Emily Dickinson: "Success is counted sweetest"

No. 67

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

As he defeated -- dying --
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

-- Emily Dickinson --
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

For Emily Dickinson, this seems like a fairly straightforward poem.   Only those who have never won can really appreciate victory.   But, still, I wonder.  How could one who has never experienced victory, realistically understand or comprehend it? The more I consider this poem, the more perplexed I become.

As usual, I must ask if I am  missing something here in this poem by Dickinson.

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

Autumn Poems

Today, September 22,  2016 is the first day of Autumn, or the Autumnal Equinox, or if you prefer, the Fall Equinox.  In recognition of this, here are a few poems about autumn. 



No. 12

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 should be old fashioned
I'll put a trinket on.

-- Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson




With the moon-rising .. .
   Leaf after leaf after leaf
        Falls fluttering down
                     -- Shiki --
from Cherry-Blossoms: Japanese Haiku Series III
tran. not given





     The mountain grows darker,
Taking the scarlet
    From the autumn leaves.
                     -- Buson --
from Silent Flowers
trans R. H. Blyth



Clear autumn sky
   One pine tree
Soaring on the ridge.
               -- Soseki --
from Zen Haiku
Trans and edited by Soiku Shigematsu




Song at the Beginning of Autumn

Now watch this autumn that arrives
In smells.  All looks like summer still;
Colours are quite unchanged, the air
On green and white serenely thrives.
Heavy the trees with growth and full
The fields.  Flowers flourish everywhere.

Proust who collected time within
A child's cake would understand
The ambiguity of this--
Summer still raging while a thin
column of smoke stirs from the land
Proving that autumn gropes for us.

But every season is a kind
Of rich nostalgia.  We give names--
Autumn and summer, winter, spring--
As though to unfasten from the mind
Our moods and give them outward forms.
We want the certain, solid thing

But I am carried back against
My will into a childhood where
Autumn is bonfires, marbles. smoke;
I lean against my window fenced
From evocations in the air.
When I said autumn, autumn broke. 

-- Elizabeth Jennings --
from Collected Poems
  

 When I think of autumn, I do not think of autumn in Tucson, where I've lived for over 45 years.  Instead, I think of autumn in Chicago, where I grew up.

Emily Dickinson: "Frequently the woods are pink--"

This poem, reflecting the change of seasons, is one of the most accessible and understandable of her poems,  at least it is for me.  Of course, it appears to be an early one, possibly composed as early as 1858, according to the editor, Thomas H. Johnson, which may account for its unusual straightforwardness.


#6

Frequently the woods are pink --
Frequently are brown.
Frequently the hills undress
Behind my native town.
Oft a head is crested
I was wont to see --
And as oft a cranny
Where it used to be --
And the Earth -- they tell me --
On its Axis turned!
Wonderful rotation!
By but twelve performed!  

-- Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson: a winter poem

Like Brooms of Steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street--
The House was hooked
The Sun sent out
Faint Deputies of Heat--
Where rode the Bird
The Silence tied
His ample-plodding Steed
The Apple in the Cellar sang
Was all the one that played.
 -- Emily Dickinson --
Poem No. 1252
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Edited by Thomas H. Johnson


Lean and spare, as are all of Emily Dickinson's poems.  Having lived in Chicago, I know what those "Brooms of Steel" are like.  The winds cut through anything one can wear, and only four walls can keep them out, mostly.  And, even on a sunny, windless day, the sun's heat is barely noticeable.  And the silence .  .  .

Emily Dickinson, a poem

#9

Through lane it lay -- through bramble --
Through clearing and through wood --
Banditti often passed us
Upon the lonely road.

The wolf came peering curious --
The owl looked puzzled down --
The serpent's satin figure
Glid stealthily along --

The tempests touched our garments --
The lightning's poinards gleamed --
Fierce from the Crag above us
The hungry Vulture screamed --

That satyr's fingers beckoned --
The valley murmured "Come" --
These were the mates --
This was the road
These children fluttered home. 

-- Emily Dickinson --
#9
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
edited by Thomas H. Jackson


Lucky children .  .  . or so I think, and perhaps Emily Dickinson thinks the same. 

Emily Dickinson

This is another of Emily Dickinson 's many poems on death.  It focuses on death as a being restful, a safe shore--a common theme in her poetry.


