stand the relation of one image to another, as is required
in 1224, is unnecessary:
A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel--
A Resonance of Emerald--
A Rush of Cochineal--
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts it's tumbled Head--
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy Morning's Ride--
In the first four lines the poet says that the hummingbird
flies so rapidly that its route is practically invisible and
that its colors seem to be a kind of rushing echo of a pri
mary sensation rather than that sensation itself. Lines
five and six concentrate on the after-effects of the humming
bird's visit, and lines seven and eight constitute a rather
l6l
whimsical direct commentary both on what the bird was doing
in the flower garden and on the speed with which it was able
to fly and do its business.
Another of Miss Dickinson's w.ell-known descriptive po
ems was written in 1 8 8 2. Like most of the poems of its type
in the late period, it lacks direct commentary and presents’
the poet's attitude toward her subject indirectly through
figures:
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away--
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy--
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon--
The Dusk drew earlier in--
The Morning foreign shone--
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone--
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.
Here Miss Dickinson describes her subject according to its
qualities and elaborates these by means of frequent similes.
Line two contains the subject of the poem--the passing of
summer. Lines one, three, and four explore through simile
the manner in which summer passes. In line five the poet
introduces a quality characteristic of late-summer, early-
autumn in New England, the evening quiet which in the non
industrial areas of Massachusetts is intensely peaceful.
The quality of silence mentioned in line five is extended
and explored in lines six, seven, and eight. This
«
162
elaboration gives to the scene a definite cloistered, pen
sive character which the simple mention of silence only sug
gests .
In line nine she mentions yet another quality of the
season, early dusk, and without elaborating that particular
point states in line ten that morning, too, is different
from what it was in summer. Lines eleven and twelve explain
through metaphor and simile what she means by "foreign" in
line ten and add the notion that not only is morning a
strange, alien, and unpleasant experience but also that it
is eager to be gone, that day will be brief. The final four
lines, without directly stating the poet's commentary, con
stitute a restatement of the first four lines and indicate
through the import of the figures that to the poet summer is
the best, most beautiful season of the year, that fall is
inferior, and that when summer goes, she retires without
benefit of transportation to a kind of platonic world of
perfect forms.
If we turn now to the block of twelve poems Miss Dick
inson wrote during the two years prior to her death, we see
once again both pattern repetition and the absence of any
new imagery technique. According to the Johnson edition,
one half of these poems were written in letters instead of
packets, and four of the remaining six never progressed be
yond the work-sheet stage. Regardless of the condition of
the manuscripts and their sources, we can see in them the
l6 3
direction of Miss Dickinson's effort and the structure and
imagery patterns she was in the process of using. If we
consider these poems from the standpoint of pattern rather
than from that of source or condition, we can see clearly
that they are repetitions of variations familiar from the
Sarly period of her poetry.
Beginning again with the first variation of the state-
ment-elaboration-conclusion pattern in which the poet makes
her introduction of topic in an unfigured line, we find that
six of the twelve poems belong in this category. The first
of these, 1 6 3 7* is a single quatrain from a letter sent to a
Mrs. Edward P. Crowell about 2 March 1 8 8 5. Thomas Johnson
remarks about this poem in his notes:
The first line of the poem is separated from the remaining
three in such a way as to suggest it was not intended to
be a part of them. It is impossible in such a .jeu d1 es
prit to be sure where the prose leaves off and the poetry
begins, a situation that in many instances ED [sic] seems
to have intended. (p.1122)
Regardless of what the poet may or may not have intended,
Johnson published the poem this way:
Is it too late to touch you, Dear?
We this moment knew--
Love Marine and Lbve terrene--
Love celestial too--
If we follow Johnson's lead and consider the quatrain as one
unit, we find that the first line is an unfigured statement
of topic in the form of a question and that it is followed
by a three-line conclusion. Lines two, three, and four pre
sume a negative answer to the question in line one and state
164
in unfigured language that contact is all the love there is.
The fact that this quatrain is entirely unfigured is not
surprising; from her earliest period on through her latest,
Miss Dickinson wrote unfigured as well as figured poems.
That she was still writing them in 1885 simply indicates
that the apparent lack of preference of one form to another
evident in the earlier years continued to the time of her
death.
