Month: March 2004

I’ve finished reading Emily Dickinson for a while, but I didn’t want to leave without noting what seems to me, though I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else, the importance of the “bird” symbol, or motif, in her poetry, and, in particular, the “robin.” The robin first appears in poem number “5:”

5

I have a Bird in spring
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
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown —
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.

Fast is a safer hand
Held in a truer Land
Are mine —
And though they now depart,
Tell I my doubting heart
They’re thine.

In a serener Bright,
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
Each little discord here
Removed.

Then will I not repine,
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown
Shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return.

Here the robin typically seems to represent the simple “joy,” the joy of song, which, though now gone, will certainly return with new joys.

Dickinson often seems to identify herself with the robin:

376

Of Course — I prayed —
And did God Care?
He cared as much as on the Air
A Bird — had stamped her foot —
And cried “Give Me” —
My Reason — Life —
I had not had — but for Yourself —
‘Twere better Charity
To leave me in the Atom’s Tomb —
Merry, and Nought, and gay, and numb —
Than this smart Misery.

Here, of course, it’s God, not Emily, that apparently compares Emily with the robin.

Sometimes Dickinson seems to project values onto the robin that, judging from her poetry, she holds dear:

828

The Robin is the One
That interrupt the Morn
With hurried — few — express Reports
When March is scarcely on —

The Robin is the One
That overflow the Noon
With her cherubic quantity —
An April but begun —

The Robin is the One
That speechless from her Nest
Submit that Home — and Certainty
And Sanctity, are best

The robin in the opening stanza is clearly identifiable with the robin that inhabits my backyard, but I suspect that the values expressed in the last stanza would be much more valuable to Dickinson than to my backyard inhabitants.

The robin in the following poem:

1483

The Robin is a Gabriel
In humble circumstances —
His Dress denotes him socially,
Of Transport’s Working Classes —
He has the punctuality
Of the New England Farmer —
The same oblique integrity,
A Vista vastly warmer —

A small but sturdy Residence
A self denying Household,
The Guests of Perspicacity
Are all that cross his Threshold —
As covert as a Fugitive,
Cajoling Consternation
By Ditties to the Enemy
And Sylvan Punctuation —

is hardly identifiable as a robin at all, but probably could be identified rather closely with values that Dickinson held quite dear, particularly “Guests of Perspicacity” and the “Sylvan Punctuation” she was unwilling to give up in order to be published.

If the robin is a “Gabriel,” he heralds spring:

1465

Before you thought of Spring
Except as a Surmise
You see — God bless his suddenness —
A Fellow in the Skies
Of independent Hues
A little weather worn
Inspiriting habiliments
Of Indigo and Brown —
With specimens of Song
As if for you to choose —
Discretion in the interval
With gay delays he goes
To some superior Tree
Without a single Leaf
And shouts for joy to Nobody
But his seraphic self —

And as the symbol of spring, he also seems to represent the joy of life reborn from “a superior Tree/ Without a single Leaf,” which one must imagine would appear somewhat cross like.

The more of Dickinson’s poems you read, the richer this symbol becomes, linking itself to many of her poems where there is no obvious reference to a bird:

254

“Hope” is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —

I’ve heard it in the chillest land —
And on the strangest Sea —
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb — of Me.

Although Dickinson often identifies the robin with singing, this is one of the few places I found where she specifically links that singing to her concept of “Hope.”

It is this “lonesome Glee,” this “delight without a cause:”

774

It is a lonesome Glee —
Yet sanctifies the Mind —
With fair association —
Afar upon the Wind

A Bird to overhear
Delight without a Cause —
Arrestless as invisible —
A matter of the Skies.

that Dickinson seems to link to her own poetry. It as if the singing itself is enough to sanctify “the Mind.” even if there appears no cause for that glee to outsiders.

One suspects that it is not entirely coincidental that Dickinson almost invariably identifies the bird as “she” or “her:”

1585

The Bird her punctual music brings
And lays it in its place —
Its place is in the Human Heart
And in the Heavenly Grace —
What respite from her thrilling toil
Did Beauty ever take —
But Work might be electric Rest
To those that Magic make —

One could almost imagine that she sees this “punctual music” as a way of attaining “Heavenly Grace.”

Two poems that focus on the Bobolink instead of the usual robin seem to me to offer an interesting insight into Dickinson’s religious views:

324

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 —

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice —
I just wear my Wings —
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton — sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman —
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at least —
I’m going, all along.

Are the wings the poet is wearing the wings of the Bobolink or the wings of an angel?

