Linda's Literary Home

Author: Linda Sue Grimes

  • Emily Dickinson’s “I know a place where Summer strives”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “I know a place where Summer strives”

    In Emily Dickinson’s “I know a place where Summer strives,” the speaker personifies summer as a woman who struggles to overcome the coldness of late spring.

    Introduction with Text of  “I know a place where Summer strives”

    The poet especially loved summer, and in this fascinating poem, she allows her speaker to convert summer into a gardener who experiences the obstacles that sometimes accompany the difficult birth of the summer season.  

    Sometimes it seems that it takes great effort or striving to overcome the coldness of late spring in New England, where residents may suffer snow and frost before the warmth of summer blossoms into the promised reality.

    The poem offers a unique look at the arrival of the summer season. The speaker’s personification of summer as a woman tending her garden creates a magnificent drama that occurs every late spring.

    Emily Dickinson’s poem, “I know a place where Summer strives,” consists of three stanzas. Each stanza has the rime scheme ABCB.  The poems is #337 in Thomas H. Johnson’s The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

    I know a place where Summer strives

    I know a place where Summer strives
    With such a practised Frost –
    She – each year – leads her Daisies back –
    Recording briefly – “Lost” –

    But when the South Wind stirs the Pools
    And struggles in the lanes –
    Her Heart misgives Her, for Her Vow –
    And she pours soft Refrains

    Into the lap of Adamant –
    And spices – and the Dew –
    That stiffens quietly to Quartz –
    Upon her Amber Shoe –

    Commentary on “I know a place where Summer strives”

    In Emily Dickinson’s “I know a place where Summer strives,” the speaker personifies summer as a woman who struggles to overcome the coldness of late spring.

    First Stanza:  Summer Endeavoring to Become

    I know a place where Summer strives
    With such a practised Frost –
    She – each year – leads her Daisies back –
    Recording briefly – “Lost” –

    In the first stanza, the speaker makes the puzzling claim that she knows “a place where Summer strives.” This remark is startling; one does not think of seasons as having the ability or the need to “strive.”   

    Only people are capable of striving. But in this poem, the speaker is, in fact, dramatizing the onset of summer by personifying Summer as a woman; Summer becomes a gardener who is endeavoring to accomplish the arrival of the summer growing season. 

    Unlike those who find the arrival of each season an automatic transition that is hardly noticeable, this speaker dramatically reveals that sometimes the Summer growing season is won by fits and starts. The speaker says that Summer “strives / With such a practised Frost.”   

    Late spring can remain cold in New England, where Dickinson lived all of her life. So it would seem that summer sometimes had a difficult birth, contending with frost and even snow.  But Summer makes a great effort, and her endeavors result in bringing back the flowers, which seemed lost during the winter. 

    Second Stanza:   A Helping Hand

    But when the South Wind stirs the Pools
    And struggles in the lanes –
    Her Heart misgives Her, for Her Vow –
    And she pours soft Refrains

    The speaker then asserts that for all the difficult attempts at arriving, a situation arises that offers a helping hand to Summer in bringing the season to full bloom. The “South Wind stirs the Pools,” and a summer storm blows up. 

    But Summer then still has some doubt about her success, and she has a promise to keep in delivering summer qualities of warmth and fertility so that seeds in the ground may grow into viable plants for food for people and animals.   But then the rains begin, and Summer does absolutely arrive. All her striving has paid off.

    Third Stanza:  A Fierce Attempt

    Into the lap of Adamant –
    And spices – and the Dew –
    That stiffens quietly to Quartz –
    Upon her Amber Shoe –

    Summer “pours soft Refrains // Into the lap of Adamant”; she strives fiercely to arrive. She brings rain to the plants that will flourish during the growing season, which she had promised.  

    The rains will convert the landscape to a glowing green grassy hue that will illuminate the summer’s growing season.   The Summer as a woman will tend her garden, and she will get mud on her shoes.  That mud will become hardened like “Quartz.”  Thus “Sumner” will sport shoes of “Amber.”

