{"id":180,"date":"2009-11-18T12:26:16","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T17:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/?page_id=180"},"modified":"2010-02-18T11:51:11","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T16:51:11","slug":"buonanduci","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/journal\/past-issues\/issue-1\/buonanduci\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThese\u2014never stir at all\u2014\u201d: The Static and Dynamic in Dickinson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michele Buonanduci<\/a><\/p>\n

Download this article<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Angle of a Landscape\u2014\u201d (#578) brings together two of the most prominent themes in Emily Dickinson\u2019s poetry\u2014the variability of nature in the outside world, and the constancy of her own domestic surroundings. These take their form in the steadfast landmarks and changing seasons, viewed daily from Dickinson\u2019s own bedroom window. Dickinson often fluctuates in her poetic works between a desire for confinement and an affinity for the boundless natural world. This particular poem, which encapsulates these two converse and seemingly irreconcilable extremes, implies that Dickinson may have found a way to rectify her indecision through her own self-expression. The nature of poetry itself and Dickinson\u2019s own poetic form enable her to combine the static and the dynamic, without choosing between the two.<\/p>\n

Upon waking, Dickinson\u2019s \u201copen eye\u201d is \u201cAccost[ed]\u201d by \u201cThe Angle of a Landscape\u2014,\u201d which, presumably when she rights herself, turns out to be \u201cjust a Bough of Apples\u2014 \/ Held slanting, in the Sky\u2014.\u201d What is implied in this scenario is the importance of perspective and its effect on how one views both the nature of an object (or a person, or a place, or an idea), and its scale. Just by a \u201cslant\u201d of her head, which can also be taken as a \u201cslant\u201d in thought, what initially appeared to be a vast landscape is reduced to something else entirely\u2014something much smaller in scale and closer in distance\u2014a branch of apples, quite nearly within reach.<\/p>\n

Dickinson plays with similar themes of perspective and scale, as well as passing time and constancy, throughout the poem. As time goes on, she views the landscape change. One day, the tree outside her window has \u201cEmerald Bough[s],\u201d and then, upon wakening, she finds these to be replaced by the \u201cDiamonds\u201d of snow. It seems both natural and fluid, the way \u201cThe Seasons\u2014shift\u2014[her] Picture\u2014,\u201d like a slideshow or a reel of film, and yet markedly, some things remain unaffected by the continuous cycle of nature\u2014 landmarks such as \u201cThe Chimney\u2014and the Hill\u2014\u201d \u201cnever stir at all\u2014.\u201d All of this, meanwhile\u2014the turning of the seasons (the passing of time) and the vast landscape (the outside world) she sees\u2014fit, it seems, \u201cBetween [her] Curtain and the Wall,\u201d what she calls \u201can ample Crack.\u201d Thus, the expansive scale of the passing seasons and the landscape she describes, fill, to her eyes, the mere inches between where her curtain ends and her wall begins.<\/p>\n

This, then, leads one to shift his or her own perspective on what the poem itself is saying. The poem, which emphasizes the importance of perspective, must itself be looked at from more than one \u201cangle.\u201d It is one thing to look at it through Dickinson\u2019s own eyes\u2014looking out through her window onto a branch, or a landscape, or the changing seasons. However, this viewpoint can make a distinctive turn, looking instead in<\/em> on the bedroom in which Dickinson literally passed her life away. It may well be noticed that among the landmarks that \u201cnever stir at all\u2014,\u201d her own \u201cCurtain\u201d and \u201cWall\u201d may very well be included. For as time and seasons pass, it is still in her same bed that she \u201cwake[s]\u201d to mark these changes, and through the same window that they appear to her eyes.<\/p>\n