The second poem in the group', 1 6 3 8, was also taken from
a letter, and begins with an unfigured line, has a brief
elaboration section, and ends with a two-line conclusion:
Go thy great way 1
The Stars thou meetst
Are even as Thyself--
For what are Stars but Asterisks
To point a human Life?
In his note to the poem Johnson states that "the verse is
here used in loving memory of Lord [Judge Otis P. Lord], who
had been for many years an intimate friend of the Dickinson
family" (p. 1123). The first line is a rephrasing of the
injunction which appears often in the New Testament as a
saying of Christ: "go thy way in peace." Here Miss Dickin
son assumes the prophet's mantle, asserts that the heavenly
bodies Lord meets on his way to heaven are the same as he
because both he and stars are "Asterisks." The comparison
of the star and the asterisk is on the basis of shape; in
the case of Judge Lord, the asterisk marks his omission from
the roll call of the living. Consequently, as the asterisk-
165
star is a prime tool of navigation and therefore a source of
physical direction, so the mark of omission and the knowl
edge of the life it marks is a source of spiritual direction.
The third poem in this group is merely two lines long
and is also an extract from a letter:
A Letter is a joy of Earth--
It is denied the Gods--
Here we have a one-line statement followed by a one-line
qualification of the initial statement. Since the poem is
as brief as it is, we cannot expect it to conform to any
complex pattern. That the poem begins with a statement and
moves into an elaboration or qualification is quite usual in
the statement-elaboration-conclusion group, however.
Poem 1640, the fourth in the group, also begins with an
unfigured statement of topic. Commentary rather than elabo
ration follows this statement, however, and therefore one
component is missing from the full statement-elaboration-
conclusion pattern:
Take all away from me, but leave me Ecstasy,
And I am richer then than all my Fellow Men--
111 it becometh me to dwell so wealthily
When at my very Door are those possessing more,
In abject poverty--
Miss Dickinson is playing here with two referents for riches,
psychological or physical wealth, and both her language and
her ideas are easy to follow. The fact that she failed to
include an elaboration section in this poem is not surpris
ing: from the earliest period we have seen that she varied
her patterns by shuffling the order of her components or by
166
leaving out one component entirely. In the early period,
for example, we discussed poem 1 0 8, 'Surgeons must be very
O
careful/ When they take the knife I " In which the poet pro
ceeded directly from her statement to her commentary. And
In the poetry of 1862 we noticed that she failed to write an
explicit conclusion in poem 318, "I’ll tell you how the Sun
rose--.' In the period 1863-1865 we also observed this
tendency to avoid monotony of pattern by shuffling or elim
inating components: poem 1026, "The Dying need but little,
Dear,"^" lacks a conclusion, as does 985* "The Missing All,
prevented Me."^
The fifth example of the first variation, poem 1643, is
a worksheet draft of a poem Miss Dickinson apparently never
completed. Although the poem is unfinished and has several
alternate readings within the text, the structure and image
ry patterns In it are clear:
Extol thee--could I-- Then I will
by saying nothing new--
But just the anti fair--averring--fairest--truest truth
that thou art heavenly
tritest--brightest truth--
sweetest
that tritest eulogy
That thou are heavenly
Perceiving thee is evidence
That we are of the sky
Partaking thee a guar t y guaranty
of immortality
In line one the poet announces her topic and begins her
2See pp. 97-98.
^See pp. 136-137-
■^See p. 5^-
5See p. 138.
167
elaboration, which extends through line four and Its several
alternate readings. The conclusion proper Is drawn In lines
five and six and elaborated in lines six and seven. The
fact hat Miss Dickinson used no imagery in this poem is not
surprising. Poem 1637^ contained no figures either. As I
pointed out when discussing that poem, figured and unfigured
poems have stood consistently side-by-side with heavily fig
ured ones from the earliest period through the latest.
The sixth and last example of the first variation, poem
1645, is also a worksheet draft which contains a clear
three-part structure:
The Ditch is dear to the Drunken man
for is it not his Bed--
his Advocate--his Edifice--
How safe his fallen Head
In her disheveled Sanctity--
Above him is the sky--
Oblivion bending over him
And Honor leagues away
In the first three lines the poet makes her statement which
she elaborates in lines four and five and comments upon in
lines six, seven, and eight. The elaboration and the con
clusion are both heavily but simply figured. "Fallen Head"
in line four is a synecdoche based on the cliche "fallen
man." In line five, the "Ditch" in line one is made a woman
who is "disheveled" but holy. Within the conclusion simple
personification predominates and we see "the Drunken man"
protected by "Oblivion" and unconcerned about "Honor," who
^See p. l6l.