    But happily, all her arduous striving will have succeeded: the flowers will gloriously come back.  The frost will have finally departed, and the summer rains will be moistening the thirsty mouths of the plants.  

    Marvelous spices will result from Summer’s loving care of sun and rain.  And even the gardener’s shoes will wear a beautiful “amber” because she has trampled in the mud caring for all the varieties of plants that help fill her larder for winter.

    Dickinson’s “I know a place where Summer strives” rendered in song  

  • As I Sit Alone, Musing

    As I Sit Alone, Musing

    Singing spreads through the wires
    Of my brain in young years
    As I grew taller but remained short.
    In the music, I felt secure
    That one day I would encounter
    Some perfect way of being
    And knowing and feeling.

    Where is the singing from the heart?
    Where the soul holds sway.
    Where is soul speaking with silent tongue?
    Where the mind changes but grows still
    With each touch of the Divine.
    And the music grows stronger
    As I sit alone, musing. 

    The shadow of the song
    Graces the night with the perfume
    Of love and wisdom.

    Each day with music
    Renders passion a foe
    Of tranquility
    Allowing flesh to dominate
    The flow of blood in wistful veins.
    The music heals
    As new wounds open.

    Singing in the silence of the soul
    Brings a new day to peace
    Calming the blood, soothing restlessness.

  • The Flowers Are Bright Today

    Image: Created by Grok inspired by the poem
    Image: Created by Grok inspired by the poem

    The Flowers Are Bright Today

    The flowers are bright today.
    They take on an ethereal glow.
    They bloom in the flames of my tongue—
    And then remain silent.

    They give off joy from a sacred place.
    Their fragrance shies away from contempt.
    As dumb as trees, they speak a holy tongue.
    Noise has no sway with their beauty.

    They employ no mask to obfuscate dawn.
    They seek no retribution in the storm.
    They bend as needed—
    Not to a dictator but to their Liberator.

    In the fires of eternity, they sing eternally.
    They rock their love in the equation
    Where humankind wishes to exist.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “I cannot dance upon my Toes”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “I cannot dance upon my Toes”

    Famously, the poet Emily Dickinson lived a reclusive life.  She protected her privacy.  In her poetry canon, she often crafted little poetic dramas exploring and exposing the great joy her solitude afforded her. This poem is one of those little dramas.

    Introduction with Text of “I cannot dance upon my Toes”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I cannot dance upon my Toes” offers five stanzas, setting forth the poet’s famous slant rimes and non-traditional rhythms. The speaker is celebrating, with special emphasis, her personal experiences of “Glee.”

    She knows that her readers/listeners will readily perceive her comparison to great performances in dance, theater, and opera.  While her speaker does not link her joyous ecstasy to any particular public performances, she experiences great ecstatic bliss which she deems similar to the feelings heralded by such artistic displays.

    I cannot dance upon my Toes

    I cannot dance upon my Toes –
    No Man instructed me –
    But oftentimes, among my mind,
    A Glee possesseth me,

    That had I Ballet knowledge –
    Would put itself abroad
    In Pirouette to blanch a Troupe –
    Or lay a Prima, mad,

    And though I had no Gown of Gauze –
    No Ringlet, to my Hair,
    Nor hopped to Audiences – like Birds,
    One Claw upon the Air,

    Nor tossed my shape in Eider Balls,
    Nor rolled on wheels of snow
    Till I was out of sight, in sound,
    The House encore me so –

    Nor any know I know the Art
    I mention – easy –Here –
    Nor any Placard boast me –
    It’s full as Opera –

    Commentary on “I cannot dance upon my Toes”

    In Emily Dickinson’s “I cannot dance upon my Toes,” the speaker is creating a colorful poetic drama that examines the amazing joy afforded her through her engagement with solitude.

    First Quatrain:  The Joy of Dancing

    I cannot dance upon my Toes –
    No Man instructed me –
    But oftentimes, among my mind,
    A Glee possesseth me,

    The speaker asserts that she does not have the proficiency to dance as a ballerina would, because she has not received the necessary training and lessons that such dancers need to undergo. However, there are times during which she has the ability to experience indescribable joy of her soul.  She suggests that such joy may be similar to that experienced through ballet.

