be the One...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Emily Dickinson

#505

I would not paint – a picture –
I’d rather be the One
Its bright impossibility
To dwell – delicious – on –
And wonder how the fingers feel
Whose rare – celestial – stir –
Evokes so sweet a Torment –
Such sumptuous – Despair –

I would not talk, like Cornets –
I’d rather be the One
Raised softly to the Ceilings –
And out, and easy on –
Through Villages of Ether –
Myself endued Balloon
By but a lip of Metal –
The pier to my Pontoon –

Nor would I be a Poet –
It’s finer – own the Ear –
Enamored – impotent – content –
The License to revere,
A privilege so awful
What would the Dower be,
Had I the Art to stun myself
With Bolts of Melody!

*

Dickinson is the deep well in American literature – a poet’s poet – and she did it on her own terms. Writing for writing’s sake. She humbles us all. Her poetry is a vast landscape of greatness: “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers –” to “This World is not Conclusion.” to “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!” to “A still – Volcano – Life –”. I open her work, a sacred totem to me, to most any poem, and discover something new about myself. She mapped the way to possibility.

A poem that balances a number of themes and readings – quite typical in her oeuvre – is #505. In this work, written in 1862 – her great year – she focuses the aboutness of the poetry on woman in society, woman as poet, the relation of art and artist, sexual tension, and the joining of opposites, just to name five points. Her command of language is superb. The unusual syntax and writing mechanics, well ahead of their time, layer her poetry with a microscopic sense of awareness.

Her choice of verbs and action descriptives in #505 is essential to the work’s strength: dwell, delicious, feel, stir, evokes, raised, enamored, impotent, content, and stun. This is a poem of epiphany, of release. Dickinson is concerned with showing the moment when the creation comes to the creator: painting to artist, song to musician, poem to poet. This work shows, convincingly, the need for the artist – no matter the genre – to surrender control to the art.

The artist feels the image in the fingers as the art is created. Note her descriptive words, creating a sexual subtext in the poem: delicious, feel, celestial, so sweet a torment, sumptuous. With the cornet, for example, Dickinson wants the reader to envision several meanings: an instrument, a military officer, the symbol for a New England feast – a notion Cynthia Wolff discusses in her massive work Emily Dickinson (Addison-Wesley, 1988). I think she moves past the phallic implications, quite purposely, to a more universal awareness of artistic power that is neither male nor female (**). She writes in this poem of fingers to brush, song to ceiling, lip to metal, pier to pontoon, sound to ear. The sensual and the physical are the foundation for Dickinson’s poetics.

This poem impresses me because of Dickinson’s writing about the desire to be not the poet but the sound of the poem, spoken, coming to the poet’s ear. She wants to feel the moment – and here is the realization of the sexual experience which Dickinson compares in many works to the writing experience – the art coming to the fingers of the painter as the image comes alive on the canvas. In stanza two, the song is created – the balloon that hovers – at the moment the lip and cornet meet. What a wonderful creative view. Forget the poet – and that was part of her surrendering to her art … Be the poem. That is power – to “own the Ear.” If we follow this truth, think of the possibilities in relationships: artist to society, poet to self, reader to poem, being to being.

She writes,

Had I the Art to stun myself
With Bolts of Melody!

I’m certain that Emily Dickinson realized her artistic worth, her presence in literature. That’s why she refused to compromise her art, and is why I’m drawn to her poetry – and stay there.

(**)
note to self…

While mowing the yard this afternoon, and continuing to ponder the poem, I’m realizing the yard as female and the mower as male. That strikes me as a negative and even violent image – until I rethink mowing. Actually, I’m nursing the yard, dressing it, attending to its needs. That’s more acceptable to me, illustrating yard as male and mower as female. I understand that these symbolic notions can and should easily be reversed – as shown in Dickinson’s shifting use of imagery.

In stanza two, the pier is easily recognized as a masculine representation, and the pontoon as female. Add to this the limitations or “impotent” function of the pier. The female pontoon comes to the pier. This relates to Dickinson’s attack on the belief, for example, that poetry is a masculine activity. She, however, refuses to stop there – the pontoon must also be viewed as a masculine representation to the water’s female aspect. If this is true, then each major image must be afforded the same dualistic nature. Canvas to brush, fingers to brush, horn to song, song to village, page to poet’s hand....

This poem is a möbius strip.