853.1864.She staked Her Feathers – Gained an Arc –

She staked Her Feathers – Gained an Arc –
Debated – Rose again –
This time – beyond the estimate
Of Envy, or of Men –

And now, among Circumference –
Her steady Boat be seen –
At home – among the Billows – As
The Bough where she was born –
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My biographical interpretation of ‘She staked Her Feathers – Gained an Arc -’, F853:

Stanza 1

She staked Her Feathers – Gained an Arc –
Debated – Rose again –
This time – beyond the estimate
Of Envy, or of Men –

S1.

Before 1860, ED thought she had dedicated her life to composing great poems, but her four-year correspondence with “Master” and his fateful visit that summer almost sidetracked her life’s “Arc”. She fought hard to escape her worship of older men, her father obsession, then she spread her wings and rose again, this time beyond the “estimate of Envy, or of “Men”.

Stanza 2.

And now, among Circumference –
Her steady Boat be seen –
At home – among the Billows – As
The Bough where she was born –

S2.

And now she soars the outer boundaries of poetry, her boat steady while she composes poem forms no one has ever seen before, breaking all the rules, “At home – among the Billows”, confident she has recovered “The Bough where she was born –” to be.
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I think this poem, ‘She staked Her Feathers – Gained an Arc’ is ED’s description of the “arc” of her life from [1] before Wadsworth’s visit, [2] during and for two or three years after his “visit” to Amherst, and [3] the remainder of her life.

I think ‘Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning—’, F841, marks the watershed moment when ED decided to swear off any distraction from her initial life purpose, composing great poetry.

I think poems F843, F844, F845, F847, F848, F850, and F851 form a septet of rededication to using her remaining days to compose world-class poems. Whether that happens, we can judge from her remaining poems, F851-F1789. It will be hard for her to improve on the impropriety of her past poems.

For those reasons, I think F841 is the most important poem ED composed during the first 34 years of her life.
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ED suggested four alternate words in pencil on her manuscript of F853:

Line 1.

Feathers {Wings}
Arc {Bush}

L1.

I much prefer ED’s original words because “Wings” and “Bush” seem intended to hide the gist of the poem. Perhaps, ED felt she needed camouflage in case someone solved her riddle about the “Arc” of her life, that is, she composed a public and a private version of this poem.

Line 3.

estimate {inference}

L3.

I like both ED’s words because “estimate” implies she doesn’t care what other’s think about her life and poetry, and “inference” suggests she doesn’t care whether someone understands the “Arc” of her life. She’s going to keep doing what she’s been doing.

Line 7.

home {ease}

L7.

I prefer ED’s alternate word, “ease” because it implies she not only feels comfortable with the “Billows” of her life, but it also implies she is not just at “Home” with the tough times of life, but that she’s also at “ease” because she knows what “Billows” are.
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ED’s Stanza 2 rates paradigm status for how an experienced poet, or any person experienced in their line of work, feels, compared to a tyro:

And now, among Circumference –
Her steady Boat be seen –
At home – among the Billows – As
The Bough where she was born –

Speaking as a former guide of 60 canoe trips over 58 years in Quetico Provincial Park, Ontario, paddling a canyonesque seven-mile lake against a stiff in-your-face breeze and high waves, read “Billows”, scared the shit out of any novice in my crew, but many years of fighting such gales gave me “confidence, read “At home – among the Billows”, that turning 45 degrees out of the wind and paddling like hell until your endurance breaks, pulling into a cove to rest, then re-emerging into the gale, and repeating as many times as it takes to reach the portage trail at the far end of the lake was just another safe day in paradise.

So it is with life.

HOME

After commenting on Poems 1-763 (Franklin) on The Prowling Bee’, I am convinced that (virtually) all of Emily Dickinson’s (ED’s) poems have a factual historical level in addition to their various poetic levels of meaning. The reason for her instant and continuing public adulation (1890 - present) was and is, by far, poetic. She is one of the "Greats" that she always dreamed to be, despite her lifelong refusal to publish. That refusal freed her from criticism and allowed her to explore the outer boundaries of poetic power.

More than a century of scholarly research has resulted in somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 books and published academic papers about ED. A large majority of these publications focus only on the “poetic levels” of one or more of ED’s poems. Publications that consider both the “historic level” and “poetic levels” comprise a small minority. Publications that focus only on the factual history of her life probably number less than 100. (All numbers in this paragraph are my estimates.)

Unfortunately for ED’s universe of readers, these two basic levels (historical and poetic) cannot be separated into two ivory towers. Every history-level publication that I know of includes at least some discussion of the poetic level(s).

The reverse is not true. In fact, authors of the “poetry-level” school seem to avoid commenting on the historical level, sometimes admonishing that a poem must stand on its own, without concern for its historical roots. To my knowledge, there are (virtually) no published “history-level” books or articles that totally ignore ED’s poems and their poetic levels.

Of course, ED’s refusal to publish her poems was only possible because of lifelong financial and daily social/housekeeping support by her family, especially her father and sister, respectively. In addition, throughout her life, the Dickinsons hired servants, first Negro and later Irish, some of whom became much more than housekeepers for ED.

My point is that our appreciation of ED's poems can be enhanced by understanding both poetic and historical levels of her sound and sense. We impoverish ourselves if we ignore their historical base.