    The ability to dance upon one’s the toes remains a physical prowess, and very few individuals ever have the ability to reach such a lofty achievement.  Because such ability and talent remain so rare, the speaker assumes that those who have the talent to render such performances must then experience “Glee.”

    Second Quatrain:  Skill That Remains Amazing

    That had I Ballet knowledge –
    Would put itself abroad
    In Pirouette to blanch a Troupe –
    Or lay a Prima, mad,

    The speaker then reports that if she ever had the special talent and physical agility to dance upon her toes, she would experience a fantastic level of “Glee.”  The feeling would allow her to beam her talent as does the best of artists in the art of the ballet.

    She is sure that her amazing skill would put the prima ballerina to shame causing that dancer to become maddened.  The entire company of the ballet would become astonished by her amazing skill.

    The speaker’s exaggeration places emphasize upon her belief that her soul qualities alone are responsible for her actual talent, and she wishes to pay homage to the Divine Essence which bestows on her such abilities. 

    Third Quatrain:  No Fancy Outerwear

    And though I had no Gown of Gauze –
    No Ringlet, to my Hair,
    Nor hopped to Audiences –like Birds,
    One Claw upon the Air,

    In the third quatrain, the speaker reveals that she does not own gowns and gauze, as the famously public celebrity would possess.  She also does not have the ability to sport other fancy clothing as theatrical talent may do.  She also cannot have her hair styled into decorous fashion.  No make-up artists ever visit her to ply their wares. She will wear no ringlets in her hair.

    Because the speaker does not engage in the art of the ballet, she does not have the ability to fully comprehend that specialized art form.  She freely admits that she has never engaged and will never experience the feelings that ballet dancers do as they cavort and prance upon the stage “like Birds” with “One Claw upon the Air.”

    The speaker seems to express a modicum of disdain in describing the ballerinas as birds hopping across as stage with their hands in the air resembling the claw of a bird.  That fascinating image elevates the description as it so colorfully fits the event.

    Fourth Quatrain:  Keeping Life Simple

    Nor tossed my shape in Eider Balls,
    Nor rolled on wheels of snow
    Till I was out of sight, in sound,
    The House encore me so –

    The speaker then offers further images that reveal experiences which she has never had and likely never will experience.  For example, she has never “tossed” her body in “Eider Balls.”  Instead of the fancy, intricate costumes which ballerinas and opera singers wear, this speaker dresses herself in simple clothing. 

    She has never finished a performance by dancing out of sight of the audience.  She has never been called back to the stage by a ardent group of fans as they continue to applaud, prompting her to return to give them an enthusiastic “encore.”

    Fifth Quatrain:  Heavenly Rewards

    Nor any know I know the Art
    I mention –easy –Here –
    Nor any Placard boast me –
    It’s full as Opera –

    This speaker is demonstrating that she resides and thrives far outside of the milieu of ballet dancers.  She suspects that no one with whom she is acquainted would even have an inkling that she has ever become aware that such an art exists. 

    Through intuition, this speaker can comprehend that the value of her work and her ultimate worth are equal to –if, in fact, they do not overtake in value –that of the performances that have received so many accolades of praise.  

    She is convinced that her accolades remain on a mystical level of being.  Therefore, she can dance upon her toes –if only metaphorically and mystically –through her God-given talents reserved especially for her.

    Through this speaker, the poet has paid tribute to her poetic talent and even, at least in her own mind, has elevated her own talent.  In effect, she is averring that she is quite content to be unknown poet.  

    Even having the ability to be a celebrated prima ballerina cannot complete with the joy she experiences through her poetry creation.  Her garden of verse offers her her own stage for performance that makes it possible for her to live a complete life.

  • Haunting the Trees

    Haunting the Trees

    Making the sky look pink under the gray clouds. — Anonymous

    Every spectacle flits itself upon some podium.
    Hear the word pablum spew from despotic veins.
    Vines tangle in the wind.
    Rain beats against the tin roof of sorrow.