168
Is "leagues away."
The remaining six poems in this group are all examples
of the second variation of the statement-elaboration-conclu-
sion pattern in which Miss Dickinson makes her initial
statement in a figured line. Two of the six are fully de
veloped examples, three are quatrains and lack an elabora
tion, and one is a seven-line poem lacking a conclusion. Of
the two fully developed examples, one, poem 1642, is quite
heavily figured:
"Red Sea," indeed! Talk not to me
Of purple Pharaoh--
I have a Navy in the West
Would pierce his Columns thro'--
Guileless, yet of such Glory fine
That all along the Line
Is it, or is it not, Marine--
Is it, or not, divine--
The Eye inquires with a sigh
That Earth sh'd be so big--
What Exultation in the Woe--
What Wine in the fatigue!
In the first two lines Miss Dickinson makes her statement of
topic. "Red Sea" and "purple Pharaoh," one would assume,
refer to the flight of the Israelites out of Egypt and to
the miracle of the parting of the waters. Therefore, the
topic of the poem seems to be a refusal to hear anything
about the power of God and the power of Pharaoh. The elabo
ration, beginning in line three and extending through line
ten, explains the topic by presenting the fact that the "I"
of the poem has power also: the "Navy in the West" could
destroy the column of Pharaoh without any help from God.
Lines five through ten are an attempt to explain what is
169
meant by the term "Navy In the West" but do not seem to be
at all clear. "Navy In the West" is certainly a figure of
power but the explanation of that figure in lines five
through ten is so obscure as to be completely unintelligible.
In this section, Miss Dickinson seems to proceed by associ
ation, a common technique in many of her poems, but she does
not leave adequate clues for her reader to follow; conse
quently, the important explanation section does not explain
and makes the entire import of the poem cloudy. The conclu
sion also depends upon the information in the elaboration
section for its meaning; because that information is not
available, the conclusion is also mystifying.
The other fully developed example of the second varia
tion is 1646:
Why should we hurry--why indeed
When every way we fly
We are molested equally
by immortality
no respite from the inference
that this which is begun
though where it's labors lie
A bland uncertainty
Besets the sight
This mighty night
In the first four lines Miss Dickinson makes her statement
in a personification figure which presents the picture of
fleeing humanity being "molested" by "immortality." The
elaboration section extends from line five through line
eight and presents the idea that the entire relationship of
the human being and immortality is obscure. Line eight
properly belongs to the elaboration section since it
<4
170
completes the Ideas in both lines six and seven. It is also
required in the conclusion, however, because the last two
lines lack a subject. Apparently Miss Dickinson intended
the line to work in both sections, and it is possible to say
that this particular structural peculiarity represents sim
ply another experiment in condensation. Regardless of the
manner in which line eight functions, it is possible to see
the three sections clearly, to identify them as statement-
elaboration-conclusion and to see that poem 1646, like all
the others of the very late group we have been discussing,
is essentially a pattern repetition.
Turning now to the examples of the second variation
which lack one component or another, we find three quatrains
lacking an elaboration section. All three of these are
nearly exact structural copies of poem 1 0 8, written in
1859:7
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife i
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit--LifeI
The basic structure here is that of a two-line statement and
a two-line commentary. Poem l64l, written in 1 8 8 5, resem
bles 108 closely but employs a conjunction which seems to
tie the two sections together:
Betrothed to Righteousness might be
An Ecstasy discreet
But Nature relishes the Pinks
Whuch she was taught to eat--
7See pp. 97-98.
171
The first two lines in this poem serve to introduce the top
ic of betrothal and marriage by offering "Righteousness" as
a mate and "Ecstasy discreet" as a reward. The final two
lines have the effect of a conclusion by rejecting the first
possibility in favor of another arrangement and another ec
stasy which is instinctive and therefore unrestrained rather
than discreet. Functionally speaking, then, the first two
lines constitute a statement of topic and the last two a
commentary.
