N. Scott Momaday and Emily Dickinson

The following excerpt comes from N. Scott Momaday's The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages.   The chapter title is "A Divine Blindness:  The Place of Words in a State of Grace."   I have often found Dickinson's poetry to be puzzling and enigmatic, but this poem confounds me completely.

I am publishing this excerpt because of Momaday's first comment on the poem:  "This poem, written about 1866 by a then obscure woman poet in the Connecticut Valley of western Massachusetts, is one of the great moments in American literature."  I know what that means, but I can't relate it to Dickinson's poem.  Perhaps you will do better.

The excerpt--poem and commentary:

     "When the subtitle "The Place of Words in a State of Grace" occurred to me, in the back of my mind was this poem by Emily Dickinson.

                            Further in Summer than the Birds
                            Pathetic from the Grass
                            A minor Nation celebrates
                            Its unobtrusive Mass.

                             No Ordinance be seen
                             So gradual the Grace  
                             A pensive Custom it becomes
                             Enlarging Loneliness.

                             Antiquest felt at Noon
                             When August burning low
                             Arise this spectral Canticle
                             Repose to typify

                             Remit as yet no Grace
                             No Furrow on the Glow
                             Yet a Druidic Difference  
                             Enhances Nature now   
                          


    This poem, written about 1866 by a then obscure woman poet in the Connecticut Valley of western Massachusetts, is one of the great moments in American literature.  The statement of the poem is profound;  it remarks the absolute separation between man and nature at a precise moment in time.   The poet looks as far as she can into the natural world, but what she sees at last is her isolation from that world.  She perceives, that is, the limits of her own perception.  But that, we reason, is enough.  This poem of just more than sixty words comprehends the human condition in relation to the universe:

                              So gradual the Grace  
                             A pensive Custom it becomes
                             Enlarging Loneliness. .


But this is a divine loneliness, the loneliness of a species evolved far beyond all others.  The poem bespeaks a state of grace.  In its precision, perception, and eloquence it establishes the place of words within that state.  Words are indivisible with the highest realization of the human being."



As I wrote above, I recognize that Momaday considers Dickinson's poem to be of supreme significance, but I cannot relate his words to the poem.

Any thoughts?


Poem 1068
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
edited by Thomas H. Johnson