    Making truth is not making blather.
    Dogs grunt, run, and die.
    Over the hill go trains of thought.
    We look, learn, like, but fail to listen.

    In the glow of day, the rocks whiten.
    Lights go on at dusk in the starry afterthought.
    Saving time is not saving love.
    There is no “I” in “lost.”

    I confess to confession for the sake of
    Professing whatever is necessary.
    Each sentence completes itself
    Even in a tempest.

    Later is sooner than never,
    And I tell myself to wait and be patient.
    But I never listen, unless I feel bothered
    By other lies that scold me.

    You may paint your ceiling black
    And seek solace in some pretty face
    But you will never straighten your crooked
    Brain by faking the words of the ancients.

    Turn away, I keep saying to the wind—
    The wind that remains ghostly
    Keeping memory at bay
    While haunting the trees.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose”

    The speaker in Dickinson’s poem “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose” is dramatizing what she knows about the sunrise but then hazards only a dramatic guess about sunset. Her choice for the target of her knowledge transforms the simple of act sunrise into a symbol.

    Introduction with Text of “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose”

    Emily Dickinson’s poem “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose” consists of sixteen lines, featuring her signature slant rimes and a generous sprinkling of dashes. The poem is written as one piece without divisions by stanzas but sections itself topically into four movements.

    The first two movements describe how the sun came up on the particular morning of the speaker’s choosing, while in the second two movements, the speaker is simply dramatizing her suggestion for why she cannot explain how the sun set.

    I’ll tell you how the Sun rose

    I’ll tell you how the Sun rose –
    A Ribbon at a time –
    The Steeples swam in Amethyst –
    The news, like Squirrels, ran –
    The Hills untied their Bonnets –
    The Bobolinks – begun –
    Then I said softly to myself –
    “That must have been the Sun”!
    But how he set – I know not –
    There seemed a purple stile
    That little Yellow boys and girls
    Were climbing all the while –
    Till when they reached the other side,
    A Dominie in Gray –
    Put gently up the evening Bars –
    And led the flock away –

    Commentary on “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose” is dramatizing what the speaker knows about the sunrise but then hazards only a dramatic guess about sunset.  Interestingly, she is suggesting that she can observe the sunrise but not the sunset.

    First Movement:   Explaining the Unexplainable 

    I’ll tell you how the Sun rose –
    A Ribbon at a time –
    The Steeples swam in Amethyst –
    The news, like Squirrels, ran –

    The speaker announces that she will be explaining to her listeners, “how the Sun rose.”  She then through the employment of metaphor likens the sun’s rays to ribbons that are released a single ribbon at a time.  The colorful sun ribbons of rays are leisurely released, and they hover the ocean to a place where the steeples of churches appear to “sw[i]m in Amethyst.” 

    The sun’s fire then looms upon the blackness, immediately reverting to blue as it takes on a brightness, fully glowing because of the light that the sun has released.   The luminescence of the sun spreads with great haste; thus the speaker compares its speed to the scampering of squirrels, as she calls the event “news.”

    Second Movement:  The Ordinary Made Extraordinary

    The Hills untied their Bonnets –
    The Bobolinks – begun –
    Then I said softly to myself –
    “That must have been the Sun”!

    The speaker now asserts that the hills removed their “Bonnets,” and the birds knowns as “Bobolinks” commenced their singing.  The metaphoric personification of hills with bonnets suggests that all of nature is coming alive again, and the speaker knows this because she sees many colors that may be detected in the faraway hills.  Birds have awakened, and they have begun their many layered chirping.

    The speaker’s reaction is such that it would make it seem she is seeing this event for the first time.  She muses and quotes herself breathlessly, for example, as she exclaims,”‘That must have been the Sun’!”  The speaker is creating her little drama using ordinary items from her environment which she makes extraordinary in her reporting.

