Response to Emily Dickinson, "Poem 520"

I'm sure you're not surprised to learn that, of the four water poems I posted on July 23, the Dickinson is my favorite. But you may (or possibly you may not) be surprised to learn that I've only learned to love Dickinson within the past 5 years or so. Before that, I was respectful and humble but not attached to her poems either emotionally or intellectually. I had to grow up some before I could figure out how to like her.

For me, reading Dickinson can be like suddenly walking into a strobe-lit room after having spent the previous hour peacefully watching the night sky. For all her pretense at primness, she's sharp-edged and aggressive, and her poems shove the reader into unexpected corners. Even though Poem 520 is a well-known piece, its progress never ceases to unnerve me. I always forget how it ends: how it shifts from a pleasant dog walk to the bowing obeisance of the encroaching, erotic sea. Yes, ocean, Emily wins again.

Enough is never enough for Dickinson. She's like Plath that way--always cramming in yet one more glittering image, performing yet one more linguistic sleight-of-hand. Of the 6 stanzas of Poem 520, 4 deal with the creeping, inexorable tide: line upon line the sea climbs the speaker's body. The poet had to show great restraint in her pacing and her diction to create such slowness, such suspense; yet in this short poem she had to be simultaneously rapid and exact and shocking.

I never wish I could write like Dickinson, as I sometimes wish I could write like Plath. Dickinson so often feels barely human to me, more like the blue flame on a gas burner, all purity and rectitude in her heat. Plath is more of a regular human mess, despite her linguistic genius. But sometimes, when I wish I were less of a mess as a writer or a human being, I read a Dickinson poem. I haven't yet learn how to change anything about my own disorder, but at least I've learned to watch the real poet perform.