Clear as a Belle

For the past couple of days, I’ve been discussing Dickinson’s poem “I think the Hemlock likes to stand.” 

Yesterday, I focused on the word “marge,” a word with which I was unfamiliar, and I ended my post with this:

“’Twas a 'Marge of Snow' piqued my interest in the poem, but wait – there’s more!  I would venture to say that this poem is not necessarily ‘readily accessible’ to today’s general public.  Dickinson definitely had a robust vocabulary, plus – as you can see throughout the poem – she was highly intelligent.  Was she being purposely profound or esoteric in this work?  Not really.  Of course, she did use terminology more readily accessible to those of her age, and she did write for an educated reader, but I would not aver that she was being deliberately complex so as not to be understood – say, like Ezra Pound.”

So what about this poem, above and beyond the “marge”?

First, there are words with which I am familiar but are not part of my day-to-day vocabulary:  “slake,” “cloy,” “hoar,” and “Tabernacle” (to be honest, though, I more than occasionally use “tabernacle” when I’m being snarky online, especially if/when Maggots attempt to goad me into debate, and they declare that my opinion is “wrong”; I shoot back something along the lines of, “Oh, I didn’t realize that you were such a tabernacle of wisdom”; I’m sure they have no idea what I even mean). 

Also, the poem contains a few obscure geographical references:  Lapland, the Don, and the Dnieper.  Stir in a number of puzzling images (“Marge of Snow” – discussed yesterday – “Norwegian Wines,” “satin Races,” “Children of the Don,” and the final line’s “Wrestlers”), and voila, the result makes for a challenging read. 

What do you make of this poem?  Is it one that draws you into Dickinson – or not so?