In the name of the Bee –
And of the Butterfly –
And of the Breeze – Amen!
I wrote about this brief, three-line poem this past May. At one point in the past, early publishers thought that it was actually part of a longer work created with two other short poems, and my late-May post focused on that perception along with some discussion as to – in the words of Dickinson scholar Helen Vendler – “what counts as a poem at all." That post is HERE.
Yesterday, my wife and I visited a nearby natural area, so I thought today I would pay tribute to this short celebration of nature, a verse a la Frank Lloyd Wright’s later proclamation, “I believe in God, but I spell it N A T U R E.”
Helen Vendler opens her book, Dickinson, Selected Poems & Commentaries, with an analysis of these three lines. “In this tiny poem,” stated Vendler, “we see a first, second, third, and fourth effort at imagination,” a key ingredient in Vendler’s definition of poetry:
“First: the poet invents the idea of a parody of a Christian form of words, while retaining a trace of its source in its closing ‘Amen.’ And second: the poet decides on the three nouns to be substituted for the three Persons of the Trinity. And third: the poet has to make her trinity of nouns ‘mean something’ in relation to one another (as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are related). While Bee and Butterfly are named and capitalized living beings (as are the Father and the Son), the Breeze is a motion of air (as was the Holy Spirit at Pentecost). And fourth: the nouns chosen must have a ‘spiritual’ quality, must be symbolic as well as ‘real’; the Bee (for Being), the Butterfly (Psyche, the resurrected Soul), and the Breeze (the Spirit) all fit that criterion.”
Vendler concluded her commentary with this:
“It is her own imaginative effort that Dickinson is ‘baptizing’ here, calling on the authority of Nature, not of God.”
In tribute to Dickinson’s “secular Sabbath in the open field,” I thought I’d post a few pics from our short hike yesterday.
Below: Some of the flowers in a butterfly garden. At the time, I did not see any butterflies, though I did some some later in a field we traversed. I did see a busy bumble bee -- in the pic at the far left.
And of the Butterfly –
And of the Breeze – Amen!
I wrote about this brief, three-line poem this past May. At one point in the past, early publishers thought that it was actually part of a longer work created with two other short poems, and my late-May post focused on that perception along with some discussion as to – in the words of Dickinson scholar Helen Vendler – “what counts as a poem at all." That post is HERE.
Yesterday, my wife and I visited a nearby natural area, so I thought today I would pay tribute to this short celebration of nature, a verse a la Frank Lloyd Wright’s later proclamation, “I believe in God, but I spell it N A T U R E.”
Helen Vendler opens her book, Dickinson, Selected Poems & Commentaries, with an analysis of these three lines. “In this tiny poem,” stated Vendler, “we see a first, second, third, and fourth effort at imagination,” a key ingredient in Vendler’s definition of poetry:
“First: the poet invents the idea of a parody of a Christian form of words, while retaining a trace of its source in its closing ‘Amen.’ And second: the poet decides on the three nouns to be substituted for the three Persons of the Trinity. And third: the poet has to make her trinity of nouns ‘mean something’ in relation to one another (as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are related). While Bee and Butterfly are named and capitalized living beings (as are the Father and the Son), the Breeze is a motion of air (as was the Holy Spirit at Pentecost). And fourth: the nouns chosen must have a ‘spiritual’ quality, must be symbolic as well as ‘real’; the Bee (for Being), the Butterfly (Psyche, the resurrected Soul), and the Breeze (the Spirit) all fit that criterion.”
Vendler concluded her commentary with this:
“It is her own imaginative effort that Dickinson is ‘baptizing’ here, calling on the authority of Nature, not of God.”
In tribute to Dickinson’s “secular Sabbath in the open field,” I thought I’d post a few pics from our short hike yesterday.
Below: Some of the flowers in a butterfly garden. At the time, I did not see any butterflies, though I did some some later in a field we traversed. I did see a busy bumble bee -- in the pic at the far left.
Below: A boggy area at the bottom of a steep hill. Standing at the bank, I saw a few tracks in the mud; on the far right, the track could be from a raccoon; the pic beside it is from a deer. I also saw some blackberries-to-be.
Below: Hidden and/or in the distance: Look just about in the center of the pic at the far left and you'll see a deer hiding in the grasses -- you can just make out her eye. In the other two pics, two bucks and at least one doe were barley visible in these areas -- but with a great zoom lens on my wife's phone, we got close ups of them in the pics below.
Below: Close ups of the deer we spotted from afar.
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