Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup”

Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup”

Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup” mimics a toast to a departing friend.  It appears in a letter to newspaper editor Samuel Bowles, a family friend.

Introduction and Text of “I would distil a cup”

The text of Emily Dickinson’s “I would distal a cup” in prose form appears in a letter to Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, the most influential newspaper in New England around 1858.  The letter begins with the writer thanking Mr. Bowles for sending her a pamphlet.  She expresses uncertainly that he is the actual sender but thanks him in case he is.

The rest of the letter finds the writer communicating her famous claim that her friends are her “estate,” and celebrating the notion that friendship enlivens her, keeping her on her toes.  The letter bears the date August 1858 and she remarks that the workers are gathering the “second Hay.”  

Thus the summer season is winding down.  It is at this point in the letter that she states, “I would distil a cup, and bear to all my friends, drinking to her no more astir, by beck, or burn, or moor!”

Apparently, Dickinson thought enough of this sentence to include it as a full-fledged poem in one of the many  fascicles that Thomas H. Johnson later edited for publication in his The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, the groundbreaking work that restored Dickinson’s poems to their original forms.  

In the letter, Dickinson’s sentence-turned-poem seems to jump up out the verbiage as a toast at a gala dinner party, wherein one would rise, raise a cup, and offer the toast to one being recognized.

I would distil a cup

I would distil a cup,
And bear to all my friends,
Drinking to her no more astir,
By beck, or burn, or moor!

Commentary on “I would distal a cup”

In a letter to Samuel Bowels, Emily Dickinson puts on display her colorful, chatty conversational ability, including this original prose-statement, which later became a finished poem.

First Movement:  Creating, Rising, and Offering

I would distil a cup,
And bear to all my friends,

The speaker, as if rising to offer a toast at some gathering of friends, imparts that she wishes to offer a toast “to all [her] friends.”  The drink is likely a fine whiskey; thus the speaker conflated the manufacture of the drink with her lifting the cup.  

She makes herself more important to the creation of the drink than she, or anyone offering a toast, would deserve.  But the exaggeration simply implies her devotion to her friends, who are by the way, her “estate.”  Not only is she offering a toast, but she is also creating the drink in order to offer it.

Then after the speaker had created this distilled beverage, she lifts her cup and bears its contents to all of her friends.  At the point that poem appears in her letter to Bowles, she had made it clear that she can make chatty conversation.  

She has claimed that she wishes to be forgiven for hoarding her friends.  She has surmised that those who were once poor have a very different view of gold than those who have never suffered poverty.

The letter writer even invokes God, saying He does not worry so much as we or else he would “give us no friends, lest we forget him.”  Playing on the expression, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” she compares what one might anticipate in “Heaven” as opposed to what one experiences on earth and finds the latter more appealing.

However, the speaker then abruptly tells Bowles that, “Summer stopped since you were here,” after which she mourns the loss of summer with several acerbic witticisms.  She offers Bowles some paraphrases from her “Pastor,” who has dismissed humanity as nothing but a “Worm.”  

Then she poses the question to Bowles:  “Do you think we shall ‘see God’?”  This abrupt inquiry likely startled Bowles, which is no doubt the writer’s purpose.  But then she moves on to the image of “Abraham” “strolling” with God “in genial promenade,” seemingly answering her own startling question.

Second Movement:  As Summer Abandons the Streams and Meadows

Drinking to her no more astir,
By beck, or burn, or moor!

After having distilled the fine liquor, poured it into her cup, she lifts it and offers her toast to the one who is in the process of departing—her beloved summer.  The summer season is no longer “astir” in the streams or on the meadows.  

She employs the colorful terms “beck” and “burn” (bourne) to refer to streams of water.  And then she refers to fields, heaths, or meadows as “moor,” likely also for its colorful, exotic texture.

Immediately after the toasting sentence in the letter, the letter writer abruptly bids Mr. Bowles, “Good night,” but she still has more to say and proceeds to say it.  She then claims that “this is what they say who come back in the morning.”  

She seems to be identifying with summer who is saying good-bye but only to return “in the morning.”  But her certainty that “Confidence in Daybreak modifiers Dusk,” allows her to accept the pair of opposites that continually blight her world.

The speaker has difficulty even saying good-night or good-bye to a friend once she has opened the conversation. But she knows she must wind down, just a summer has done; thus she wishes blessings for Bowles’ wife and children, even going to far as to send kisses for lips of the little ones.  

She then tells Bowles that she and the rest of the Dickinson family remain eager to visit with him again.  And she will dispense with “familiar truths,” for his sake.

Emily Dickinson and at the Exotic

Emily Dickinson’s penchant for exoticisms likely enamored her of some of the more cryptic expressions placed in her letters.  That penchant allowed her be so cheeky as to select certain expressions and later present them in a fascicle as a poem.  

It also explains her employment of terms for ordinary nouns such a field, river, creek, or meadow.  She kept her dictionary handy and made abundant use of it. Luckily, her intuitive perception and ability with language kept her from suffering the clownish terminology often detected by users of a thesaurus.