The "Thesis" Poem: Dickinson, Sappho and Stevens
This is the third in a series of short essays on techniques I intend to steal from Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson often “proves” or “shows” in a poem that an initial claim is true. This sort of poem, I call it the “thesis” poem, begins with an assertion that takes the formulation X=Y. The trick is to make the initial claim striking and engaging enough to compel the reader to continue. Thesis poems achieve this goal by making a claim that 1.) at first seems counterintuitive; 2.) has dynamic opposition to it built into the poem; 3.) is so wild that the reader most likely never considered the matter before; or 4.) turns an abstraction into a concrete image. This essay will consider these four types on the basis of representative examples found in the works of Dickinson, Sappho and Stevens.
1.) Opening claims that buck popular belief always draw the reader in—he/she wonders how a person could say such a thing and feels compelled to keep reading and find out.
Winter is good - his Hoar Delights
Italic flavor yield -
To Intellects inebriate
With Summer, or the World -
Generic as a Quarry
And hearty - as a Rose -
Invited with asperity
But welcome when he goes. (Poem 1316)
Dickinson immediately engages the reader by calling winter, that most hated of seasons, “good.” And why? Because his “Hoar Delights” make “Intellects inebriate/With Summer” dream of the delights of warmer seasons, Mediterranean pleasures, “Italic flavor.” Winter is “hearty – as a Rose” not from any of his own qualities, but because his very lack of “Italic flavor” compels “Intellects” to recollect warm and pleasant days. Let’s consider another example:
Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away. . . (Poem 1657, 1-4)
The opening two lines of this poem provide an even more striking example—contrary to popular belief, Eden is where we live “every day”; we fail to recognize it until we “drive away” at death.
2.) The author of a thesis poem can also make the initial claim dynamic by first presenting a series of (wrong) views held by others. A rhetorical focusing device known as the “priamel” serves this function well: in it, foils (usually three of them) are introduced to set off the poet’s climactic assertion—the one that will be “proved”. The priamel generally has the following formulation: some say X=A, others say X=B, still others say X=C, but I say X=Y. The opening of Sappho 16 provides a concise example:
Some call ships, infantry or horsemen
The greatest beauty earth can offer;
I say it is whatever a person
Most lusts after.
Proving the point will be no trouble . . . (Sappho 16, 1-5, my translation)
Sappho goes on to support her thesis with the exemplum of Helen of Troy—her eros for Paris compelled her to abandon her husband, children and other family and commit adultery.
3.) The thesis poem can also work well when the poet begins with a grand and extravagant proclamation. Wallace Stevens often begins poems this way:
The romance of the precise is not the elision
Of the tired romance of imprecision.
(“Adult Epigram,” 1-2)
Thought is false happiness. . .
(“Crude Foyer,” 1)
The moon is the mother of pathos and pity
(“Lunar Paraphrase,” 1)
Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil.
(“The Comedian as the Letter C,” “I: The World Without Imagination,” 1)
These statements are not counter-intuitive like the examples above. Rather, they arrest the reader with the authoritative manner in which they are presented—a pseudo-religious or pseudo-scholarly tone. As it is unlikely that the reader has ever tried to define the “romance of the precise,” for example, he does not have an opinion one way or the other about the veracity of the claim presented but succumbs to the commanding tone of the authority uttering them.
4.) A further and very common approach to the thesis poem involves the embodiment and definition of an abstract concept. One of my favorite examples appears as an aria in Bizet’s Carmen: L'amour est un oiseau rebelle (“Love is a rebellious bird”). Dickinson provides us with many examples of this type of poem:
Faith — is the Pierless Bridge
Supporting what We see
Unto the Scene that We do not —
Too slender for the eye . . .
(Poem 915, 1-4)
Hope is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —
(Poem 254, 1-4)
These poems provide allegories of big concepts in that they embody them and include representative details. Dickinson’s allegories, however, greatly differ from the Medieval sort—hers are ambivalent and far more complex. Faith, for example, is “pierless” bridge (a bridge without supports) that is “supporting what We see . . .”, and the pun on pierless—“peerless” or “without equal”—complicates the picture with polyvalence.
Forgive me, readers, for my categories and pigeon-holing. I have loved Dickinson’s poetry since childhood but despaired of getting anything out it I could use in my own work. The descriptive analysis I have done in this and my previous essays is the only way I have found to work through her idiosyncrasies and expansiveness and come out the other side with techniques I can apply. Thank you for your patience.
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Aaron Poochigian
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