PoemoftheWeek

After a google search I believe it is some sort of netted fabric.

In the fifth stanza what do you guys think of the bringing in of Squirrels. Using my experience of these rodents I think she is referring here to "The Pleading of the Summer." This would not be a reference to sight, but sound. Have you ever heard the weird buzzing squirrels make? It sounds like it is coming from everywhere at once. This seems to me like it would be one of those things of Nature that transcends man's understanding.

What do you guys think of her comparing the sunset, a creation of Nature, to that of a manmade fabric? I think her first line definitely states her preference, perhaps the illusions to Shakespeare coming mockingly? Maybe not. Maybe her comparison is supposed to be between what is felt and what is seen. Good poem, I haven't studied Dickenson yet.

Tulle is a gauzy fabric used to make ruffs and frills - and especially wedding gowns - here she uses it as a nice metaphor for snow.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

Tulle is a gauzy fabric used to make ruffs and frills - and especially wedding gowns - here she uses it as a nice metaphor for snow.

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Oh, thanks.

There is a lot of delicious ambiguity in this poem:

Is the last line implying an alternative method of seeing or seeing an alternative route?
Do the 'graspless manners' belong to the squirrels? The full stop in the previous line would imply not - so to what do they refer?
Chariots -- in the vest? Pleading of the summer? Where do these two phrases fit? What do they mean even?

It's a grower - that's about the only thing I'm really sure of.

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Is the last line implying an alternative method of seeing or seeing an alternative route?

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I think so.
The tint she cannot take in some way is best-but she cannot reason why-but the squirrels seem to know-through graspless manners. Maybe the reason that she is unable to grasp tint is because The Tint is ungraspable; it cannot be reasoned or deduced by us in any way. The Tint must be felt; it is a fine impalpable array.

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So how about we ask ktd one more time, and if he/she doesn't respond again, then obviously she doesn't want to share it. I'll understand.

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I'll just leave it as this: I'll be 18 this year and am planning enrollement at Wellesley College. ;)

:lol: Wow, I guess I got something right. Not even 18? Wow you seemed much older. I thought you were a grad student.

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Wow, I guess I got something right. Not even 18? Wow you seemed much older. I thought you were a grad student.

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Gee, sorry again for not knowing you were a girl, ktd. Mea Culpa. I thought you were about 19 or 20, first or second year undergrad. I'm not sure I would have guessed highschool. You must just be wise beyond your seventeen years. ;) Wellesley sounds like a great school...but where's your supply of young men to date? :brow:

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

I may be completely wrong - it has been known - but I think she's describing a sunset in the first couple of verses and how such sights affect her in the subsequent stanzas.

'The tint' is one of those exquisite, indescribable shades of colour that you sometimes see in a really great sunset; where the red and gold of the clouds meets the blue and turquoise of the sky. I see the 'Cleopatra's company' as being a reference to these colours as well - think of Tutankhamen's deathmask.

Following this physical description, Dickinson goes on to express the transcendental feelings associated with such visions of nature at Her most powerful and moving; how they leave us feeling inadequate and very small. She cites summer landscapes and winter snowscapes as further examples; but the prominence given to the sunset suggests that this was the moment that inspired the poem. She is saying finally that such things give us only hints of a greater glory that we won't witness till after death.

I am not at all familiar with Emily Dickinson's work, so it took several readings to get anything from this. I'd be grateful if anyone could shed any light on the unusual punctuation - breaking lines with dashes in mid phrase - and the capitalisation of certain words (which I assume is for emphasis). Are these common in her poetry?

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Being a great fan and having read as much on her life as is possible I think probably she did the unusual punctuation simply because she felt like it and didn't give a fig newton about what anyone else thought of it. Yay, I like that. All these rules and regulations about how to say what comes from your very own unique mind and heart-I hate that , it is just as wierd to me as having to wear fashions that some guy who lives in his own little fantasy world decides everyone else should wear.
but that is just my thought :D

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Wellesley sounds like a great school...but where's your supply of young men to date?

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Now do you see whats happening. I take everything that was said back; I'm a life-form from the planet Xenon come to Online-Literature to do research on galactical literature. Yes, we have schools where I come from-but what you call schools we call oohh-pock. If you want to procreate, you must get permission from The Mother Brain; otherwise kneck roek bop, kneck roek bop.

you are too adorable. How do you just say hullo and shake hands I wonder?,do you have hands then?

