Emily For Today

My wheel is in the dark!
I cannot see a spoke
Yet I know its dripping feet
Go round and round.

My foot is on the Tide!
An unfrequented road —
Yet have all roads
A clearing at the end —

Some have resigned the Loom —
Some in the busy tomb
Find quaint employ —

Some with new — stately feet —
Pass royal through the gate —
Flinging the problem back
At you and I!

c. 1858; Johnson, pg. 10

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More early work from Emily Dickinson. I tried to comment on yesterday's poem, but lacked the formal terms to describe what she was doing rhythmically. As with yesterday's poem, the basic meter seems to be the iamb; for example, the first two lines seem to scan:

My wheel is in the dark!
I cannot see a spoke

Immediately,  the next line varies the model: "Yet I know its dripping feet..."

Aside from "loom / tomb" in the third stanza, there does not seem to be a rhyme scheme. There may be some "eye" rhymes here, but one would have to be extremely forgiving to say "feet" rhymes with "gate" in the final stanza.

So, mechanically, the thing holding the poem together is the shifting rhythm. The diction is also striking: "Some in the busy tomb / Find quaint employ" is an irony worthy of Andrew Marvel or John Donne. In fact, I sense an echo of Marvel's "Coy Mistress" in the line.

Thematically, this seems to be a sort of puzzle poem (as yesterday's was). I think we can enjoy it on its own merits, without trying to resolve what Emily is talking about. But part of the fun is resolving that problem, and understanding what that answer means to us.

Returning to my belief that reading the Complete Works is beneficial to the beginning poet, one can identify some elements here that are typical of Ms. Dickinson's future work. The most obvious is her frequent, and hap-hazard, use of the dash as a punctuation mark (here represented by the —). Second, is her growing sense of rhythm. Third, is her distinctive turn of phrase. The irony in the third stanza is one example of her turn of phrase; another is "Pass royal through the gate" in the concluding stanza.  For some reason, I really like that one; it seems appropriately compressed.

Reading through Emily Dickinson's Complete Works, as compiled and edited by Thomas Johnson, is proving to be a fruitful poetry workshop.