    Third Movement:  A Forceful Drama

    But how he set – I know not –
    There seemed a purple stile
    That little Yellow boys and girls
    Were climbing all the while –

    The speaker then envisions her situation to be nearer to sunrise than to sunset.  This idea, of course, is merely fictional, but it offers her the ability to create her drama of how the sun rises.  She knows she cannot explain scientifically such an event, but she can forcefully and dramatically imagine it.

    So in order to explain sunset, she imagines she can see a set of steps that appear purple in color from a distance.  Little Chinese children are climbing on those steps.   Those children are likely just going home from a day of school or tending sheep.

    Fourth Movement:  The Cover of Darkness

    Till when they reached the other side,
    A Dominie in Gray –
    Put gently up the evening Bars –
    And led the flock away –

    The children have climbed to the other side of the stile, an event that signals the sun’s lowest point just as it then vanishes from sight.  A shepherd or perhaps even a churchman secures the gate then leads the flock of sheep or perhaps children away from that area.

    Because darkness is now hovering thick, the speaker cannot offer any images for what may be happening next.  The speaker’s lack of knowledge about sunset is reflected in her word choices which are much less certain than her drama about how the sun rises.  By suggesting that she can tell you all about how the sun rose but not so much about how it set implies the speaker prefers sunrise to sunset.

    The Symbolism of Sunrise

    In Emily Dickinson’s “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose,” sunrise becomes symbolic of life-enhancing positivity: the beginning of the day offers opportunities for living and creating.  Sunset, on the other hand, simply offers the opportunity for sleep.

    The curious active mind is always hankering for more positive opportunities for acting out its desires, for securing a stage for creativity, and for living its need for motion.  That stage is daylight, after the sun rises and throws its life-giving rays upon land and its inhabitants.  

  • Leave off the Past Again and Again

    Image-Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem
    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem

    Leave off the Past Again and Again

    for Me as a Young Girl

    Leave off the past again and again—
    Because I got used to trying to run
    When I was too young to know,
    I didn’t have to run but merely walk well.

    The others seemed to be always ahead
    And I could never catch up.
    The pain in my side told me
    I could not compete.

    But I wore my misery like a veil
    Covering some future tranquility
    That I could never achieve
    In the darkness of adolescence.

    Why did I not see that I could breathe
    Free in the air of ancient philosophy? —
    Even after I learned to walk with tenets
    And practice techniques for freedom?

    Peace is a heavenly state of being,
    Secured by tranquility and mindfulness,
    But it is not easy to sit still
    With a body screaming out pain.

    The more I put off, the more I fail
    But I seem to know what I do not know
    Even as I break my heart over
    My vague thoughts and prayers.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light”

    Dickinson closely observed and investigated her surroundings; she also keenly examined her own feelings then dramatized those feelings in poems.  In “There’s a certain Slant of light,” her speaker is infusing melancholy into her perception of light streaming through a window on a winter afternoon.

    Introduction with Text of “There’s a certain Slant of light”

    Emily Dickinson developed the habit of closely observing as she investigated her surroundings.  The poet then keenly examined and mused upon her own feelings, finally dramatizing those feelings in poems.

    The poet created this speaker in “There’s a certain Slant of light” to reveal a mood of slight melancholy as she muses on a shaft of light streaming in through her window on a winter afternoon.  

    That streaming light through the window seems to tip and tilt, that is, “slant,” in a way that causes the speaker to undergo that sense of melancholy, which is no ordinary gloom but brings with it a spiritual aspect. 

    The speaker creates a little drama based on her intense feeling of spiritual intuition which has been motivated by a simple “Slant of light” streaming in through the window on a cold, winter afternoon.

    There’s a certain Slant of light

    There’s a certain Slant of light,
    Winter Afternoons –
    That oppresses, like the Heft
    Of Cathedral Tunes –

    Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
    We can find no scar,
    But internal difference,
    Where the Meanings, are –

    None may teach it – Any –
    ‘Tis the Seal Despair –
    An imperial affliction
    Sent us of the air –

    When it comes, the Landscape listens –
    Shadows – hold their breath –
    When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
    On the look of Death –

    Reading of “There’s a certain Slant of light” 

    Commentary on “There’s a certain Slant of light”

    A simple viewing of a shaft of light streaming into the room on a winter day engenders in this speaker a melancholy prompting this little drama.  The spiritual experience thus is rendered in paradox—the ultimate literary device for communicating the ineffable.

