RPO -- Annie Finch : Letter For Emily Dickinson

Annie Finch (1956-)

Letter For Emily Dickinson

1When I cut words you never may have said

2into fresh patterns, pierced in place with pins,

3ready to hold them down with my own thread,

4they change and twist sometimes, their color spins

5loose, and your spider generosity

6lends them from language that will never be

7free of you after all. My sampler reads,

8"called back." It says, "she scribbled out these screeds."

9It calls, "she left this trace, and now we start" --

10in stitched directions that follow the leads

11I take from you, as you take me apart.

12You wrote some of your lines while baking bread,

13propping a sheet of paper by the bins

14of salt and flour, so if your kneading led

15to words, you'd tether them as if in thin

16black loops on paper. When they sang to be free,

17you captured those quick birds relentlessly

18and kept a slow, sure mercy in your deeds,

19leaving them room to peck and hunt their seeds

20in the white cages your vast iron art

21had made by moving books, and lives, and creeds.

22I take from you as you take me apart.

Notes

1] Emily Dickinson: New England poet (1830-86).

5] Cf. Dickinson's poem "Cobwebs" (1896):

The spider as an artist
Has never been employed
Though his surpassing merit
Is freely certified
By every broom and Bridget
Throughout a Christian land.
Neglected son of genius,
I take thee by the hand.

8] "called back": Lavinia Dickinson inscribed this on Emily's gravestone in the West Cemetery, Triangle Street, Amherst. It is the title of a poem published in her 1896 collection of poems:

Just lost when I was saved!
Just felt the world go by!
Just girt me for the onset with eternity,
When breath blew back,
And on the other side
I heard recede the disappointed tide!
Therefore, as one returned, I feel,
Odd secrets of the line to tell!
Some sailor, skirting foreign shores,
Some pale reporter from the awful doors
Before the seal!
Next time, to stay!
Next time, the things to see
By ear unheard,
Unscrutinized by eye.
Next time, to tarry,
While the ages steal, --
Slow tramp the centuries,
And the cycles wheel.

screeds: fragments, pieces.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of Annie Finch or Tupelo Press permissions department.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text:
Publication date note: Calendars (Dorset, Vermont: Tupelo Press, 2003): 6. Cornell University Library OLIN PS 3556
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition:
Recent editing: 1:2004/6/16

Composition date note: Composed 1993.

Other poems by Annie Finch