I’m an early riser, so I’m often up before sunrise. Of course, our cats love it, because it means a timely breakfast for them. slices on hand).
 | Once I get them fed, I typically head out to our screened-in porch with my iced coffee and banana bread where I edit my daily-dose-of-Dickinson post (and by the way, I live in an area with a coffee shop that sells the world’s best banana bread – I’m not exaggerating in the least – and I always keep several slices on hand). Out there on the porch, in the dim light of astronomical dawn, I can’t help but give audience to the discourse and homilies among the treetop birds – “natures little poets” as Dickinson called them – and I cannot stress how spot-on is Dickinson’s poem “The Birds begun at four o’clock.” |
What a wonderful poem!
The birds start early as the sun makes its ascent during those periods of dawn where light steadily diffuses; and then – check out lines 3 and 4 – “A music numerous as space / But neighboring as Noon.”
I mean, how incredible is that? An amplitude of sound as large as space itself, yet as friendly as a neighbor’s chat at noon. “I could not count their Force,” admitted Dickinson, as their voices spread as tributaries flow upon one another to “multiply the Pond.”
Again, I ask – how incredible – and perfect – is that? And that just takes us to line 8, the poem is just getting started!
Needless to say, there are few, if any, witnesses to this daily performance (“Except occasional man” – and I am fortunate, often, to be such a one), so why do the birds do it? It’s not for applause. Nope. It’s all just for “independent Ecstasy.”
I’m blown away.
Later – as the poem progresses – at that time when sunlight has “engrossed the East,” the “flood” is done, the band is gone, the day moves on. This daily miracle is all but forgotten (this calls to mind the quotidian nonchalance of those who ignore sunsets in “The largest Fire ever known,” discussed HERE.
I love this poem’s focus on the natural world and the interplay between human and animal experience, and I love Dickinson’s ability to imbue ordinary moments with a sense of wonder and the sublime (Once again, allow me to quote Dickinson scholar Julia Hejduk: Dickinson is “a poet of incarnation—of the small, concrete, and quotidian becoming a vessel for the infinite”).
Back in 1890, an early reader of the first edition of Dickinson’s poetry wrote to editor Mabel Loomis Todd and compared Dickinson to another popular poet of the day, J. Whitcomb Riley. Riley, he said, “merely helps us see the things without doing much to help us see into them.” That is certainly not the case with Emily Dickinson.
More on this poem tomorrow.
The birds start early as the sun makes its ascent during those periods of dawn where light steadily diffuses; and then – check out lines 3 and 4 – “A music numerous as space / But neighboring as Noon.”
I mean, how incredible is that? An amplitude of sound as large as space itself, yet as friendly as a neighbor’s chat at noon. “I could not count their Force,” admitted Dickinson, as their voices spread as tributaries flow upon one another to “multiply the Pond.”
Again, I ask – how incredible – and perfect – is that? And that just takes us to line 8, the poem is just getting started!
Needless to say, there are few, if any, witnesses to this daily performance (“Except occasional man” – and I am fortunate, often, to be such a one), so why do the birds do it? It’s not for applause. Nope. It’s all just for “independent Ecstasy.”
I’m blown away.
Later – as the poem progresses – at that time when sunlight has “engrossed the East,” the “flood” is done, the band is gone, the day moves on. This daily miracle is all but forgotten (this calls to mind the quotidian nonchalance of those who ignore sunsets in “The largest Fire ever known,” discussed HERE.
I love this poem’s focus on the natural world and the interplay between human and animal experience, and I love Dickinson’s ability to imbue ordinary moments with a sense of wonder and the sublime (Once again, allow me to quote Dickinson scholar Julia Hejduk: Dickinson is “a poet of incarnation—of the small, concrete, and quotidian becoming a vessel for the infinite”).
Back in 1890, an early reader of the first edition of Dickinson’s poetry wrote to editor Mabel Loomis Todd and compared Dickinson to another popular poet of the day, J. Whitcomb Riley. Riley, he said, “merely helps us see the things without doing much to help us see into them.” That is certainly not the case with Emily Dickinson.
More on this poem tomorrow.
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