Emily Dickinson's Slant: A reflection

Truth, and a love poem

Spoken rendition of “Emily Dickinson’s Slant”.

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Photo by Martin Sanchez

Process

This past November, I began a third side of Poetry & Process titled Memory. Memory is a newsletter highlighting a poem that includes a chat thread where individuals who want to incorporate poetry more deeply into their life come together to memorize these poems. I have never studied poetry in a formal setting and have only been a student of poetry for the past five years, so choosing a poet and a specific poem for Memory has been more challenging than I expected. It begins with choosing a poet that has a life-sized reputation and searching for poems by that poet that are well respected or resonate with large numbers of people. For poets who I am not well-read in, the process of picking just one poem to insert into precious brain storage feels like a daunting task, especially since there are others that have signed onto this project.

In January, I decided I wanted to pull from Emily Dickinson’s well-known body of work, even though her work is not well-known by me. A poet from the 19th century who lived an isolated life but also displayed a deep wisdom that few individuals ever seem to embody seemed like a great focal point for two weeks. Gold appeared everywhere as I browsed her work, but poem #1263 struck me in the cheek as a poem that has lived in infamy for the way it precisely states a truth that we all experience at some point, but leaves the question of what truth is important to share with others for the reader to interpret. It is an important piece of writing whose lessons are not bound by time and that can help provide words and feelings to many life circumstances. That is a valuable gift.

#1263
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

After publishing the Memory post of Tell all the truth but tell it slant I spent the next two weeks reflecting on this piece and committing it to memory with the Memory community. My time spent reflecting on poems does not typically result in my desire to pen a poem, but that is what occurred with this piece. I felt the need to critique my often-firm desire to move through life in a straight line, putting ideas into black and white categories, and placing other people into firm boxes. In a roundabout way, these are the things that Emily Dickinson’s poem advises against, and what better way to explore the gray area and complexity of people by working to write a poem.

Writing Notebook, Emily Dickinson's slant

Themes

The challenging work of Emily Dickinson’s Slant was to create something original while exhibiting gratitude for Emily’s wisdom and maintaining a clear tie back to the original. That came through in two ways.

First, the beginning two stanzas are an expansion of visual elements. Emily uses a clear visual of light, most strikingly a bolt of lightning and works with that impact throughout her poem. My piece pushed on the visual of slant, using a poetic list to make clear how most, if not all things we encounter contain a metaphorical, if not physical slant.

A mountain piercing the sky.
The pitch of the roof over my head.
My pen as I write on this page.
A candle wick as it burns and disappears.
How I hold the carafe as I pour your coffee.
Every branch on every tree in every forest.
The way the rain plummets to the earth.
These diagonal buffalo check chairs. 
Even this one hundred twenty year floor.

Early spring tulips reaching for the sun.
Sun rays that break apart an evening cloud layer.
My dog’s head when I scratch his cheek.
The bed that holds the river you swim in summer.

My poem paired with the knowledge of Emily’s provides the truth (albeit in a slanted way) that truth is mostly relative. This poem uses our physical world to illustrate that truth cannot be pinned down in a clean manner. Philosophical discussions of truth are rarely resolved. The practical part of our day-to-day life is often cloudy in the specific details of what occurred when one tries to recall them later. We are left with our interpretation of our experiences, our conscious thoughts and feelings, and a mysterious question as to where these all emerge from. These thoughts and feelings become momentary truth, and the person that learns to live from this truth in a way that does not impose on the world but gives to the world is one that knows how to live peacefully in the world.

While exploring the slant in life, this poem also evolves into a love poem. There is a slow shift from stanza one to stanza three in how the poet describes the world, moving from the things he is experiencing to reflecting on the one he is intimate with. Most of the list reflects on objects (mountain, roof, pen, candle) which then moves gradually to the other person (your coffee, you swim, you age). We experience this couple’s time together from night to early morning (a candle slowly burning to early morning coffee), to the sensual line reflecting on the bed that is a river she swims, to the change of the feeling of time as they grow old together.

A mountain piercing the sky.
The pitch of the roof over my head.
My pen as I write on this page.
A candle wick as it burns and disappears.
How I hold the carafe as I pour your coffee.
Every branch on every tree in every forest.
The way the rain plummets to the earth.
These diagonal buffalo check chairs.   
Even this one hundred twenty year floor.

Early spring tulips reaching for the sun.
Sun rays that break apart an evening cloud layer.
My dog’s head when I scratch his cheek.
The bed that holds the river you swim in summer.

Feeling time flow as you age.

The final stanza is the second and more obvious nod to #1263, borrowing words from Emily Dickinson’s poem (delight, lightning, Truth, bright, surprise) to explore beauty, love, and ultimately truth. This stanza was a chore as I expressed a truth that I could not really pinpoint, attempting to write clearly something that cannot be said with words.

Emily used a series of strange capital letters in her poem, so I decided to keep the capital T in Truth in this final stanza. Whatever a “capital T truth” means is up for debate, and since you are the reader, today it is up to you. In my mind it felt like something existential, which was where this stanza attempted to go. It progresses from the first 3 lines where the love poem continues, to the final two where it merges with the exploration of slanted truth, without a clear statement, but a statement that feels true in the gut.

Slant is how beauty can slide,
how experience can shift the stone under my feet,
how my love can tumble to the deep,
a gradual delight with no lightening,
only Truth to brighten and surprise.

Do you see it?

I hope Emily would approve.

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In closing

A final note about writing this poem, one that carries a touch of humor.

The first stanza mentions a chair. As I wrote the poetic list in the beginning, I was taking a mental tour of what surrounds me in my house and my neighborhood. The initial line was “These mid-century modern argyle chairs.”, a reference to two chairs we have in the dining room, and the chairs I sit in when writing before the sun comes up. I shared this poem with my wife prior to publishing and she immediately knew which chairs in our house I was describing, but quickly informed me that they are not mid-century style, nor are they argyle! Initially I thought I would keep the description as is, and call it a slanted truth, but in the end, a lie is a lie, so the line changed to something more accurate, “These diagonal buffalo check chairs.”

Truth might not always be clear, but putting slant on a lie does not magically make it true.

As always, remember to take everything I wrote about the themes in Emily Dickinson’s Slant and entirely throw it out to replace it with what you feel when you read it. This is the intent of the Poetry & Process newsletter, designed to allow you to have space to let the poem do its work in you, by publishing the poem first with the reflection published days or weeks later. Poetry is alive. It will work in each of us in a variety of ways.

May you walk each slant in life with ease.

Brian

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If you missed the “A Poem” post of Emily Dickinson’s slant, I hope you will read and enjoy! You can find it here.

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