Classic Poem of the Month
This month, Wendy Klein has selected two Emily Dickinson poems for our Classic Poem feature.
341
After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
The Nerves sit
ceremonious, like Tombs—
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that
bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round—
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—
A
Wooden Way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone—
This
is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing
persons, recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting
go—
754
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 Sovereign 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 its 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—
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—
Addicted to Dickinson
I can’t remember my very first exposure to Dickinson, but it must have been early as my father taught high school English, wrote poetry himself, and would read poems aloud to anyone who was prepared to hold still long enough to listen. Undeterred by indifference or even rejection, he would pursue a potential audience from room to room, holding forth. Because my mother died when I was a baby, I grew up in an atmosphere pervaded by death, and I remember the first Dickinson line that caught my fancy was the familiar, Because I could not stop for Death,/ He kindly stopped for me, with its hint at the possibility of being able to choose the timing of one’s own death; to take charge of the process. As a child and teenager I was a misfit in most settings and became increasingly attracted to Dickinson when I learned, probably at university, that she, too, was reclusive and eccentric. I even tried for a short time to write like her, but without the dashes and the strange capitalisation and realised how difficult it was. The more I read her, the more I became struck with the contrast between the picture of the diminutive woman in white and the strident, almost muscular quality of her poetry, which is exemplified in the two poems I have chosen as particular favourites.
What I love about Poem 341 is its sense of quiet: The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs […] A Quartz contentment, like stone—This is the hour of Lead— […] First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go –. For me, the opening line: After great pain, a formal feeling comes, seems to sum up the emotional constraint which can occur between individuals in the midst of impending crisis, such as life-threatening illness, something which I have certainly experienced. Despite its quiet start, it crashes forward right up until the ‘letting go’, the images hard, unyielding: wood, stone, quartz, lead. Once again I am seduced by the suggestion of ‘choice’, in the final words, ‘ letting go’, echoing, Because I could not stop for death. In contrast, the opening line of Poem 754 just hit me between the eyes: My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun. I was enchanted by the idea of the poet as the lethal weapon, awaiting a perpetrator, the mysterious He, Master (maybe God) to pull the trigger and with whom she roams and hunts; and the way the poet/gun acknowledges despite her smile […] Upon the Valley glow—she/it has a Vesuvian face, is a deadly foe, with an emphatic thumb, who/which has the power to kill, /without the power to die—. It is unclear to me whether Dickinson is referring to the potential power of the poet/poetry as a loaded gun or whether she is commenting on the potential for violence in all of us that may erupt — like the volcano, Vesuvius. Whatever the case, this strikes me as pretty avant garde material for a woman poet, dead by 1886. I see her as wonderfully subversive through her use of references that could relate as easily to the Columbine Massacre; or to Afghanistan and Iraq. I love her, and I cannot stop reading her. To open my copy of The Complete Poems is to find something each time to make me gasp with admiration, or to smile with delight at her audacity.
— Wendy Klein
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