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Now do you see whats happening. I take everything that was said back; I'm a life-form from the planet Xenon come to Online-Literature to do research on galactical literature. Yes, we have schools where I come from-but what you call schools we call oohh-pock. If you want to procreate, you must get permission from The Mother Brain; otherwise kneck roek bop, kneck roek bop.

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:lol: :lol: Nanoo Nanoo! Oh wait, wrong planet. I'm from a planet called academia :alien: where the inhabitants speak a language called "theory" (far less intelligible than your native Xenon language--seriously). They do this a lot: :brickwall and call it "thinking."

Well enough frivolous interrogation of one another and back to a serious discussion of poetry. :banana:

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Being a great fan and having read as much on her life as is possible I think probably she did the unusual punctuation simply because she felt like it and didn't give a fig newton about what anyone else thought of it.

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I think that's a very good point Rachel. I've often thought that Dickinson isn't really what one might call a "critic's poet" in that she very much does her own thing in her own way. I sense that the way to understanding her poetry is often less a matter of thinking it out than of feeling it out.

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I think that's a very good point Rachel. I've often thought that Dickinson isn't really what one might call a "critic's poet" in that she very much does her own thing in her own way. I sense that the way to understanding her poetry is often less a matter of thinking it out than of feeling it out.

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I've always believed understanding her poetry requires utmost attentiveness by my critical eyes-being that most of her poetry is so short. The dependency of word choice, meter, syntax, etc, requires 'that extra level of importance' for the poem to succeed-and a lot of her poetry does succeed in achieving its art without overkill.

ktd,

I spent a little time on Xenon on business. The people things were delightful but I found the magenta sky a little strident. I love those little pastries that whistle when you chew them though - are they called Knirple, Knopple? Something like that.:D

Thanks (and thanks to Rachel too) for clearing up the capital letter/punctuation thing. It sort of agrees with my guesses.

you....GUESSED? Oh I am shattered. I thought, no I was certain beyond anything that you KNOW EVERYTHING.
hmm, I think you are joking. No I know you are, for the wind has brought word to me from far away places that even the trees talk about you on breezy evenings and marvel that you know everything. :lol:

It was interesting to read how others here take to the style. Its like song lyrics I have read while listening to the particular singer. If I " listen " to it, I arrive. What I mean by this is, when someone is reciting a story or tale, or singing a song, its different to reading with 'our own' mental voice. I think this is Dickinson talking in her style.

A woman, elating the beauty revealed since the arrival of Summer. She has moments, flushes of high inspiration, fleeting and about to stay, but don't, can't quite. The Squirrels take these things, as is their nature, until the scowl of Winter and snow arrives again to protect what belongs to nature. Then, she knows, for only in her grave, no more Winters needed and she will enjoy without interruption.

The very last words seem like throw aways. Not sure I described it so well.

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Originally Posted by jackyyyy

A woman, elating the beauty revealed since the arrival of Summer. She has moments, flushes of high inspiration, fleeting and about to stay, but don't, can't quite. The Squirrels take these things, as is their nature, until the scowl of Winter and snow arrives again to protect what belongs to nature. Then, she knows, for only in her grave, no more Winters needed and she will enjoy without interruption.

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I'm not sure I agree with that, Jack. I don't think it's simple beauty she's talking about, the kind you just enjoy. The third stanza transports the experience beyond that: "The Moments of Dominion / That happen on the Soul / And leave it with a Discontent / Too exquisite - to tell-" This is a deep phenomena she's talking about, obviously because of the allusions, spiritual, trascendental. That's anting the pot up a notch, and then (if you'll excuse the poker metaphor) she further antes it up at the end, perhaps throwing all her chips in: "Their Graspless manners - mock us / Until the Cheated Eye / Shuts arrogantly - in the grave - / Another way - to see -" So the experience with nature or beauty does something to her soul, which is to say it is quite an engraved ordeal. But that in the end is not the totality of experience. Transcendentalism is not the complete picture. There will be still another level to the experience that the living eye cannot know or see, but only from the grave can one know or see it.

Aye, Virgil, I am not sure I agree with me either, but after reading it over two score times, I do want to post something to egg the ideas. You know who comes to my mind when I read it, Katherine Hepburn (nope, I don't know why). I was aware that her choice of words imply greater things, but I wonder if her intention was, and in her style, simply an account of her feelings, rather than a profound statement.