Dickinson wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a lifelong correspondent: \u201cI do not cross my Father\u2019s ground to any House or town\u201d (Johnson 461). When asked whether she ever felt a \u201cwant of employment,\u201d being confined so, she replied, \u201cI never thought of conceiving that I could ever have the slightest approach to such a want in all future time,\u201d adding, \u201cI feel that I have not expressed myself strongly enough\u201d (474). Within this context, it seems an understatement to say that Dickinson was content to pass her life away within the walls of her childhood home. Indeed, there is certainly something to be said for the value of security such unchanging familiarity provides her, and this can be read through the lines of her poetry. In \u201cThe Wind begun to rock the Grass\u201d (#796), Dickinson writes of a gathering storm. The \u201clivid Claw\u201d of lightning and the rains which \u201cwrecked the Sky,\u201d violent forces of nature, in the final lines \u201coverlooked [her] Father\u2019s House.\u201d Thus, her father\u2019s house is safe from the chaotic forces of the outside world. The house is untouched by the unpredictability of nature, which can be read as life beyond her father\u2019s grounds, of which it seems she holds some intangible fear.<\/p>\n

Dickinson struggles with this seeming need for physical confinement in poem #456, \u201cA Prison gets to be a friend\u2014.\u201d She writes of a \u201cKinsmanship\u201d which develops between the prison and its inmate. Further, the one held captive comes to \u201clook with gratitude\u201d towards it, and to regard as \u201csweet\u201d those features which \u201cDay and Night\u2014 \/ Are present to us\u2014as Our Own\u2014.\u201d Again, its familiarity, its certainty, its predictability\u2014these are the things which make a prison a source of comfort to Dickinson. Her \u201cPrison,\u201d which we can assume is her house, has all of these features. However, while in this instance it is a prison in which Dickinson dwells, a mere ten poems later it is within \u201cPossibility\u201d (#466). It seems that she wavers between a desire for the unchanging (her lifelong home) and the dynamic (nature and the outside world), unable to choose between the two.<\/p>\n

For Dickinson, nothing breaches this gap better than poetry, which combines both the changing and the unchanging\u2014elements which diametrically oppose one another yet seem to be simultaneously necessary in her mind (and occur very nearly next to one another in her poetry, separated by mere sheets of paper). In the most literal sense, words are unchanging. Once written, they are permanent. Dickinson\u2019s poems, recorded in her tediously copied fascicle sheets, were sure to remain unchanged unless edited by her own hand. Yet at the same time, there is nothing as dynamic and mutable as language, which can be read in countless ways and is capable of expressing the enormity of both time and space. There is no limit to poetry in this sense, even while it can be physically contained within several folded sheets of paper. Poem #278 expresses this very sentiment. Dickinson writes that while some claim that \u201cA word is dead, when it is said,\u201d she herself insists that \u201cit just begins to live \/ That day.\u201d Again, this reflects the static versus the dynamic nature of poetry.<\/p>\n

Dickinson wrote her first letter to T. W. Higginson in 1862, asking him to tell her \u201cif [her] Verse is alive\u201d (403). For Dickinson, the life and limitless nature of poetry was its ultimate appeal. In poem #1491, she states simply, \u201cTo see the Summer Sky \/ Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie\u2014 \/ True Poems flee\u2014.\u201d Two things are emphasized here. First, the scale of the poem is expansive. The entirety of the summer sky is impossible to contain even within our range of vision. Yet here it is expressed within a mere three lines. Second, it states that poems are never motionless\u2014they are unpredictable and dynamic. \u201cTrue Poems flee\u2014,\u201d and cannot truly be tied down, even to the page.<\/p>\n

Dickinson\u2019s unresolved desire for both the familiarity of her unchanging home as well as the unpredictability and freedom found in the natural world finds an outlet in her poetry. These elements exist together in her poem \u201cThe Angle of a Landscape\u2014.\u201d In the final stanzas, she begins to describe the \u201cshift[ing]\u201d of the scenery outside her window and wakes to find unexpected changes in the seasons. In other words, the \u201cPicture\u201d begins to move and change before her more rapidly. Interestingly, it is then that the poem ends, with Dickinson\u2019s final remark, \u201cThese\u2014never stir at all\u2014.\u201d Dickinson\u2019s punctuation is ambiguous here, as it is throughout most of her poetry; only dashes are used to separate groupings of words. It makes sense for this final statement to refer to the previous two lines, which mention the few motionless landmarks (and, by extension, her own bedroom window), the unchanging features in her life. However, if taken out of context, what could be inferred from its meaning is that all<\/em> of the preceding words Dickinson has written, words that speak of passing time and changing landscapes, are in fact the objects that \u201cnever stir at all,\u201d being fixed onto a page by her own hand. Notably, Dickinson wrote only one version for this poem, without any alternative readings. Again, she seems to be insisting on the constancy of her words even while their nuances are ever-changing and expanding.<\/p>\n

