Emily Dickinson and Larissa Szporluk

It’s late January in Wake Forest, and when Emily Dickinson talks about a “certain slant of light” that “oppresses–like the heft of cathedral tunes,” I feel her pain. We are in the thick of winter here, and there are days when the naked trees look violated by that sharp, cool afternoon light. The poem begins with a fairly straightforward image of winter light, but makes it strange by likening it to oppressive cathedral tunes. The unlikely metaphor invokes a sense of foreboding that only deepens in the following stanza, which also serves as an exemplar of Dickinson’s characteristic interior focus: “Heavenly Hurt, it gives us– / We can find no scar, / But internal difference / Where the Meanings, are–” This interior injury is universal, indicated by the introduction of the first person plural pronouns of “us” and “We.” “It,” though apparently referring to the slant of light from the first stanza, has now taken on a spiritual dimension by the speaker’s naming the injury “Heavenly Hurt,” underscoring the religious connotations invoked by the first stanza’s cathedral hymns.

Larissa Szporluk’s poem “Solar Wind,” opens with the Dickinson-like intention of naming the unseen: “I don’t pray. / I just walk out there / where it’s thin / with my bow and aim.” Formally, Szporluk favors Dickinson’s understated, minimal style. The vague identity of “there” in the second line is a physical alternative to prayer (typically understood as a spiritual discipline). But “there” and its indeterminate location suggest an ongoing internal battle between the “real” and the “spiritual” that characterizes the poem at large. Szporluk's poem is in free verse, unlike Dickinson's four quatrains in ballad stanza form (alternating rhyme and unrhymed lines). Still, Szporluk's spare lines and ambiguous pronouns capture something of Dickinson's ability to blur the line between abstract and concrete, opening a window into the mysterious world of “internal differences” without removing enigma.

The speaker in “Solar Wind,” injured by the absence of a visible sign from God, shares in the universal experience Dickinson claims in “There's a Certain Slant of Light.” She (I’ve read the speaker as a female) departs from Dickinson's removed speaker by her particularity. Desperate, she makes her plea to God directly: “Leave if you're leaving. / Leave plain mud. / I don't know what else / is on your beard. / It would be mercy, God. / I grow weird in the field.” Like the shadows in Dickinson, I found myself holding my breath after the last line. 

"Solar Wind" by Larissa Szporluk 

I don't pray.
I just walk out there
where it's thin
with my bow and aim.

But I should have yelled.
I should have changed the world.

A person can die of balance.
just gleam like squid
and disappear.

The fence around our house
is soft with rain.
It can't stop my arrows.
It can't stop

what wants to happen,
the meteors I hear, power lines
blowing from the mountain.

or the girl somewhere
who reads you,
whose skin has memorized your life.
Nothing stops her fingers;
they swim with you at night.

Leave if you're leaving.
Leave plain mud.

I don't know what else
is on your beard.
It would be mercy, God.

I grow weird in the field.