DISCOURSE WITH CARE.

April 28, 2004 by 13 Comments

A Man may make a Remark –
In itself – a quiet thing
That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark
In dormant nature – lain –

Let us divide – with skill –
Let us discourse – with care –
Powder exists in Charcoal –
Before it exists in Fire –

– Emily Dickinson
913 (1865)

Via the Eudæmonist.

Comments

  1. Eliza says
    April 28, 2004 at 1:23 pm

    I know, it’s a pain, isn’t it? I do this all the time. I try to tell myself that my foot just won’t fit into my mouth, but somehow it always ends up there.
    sigh It’s my lot to go through life misunderstood. I never mean any harm by anything I say but somehow the words just come out wrong. I must remember to keep my feet on the ground in future.
    Ho hum.

  2. language hat says
    April 28, 2004 at 2:26 pm

    But Eliza, everybody loves you! Just keep dancing and let the feet fall where they will.

  3. Jack Kelly says
    April 28, 2004 at 2:42 pm

    Having spend a long time researching the history of gunpowder I was struck by the poet’s imagery involving what was at the time the only known explosive. Gunpowder indeed contains charcoal (in a mixture with sulfur and saltpeter). The ingedients were individually harmless; mixed they became explosive.
    My book is called Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards & Pyrotechnics.

  4. Amanda says
    April 28, 2004 at 5:20 pm

    Fascinating. I think Dickinson was interested in delayed effects, and in finding images for them; #913 reminds me of #1261, in that both have to do with dormancy (and “discoursing with care”):
    A Word dropped careless on a Page
    May stimulate an eye
    When folded in perpetual seam
    The Wrinkled Maker lie
    Infection in the sentence breeds
    We may inhale Despair
    At distances of Centuries
    From the Malaria –

  5. language hat says
    April 28, 2004 at 7:27 pm

    That’s quite a poem. And the rhyme of despair and malaria is daring even for Dickinson.

  6. PF says
    April 28, 2004 at 7:30 pm

    Am I also to infer that Page rhymes with seam?

  7. language hat says
    April 28, 2004 at 8:55 pm

    No, we’re dealing with rhymes on the 2 and 4 here.

  8. Alexei says
    April 29, 2004 at 2:33 am

    Why is that poets strive to make lines 2 and 4 rhyme while leaving lines 1 and 3 un-rhymed? It must be a quest for closure. Does anyone know of an English poem where, in each stanza, lines 1 and 3 rhyme but lines 2 and 4 don’t?

  9. PF says
    April 29, 2004 at 12:09 pm

    My bad hats. Is my face red.

  10. Eliza says
    April 29, 2004 at 1:05 pm

    I’m scouring through my poetry book;
    A happy girl I’d be
    To find after a careful look
    Rhymes for lines three and one.
    Alas none do I find so I
    Am posting this small ditty,
    So that at least you’ll all see why
    Lines two and four sound better.

  11. Alexei says
    April 30, 2004 at 6:11 am

    That’s how one of the most original and, perhaps, indecent 20th century Russian poems is structured.

  12. Alexei says
    April 30, 2004 at 6:12 am

    I don’t know what happened to the link: http://noskoff.lib.ru/akuzm010.html#l220

  13. language hat says
    April 30, 2004 at 7:54 am

    Excellent example! (It’s a poem by the notoriously indecent Kuzmin.)

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