Poem 1647, a part of a letter to Higginson dealing with
the death of Helen Hunt Jackson, is more clearly divided in
to two separate sections than is l64l:
Of Glory not a Beam is left
But her Eternal House--
The Asterisk is for the Dead,
The Living, for the Stars--
In the first two lines Miss Dickinson plays with several
meanings of "Glory" and in the process produces a kind of
litotes. "A Beam" of "Glory" and "Eternal House" are, of
course, construction figures. In addition, "Beam" refers to
radiance and "Eternal House" stands for glory considered as
a reward for achievement and therefore for fame or renown.
By exploiting several of the many meanings of "Glory" the
poet manages a clever understatement and says, in effect,
that there is nothing left but everything. In lines three
and four, she uses the asterisk-star figures she used in
172
1 6 3 8, "Go thy great way!"^ In 1647 she uses the figure of
the asterisk to stand for the missing dead, as she did in
1 6 3 8. But in line four of 1647 she reverses the order in
1638 and says not that the stars are for the living but that
the living are for the stars. Apparently she is building on
the word-play in lines one and two because by reversing what
would seem to be a natural order of terms she points out
that the asterisk is for the dead and corresponds to the
beam of radiance that is gone, and that fame is an "Eternal"
phenomenon like the stars and therefore is the property of
the living. In short, although one dies, one lives on if
one has achieved fame.
Poem 1648, a part of the letter to Higginson in which
1647 appeared, is also clearly in two sections:
The immortality she gave
We borrowed at her Grave--
For just one Plaudit famishing,
The Might of Human love--
The first two lines introduce the topic and the last two
form a commentary. The import of this poem is quite cloudy,
however. In lines one and two the poet makes the point that
at the graveside the living partook of the immortality of a
certain dead person. What she means by this is not clear
certainly. But the last two lines are more obscure than the
first two: she does not tell the reader who is "famishing"
for applause, the dead person or the living. Here, as in
O
See p. 164.
173
1642, "'Red Sea,' indeed! Talk not to me,"^ the poet appar
ently understands what she is talking about but does not
provide the reader with enough clues to follow her.
The last of the examples of the second variation, 1644,
is an unfinished worksheet draft which, Johnson says in his
note to the poem, "was left in so indeterminate a state that
no reconstruction of it is here attempted" (p. 1126). Al
though it is difficult to see the exact import of the poem,
it is possible to see it structural divisions:
Some one prepared this mighty show
To which without a Ticket go
The nations and the Days--
Displayed before the simplest Door
Pass slow before the humblest Door
That all may them--it--examine
and more
witness it and more
The--of summer Days--
pomp of summer Days
The Ethiopian Days
Lines one through three seem to state the topic in figures
and lines four through seven seem to elaborate it. There is
no concluding remark added here, and the poem seems to be
left hanging in the air.
Examination of both the single block of twelve poems
Miss Dickinson wrote at the end of her life and the types
that she wrote throughout the period 1866-1886 reveals a
number of significant characteristics which can also be ob
served in the poems not selected for discussion. Chief
^See pp. 168-169.
1-74
among these is the fact that the poet narrowed her pattern
variations noticeably. That the complicated repetition and
image-list variations of the statement-elaboration-conclu-
sion pattern did not appear and that the first and second
variations only were present seems to indicate that the
flood-tide of creativity which began to diminish in the pe
riod 1863-1865 had nearly run out by the time the poet died
at the age of fifty-six. That the complex and subtle double
image poem also did not appear would seem to support this
contention, as would the fact that the nature vignette, an
altogether different type of poem from the statement-elabo-
ration-conclusion type which deals with the exploration of
an idea, a situation, or an emotion, is fully developed in
the late period.
When we consider the question of Miss Dickinson's use
of imagery in these poems, we can say again that there is
nothing new and that narrowing is apparent: the figures
which appear in the late poems function within the variation
patterns as vehicles whereby the poet makes a statement,
elaborates it, draws a conclusion, or describes an object;
in addition, controlled suggestion, the systematic use of
the connotations and denotations in a word, is noticeably
sporadic and nowhere even begins to approach the poet's use
of that technique in the poems of 1 8 6 2.