    First Stanza:  The Oppression of Tilting Light

    There’s a certain Slant of light,
    Winter Afternoons –
    That oppresses, like the Heft
    Of Cathedral Tunes –

    The speaker begins the drama by asserting that on certain winter afternoons the light shining in through her window comes in at a “certain Slant” and that tilting light “oppresses” her in the way the heavy tones of sacred chants might do. Although light is weightless, to the speaker in this particular mood, it seems heavy enough to oppress her into melancholy.

    A paradox results from the speaker finding the “light” to be as heavy as church music.  Music experienced in church is meant to uplift, not weigh one down.  If something that is meant to uplift does the opposite, then one has to explore the reasons for such oppression.  Why would music that ordinarily produces a spiritual upliftment become an instrument of oppression—that is, something that is heavy?

    Second Stanza:  The Human Craving for Meaning

    Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
    We can find no scar,
    But internal difference,
    Where the Meanings, are –

    The deeply inspiring sound of “Cathedral Tunes” brings the speaker to a place of “Heavenly Hurt.”  Again, she paradoxically describes her experience:  Heaven is a spiritual place where there is no hurt, no pain, no distress, no oppression—only bliss. 

    The speaker confirms as much as she avers that this “hurt” never results in a “scar.”  And it also leaves no physical mark such as scar because this melancholy is inside of the speaker; it is her soul that has engaged with this music, this light, that has caused this spiritual experience.

    The speaker employs the term, “Meaning”—all human beings on all levels of awareness crave meaning in their lives, and the speaker has become aware of the meaning of an inner life that is more important than the corporeal.  True meaning come from the soul not from the body that changes and dies, nor from the mind that knows nothing but change.

    Third Stanza:  Soul Meaning

    None may teach it – Any –
    ‘Tis the Seal Despair –
    An imperial affliction
    Sent us of the air –

    The speaker then affirms that one cannot be taught this kind of soul meaning. The mystical state of the desire for meaning comes on one unbidden, as casually as taking a breath. “Despair” of the material world often leads one to ask the question, is this all there is to life?

    But the individual becomes a seeker after she begins to entertain such questions.  Divine cravings may be prompted by any outward experience such as light tilting in through a window, but those cravings for spiritual reality can be satisfied only through soul-union, which is Divine Awareness.  The melancholy of spiritual desire is a first step to that Ultimate Awareness.

    Fourth Stanza:  The Nature of Reality

    When it comes, the Landscape listens –
    Shadows – hold their breath –
    When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
    On the look of Death – 

    After the strong spiritual desire for meaning, that is, comprehending the nature of Reality approaches the sensibility of the individual, that individual wished to cease the flux of all phenomena in order to listen—”be still and know that I am God” (KJV, Psalm 46:10).

    This speaker creates her drama by asserting that “Shadows  – hold their breath.”  Shadows holding their breath suggests a depth of quietness that is nearly unfathomable.  A miraculous awareness engulfs the speaker.

    The speaker has discovered that this “heavenly hurt,” this spiritual melancholy, transforms itself into the light of understanding.  Death loses its grip and meaning after such a level of awareness is achieved, no longer grasping the heart and mind of the individual.  

    After death has become merely a distant force, the spiritual aspirant sees more clearly all other forces that operate in her sphere.  The speaker has thus reached that inner Goal.  Death is beaten and given its place to Awareness. 

    The Science and Symbolism of Light

    That a simple “Slant of light” should engender a deep mystic state of awareness in this speaker is quite apt.  Regarding the nature of light, in his spiritual classic, Autobiography of a Yogi [1], Paramahansa Yogananda has explained that the material universe is composed of light.  Many modern discoveries have revealed to humanity that the cosmos is composed of various expressions of one power—light—guided by Divine Intelligence.

