After many years, I have decided to take a class--a MOOC class to be specific. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. I am taking Modern American Poetry taught by Al Filreis from the University of Pennsylvania. I've just finished my first essay on Emily Dickinson poem, "I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed." Here is the poem, followed by my essay, followed by Professor Als' comments.
I taste a liquor never brewed [edit]
I taste a liquor never brewed --
From Tankards scooped in Pearl --
Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of Air -- am I --
And Debauchee of Dew --
Reeling -- thro
endless summer days --
From inns of Molten Blue --
When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door --
When Butterflies -- renounce their "drams" --
I shall but drink the
more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats --
And Saints -- to windows run
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the -- Sun
-------------------------------------------------------
Alternate Spirituality in Emily Dickinson’s “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed”
or
Getting Drunk Off Nature
If I believe it then it’s religion.
If you believe it then it’s myth.
–Kenneth C. Davis,
Don’t Know Much About Mythology
Right from the start, I taste a liquor never brewed, enters into an extraordinary realm. Dickinson begins with the impossible. You cannot taste liquor never brewed. There is a parallel here with I dwell in possibility—a fairer house than prose. I am unaware of any house built with bricks and planks of prose. The language of the impossible is extended to the next phrase--from tankards scooped in pearl. Well, if you have a tankard lined in pearl, that’s got to be a collector’s item. Dickinson wants to take us on a journey beyond the possible into a world of her interiority of infinite possibility.
This metaphysical ecstatic state is manifested through the imagery of inebriation—the word inebriate is even used. We know from stanza one that this liquor is fairly potent stuff—more potent than any vat along the Rhine. In the second stanza, she refers to herself as the debauchee. This is followed by reeling, and even more drinking, and concludes with calling herself a little tippler.
Nature is the drink of choice in this case. She is drunk from sheer air--inebriate of air--and dew--debauchee of dew--and reels from summer days--endless summer days. Not only is Emily drunk, so are her pals in nature. We have the drunken bee and the butterflies with their drams. Her identification with nature is absolute—this is her
religion.
With stanza three, we have the returning rhetoric of the impossible. Landlords do not turn out bees from foxgloves, and butterflies do not renounce drams—at least not in my backyard. Indeed, such behavior is "unnatural." By extension and implication, Emily is also expected to behave in a way that is unnatural and not
go frolicking about in nature like a drunken wanton. Like the bee and butterfly, she is subject to the landlords. (ED puts landlords in quotation marks.) But who are these enforcers of the unnatural?
Beginning with seraphs topped with snowy hats, the idea of the love of nature as a spiritual drunkenness is challenged by a new metaphor--landlords as the guardsmen of conventional religiosity. Notice the word is landlord, not landlady. Clergy was all male in ED’s day. The seraphs with those hats could easily be bishops with miters. And then we have the saints running to windows. Here we are in a church, and the congregants are gawking out the window at Emily--the little tippler—who is outside (outside not inside)—and
leaning against the--what?—the sun. Notice how the last dash is in ungrammatical position. You can’t have the followed by a dash. This puts in a pause that accentuates that last one syllable word. But the word is not
son, as in Christ--it is sun as in nature. Because the words are homonyms, we cannot help but think son when ED uses sun. This puts a lot of emphasis on sun. Emily is the non-traditionalist, the outsider, the woman in the
world of priestly men, the writer who puts in a dash where no dashes are allowed, who finds her alternate spirituality in nature.
Professor Al: James, this is one of the best essays I've read in this bunch. You really are able to follow the shifting
flow of the conceits, and you have a sense that they are the key to understanding the formal way in which the poem itself is reeling. Really well done.
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