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
I have asked the reader to follow and absorb throughout
the major part of this study extensive and perhaps somewhat
tedious analyses of representative examples of Miss Dickin
son's poems. That structure and imagery patterns are pres
ent in the poet's work and that they are limited in number
and variety, however, seems to be clear from the-examples we
have seen. We have observed throughout our investigation
that in general these were of two main types; either her po
ems were variations of the statement-elaboration-conclusion
pattern or they were descriptive. Considered specifically,
the variations of the statement-elaboration-conclusion pat
tern are four. In the first the poet makes her initial an
nouncement of topic in an unfigured line; in the second she
employs a figure for that purpose. The third variation is
one in which the poet repeats her statement and its elabora
tion a number of times before drawing her conclusion. And
the fourth contains a list of images connected by associa
tion progression which the poet uses to make, elaborate, and
comment upon her point. The second major pattern, that of
175
176
description, has three variations. In the first the poet
uses a list of pictorial images to create a picture. In the
second she describes her subject according to its activity.
And in the third she describes one subject 3n terms of an
other through analogy.
In addition we noticed that within these major pattern
and variation configurations the poet sometimes uses an im
agery technique which I have called controlled suggestion.
The use of this technique enabled Emily Dickinson to create
quite special effects and to indicate meanings that she did
not spell out. By using broad or free suggestion she was
able to utilize all the connotations that adhere to the de
notation of a word and consequently was able, when she used
this technique systematically in a poem, to create what I
have labeled the double-image poem. In this particular con
struct she discussed two different topics in one coherent
and unified but equivocal set of images. As I pointed out
in the introduction, the poems containing strong suggestion
are similar to Japanese haiku in that they require the read
er to effect the association-synapse between meanings and
depend for their effect on the reader's sensibility rather
than on his capacity to follow an explicit development of
thought.
By isolating the several variations of each major pat
tern, by watching for the presence or absence of suggestion,
and by charting the appearance of each in the corpus of Miss
Dickinson's poetry, we are able to see what variations and
techniques were characteristic of each period in her life as
a creative artist. In the early period, for example, we no
tice that the first three variations of the statement-elabo-
ration-conclusion pattern and the first two variations of
the descriptive type are well-developed and amply repre
sented. We also notice that Miss Dickinson only gradually
<
began to use association imagery (suggestion) in this period
and that this technique did not become a major one until the
poetry of l86l. When we consider the poetry of 1 8 6 2, we
find that all variations of each pattern were represented,
that the poet uses a great deal of free suggestion, and that
through the use of consistent multiple suggestion she is
able to create in both major patterns double-image poems of
considerable subtlety, richness, and complexity. In fact,
in the poetry of 1862 we observe that the poet's use of as
sociation by suggestion appears to be both extensive and
habitual in all variations of both patterns.
In the poetry of 186 3-1 8 6 5, we find that instead of
continuing the performance she gave in 1 8 6 2, Miss Dickinson
narrows her variation repertoire somewhat. We find also
that during this period she omits the list-of-images varia
tion of the statement-elaboration-conclusion pattern and
that in 1865 she omits the list-of-images variation of the
descriptive pattern. In addition, we notice that during
this period she writes no double-image poems at all and that
178
she uses suggestion imagery only sporadically. And in the
final period 1866-1886 we saw that the narrowing of struc
tural pattern begun in 1863-1865 had proceeded further, that
only the first and second variations of each pattern were
evident, and that suggestion appeared only rarely.
As we proceed through the corpus of Emily Dickinson's
poetry we observe one other significant phenomenon: in each
period Miss Dickinson wrote poems which contained no figures
at all. Considered by itself this fact would perhaps be un
important. But when we put it together with the other ob
servations we have been able to make about the poet's struc
ture and imagery patterns, it appears that although they
were limited indeed, her patterns were not completely monot
onous because she was able to vary them by using imagery or
by omitting it entirely. The consistent presence of unfig
ured poems in all periods indicates yet another conclusion
which is perhaps more important than the recognition of how
the poet was able to vary what would seem to be extremely
limited patterns. This conclusion, I believe, is that al
though Miss Dickinson wrote many poems which contain images,
she at no time in her career seemed to prefer these to the
entirely unfigured poem. And when we put this idea together
with the fact that she created poems rich in texture and
suggestion in 1862 and then apparently did not continue this
type of composition, it seems likely that she did not dis
criminate aesthetically between one variation and another or
179
between one technique and another. This, of course, is sim
ply another way of saying that unlike most twentieth-century
poets and critics she apparently valued a simple, clear, un
figured poem as much as she did a complicated, subtle, per
haps obscure, figured one. This conclusion does not demon
strate that Miss Dickinson did not know any better, that she
was "an instinctive artist," or that she was "an automatic
writer," as most critics of her work assert. It seems to me
the last thing we can say about a poet who presents her read
er with clear structure and imagery patterns is that she was
writing "instinctively" or "automatically." That her tech
nical range was extremely limited, that she used again and
again a definite number of pattern variations, and that she
seemed not to prefer one type to another seems to be indi
cated and serves to define rather exactly the breadth of her
technical range. Within her range, however, she shows great
skill.
