810.1864. The Robin for the Crumb

The Robin for the Crumb
Returns no syllable
But long records the Lady’s name
In Silver Chronicle.

My interpretation:

The poet for the food returns no formal “thanks” but long records the giver’s name in silver poetry.

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Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 set the trope’s standard:

“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee”

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Franklin (1998) tells us there were two manuscripts of Fr810, “about 1864 and 1865”.

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While in the Boston area for eye treatment in 1864 and again in 1865, ED lived with her cousins, Frances and Louise Norcross, daughters of her mother’s oldest sister, at a boarding house located at 86 Austin Street in Cambridge. Her Aunt Lucretia Dickinson Bullard, eldest sister of ED’s father, lived at 24 Center Street in Cambridge, only 1.7 miles from ED’s boarding house. (Google AI)

During ED’s “eight weary months of Siberia”, AKA Cambridge and Boston, MA, for eye treatments, ED’s Aunt Lucretia must have sent her and her cousins a covered dish of food. Apparently, to thank her aunt, ED sent Fr810, ‘The Robin for the Crumb’. ED’s thank-you poem begins “Dear Aunt” and ends “Affy, Emily” (MML432, MML525). Occasionally, ED’s Aunt Bullard would also send bouquets of garden flowers and get-well cards.

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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.