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The third stanza transports the experience beyond that: "The Moments of Dominion / That happen on the Soul / And leave it with a Discontent / Too exquisite - to tell-"

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"Dominion" or mastery is another positive emotion, and "Too exquisite" sounds like her style again.

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"Their Graspless manners - mock us / Until the Cheated Eye / Shuts arrogantly - in the grave - / Another way - to see -"

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When she writes "Another way - to see", does not infer to me that what she could see would be 'superior', only that its 'another way to see'.

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Originally Posted by jackyyyy

You know who comes to my mind when I read it, Katherine Hepburn (nope, I don't know why).

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Well, they were both from the same part of the U.S. Did Hepburn ever marry? She seems like a spinster type, but as an actress I'm sure she was more extraverted than Emily.

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When she writes "Another way - to see", does not infer to me that what she could see would be 'superior', only that its 'another way to see'

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Hmm. I would agree with that. It hadn't crossed my mind.

I think she married Humpthrey 5 or 6 times, if that counts, and Spencer Tracey. I was crazy about her too.

Nope, just checked, Tracy was a companion, nearly the same thing.

I can't help seeing the last line as havnig the stress on the word 'way' - implying that she means seeing another way, as opposed to seeing in another way. I think it's the pause thingy. Anybody else get that?

As I read it, the stress is on the word 'see'. If I marry the person to the style, I can see her saying that, in her kind of flippant, half arrogant way...

another way - to see.. what she wants to see, but the scoundrel Squirrels will not let her, least not here on Earth.

Hepburn married businessman & playboy Ludlow Ogden Smith in 1928 and divorced him 6 years later. They famously got a second divorce in 1942 before he remarried because he wasn't sure that their Mexican divorce was legal! She had a long term affair with Spencer Tracey but never married him and no affair with Humph that I ever heard about. She did star alongside him in the brilliant 'African Queen' though.

I'm not sure about the last line, I can see it both ways. I like that in a poem. If it means the same every time you read it, it's too obvious IMHO.

Yes, a poem for all seasons. So, why be precise, when we should just enjoy the colours it splashes on us. I feel if I read it again and again, Katherine will end up married to Tracy.. somewhere in those words. (nope, I don't know why)

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The third stanza transports the experience beyond that: "The Moments of Dominion / That happen on the Soul / And leave it with a Discontent / Too exquisite - to tell-" This is a deep phenomena she's talking about, obviously because of the allusions, spiritual, trascendental.

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If you read this poem again, taking into account The Squirrels graspless manners to experience the transcendental aspect of tint, then you'll see in stanzas 1, 4, 5, 6, that she is trying to find an angle to grasp this transcendental aspect of The Tint. But to no avail. But yet, she continues throughout the poem to find an angle to grasps The Tint nontheless-even to her very last moments of existence-she refuses to understand The Tint through any other means, except grasping: Until the Cheated Eye
Shuts arrogantly

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If you are looking for a poem more horrible than Crow and one that asks almost as many questions, try More Light! More Light! by Anthony Hecht. It’s a harrowing read.

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Unnamable,

Wow! How absent or unconcious must the soul be to torture for amusement.

Read Raymond Carver's Cathedral, you will see a similar thing developing as in Dickinson's Tint poem.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

I'm not sure about the last line, I can see it both ways. I like that in a poem. If it means the same every time you read it, it's too obvious IMHO.

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I agree. I can read it both ways. But I'm not sure it changes the meaning that much.

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Originally Posted by ktd222

If you read this poem again, taking into account The Squirrels graspless manners to experience the transcendental aspect of tint, then you'll see in stanzas 1, 4, 5, 6, that she is trying to find an angle to grasp this transcendental aspect of The Tint. But to no avail. But yet, she continues throughout the poem to find an angle to grasps The Tint nontheless-even to her very last moments of existence-she refuses to understand The Tint through any other means, except grasping: Until the Cheated Eye
Shuts arrogantly

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Why do you say to no avail? The third stanza states that those things "happen on the soul". But I will say that I'm not getting the fifth stanza as I should. The "Mystery" and the squirrels confuse me. Perhaps we should focus on this stanza. Any thoughts out there?

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The third stanza states that those things "happen on the soul".

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Because if you read this stanza:

The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite -- to tell --

The Moments of Dominion that happen on the Soul; not the Soul causes the Moments of Dominion to happen. She still isn't understanding, even though The Moments of Dominion has happened on her Soul. Her Soul has yet to fully understand, hence, on her Soul. There is this thing going on where just like the Tint and she, the Soul still isn't able to take the Moments of Dominion in, which is another way of saying the Soul hasn't grasped.

