Dickinson, “I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl” (#443)
Why does Emily Dickinson extol “little duties” in the wake of a catastrophe?
by Robert Pinsky
Emily Dickinson’s poems have a distinctive interplay of mystery and clarity. Her way of making phrases and sentences, and of stretching them across lines of verse, attains a clarity less like that of a contract or scorecard than the clear meaning of a facial expression, or a hand gesture, or a carriage of the whole body—whether as in the little movements of ordinary life or as in a dance.
“I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl” presents those ordinary, domestic, and personal actions of the body as a dutiful surface overlaying a mystery: a time, “some way back,” when life delivered an unspecified blow so severe that existence stopped.
That great loss has left a great, invisible hollow. Despite the absolute emptiness—or because of it, she says—daily actions are performed “precisely” and with “scrupulous exactness” by one who keeps on living after life actually has closed. (Dickinson’s poem No. 1732 begins “My life closed twice before its close.”) There’s a religious overtone to speaking of life as having a “Reward” and an “Errand”—errand, a wonderfully humble little word opening onto a great expanse! But as if to limit that overtone (or to make clear that this feeling is not exactly Christian resignation), the poem also includes a much different vocabulary: “Science” and “Surgery” and “Telescopic Eyes.” Audaciously, she declares that the protective veil of the ordinary provides a shield for the sake of Science and Surgery—”not for ours.”
The movement of the poem through its taut, suspended phrases merits the adjective “Telescopic”: Here is a work of art that artfully, rapidly telescopes between kinds of scale—”the very least” and the “infinite,” a shawl on the shoulders and a bomb at the bosom. The central, generative wound remains mysterious, a silence that gives conviction to Dickinson’s series of extreme—yet, in their way, understated—assertions that this wound is absolute.
I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl—
Life’s little duties do—precisely—
As the very least
Were infinite—to me—I put new Blossoms in the Glass—
And throw the old—away—
I push a petal from my Gown
That anchored there—I weigh
The time ’twill be till six o’clock
I have so much to do—
And yet—Existence—some way back—
Stopped—struck—my ticking—through—
We cannot put Ourself away
As a completed Man
Or Woman—When the Errand’s done
We came to Flesh—upon—
There may be—Miles on Miles of Nought—
Of Action—sicker far—
To simulate—is stinging work—
To cover what we are
From Science—and from Surgery—
Too Telescopic Eyes
To bear on us unshaded—
For their—sake—not for Ours—
‘Twould start them—
We—could tremble—
But since we got a Bomb—
And held it in our Bosom—
Nay—Hold it—it is calm—Therefore—we do life’s labor—
Though life’s Reward—be done—
With scrupulous exactness—
To hold our Senses—on—
……………………….……—Emily Dickinson
Originally published in Slate, January 27, 2009.