What do you call the sound produced by something striking water?
Okay, before I get to that, my recent posts have explored Dickinson’s use of the words “house” and “home,” and one other poem with “home” I’d like to share is “A Bird came down the Walk.” It’s a thoroughly delightful poem about a bird – and Dickinson describes all the business of that bird as he walked his daily beat.
Okay, before I get to that, my recent posts have explored Dickinson’s use of the words “house” and “home,” and one other poem with “home” I’d like to share is “A Bird came down the Walk.” It’s a thoroughly delightful poem about a bird – and Dickinson describes all the business of that bird as he walked his daily beat.
There are so many wonderful images in the poem – the Angle Worm (RIP), the convenient Grass, the sideways hop, the Beetle, the rapid eyes (like frightened Beads), and his Velvet head – just to name a few.
The final lines are described by poet and critic Helen Vendler as follows:
“Dickinson puts all her charm to work at the end of the poem, stifling both savagery and fear in the opulence of her ‘oh’ sounds, accompanied by alliterating phrases: ‘rolled . . . rowed .. . Home ... Oars . . . Ocean;' followed by her light ‘silver .. . seam’ and her buoyant ‘Butterflies, off Banks of Noon.’ In the synthesizing Dickinsonian imagination, the ocean's fish, which swim with splashing sounds, are by the one word ‘plashless;' metamorphosed into a swarm of silently moving butterflies.”
One doesn’t come across the word “plash” all that often – at least I don’t – and “plash” is the sound produced by liquid striking something or being struck. Dickinson used a form of the word in three poems:
Plashless: A Bird came down the Walk
Plashing: A Prison gets to be a friend
Plash: I’ve known a heaven like a tent
The final lines are described by poet and critic Helen Vendler as follows:
“Dickinson puts all her charm to work at the end of the poem, stifling both savagery and fear in the opulence of her ‘oh’ sounds, accompanied by alliterating phrases: ‘rolled . . . rowed .. . Home ... Oars . . . Ocean;' followed by her light ‘silver .. . seam’ and her buoyant ‘Butterflies, off Banks of Noon.’ In the synthesizing Dickinsonian imagination, the ocean's fish, which swim with splashing sounds, are by the one word ‘plashless;' metamorphosed into a swarm of silently moving butterflies.”
One doesn’t come across the word “plash” all that often – at least I don’t – and “plash” is the sound produced by liquid striking something or being struck. Dickinson used a form of the word in three poems:
Plashless: A Bird came down the Walk
Plashing: A Prison gets to be a friend
Plash: I’ve known a heaven like a tent
About this poem Franklin wrote, “Three (one lost), variant, about summer 1862. The lost manuscript was sent to T. W. Higginson, probably in the fifth letter to him, written about August 1862. Higginson listed it for Mabel Todd on 13 May 1891 as one of the poems he had received…and he published it in the October 1891 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.”
I’ll have some follow-up on this tomorrow.
I’ll have some follow-up on this tomorrow.
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