Emily Dickinson’s “Low at my problem bending”

Emily Dickinson’s “Low at my problem bending”

The speaker muses over a personal problem only to encounter a larger, calmer one that displaces all earthly calculation.

Introduction and Text of “Low at my problem bending”

In Emily Dickinson’s “Low at my problem bending,” the speaker bends intently over a private concern when a greater problem arrives. This new problem proves larger and serener, involving higher sums that dwarf the original figures.

The speaker then sets aside the “busy pencil” and lets the figures slip away. The “baffled fingers” question their own befuddlement in the face of this elevated demand.  On the literal level the speaker appears engaged in arithmetic or accounting. Yet the intrusion of a calmer problem signals a shift from worldly sums to matters of the soul.

Low at my problem bending

Low at my problem bending,
Another problem comes –
Larger than mine – Serener –
Involving statelier sums.

I check my busy pencil,
My figures file away.
Wherefore, my baffled fingers
Thy perplexity?  

Commentary on “Low at my problem bending”

Emily Dickinson’s “Low at my problem bending” dramatizes the speaker’s sudden elevation from a personal calculation to a higher, calmer demand that silences all earthly tools.

First Stanza: “Low at my problem bending”

Low at my problem bending,
Another problem comes –
Larger than mine – Serener –
Involving statelier sums.

The speaker begins bending low over a private problem. At once another problem arrives, one larger than the original and marked by greater serenity.  This new concern involves more important sums. The speaker senses that ordinary arithmetic cannot address the elevated scale now presented.

In my earlier essays on Dickinsonian poems, I have discussed the speaker’s habit of preferring inner information over  outer, material level evidence. Here that same habit appears as the speaker recognizes the superior claim of the more placid problem.

Paramahansa Yogananda explains that the vastness is your real Self. The speaker, confronted by the larger problem, begins to sense that same vastness beyond finite sums.    The contrast between the low bending posture and the calm elevation of the new problem suggests a movement from earthly worry to meditation on the eternal.

Second Stanza: “I check my busy pencil”

I check my busy pencil,
My figures file away.
Wherefore, my baffled fingers
Thy perplexity?  

The speaker immediately checks the “busy pencil.”  All the carefully ordered figures are filed away as if dismissed by a higher authority.  The confused fingers then address their own confusion. They wonder why their former skill proves useless before the statelier demand.  The speaker’s tools of calculation prove inadequate once the larger problem appears. 

Ordinary sums give way before the serene scale of the soul’s true concern.  Paramahansa Yogananda explains that one must change consciousness from that of a mortal to a divine being. The speaker’s “baffled fingers” enact that very change as earthly figures vanish.  

In my earlier essays on Dickinsonian poems, I have discussed the speaker’s reliance on mystical intuition to resolve riddles of existence. That same intuition now silences the pencil and leaves the fingers questioning their former busy work.

The final question hangs in the air, inviting the reader into the same contemplative musing that has lifted the speaker beyond finite problems to the calmer, cooler realm of the Infinite.