                    4
On this wondrous sea
Sailing silently,
Ho! Pilot, ho!
Knowest thou the shore
Where no breakers roar --
Where the storm is o'er?

In the peaceful west
Many the sails at rest --
The anchors fast --
Thither I pilot thee --
Land Ho!  Eternity!
Ashore at last!

-- Emily Dickinson --
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Edited by Thomas H. Johnson
Poem 4, pages 6-7


Death here is seen as a safe harbor, welcomed after the storm of life--one of the most common themes found in her poetry.  I found the reference to the "peaceful west" also intriguing.  Perhaps it has to do with the image of the setting sun, signalling the end of the day, which is also a common image used by many poets--our life span seen as a day.  For example, one finds this in Shakespeare's Sonnet LXXIII; in fact both the setting sun and the west are present.

"In me thou see'st  the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest."


Although the poet is not speaking directly of death, death is lurking in the background for this time is that time just before death, the twilight of one's life.  And, we see similar elements here: a time of rest and a reference to the west. 

While I am clearly in the autumn of my days, I am not looking forward to a rest, just yet. 

   

Wallace Stevens: The House was Quiet and the World Was Calm

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the evening, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm.  The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
is he reader leaning late and reading there.

-- Wallace Stevens --



Another title for this poem could be "Meditations on Reading."  Or, perhaps that could be a subtitle for I really don't want to give up the title for it fits the poem so well, for when I am reading, the house is quiet, regardless of how noisy it may really be, and the world is calm, in spite of the daily headlines.  The title flows as do the words on the page.

This poem best describes the act of reading, as least as far as I am concerned.   The flowing into a union of the reader, the writer, the ideas/words, and the night convey what I experience when I look back at a time when I was absorbed in a book.  I am somewhere else and only partially me.   To say I am only reading words on a page is true, but only partially true.  It is not the whole truth.  Emily Dickinson said some thing very similar when she wrote, "There is no frigate like a book/To take us Lands away."

Emily Dickinson: "Slant of light"

#258

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--

-- Emily Dickinson --
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Thomas H. Johnson, editor



This is one of the poems of Dickinson that I had to reread several times when I first read it, especially the first stanza, which I find one of the most engrossing  stanzas that she has written.   I know that "Slant of light," not from where I live now in Tucson, but in Chicago, where I grew up.  It had been a grey, overcast, dull day and suddenly, just before nightfall, the sun at the western horizon breaks through the clouds and lights all with a strange golden glow that does something to the back of my throat.


Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--
We can find no scar,
but internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are--

I can't explain it, and this rarely, if ever, happens with any other poem, even those most loved by me.  There is some quality to that light that is unique and disquieting.

Emily Dickinson: The End of Summer

#1536

There comes a warning like a spy
A shorter breath of Day
A stealing that is not a stealth
And Summers are away --


But a spy is not supposed to be noticed!  The change from Summer to Autumn, at first I guess, isn't that noticeable--just a shortening of the Day and a slight loss of  ?   Perhaps the warning is the shorter breath and the stealing?  The Summer is dying. 



#1540

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 Afternon --
Th Dusk drew earlier in --
The Morning foreign shone --
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that wold be gone --
And thus, witout a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful 

Again, the sense that Summer doesn't just abruptly leave, but quietly steals away.
"Our Summer made her light escape"   Just small changes maybe, but into the Beautiful?
This is ambiguous.


#1572

We wear our sober Dresses when we die,
But Summer, frilled as for a Holiday
Adjourns her sigh --

The contrast between us and Summer during our last days.  Perhaps this explains the last line of the previous poem "Into the Beautiful."

--  Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Thomas H. Johnson, Editor




And as always, I can't help but think of similar haiku, suggesting that poets (and therefore humans) from around the globe aren't that different.

                  A single cricket
Chirps, chirps, chirps, and is still .  .  . my
           Candle sinks and dies
                                 -- Anon --

Nothing remarkable here--just a cricket going silent and a candle fading away


          So enviable .  .  .
Maple-leaves most glorious
    Contemplating death
                        -- Shiki --


     Should it have such worth,
What would I not give
    For the scenery of autumn?
                   -- Soin --


The last two haiku, seem related to the second and third poems by Dickinson..