    Paramahansa Yogananda has also explained that only differing rates of vibration account for the differing forms that exist throughout the cosmos:

    Modern science has shown that everything in the universe is composed of energy (light), and that the apparent differentiation between solids, liquids, gases, sound, and light is merely a difference in their vibratory rates.

    Also in his autobiography, Paramahansa Yogananda has explained in detail the nature of light, comparing it to other “waves”:

    Among the trillion mysteries of the cosmos, the most phenomenal is light. Unlike sound waves, whose transmission requires air or other material media, light waves pass freely through the vacuum of interstellar space. Even the hypothetical ether, held as the interplanetary medium of light in the undulatory theory, may be discarded on the Einsteinian grounds that the geometrical properties of space render unnecessary a theory of ether. Under either hypothesis, light remains the most subtle, the freest from material dependence, of any natural manifestation.

    The individual who has achieved the realization that “the essence of creation is light” is thus capable of operating the law of miracles.  The term miracle simply applies to any phenomenon whose operation science [2] has yet to discover.  

    What the soul knows through intuition will always be running miles and years ahead of what physical science [3] knows because physical science can explore and examine only the created cosmos not the Creator of that cosmos.  The soul, however, being a spark of the Creator, knows all that the Creator knows—either in fact or in potential.

    Emily Dickinson’s employment of light in this poem thus results from her deep intuitive awareness that light is the building substance of the cosmos.  Therefore, “light” becomes a symbol for that intuition that would continue to guide the poet as she continued to create her  mystical, metaphysical, metaphorical “garden” of poetry.

    Sources

    [1]  Paramahansa Yogananda.  Autobiography of a Yogi.  Self-Realization Fellowship.  Accessed June 3, 2026.
    [2]  Ard Louis.  “Miracles and Science: The Long Shadow of David Hume.”  The BioLogos Foundation.  March 12, 2018.
    [3]  Lisa Zyga.  “Quantum Mysticism: Gone but Not Forgotten.” Phys.org.  June 8, 2009.

  • Bridge of Eternity

    Image-Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem
    Image: Created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem

    Bridge of Eternity

    The riddle takes the black tick and runs laughing
    Down the path to the doggy life of flukes.
    Don’t get me going if you won’t follow
    For questions may continue to erupt.

    Being strong may be illusive in the dusk.
    But weakness has its own sundowning
    Flipping and flopping like a big fish on a hook.
    Stay gutless if you can, while you ring the mold
    From your lips, as sunlight defies your spin.

    Righting each wrong will take forever,
    It will seem, as you sculpt each lie
    To connect your heart to a lifejacket
    Tacked onto the bridge of eternity.

    Love cannot seep through chicken wire
    And your smooth tongue will plaster your eyeballs.
    Satan will not pluck the weed of sorrow
    Even as you wait for feathers from the duck face—
    Whose nose will enjoy your scent?

    Don’t listen to me, for I have nothing to say
    To pigs and fleas, and I insist you defy matter
    By displaying both.  Selfish bloat and twitches.
    You resemble bitter fruit, displayed but seasonless. 

    The crimes we commit will tackle us
    And some of us will lie and try to avoid
    Our just deserts as if we deserve more. 
    But prison waits as sure as your moldy tongue
    And we cannot avoid what is coming to us.

  • Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died”

    Image: Emily Dickinson - Amherst College - Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 - likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
    Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet

    Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” dramatizes the speaker’s act of dying, as well as Dickinson’s mystical vision, which corresponds to yogic philosophical and religious teachings.

    Introduction and Text of “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died”

    Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” consists of four rimed quatrains with the rime scheme ABCB. Most of the rimes are slant rimes: Room-Storm, firm-room, be-fly. Sprinkled liberally with her signature dashes, the poem displays an appropriate breathless quality. 