The notion that Emily Dickinson was an "instinctive"
artist has long been advanced in one form or another by the
majority of critics who have dealt with her technique.
George Whicher, for example, wrote in 1930 that,
She was an instinctive artist. . . . Other critics be
sides Colonel Higginson have deplored the inexactness of
her rhymes, as though a poet's main business were with the
rhyming dictionary. She knew better. She was inattentive
to superficial polish, but at a time when poetry was like
furniture put together with putty, gilded, and heavily up
holstered, she preserved in her writing the same instinct
of sound workmanship that made the Yankee clipper, the
Connecticut clock, and the New England doorway objects of
i8o
beauty.1
The examples Dr. Whicher chose to illustrate what he meant
by the "instinct of sound workmanship" are unfortunate. The
Yankee clipper, the Connecticut clock, and the New England
doorway were all products of master workmen skilled in their
crafts and trained carefully as apprentices and journeymen.
What Dr. Whicher is actually saying here is that Miss Dick
inson preferred an organic, functional design to an ornate,
studiously or conspicuously impressive one and that she used
the former instead of the latter in her work. That she was
able to perform instinctively seems doubtful, for in all
crafts the organic, functional design presents great techni
cal problems to the craftsman who must make with his own
hands what the designer has indicated. In this study we
have seen that Miss Dickinson did indeed use organic, func
tional designs in her poetry. But to attribute this
achievement to instinct in her case, when we would not be
able to do so in any other of the practical or fine arts,
seems completely unsound.
Thomas Johnson seems to hedge somewhat on this question.
Apparently he believes that Miss Dickinson was both an in
stinctive or "possessed" artist whose work sprang into ex
istence fully developed, yet one who had to rewrite, polish,
and refine her lines:
lnForeword," Emily Dickinson: A Bibliography (Amherst,
1930), p. 13-
l8l
Clearly Emily Dickinson had no formal theory of poetics,
in the sense that she could have written a critique in the
manner of Poe. But she had a developed and consistent
idea of the manner in which the poet is inspired. Her
ideas are conventional to the degree that they are in the
main stream from Plato to Emerson. The poet is a seer;
his inspiration comes as a grace, overleaping regular
channels; he is thus a man possessed, who reveals truth
out of the agony of his travail; and the anguish of such
possession enables the receiver to partake of reality and
reveal at least a fragment of the mysteries that the heart
perceives. Such possession cannot be made comprehensible
to others by instruction. Uncontrolled, it leads into the
sheer nonsense of automatic writing. . . . She persistent
ly labored to file her lines so that the images would be
exact and sharp. She was aware that form is inherent in
the created object, and she achieved control when her per
ceptions gave shape to the object before her pen touched
paper.^
It seems to me that Mr. Johnson's remarks are either unclear
because they are inadequately explained or simply self-con
tradictory. If a poet must correct and file her lines, she
is not any more or any less "possessed" than the creative
artist working in any medium who is inspired by an idea and
who must labor to give that idea form. To say that a poem
came full-blown from the poet, like Athena from the head of
Zeus, is quite a different matter from saying that the poet
had an idea, put it on paper, and then refined a rough draft
into a finished copy.
In a brief article he wrote on Miss Dickinson in 19^-5*
F. 0. Matthiessen stated without any reservation or equivo
cation that the poet was an "instinctive"'' artist:
Her process was almost wholly instinctive. No matter what
p
Emily Dickinson: An Interpretative Biography (Cam-
bridge, 1955), P- 1^8.