Fall Equinox

Like last year, the first day of autumn, or the Fall Equinox, doesn't seem much like fall here in Tucson, where the temperature is expected to hit 100. But, the Sun and the Stars have decreed that today is the day, so here's a few poems that may be closer to reality in a month or so.

For you in northern climes, therefore:



Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the fragrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
with a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

-- Carl Sandburg --


(Autumn--the season of memories . . .)




Yellow autumn moon . . .
Unimpressed the scarecrow stands
Simply looking bored

-- Issa --
from A Little Treasury of Haiku






Autumn Refrain

The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of the sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never--shall never hear. And yet beneath
The stillness that comes to me out of this, beneath
The stillness of everything gone, and being still
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,
And grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never--shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.

--Wallace Stevens --


(I find this the most puzzling of the autumn poems.)




#656

The name - of it - is "Autumn" -
The hue - of it - is Blood -
An Artery - upon the Hill -
A Vein - along the Road -

Great Globules - in the Alleys -
And Oh, the Shower of Stain -
When winds - upset the Basin -
And spill the Scarlet Rain -

It sprinkles Bonnets - far slow -
It gathers ruddy Pools -
Then - eddies like a Rose - away -
Upon Vermilion Wheels -

-- Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
ed. Thomas H. Johnson


Autumn Note

The little flowers of yesterday
Have all forgotten May.
The last gold leaf
Has turned to brown.
The last bright day is grey.
The cold of winter comes apace
And you have gone away.

-- Langston Hughes --





Gathering Leaves

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

-- Robert Frost --


(That last line raises some questions, doesn't it? Frost has a habit of doing that. Does the poem end on an ominous note?)




Dry cheerful cricket
Chirping, keeps the autumn gay . . .
Contemptuous of frost

-- Basho --
from A Little Treasury of Haiku
(This poem also seems to end on an ominous note.)

(Just noticed the double tie-ins with the previous poem.)

Serendipity

One of the poet's favorite or at least one of the most frequent themes is death. I think Emily Dickinson wrote several hundred poems on that theme. I suspect that probably every poet of some fame has written at least one or more on death. And, their treatment of death is as varied as they themselves are. Here is one I just discovered that dates back to about 1900 B. C., over four thousand years ago.

Death is Before Me Today

Death is before me today
like health to the sick
like leaving the bedroom after sickness.

Death is before me today
like the odor of myrrh
like sitting under a cloth on a day of wind.

Death is before me today
like the odor of lotus
like sitting down on the shore of drunkenness.

Death is before me today
like the end of the rain
like a man's home-coming after the wars abroad.

Death is before me today
like the sky when it clears
like a man's wish to see home after numberless years of captivity.

-- anon --
c. 1900 B. C.
W. S. Merwin, trans
World Poetry
Katharine Washburn & John B. Major, Editors


The anonymous poet's view is that death is just returning home after a long absence. Taoists say something very similar: we come out of the Void, are here for awhile, and then return to the Void.



But, there's Dylan Thomas, whom I think would not agree.


(from) Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

. . . . .

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Come. bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



And Emily Dickinson?

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 a 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.


I think she and the anonymous Egyptian poet would agree.


And the haiku poets of Japan


A saddening world:
Flowers whose sweet blooms must fall . . .
As we too, alas . . .
-- Issa --



Death-Song

Leaf alone, fluttering
Alas, leaf alone, fluttering . . .
Floating down the wind.
-- anon --


Death-Song

I have known lovers . . .
Cherry-bloom . . . the nightingale . . .
I will sleep content.
-- anon --

Death-Song

If they ask for me
Say: he had some business
In another world
-- Sukan --


Traditionally, haiku poets would, if they were able, write one last haiku, which then became their death song. Ideally it would express their feelings about their impending death.


As for me, well, death is in the future for all of us. It approaches at its own speed and will meet us at its own choosing. There's no need, though, to rush forward to greet it. It will come. Perhaps between now and that day, I may agree with the anonymous Egyptian poet or Emily Dickinson.

But not today.



The haiku are from
A Little Treasury of Haiku
Peter Beilenson, trans.

Summer Solstice

It's that time again--the Summer Solstice, the First Day of Summer, and the Longest Day of the Year. I thought the following quotation from Joseph Wood Krutch would be appropriate to begin the day. It is from The Voice of the Desert, and the voice speaks from Tucson, Arizona.