The eager look -- on Landscapes --
As if they just repressed
Some Secret -- that was pushing
Like Chariots -- in the Vest --

The Pleading of the Summer --
That other Prank -- of Snow --
That Cushions Mystery with Tulle,
For fear the Squirrels -- know.

These two stanzas are about she suspecting the Lanscape knowing 'something, 'Some Secret -- that was pushing Like Chariots -- in the Vest --.' Yet, she is unable to unlock the secret. I'll let others comment.

I mostly agree with ktd about the 'Happen on the soul' line - think of it as 'happen upon' if you prefer, not 'happen in'.

The moments find the soul and change it, leaving it confused in a beautiful yet disturbing way but offering it no explanation. That's my take on that stanza.

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Originally Posted by ktd222

The Moments of Dominion that happen on the Soul; not the Soul causes the Moments of Dominion to happen. She still isn't understanding, even though The Moments of Dominion has happened on her Soul. Her Soul has yet to fully understand, hence, on her Soul. There is this thing going on where just like the Tint and she, the Soul still isn't able to take the Moments of Dominion in, which is another way of saying the Soul hasn't grasped.

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Yes, I agree here too, its the moments that cause the emotions, her soul is being affected. When you write "... Soul hasn't grasped", you make me confused with 'Their graspless manners'. I think its at the "Summer/Winter" point in the flow that she is summing up something. "Their graspless manners" indicates the Squirrels that do not understand, cannot grasp (it), cannot 'see' (it). And, manners = their habits.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

I mostly agree with ktd about the 'Happen on the soul' line - think of it as 'happen upon' if you prefer, not 'happen in'.

The moments find the soul and change it, leaving it confused in a beautiful yet disturbing way but offering it no explanation. That's my take on that stanza.

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I don't know that she is confused, rather she is merely feeling and enjoying, but like I wrote earlier, its as though, and at the Summer/Winter point, she becomes upset at the Squirrels (and what they represent).

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Their graspless manners" indicates the Squirrels that do not understand, cannot grasp

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If they do not understand, then how is it that they can 'mock us'? I'm not saying your wrong, but not understanding and mocking seems to contridict each other.

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Soul hasn't grasped", you make me confused with 'Their graspless manners'

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Your right, I shouldn't have said it that way. Grasping is what she is trying to do throughout the poem to understand the meaning of the Tint. 'For fear the Squirrels -- know./Their Graspless manners -- mock us'-This states the Squirrels 'know.' Not that they don't understand. And it seems to me, 'Their Graspless manners-' gets at the degree(graspless) of the Squirrels knowing of the Tint. And the narrator senses the degree of the Squirrels knowing as well, even though 'she' cannot.

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Their graspless manners" indicates the Squirrels that do not understand, cannot grasp (it), cannot 'see' (it). And, manners = their habits.

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But you are leaving out this part: 'Their Graspless manners -- mock us' .

They mock in ignorance, and as per their manners/habit. They are graspless of those feelings she has, and cannot see what she can. I am trying to ascertain this word 'graspless' which was ambiguous to me before.. I saw Squirrels with little arms as opposed to Squirrels with little ability to grasp a notion.

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I am trying to ascertain this word 'graspless' which was ambiguous to me before.. I saw Squirrels with little arms as opposed to Squirrels with little ability to grasp a notion.

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Its not a grasping at all.

The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul

To be, as you say, 'in ignorance' is the only way to experience the Tint.

Thats why I felt the piece is reflecting her style, somehow. The Winter arrives, hides it all from the Squirrels. Since Summer/Winter is perpetual, its only in the grave (she mutters to herself), will she be able to understand what she feels. (thats where I am at now, tomorrow it could change).

Understanding of Dickinson's poetry just requires attention to every single word.

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The Winter arrives, hides it all from the Squirrels. Since Summer/Winter is perpetual

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The Pleading of the Summer --
That other Prank -- of Snow --
That Cushions Mystery with Tulle,
For fear the Squirrels -- know.

Theres more here before you even get to the Squirrels. Who's 'Pleading'? Why is the Snow referred to as 'That other Prank'-which means the Summer was the first Prank? The Prank is being played on Who? The Landscape seems like an Entity here.