182
shades of difference between her religious values and
Emerson's, her way of writing continued to illustrate his
conception of the Poet. That she believed no less than he
that poetry could be written only in all-sufficient moments
of inspiration is apparent from the state of her manu
scripts .
The last remark of Mr. Matthiessen's, in which he apparently
proves his point by referring to the state of Miss Dickin
son's manuscripts, is completely unclear and confusing in
deed. In his edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson Thomas
Johnson is careful to point out that her manuscripts, many
of which have been available to scholars for years, survive
in four forms: "(a) fair copies to recipients (b) other
fair copies (c) semi-final drafts . . . (d) worksheet
drafts" (p. Ixi) . And he adds, after listing the arrangement
of drafts, that "If a poem seems to achieve its final ver
sion at a date later than that of earlier fair copies, it is
placed among poems written during the later year" (pp. lxi-
Ixii). A poem that exists in a number of drafts, of which
one is a final draft, cannot be said to be the product of
"instinct" operating in "all-sufficient moments of inspira
tion ."
The most careful statement of the position that Emily
Dickinson was an "instinctive" or "automatic" poet is to be
found in R. P. Blackmur's essay "Emily Dickinson: Notes on
Prejudice and Fact." In this essay Blackmur's main purpose
3"The Problem of the Private Poet," Kenyon Review, J:
591-592, Autumn 19^5-
183
is to show why assorted estimates of Miss Dickinson's work
are incorrect. His remarks on Mme. Bianchi's extravagant
praise of Miss Dickinson's work, for example, make clear why
he does not agree with her:
The idea is to make you feel that the slips and roughnes
ses, the truncated lines, false rhymes, the inconsisten
cies of every description which mar the majority of Emily
Dickinson's poems are examples of a revolutionary master-
craftsman. Only the idol is served here; no greater dis
service could be done to the poetry the reader reads than
to believe with however great sincerity that its blemishes
have any closer relation than contrast to its beauty.
Emily Dickinson never knew anything about the craft of
verse well enough to exemplify it, let alone revolt from
it.
Without in any way indicating that "the slips and roughnes
ses, the truncated lines and false rhymes" which "mar the
majority of Emily Dickinson's poems" might be important
clues to her theory of poetry, Mr. Blackmur proceeds to
force his own assumptions about the nature of poetry on the
reader by declaring that she simply did not know the first
thing about writing poetry. It seems strange that a critic
of Mr. Blackmur's stature and eminence would dismiss in such
cavalier fashion verse characteristics he did not approve of
or care for without investigating them thoroughly. Evident
ly he assumes the reader agrees with him because he drops
that particular point and concentrates on its corollary,
that Miss Dickinson was an "automatic" writer:
Most of the Dickinson poems seem to have been initially as
.near automatic writing as may be. The bulk remained
^The Expense of Greatness (New York, 19^0), p. 110.
184
automatic, subject to correction and multiplication of de
tail. Others, which reach intrinsic being, have been pat
terned, inscaped, injected one way or another with the
elan or elixir of the poet's dominant attitudes. (pp.
127-128)
Mr. Blackmur is saying a number of things here. He remarks
that most of her poems are nearly automatic, that the bulk
was actually a1 ;omatic, although subject to correction and
addition of detail, and that some were patterned or con
tained a special "elan." What this rather vague "elan" or
"inscaping" is he attempts to make clear when he discusses
what he considers to be her good poems: "Success was by ac
cident, by the mere momentum of sensibility" (p. 125). In
other words, she usually wrote automatically, almost always
corrected what she had written, and sometimes was lucky and
succeeded in writing a good poem. This process would seem
to me to be characteristic of the mode of creation of a good
many artists: to write quickly, to correct later, and some
times to achieve success is not unusual. And certainly such
procedure is not what we would expect from the "automatic"
writer.
In a number of other places in this same essay, Black
mur makes an issue of Miss Dickinson's gift for language.
When speaking of the verse-language of mid-nineteenth centu
ry America, he points out that "the great estate of poetry
. . . lay flat in a kind of desiccated hibernation . . ."
and that Whitman and Emily Dickinson
were unable to accept the desiccation and drove forward on
the elan of their natural aptitude for language, resorting
185
regardless to whatever props, scaffolds, obsessive sym
bols, or intellectual mechanisms came to hand, but neither
of them ever finding satisfactory form--and neither, ap
parently, ever consciously missing it. (pp. 124-25)
That a creative writer has a "natural aptitude for language"
is usually assumed by reader and critic alike. But here Mr.