"On the brightest and warmest days my desert is most itself because sunshine and warmth are the very essence of its character. The air is lambent with light; the caressing warmth enfolds everything in its ardent embrace. Even when outlanders complain that the sun is too dazzling and too hot, we desert lovers are prone to reply, 'At worst that is only too much of a good thing.'"

. . . . . .

"It so happens that I am writing this not long after the twenty-first of June and I took especial note of that astronomically significant date. This year summer began at precisely ten hours and no minutes, Mountain Standard Time. That means that the sun rose higher and stayed longer in the sky than on any other day of the year. In the north there is often a considerable lag in the seasons as the earth warms up, but here, where it is never very cold, the longest day and the hottest are likely to coincide pretty closely. So it was this year. On June 21 the sun rose almost to the zenith so that at noon he cast almost no shadow. And he was showing what he is capable of.

Even in this dry air 109 Fahrenheit in the shade is pretty warm. Under the open sky the sun's rays strike with an almost physical force, pouring down from a blue dome unmarked by the faintest suspicion of even a fleck of cloud. The year has been unusually dry even for the desert. During the four months just past no rain--not even a light shower--has fallen. The surface of the ground is as dry as powder. And yet, when I look out of the window the dominant color of the landscape is incredibly green."




Well, today is June 21st, the summer solstice. It hasn't rained for 72 days now, and it looks as though we have a good chance of reaching 80 days if the weekly forecast is accurate. The high for today is predicted to be 102, Wednesday 110, and Thursday 109.

That's Joseph Wood Krutch's thinking about summer. Following are some different reflections.


moonflower,
with a short night's sleep:
daytime

summer in the world:
floating on the lake
over waves

Both haiku are by Basho
Basho's Haiku
trans David Landis Barnhill





SUMMER SOLSTICE

Come, bring the children. Let them
feel for a moment the rhythm
of the hoe. Let them experience
the wonder of green shoots emerging
from earth, earth given us
in guardianship from the Creation.

Body, mind, and spirit full to bursting
with ripe, sweet berries, the first
tender green beans, and corn. We give
thanks, and thanks again. The twin
concepts of Reason and Peace are
seen in each kernel of an ear of corn.

Perhaps we repair our lodges
as do the beavers living close by.
Our children swim like river otters
and as their laughter reaches us,
we join them for a while
in these hottest of summer days.

- Peter Blue Cloud (Aronialwenrate)
Mohawk , b. 1935
from When the Seasons





SUMMER SCHEMES

When friendly summer calls again,
Calls again
Her little fifers to these hills,
We'll go--we two--to that arched fane
Of leafage where they prime their bills
Before they start to flood the plain
With quavers, minims, shakes, and trills.
"--We'll go," I sing; but who shall say
What may not chance before that day!

And we shall see the waters spring,
Waters spring
From chinks the scrubby copses crown;
And we shall trace their oncreeping
To where the cascade tumbles down
And sends the bobbing growths aswing,
And ferns not quite but almost drown.
"--We shall," I say; bug who may sing
Of what another moon will bring!

-- Thomas Hardy --




No. 122

A something in a summer's Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer's noon--
A depth -- an Azure --a perfume --
Transcending ecstasy.

And still within a summer's night
A something so transporting bright
I clap my hands to see --

Then veil my too inspecting face
Lest such a subtle -- shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me --

The wizard fingers never rest --
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes its narrow bed --

Still rears the East her amber Flag --
Guides still the Sun along the Crag
His Caravan of Red --

So looking on -- the night -- the morn
Conclude the wonder gay --
And I meet, coming thro' the dews
Another summer's Day!

-- Emily Dickinson--
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson




SUMMERING

I would arise and in a dream go on--
Not very far, not very far--and then
Lie down amid the sunny grass again,
And fall asleep till night-time or next dawn.

In sleepy self-sufficiency I'd turn;
I 'd seek new comfort and be hard to please--
Far in a meadow by an isle of trees,
All summer long amid the grass and fern.

Forests would have to be all round about,
And the mead silent, and the grass deep,
Else I might not gain such a tireless sleep!
I could not slumber if the wains were out!