    I heard a Fly buzz – when I died

    I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
    The Stillness in the Room
    Was like the Stillness in the Air –
    Between the Heaves of Storm –

    The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
    And Breaths were gathering firm
    For that last Onset – when the King
    Be witnessed – in the Room –

    I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
    What portion of me be
    Assignable – and then it was
    There interposed a Fly –

    With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –
    Between the light – and me –
    And then the Windows failed – and then
    I could not see to see –

    Commentary on  “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died “

    Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” dramatizes the speaker’s act of dying.  Even though it is unlikely that the poet had studied any Eastern philosophy as Ralph Waldo Emerson had done, her mystical vision corresponds nearly perfectly to Eastern yogic philosophical and religious teachings.

    First Stanza:  Breathlessness upon Dying

    I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
    The Stillness in the Room
    Was like the Stillness in the Air –
    Between the Heaves of Storm –

    In the first stanza, the speaker makes the odd assertion that as she was dying, she heard the sound of a fly.   The first instance of the breathlessness of the poem occurs immediately following the announcement, “I heard a Fly buzz.” Such a mundane statement if left unmodified! But the speaker then adds a real shocker, “when I died.” 

    Nothing could be more startling, nothing could be more Dickinsonian. The room at the time of her passing professed an eerie stillness, reminding the speaker of the quiet that settles briefly between the turbulences of a storm. The mention of the fly then hangs without further discussion until the last line of the third stanza. 

    Second Stanza:  Mourning the Passing

    The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
    And Breaths were gathering firm
    For that last Onset – when the King
    Be witnessed – in the Room –

    The speaker then depicts the people who are beginning their mourning of her passing: her loved ones had cried until they could not cry any longer.   The mourners seemed to hold their breath, waiting for that moment when the soul of the loved one makes its final departure from the body: such a momentous occasion herald’s the Divine Belovèd emissary to be in attendance. 

    The King refers to God’s angel, who will appear to escort the soul from the physical to the astral plane. While the escaping soul will be cognizant of the angel, most of the mourners probably will not be, but they will intuit the presence or “that last Onset,” which prompts the breath to tighten.

    Third Stanza:  Last Will and Testament

    I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
    What portion of me be
    Assignable – and then it was
    There interposed a Fly –

    The speaker asserts that she has completed her last will and testament, designating which “Keepsakes” should go and to whom; she has assigned to others everything that can be assigned.  Some time has obviously passed between making the will and the moment presently dramatized. 

    The immediate shift from something she must have accomplished earlier suggests the conflating power of the dying process, something like the old expression that one’s life passes before one’s sight at death. And then the “Fly” makes it appearance: “There interposed a Fly.” But she begins a new stanza to portray the importance of the “Fly.” 

    Fourth Stanza:  No Ordinary House Fly

    With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –
    Between the light – and me –
    And then the Windows failed – and then
    I could not see to see –

    The significant final stanza reveals that the fly is not a literal household fly but is a metaphor for the sound of the soul leaving the body. The line “With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz” has taken the place of the term “fly.” 

    In nature, flies appear to be black not blue.  However, as the human soul is existing its physical encasement, it experiences the blue that makes up part of the spiritual eye with its outer golden circle which rims the blue inside of which is a pentagonal white star.  The soul must travel through this eye, often referred to as a tunnel by those who have experienced near-death episodes and returned to describe their experience.

    The sound of a bumble bee or “fly,” which is a buzzing sound, is emanated by the coccygeal chakra in the spine.  As the soul journeys up the spine, it begins at the buzz chakra.  In very advanced yogis, the “buzz” sound might be described as the “om” sound.

    With the “Buzz” sound emanating from the departing soul beginning its journey from the coccygeal center, the physical eyesight begins to fail–”then the Windows failed / and then / I could not see to see.”   The speaker’s unusual claim “I could not see to see” underscores the fact that her light of vision is fading, and the final dash represents its total departure. 

    Evidence of Mystical Ability

    Although it is highly unlikely that Emily Dickinson had studied any yogic philosophy or techniques, her accurate descriptions of the process of death as well as her descriptions of experiences after death provide evidence that the poet possessed advanced mystical insight.