oh phantom queen!

If I can stop one heart from breaking; I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching, or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

- Emily Dickinson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers / that perches in the soul / and sings the tune without the words / and never stops at all.

And sweetest in the gale is heard / and sore must be the storm / that could abash the little bird / that kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land / and on the strangest sea, / yet, never - in extremity - / it asked a crumb of me.

Yesterday’s post included a homework assignment. Were you able to finish it?

In response to an excerpt from a podcaster’s interview with poet Ocean Vuong, I shared a poem by Dickinson, “As imperceptibly as Grief”; however, I purposefully left off the last line. You were to compose a final line for the poem, but not just any line – one that our “species has never encountered.”

Here’s the background: Vuong once handed a professor one of his poems; the prof scanned it and said, “You see that line you wrote?” He typed it into Google for a search. As the results popped up, he acknowledged, “It’s a decent line, but 300,000 people beat you to it.” He hit the point home with, “We’re out here to write sentences the species has never encountered.” So how did you conclude Dickinson’s poem?

Of course, on the surface, the gist of the poem is the transition of Summer into Autumn. In the final lines, the season – “without a Wing / Or service of a Keel” – makes its escape…? But escapes how? Where? Why? What should the final line say? I will point out that the poem has a very loose rhyme scheme, so there’s no pressure to compose a final line with a perfect rhyme. The alternate even lines have various types of slant rhymes – some concentrated on a vowel or consonant sound. The “rhymes” throughout the poem are “away”/”Perfidy,” “begun”/”Afternoon,” “shone”/”gone” – and “keel” with whatever we might end the poem. I suspect an easy way to conclude the work would be to explain to where the Summer escaped – so how about “into the autumn’s veil.” “Veil” hints at the colors of fall, and it “rhymes” in similar fashion the rest of the poem with “keel.”

And thus, without a wing, Or service of a keel, Our summer made her light escape Into the autumn’s veil.

That seems pretty cliché, though, no? Let’s see, how about concluding the poem with, “As winds of change exhaled.” While I like the inclusion of the wind, a favorite weather phenomenon of Dickinson’s (a search for “wind” on the online archive generates 172 entries), this image, more so than my first, is rather hackneyed.

And thus, without a wing, Or service of a keel, Our summer made her light escape As winds of change exhaled.

What do you think of “Bound for Eternity”? Well, it’s definitely been done before – even by Dickinson herself in “Because I could not stop for Death” – and it certainly fits better in that poem with the carriage and horses. Also, “Eternity” spoils what’s going on with the poem’s rhyme scheme -- and the term seems too obligatory for a 19th century poem.

And thus, without a wing, Or service of a keel, Our summer made her light escape Bound for Eternity.

I suppose I could keep on trying, but I don’t believe I’d come up with anything better than what Dickinson wrote. So how did Summer make her light escape in Dickinson’s poem?

And thus, without a wing, Or service of a keel, Our summer made her light escape Into the beautiful.

It’s a beautiful poem with a beautiful ending. I wrote about this poem last December, HERE, and said this:

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. — Emily Dickinson. Look up, breathe, and find hope in the gentle flow of nature. 🦅🧡

La speranza è quella cosa piumata che si posa sull'anima. — Emily Dickinson. Guarda verso l'alto, respira e ritrova la speranza nel flusso della natura. 🦅🧡

Full High-Definition Calming Experience :

In yesterday’s post, the final in a series about short poems, I included a portion of an interview with poet Ocean Vuong.  He shared an anecdote of when he handed one of his poems to a teacher/mentor, and the prof’s response was – in the words of the interviewer – “a punch in the face.”  Here’s what Vuong said:

“I gave him a poem, he’s like ‘but I’ll show you – I want to do something – I’m going to show you.’ And he turns around, he’s typing into Google, and he says, ‘you see that line you wrote? It’s a decent line, but 300,000 people beat you to it.’”

The lesson from the prof – in Vuong’s words:  “We’re out here to write sentences the species has never encountered.” Oddly enough, that statement made me think of one specific poem by Dickinson, one I’ve been playing around with as I set it to music for an annual ED birthday celebration concert that a friend of mine and I present each December (this year’s concert will be the “fourth annual”).  The poem:  “As imperceptibly as Grief.” It’s shown below without its final line.  I’ll explain momentarily why I’ve omitted it.

First, there is so much I love about this poem: the “distilled” quietness “as Twilight long begun” as fall approaches; the image of Nature “sequestering” herself in the afternoon – as the “Dusk drew earlier in”; the “foreign” look of the Morning as a courteous “Guest that would be gone.”  Then – without wing or the service of a keel – the Summer made her “light escape”  (and that multi-layered use of the word “light” – **chef’s kiss** ).   And then…   Here comes that final line that I omitted, and I removed it so that we could complete an experiment a la Ocean Vuong’s story.   Pretend you’ve written the poem.  Imagine you’re about to hand a copy to your professor.  However, you’ve completed the poem, the final line is there, and you’ve attempted to conclude the work with a line “the species has never encountered.”   What did you write?  How did you end the poem?