Bees are Black, with Gilt Surcingles —
Buccaneers of Buzz.
Ride abroad in ostentation
And subsist on Fuzz.
Fuzz ordained — not Fuzz contingent —
Marrows of the Hill.
Jugs — a Universe’s fracture
Could not jar or spill.
— Emily Dickinson
20 thoughts on “Poetry: Spring Again, and Bees”
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What does the second stanza mean? I have no idea. But I have always loved the line:
Fuzz ordained — not Fuzz contingent —
😉
Regarding these poetry threads, I’d just like to give a shout out to Mr. Glass, my 12th grade AP English teacher, who helped me discover how to enjoy and love poetry.
I’m not certain. But given the era in which Emily lived, I can offer a suggestion. Perhaps the Fuzz in this poem refers not to pollen, but instead to police. The bees in this poem are the leaders of Organized Crime, with “black” hearts that are only partially obscured by a girling of gold to represent the patina of culture and fine things that overlays the brutality of their existence.
The description of them as “Buccaneers of Buzz” is an allusion to their line of work: running alcohol in the face of Prohibition. Their profits, their way of life, came to exist because of the very laws that proscribe them, and thus it is that they “subsist”, as it were, on the efforts of the Fuzz to bring about their end.
The line that intrigues you so is crucial in this treatment. Here again we recognize the relationship between OC and the police, by mentioning that while it is the laws of the latter that brought the former into being, that now here they have taken on a life of their own. Thus they are not “contingent” on the Fuzz, but it is still the Fuzz which “ordained” them.
Surcingles:A girth that binds a saddle, pack, or blanket to the body of a horse.
Archaic The fastening belt on a clerical cassock; a cincture
Marrow:The inmost, choicest, or essential part; the pith. Amer Her Dict. Contrast with Fuzz, which is apparently superfluous(but only apparently).
We are casual thieves of God’s infinite bounty, but that’s cool, also part of his design.
Hill:City on the Hill? Augustine’s City of God?
Jugs:honey = Grace?
Dickinson justifies It all for me.
No wait. Buccaneers were sanctioned pirates, weren’t they. 🙂
Catsy – Umm, Dickinson died in 1886, so I think she predates prohibition a bit. I like the analysis, though.
Bob M. – I think you are thinking of “privateers” – “buccaneers” are just filthy, bloodthirsty pirates. Arrrr.
Filibusteros!
Free booty!
Whoops. For some reason I always thought she was circa early 1900s.
“For some reason I always thought she was circa early 1900s.”
Glad I didn’t getting around to telling st to note the humorous counterfactual tone of the analysis.
Well, just to counterbalance my know-it-all corrections above, here is my most embarrasing moment of cocktail party literary error:
I was talking with two beautiful girls at a party in san francisco, as they related their experiences as extras in an independent film based on Faust. I was following along, but I kept getting thrown when they mentioned the author, Gertie. I was a smart guy, I knew of the book (though I hadn’t read it), so I helpfully corrected the tall one the next time she said it.
Yeah, I’m a player. God, I still shiver in horror when I think about it.
On a thread below there was a discussion as to whether a painting could be adequately appreciated without knowing the intent of the artist.
For me, much of Dickinson’s work is not available to multiple interpretations, or interpretation at all, or maybe even analysis, but only explication or translation. I feel there is a very concise and specific idea within this poem, theological or spiritual or even sectarian, that might perhaps fill a page of abstract prose. Yet that prose homily would not be the poem.
And perhaps the process of “seeing” that this poem is a discussion of “faith not works” is itself spiritual. Some writers have frightened me, for as I dive ever deeper into the mind of this Victorian spinster I seem to find something too large to fit any finite form.
Maybe I am crazy, but I kid you not, this little poem scares me. I quit reading literature twenty years ago because love is not something easily controlled.
st, ever been to Chicago’s “Goeethy” St.? I hope those women were saying more “Gurta” than “Gertie”…
Glad I didn’t getting around to telling st to note the humorous counterfactual tone of the analysis.
No, that was completely intentional–my tongue was firmly in my cheek. I’ve just been operating with a faulty mental impression of her era for a while, apparently.
Yeah, but the Prohibition thing was pure genius, or was until you spoiled it, damn you.
fuzz ordained
how ’bout an anti-darwinian explanation? the pollen upon which bees feed was ordained by god; it is not the result of “random” mutation.
“the pollen upon which bees feed was ordained by god;”
IIRC, the way “contingent” was usually used was as the antonym of “necessary”. Everyone wore spun wool in those days, and were I expect constantly brushing or combing “fuzz” from their clothes. “Surcingles” in one definition alludes to horse blankets and horses which need brushing. The first three lines contain themes of clothing & pride.
“Hill” kinda throws me, but the idea might be “challenge” or “task”. “Marrows” being plural adds difficulty.
But lines 5 & 6: The most irritatingly superfluous aspects of God’s creation are the necessary and essential revelations of God’s challenge to Man.
“Jugs” I am pretty sure does not refer to flowers but to some kind of honey container. “jar or spill”
“Buccaneers” … the usual idea is the bee as worker, yet she did not say “Labourers of Buzz”. In a sense the bee does “steal” the pollen from the flower. Is God’s purpose for the pollen reproduction of flowers or food for bees?
I am coming round to something like the following reading: the fuzz, superfluous and non-marrow-like though it may appear, is what it was ordained that the bees feed on, so it is not contingent. From our point of view, it may seem contingent. a sort of frivolous extra; from theirs, it is the marrow. (I suspect ‘hill’ of being there for the rhyme.) The jugs hold nectar, and because it is ordained that they do so, nothing, not even the fracturing of the universe, could undo this.
Buccaneers I think is there because the bees are presented, in the first stanza, as ostentatious and gaudy freeloaders; it’s only in the second stanza that this whole line of thought is undone.
One great thing about Dickinson is that whatever else her poems are ‘about’, they always do justice to their ostensible subject. In this case, I think the poem is about, well, bees. But I also think it’s about poets.
“ostentatious and gaudy freeloaders”
I think more than just freeloading, bees descend, take what they want, and split – more piratical than parasitical.
But even more so, the specific visual elements in the first line – gold, black, and fancy belts – evoke “Buccaneers”.