{"id":284,"date":"2003-01-18T16:19:45","date_gmt":"2003-01-18T20:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=284"},"modified":"2007-01-17T14:03:39","modified_gmt":"2007-01-17T18:03:39","slug":"jamaicas-of-remembrance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/?p=284","title":{"rendered":"Jamaicas of Remembrance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rabbit wants to know, or pretends to want to know<\/a>, what “Jamaicas of Remembrance” are in the following bit from Emily Dickinson:\n<\/p>\n

And so encountering a Fly
\nThis January day
\nJamaicas of Remembrance stir
\nThat send me reeling in.<\/p>\n

I will answer the question as if it were serious though this will no doubt lead to my being made fun of. Humiliation favors the bold.<\/p>\n

Emily Dickinson spent a lot of effort in her poetry on being odd, although she was pretty odd without trying. She would pick the proximate word very often, not the obvious one but the next one over. Most of her really weird locutions can be traced to this habit. Sometimes it would work, more often not. There’s an instance of each in “There’s a certain slant of light”:\n<\/p>\n

There’s a certain slant of light,
\nWinter afternoons,
\nThat oppresses, like the heft
\nOf cathedral tunes.\n<\/p>\n

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
\nWe can find no scar
\nBut internal difference
\nWhere the meanings are.\n<\/p>\n

None may teach it any,
\n‘Tis the seal, despair,–
\nAn imperial affliction
\nSent us of the air.\n<\/p>\n

When it comes, the landscape listens,
\nShadows hold their breath;
\nWhen it goes, ’tis like the distance
\nOn the look of Death.<\/p>\n

In the first stanza “heft” for “weight” is such an obvious failure, in apposition to “oppresses,” that her first editor, Mabel Todd, used “weight” anyway, even though it has no textual warrant. On the other hand, in the last stanza, “look of Death” for “face of Death” is completely successful. You win a few, you lose a few.<\/p>\n

“Jamaicas of Remembrance” is like that. “Jamaica” is an exotic and uncharted region, or was in 1884, and that’s all she means. It sounds like it should be more but it isn’t. (The preceding analysis was partly lifted from the late and great J.V. Cunningham.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rabbit wants to know, or pretends to want to know, what “Jamaicas of Remembrance” are in the following bit from Emily Dickinson: And so encountering a Fly This January day Jamaicas of Remembrance stir That send me reeling in. I will answer the question as if it were serious though this will no doubt […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-2-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}