1591

The Bobolink is gone —
The Rowdy of the Meadow —
And no one swaggers now but me —
The Presbyterian Birds
Can now resume the Meeting
He boldly interrupted that overflowing Day
When supplicating mercy
In a portentous way
He swung upon the Decalogue
And shouted let us pray “

It’s a little hard to think of dear, sweet Emily as the “Rowdy of the Meadow,” but I really don’t think that it’s the Bobolink that blew off the “Presbyterian Birds,” do you?

It’s amazing to observe how this bird of “humble circumstances” becomes:

1265

The most triumphant Bird I ever knew or met
Embarked upon a twig today
And till Dominion set
I famish to behold so eminent a sight
And sang for nothing scrutable
But intimate Delight.
Retired, and resumed his transitive Estate —
To what delicious Accident
Does finest Glory fit!
“so eminent a sight” by the end of Emily’s works.

In fact, this humble bird was able to rise “beyond the estimate/ Of Envy, or of Men:”

798

She staked her Feathers — Gained an Arc —
Debated — Rose again —
This time — beyond the estimate
Of Envy, or of Men —

And now, among Circumference —
Her steady Boat be seen —
At home — among the Billows — As
The Bough where she was born —

For me, though, the most surprising depiction of the robin can be seen in:

328

A Bird came down the Walk —
He did not know I saw —
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass —
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass —

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around —
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought —
He stirred his Velvet Head

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home —

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam —
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.

I don’t know about you, but that’s the way I’d like to live my life, bite an “Angleworm in halves,” eat “the fellow, raw” and, in the end, unroll my feathers and row myself to a “softer home.”

After finally finishing all 1,175 of Emily Dickinson’s poems, I’m still left trying to make sense out of what I read. Too bad I’m no longer interested in formal education because I suspect I could actually have written a PHD thesis on Dickinson’s poems. Joe Duemer’s response to one of my earlier comments on Dickinson’s poetry inspired me to buy Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays, part of New Century Views, a series apparently inspired by Twentieth Century Views, a favorite of mine because it offered such a wide range of views on an author. The 18 articles in this collection, which I’ve only had time to glance at so far, will probably inspire me to come back to Dickinson later.

Unfortunately, writing about Dickinson may serve more as a Rorschach test than as an accurate analysis of her ideas. Although our basic philosophies seem quite different, there is still much in her poetry I love. One of my favorite themes that continues to emerge in the later poems is the idea that the whole world can be found in the proverbial grain of sand:

By homely gift and hindered Words
The human heart is told
Of Nothing —
“Nothing” is the force
That renovates the World “

We tend to overlook the small, everyday things we do for each other, focusing, instead, on the “special,” “dramatic,” events in our life. Perhaps we should focus on the small, everyday things that people do for each other and the inarticulate ways we try to express our abiding love for one another. It is this kind of love that “renews” the world.

We do not have to sacrifice this life for a future life:

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.

Life after death may well dwarf the life we have lived here on earth, but the human heart’s reach dwarfs time and space itself.

Refusing to accept the idea that earthly happiness should be sacrificed for heavenly success, Dickinson continually links heaven, and infinity, to now:

Who has not found the Heaven — below —
Will fail of it above —
For Angels rent the House next ours,
Wherever we remove “

Those who sacrifice this life for “eternal happiness” may well be incapable of finding true happiness at all. If we cannot find joy in God’s miracles here on earth, how can we hope to find happiness in Heaven?

Dickinson also seems to question the concept of “original sin” or, perhaps, the idea that our life is by its very nature “sinful,” and, thus, unhappy:

Of God we ask one favor,
That we may be forgiven —
For what, he is presumed to know —
The Crime, from us, is hidden —
Immured the whole of Life
Within a magic Prison
We reprimand the Happiness
That too competes with Heaven.

Though there’s certainly plenty of speculation about death and loss in Dickinson’s poetry, there are also innumerable paeans to nature:

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows, —
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night’s delicious close.

Between the March and April line —
That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
Almost too heavenly near.

It makes us think of all the dead
That sauntered with us here,
By separation’s sorcery
Made cruelly more dear.

It makes us think of what we had,
And what we now deplore.
We almost wish those siren throats
Would go and sing no more.

An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear,
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.

Joy and pain often seem inseparable in Dickinson’s poetry, just as they do in life itself. This constant tension between joy and sorrow is part of what makes Dickinson’s poetry so remarkably rich.

For Dickinson, of course, poetry itself seems to make everyday life so rich:

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry —
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll —
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.

Perhaps it is this very belief in the power of poetry, a power accessible to all, that most ties me to Dickinson’s works.