-- Robert Frost --



Summer has many faces. Robert Frost's summer is closest to mine. Which one is yours?

Emily Dickinson: Dec 10, 1830--May 15, 1886, In Memoriam

Emily Dickinson lived only fifty-six years, and much of that time as a recluse. However, the almost 1800 poems that she wrote will keep her memory alive as long as someone still reads poetry.

Dickinson never used titles for her poems, which creates a problem for her editors. One solution has been to use the first line as a title. There is now a second solution, now that all of her poems have been collected into one volume--The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson--which is edited by Thomas H. Johnson. He has tried to order the poems chronologically and has numbered them. So, I will use the numbering system devised by Johnson. Readers trying to locate the poems in other collections should search on the first line of the poem.


Dickinson wrote a large number of poems that dealt with death, so I again thought it appropriate to post one of them today. This is one of her most anthologized poems.



No. 465

I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air--
Between the Heaves of the Storm--

The Eyes around--had wrong them dry--
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset--when the King
Be witnessed--in the Room--

I willed my Keepsakes--Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable--and then it was
There interposed a Fly--

With Blue--uncertain stumbling Buzz--
Between the light--and me--
And then the Windows failed--and then
I could not see to see--

-- Emily Dickinson --


The last line has always intrigued me--"I could not see to see--" Why not simply "I could not see"?

Three Poems

99

New feet within my garden go --
New fingers stir the sod --
A Troubadour upon the Elm
Betrays the solitude

New children play upon the green --
New Weary sleep below --
And still the pensive Spring returns --
And still the punctual Snow!

-- Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson




Dead my old fine hopes
And dry my dreaming but still . . .
Iris, blue each spring

-- Shushiki --




Angry I strode home . . .
But stooping in my garden
Calm old willow tree
-- Ryota --



I guess that, at times, we may not be as important as we think we are.


both haiku from A Little Treasury of Haiku

Winter Solstice: 2010

Night People Rejoice: this is your time!
Day People Rejoice: your time is coming, beginning tomorrow!

This is the shortest day of the year, or from a different perspective, it will be tonight, the longest night of the year. It is also the first day of winter, or so say the powers-that-be, at least for this part of the planet. Other parts, other powers-that-be, other rulings.




Buddha on the hill . . .
From your holy nose indeed
Hangs an icicle
-- Issa --
From The Little Treasury of Haiku
Nobody has ever accused Issa of being overly reverent.



Going snow-viewing
One by one the walkers vanish . . .
Whitely falling veils
-- Katsuri --
From LTH



Snow in the Suburbs

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute;
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again,
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eyes,
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.
-- Thomas Hardy --



Wind and Window Flower

Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the caged yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by
To come again at dark.

He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.

But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.

Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.
-- Robert Frost --




No. 1316

Winter is good -- his Hoar Delights
Italic flavor yield --
To Intellects inebriate
With Summer, or the World --

Generic as a Quarry
And hearty -- as a Rose --
Invited with Asperity
But welcome when he goes.
-- Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
edited by Thomas H. Johnson









In the wintry moon
Gales raging down the river
Hone the rock-edges
-- Chora --
From LTH



My very bone-ends
Made contact with the icy quilts
Of deep December
-- Buson --
From LTH

Emily Dickinson: Dec. 10, 1830--May 15, 1886

I find Emily Dickinson's poetry to be fascinating, illusive, and allusive. Some of her poems just confuse and bewilder me while others are crystal clear, or so I believe. Some are very short and remind me of haiku, a favorite type of poetry of mine. Perhaps this is one reason I enjoy her poetry.

99
New feet within my garden go --
New fingers stir the sod --
A Troubadour upon the Elm
Betrays the solitude

New children play upon the green --
New Weary sleep below --
And still the pensive Spring returns --
And still the punctual snow!
-- ED --

Amidst all the changes, some good and some sad, the seasons still return. Shushiki's haiku suggests a similar view:

Dead my fine old hopes
And dry my dreaming but still . . .
Iris, blue each spring
-- Shushiki --
Little Treasury of Haiku




Or perhaps the power of some objects to bring faraway places to mind, even perhaps those one has visited only in one's imagination:

123
Many cross the Rhine
In this cup of mine.
Sip old Frankfort air
From my brown Cigar.
-- ED --



Perhaps something can only truly be appreciated after it's lost:

135
Water, is taught by thirst.
Land -- by the Oceans passed.
Transport -- by throe --
Peace -- by its battles told --
Love, by Memorial Mold --
Birds, by the Snow.
-- ED --



Her bare, spare language perfectly reflects in this poem the experience of pain--there is nothing but pain alone--nothing fancy or flowery or fine:

650
Pain -- has a Element of Blank --
It cannot recollect
When it begun -- or if there were
A time when it was not --

It has no Future -- but itself --
Its Infinite contain
Its Past -- enlightened to perceive
New Periods -- of Pain.
-- ED --



Or perhaps one offhand, careless comment could have consequences far beyond that which the speaker intended:

952
A Man may make a Remark --
In itself -- a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature -- lain --

Let us deport -- with skill --
Let us discourse -- with care --
Powder exists in Charcoal --
Before it exists in Fire.
-- ED --



Sometimes I wonder if Emily Dickinson is a member of a that infinitesimally small group of true American mystics, for there appears to be an intense personal relationship between the narrator poet and the subject of her poetry, be it nature, another person, or the deity.



All of Dickinson's poems come from
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
edited by Thomas H. Johnson

What good are books?

Books delight us when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us inseparably when stormy fortune frowns on us. They lend validity to human compacts, and no serious judgments are propounded without their help. Arts and sciences, all the advantages of which no mind can enumerate, consist in books. How highly must we estimate the wondrous power of books, since through them we survey the utmost bounds of the world and time, and contemplate the things that are as well as those that are not, as it were in the mirror of eternity. In books we climb mountains and scan the deepest gulfs of the abyss; in books we behold the finny tribes that may not exist outside of their native waters, distinguish the properties of streams and springs and of various lands; from books we dig out gems and metals and the materials of every ,,kind of mineral, and learn the virtues of herbs and trees and plants, and survey at will the wholy progeny of Neptune, Ceres, and Pluto.

Books are masters who instruct us without words of anger, without bread or money. If you approach them they are not asleep. If you seek them, they do not hide, if you blunder they do not scold, if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

-- Richard de Bury --


Or--

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.

-- Emily Dickinson --







I wonder if in 2050 AD, someone will sit down and write: "Kindles delight us when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us inseparably when stormy fortune frowns upon us . . ."

Or

"There is no Frigate like a Kindle . . ."

Fall Equinox

Today is the First Day of Autumn, although it's a bit hard believing that here in Tucson where the temperatures are still in the high 90s and low 100s. But, just in case someone is reading this who lives where autumn has arrived, I thought I would post a few autumnal poems.



Now in sad autumn
As I take my darkening path . . .
A solitary bird

-- Basho --




Summer begins to have the look
Peruser of enchanting Book
Reluctantly but sure perceives
A gain upon the backward leaves--

Autumn begins to be inferred
By millinery of the cloud
Or deeper color in the shawl
That wraps the everlasting hill.

The eye begins its avarice
A meditation chastens speech
Some Dyer of a distant tree
Resumes his gaudy industry.

Conclusion is the course of All
At most to be perennial
And then elude stability
Recalls to immortality.

-- Emily Dickinson --





In Hardwood Groves

The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above,
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove

Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put
Beneath the feet of dancing flowers.
However it is in some other world
I know that this is the way in ours.

-- Robert Frost --





The calling bell
Travels the curling mist-ways . . .
Autumn morning

-- Basho --




The haiku are from--
A Little Treasury of Haiku
Trans. Peter Beilenson
Avenel Books

Emily Dickinson: Dec. 10, 1830--May 15, 1886

It is a tradition among haiku poets to write a death-song, one that offers their last reflection on life here just before they die. Emily Dickson, while she didn't write a death-song, as far as I know, did write several hundred poems about death during her lifetime. I thought it only appropriate to provide one on this day.

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 a 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 —

-- Emily Dickinson --


Death here is personified as a kindly gentleman who clearly is not depicted as a fearsome monster, one to be feared. Her attitude is quite the opposite of Dylan Thomas' as it appears in his "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night."

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."


While I haven't read all of her poems about death, none of those that I have read come close to expressing anything similar to Thomas' rage. Death in her poems is just another part of life or a a necessary change.

Comments, anyone?