Blackmur makes this gift the means whereby Miss Dickinson
implemented what he before called her "sensibility." And he
also considers it the tool that enabled her to write the po
em which was simultaneously successful and not satisfactory
inform. Mr. Blackmur is not being at all clear or reason
able here. If we are to accept his statements as accurate,
we are faced with the necessity of crediting Miss Dickin
son's achievement to a "natural aptitude for language" that
displayed itself in automatic writing which was not really
automatic because it was usually refined and corrected and
which was sometimes successful but never satisfactory.
Mr. Yvor Winters is not much more help than Mr. Black
mur. In a rather irritable way, Mr. Winters damns Miss
Dickinson's meter by saying that "her meter, at its worst--
that is, most of the time--is a kind of stiff sing-song"
and then states quite dogmatically that all of Miss Dickin
son's poetic "heresies" are simply evidences of conspicuous
bad taste:
Emily Dickinson differed from every other major New
England writer of the nineteenth century, and from every
major American writer of the century save Melville, of
In Defense of Reason (New York, 1947), p. 2 8 3.
186
those affected by New England, In this: that her New Eng
land heritage, though it made her life a moral drama, did
not leave her life in moral confusion. It impoverished
her in one respect, however: of all great poets, she is
the most lacking in taste; there are innumerable beautiful
lines and passages wasted in the desert of her crudities.
. . . This stylistic character is the natural product of
the New England which produced the barren little meeting
houses; of the New England founded by the harsh and in
trepid pioneers, who in order to attain salvation trampled
brutally through a world which they were too proud and too
impatient to understand. (pp. 298-299)
Apparently Mr. Winters likes certain passages in the poet's
work, dislikes others, and makes his own taste the standard
by which hers is to be judged. Apparently he also dislikes .
"barren little meeting houses" and "intrepid pioneers" be
cause they, too, are crude and the product of what he con
siders to be ignorance and impatience. Mr. Winters here
does"not assert that Emily Dickinson was an "automatic"
writer, certainly. But he does imply that she did not know
what she was doing, that her critical ideas were thoroughly
inadequate. That Miss Dickinson did not write with estab
lished or traditional critical ideas is doubtlessly true.
That she had some critical acumen is indicated by her revi
sions, however. In so far as Mr. Winters is saying that her
standards were inadequate, he is probably correct. His
statement that "of all great poets, she is the most lacking
in taste" seems to suggest more than inadequacy of critical
standard, however, and is rather too sweeping and subjective
to be accepted without careful qualification.
Apparently there is some reluctance on the part of the
critics to give Miss Dickinson the status of a creative art
ist who knew what she was doing. This reluctance strikes me
as being noticeably condescending, unreasonable, and invalid
because the arguments advanced in support of the "automatic"
position are simply not accurate or convincing. We do not
have to apologize for Emily Dickinson's repetitiveness by
attributing it to instinctive or automatic origins. She
wrote some very fine poems'; that she wrote others from the
i
same blueprint that were not fine simply indicates that,
like other poets, she was liable to failure. We are not
depreciating her if we say quite simply and calmly that she
was limited in technical range and that she wrote essential
ly the same poems over and over again. That she preserved
both good and bad poems of each type does not necessarily
indicate that she had no taste or that she knew nothing of
the craft of poetry. Such conclusions are simply specula
tion. If we become just a bit more fundamental about this
point than Blackmur or Winters has been, we find that the
only thing we can really say about Emily Dickinson's work is
that her best poems illustrate certain principles of con
scious art and that her weaker poems show the same princi
ples but fail in application.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Wilson, Suzanne Marie
(author)
Core Title
Structure And Imagery Patterns In The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
English
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Literature, General,OAI-PMH Harvest
Language
English
Contributor
Digitized by ProQuest
(provenance)
Advisor
McElderry, Bruce R. (
committee chair
), Arnold, Aerol (
committee member
), Long, Wilbur H. (
committee member
)
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-51651
Unique identifier
UC11357890
Identifier
5906404.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-51651 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
5906404.pdf
Dmrecord
51651
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Wilson, Suzanne Marie
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA
Tags
Literature, General