On a more structural level, also, Dickinson\u2019s poetry is able to resolve this \u201ccleaving in [her] mind\u201d (#867) that seems to pull her at once in two opposite directions. It is common for her stanzas to contain four lines, a regular pattern of beats, and ABCB rhyme schemes. However, Dickinson will often vary the pattern of beats in one stanza as well as use slant-rhyme rather than exact rhyme. In other words, while the general formula of her poetry remains consistent, she gives herself the ability to diverge from the regularity she sets for herself. Her poems are uniform yet fluctuate in their form. \u201cThe Angle of a Landscape\u2014\u201d of course is no exception. Composed of four-lined stanzas, each line contains three beats, with the exception of only two\u2014line 3, which has four beats, and line 20, which can be read with either three or four. Interestingly, these lines are \u201cBetween my Curtain and the Wall\u201d and \u201cThese\u2014never stir at all\u2014.\u201d Thus, it is the line that depicts her unchanging bedroom window as well as the line that declares its own constancy that, in fact, vary<\/em> from the rest of the poem. Furthermore, none of the B lines in the poem\u2019s ABCB rhyme scheme are exact rhymes except for two\u2014lines 6 and 8\u2014which end in \u201ceye\u201d and \u201cSky.\u201d It is interesting, also, how this singular exact rhyme seems to link the two words, as if emphasizing how the expanse of the sky is within her sight and thus within her mind.<\/p>\n

If, then, the elements of this poem emulate poetry itself in their static yet dynamic nature, the themes of perspective cannot be ignored. Just as the expansive landscape outside Dickinson\u2019s window somehow fits, in her eyes, between the crack offered by her curtain and wall, so too does the expansive nature of poetry, with all of its limitless and uncontained possibility, fit into a few lines. The changing perspective offered by a tilt of her head that transforms a landscape into a branch of apples can be applied to poetry as well. The meaning of a poem depends entirely on the \u201cangle\u201d from which it is viewed, and a simple tilt of the head has the ability to open up infinitely many new possibilities for interpretations of the scale, substance, and very nature of the poem itself. Furthermore, the poem\u2019s insistence on the importance of perspective correlates to Dickinson\u2019s vacillation between imprisonment and freedom; a \u201cslant\u201d of the head, and what was once a \u201cPrison\u201d becomes instead a \u201cfriend\u201d (#456).<\/p>\n

Dickinson depicts in \u201cThe Angle of a Landscape\u2014\u201d what it is to be looking out on the world from her bedroom window, from which vantage point she enjoys the dynamic views of nature while herself being contained within the comfort and familiarity of four unchanging walls\u2014a different experience entirely from the person who is outside looking in. Likewise, the art form of poetry allows Dickinson the best (in her own mind) of both worlds\u2014a medium that has regularity in its structure and form, yet is infinitely mutable, and, in its \u201ctrue[st]\u201d sense, \u201cflee[s]\u201d from the page in a way that Dickinson herself would ultimately never be willing to \u201cflee\u201d from her father\u2019s homestead (#1491).<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/h2>\n

Franklin, R. W., ed. The Poems of Emily Dickinson.<\/em> Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005.<\/p>\n

Franklin, R. W., ed. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition<\/em>. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998. 3 vols.<\/p>\n

Johnson, Thomas H., ed. The Letters of Emily Dickinson<\/em>. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michele Buonanduci Download this article \u201cThe Angle of a Landscape\u2014\u201d (#578) brings together two of the most prominent themes in Emily Dickinson\u2019s poetry\u2014the variability of nature in the outside world, and the constancy of her own domestic surroundings. These take their form in the steadfast landmarks and changing seasons, viewed daily from Dickinson\u2019s own bedroom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1355,"featured_media":0,"parent":1804,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1355"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":894,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/180\/revisions\/894"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}