Emily Dickinson’s “Baffled for just a day or two”

Emily Dickinson’s “Baffled for just a day or two”

This poem, “Baffled for just a day or two,” is one of Emily Dickinson’s most puzzling riddles, and like many of her poems, it begs multiple level interpretations from a flower in her garden to the eruption in a garden mind of a new type of poem.

Introduction and Text of “Baffled for just a day or two”

Depending on who is being described as “baffled” and “embarrassed,” the poem reveals a chance “encounter” with some unexpected, but likely not completely unknown entity.  Because the location is the speaker’s “garden,” a flower may be presumed.  

But if “garden” refers to the mythological garden of the poet’s poetry, as mentioned in the poem, “There is another sky,” in which the speaker invites her brother, “Prithee, my brother, / Into my garden come!,” the strange, “unexpected Maid,” may turn out to be a poem.

Baffled for just a day or two

Baffled for just a day or two –
Embarrassed – not afraid –
Encounter in my garden
An unexpected Maid.

She beckons, and the woods start –
She nods, and all begin –
Surely, such a country
I was never in!

Commentary on “Baffled for just a day or two”

Emily Dickinson’s metaphysical garden includes many varieties of flowering poems, even those that might have startled her upon first appearance.

First Stanza:  Some Stranger in Her Garden Has Appeared

Baffled for just a day or two –
Embarrassed – not afraid –
Encounter in my garden
An unexpected Maid.

The speaker begins with an odd remark, indicating that someone or some entity was confused and perhaps struggling to emerge, as a flower pushing itself up through the soil might do.  The entity remained in the situation for only a couple of days.  Because of its struggle, which likely looked awkward, it was “embarrassed,” but it struggled on without fear.

This event happened in the speaker’s garden, where she “encounter[ed]” “an unexpected Maid.”  The speaker never reveals explicitly who or what this “Maid” is.  She leaves it up to the reader to take as much from her riddle/poem as possible.  And it is likely that she thinks of this poem as so deeply personal that she will remain blissfully unconcerned even if no one ever grasps her exact reference.

Second Stanza:  From Some Hitherto Unvisited Metaphysical Plane

She beckons, and the woods start –
She nods, and all begin –
Surely, such a country
I was never in!

This important “Maid,” who has made her appearance, then gestures enticingly, and that coaxing invitation causes the “woods” to begin moving toward her.  The “Maid” then “nods” and things begin to happen.  What begins to happen, the speaker is not divulging.

The speaker then asserts another odd remark, saying that she “was never” in “such a country.”  That claim baffles the reader, for surely the speaker cannot be saying she was never in her garden, whether it refers to her literal, physical garden or to her figurative, metaphysical garden.

But ah, knowing Dickinson, how mystically inclined her mind worked, her speaker could, in fact, be exaggerating because after the flower appeared, its beauty was beyond the gardener-speaker’s expectations.

Or if the “Maid” is a poem, the speaker is revealing that the poem was so new, fresh, and profound that she feels she has never before encountered such a piece, and therefore it must come from a “country” or place in her mind/soul in which she, up to this point, has never visited.

The poem works well on either the physical (Maid as flower) or the metaphysical (Maid as poem), as all great poetry does.  And while a reader might choose to accept the physical, readers who choose the metaphysical are likely to become more in tune with the Dickinsonian way of thinking.

The Dickinson Mind

Emily Dickinson was a poetic genius, as her reputation clearly affirms.  Her poems have delighted audiences since her works became widely disseminated.  Her poems reveal a mind that paid close attention to details.  The details that surrounded her in her home and the details of nature outside her home which she had the privilege of observing became her material for creating her little poetic dramas.

However, the Dickinson mind was not content to merely describe the minutia of everyday life or even of living a New England life.  Emily Dickinson grasped early on that the world was filled with meaning.  The life she was living and the lives which all of her contemporaries were living sustained a meaning that only suggested itself to the individuals.

But for Dickinson that suggestion remained a guiding force, urging her to know all she could know.  Her mind was a hungry, fierce animal that stalked it prey with a vengeance; it prey was that suggestion of meaning that resided in every created thing.

God has created an untold number of things, and each and every one of those things holds untold levels of meaning.  Interestingly, it seems that only God’s things known as human beings are capable of wondering about the meaning of things, the meaning of life, the meaning of living a proper life.

Also interesting, it also seems that only a new of those human beings have noticed that all God’s creation contains things with meaning.  Most individuals grasp the fact that things are useful, and in employing hat usefulness, reason and wonder often take a backseat.  People seem to leave the thinking of profound subjects for simply getting through another day with enough shelter, food, and raiment to sustain life.

Emily Dickinson was of the few who take life so seriously that they contemplate, gather the fruits of their contemplations, and then create little dramas out of them.  Her life-long amazement that existence existed motivated her to continue creating her little garden and her world that thrived under “another sky.”

The Dickinsonian mind is itself a thing of wonder.  Her depth of peering into something so simple as a flower remains a curiosity.  Her poems are testimonies to the amazing quality of her thinking.  While her depth and force may be especially extraordinary, they, nevertheless, are part and parcel of every human mind.

All human minds possess the same capabilities that the Dickinsonian mind possessed.  The only difference is in their execution.  Dickinson gave in to urge to know everything she could about everything she encountered.  Any limiting factors standing in the way of her progress became mountains that she gladly climbed, and at the top of each mount, she sat gleefully composing the details of her journey upward.