I’ve been writing about “acoustic shifts” – those brought on by major and minor keys in music or by full and partial rhymes in poetry – and Dickinson’s sensitivity to such shifts, and yesterday I discussed “Why – do they shut me out of Heaven,” a poem with partial rhymes and one that refers to a minor voice.
Today, I have another poem that plays on the word “minor,” “Further in Summer than the birds."
Today, I have another poem that plays on the word “minor,” “Further in Summer than the birds."
In the first stanza of this poem, the poet emphasizes the multitudes of crickets (and I’ll explain the crickets later) – now made obvious after the birds have migrated – and how they (i.e., this “minor nation”), en masse, celebrate their Mass when (as noted in the final two lines) “a Druidic Difference / Enhances Nature now.”
Dickinson scholar Judy Jo Small, in Positive as Sound, Emily Dickinson’s Rhymes, said this: “(Dickinson’s) reference to the crickets as ‘A minor Nation’ surely includes the musical sense of the term ‘minor’; that term introduces an analogy between the mysterious (if not exactly ‘Druidic’) ‘Difference’ one feels between the minor and the major keys and the difference between the pensive, elegiac cricket songs of late summer and the songs of the birds earlier in the season.”
By the way, this poem transitions from full rhymes in the first stanza (“grass” and “Mass”), to partial rhyme in the second stanza (“grace” and “loneliness”) to no rhyme in the final stanzas (“low” and “typify,” and “glow” and “now”). If rhyme shapes a poem in a reader’s ear and works as an indicator of poetic structure, what might these shifts in rhyme indicate?
Finally, evidence that Dickinson intended a reference to musical keys in this poem is revealed by two stanzas included in one variant version (there were as many as six variations of this poem); these stanzas, included in the Johnson edition as poem 1775, begin “The earth has many keys.”
I’ll discuss those lines soon; however, tomorrow my plan is to cover some unusual bits of trivia associated with this poem (and how we know the “minor nation” is made up of crickets).
Dickinson scholar Judy Jo Small, in Positive as Sound, Emily Dickinson’s Rhymes, said this: “(Dickinson’s) reference to the crickets as ‘A minor Nation’ surely includes the musical sense of the term ‘minor’; that term introduces an analogy between the mysterious (if not exactly ‘Druidic’) ‘Difference’ one feels between the minor and the major keys and the difference between the pensive, elegiac cricket songs of late summer and the songs of the birds earlier in the season.”
By the way, this poem transitions from full rhymes in the first stanza (“grass” and “Mass”), to partial rhyme in the second stanza (“grace” and “loneliness”) to no rhyme in the final stanzas (“low” and “typify,” and “glow” and “now”). If rhyme shapes a poem in a reader’s ear and works as an indicator of poetic structure, what might these shifts in rhyme indicate?
Finally, evidence that Dickinson intended a reference to musical keys in this poem is revealed by two stanzas included in one variant version (there were as many as six variations of this poem); these stanzas, included in the Johnson edition as poem 1775, begin “The earth has many keys.”
I’ll discuss those lines soon; however, tomorrow my plan is to cover some unusual bits of trivia associated with this poem (and how we know the “minor nation” is made up of crickets).
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