To make a prairie

“To make a prairie” by Emily Dickinson was published posthumously in 1896. The poem consists of a single stanza of five lines. The first three lines rhyme, as does the end couplet, and the meter is largely iambic. Dickinson was part of the American Romanticism movement in literature, which readers see in her focus on nature and the internal workings of the mind. Dickinson wrote during the Transcendentalist movement of literature (though she was never considered a Transcendentalist herself) as well as within the context of Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny as the United States extended its territories. Writing about this westward movement, Dickinson’s poem embodies the themes of resilience, self-reliance, and industry. In her poem, Dickinson also argues that, while traditional hard work and productivity are important, the mental capacity of the individual is even more so essential for their endeavors. Imagination and vision are what are truly necessary to be innovative and effective. Dickinson conveys this message in part through the strategic utilization of repetition and end-stop.

Poet Biography

Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was the treasurer at Amherst College. The role of treasurer at the institution was one that Emily Dickinson’s own grandfather held. After working at Amherst College, her father went on to serve a term in Congress. Dickinson’s mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, was from an upper-class family from Monson, Massachusetts, and her primary occupation was that of housewife. The second oldest, Emily had two siblings—an older brother named Austin and a younger sister named Lavinia.

Dickinson attended school at Amherst Academy for approximately seven years. Afterwards, she went to Mount Holyoke Female Seminary to further her education. However, she did not remain at Mount Holyoke for long, only staying at the institution for a year before leaving for unknown reasons. Throughout her educational career, Dickinson was praised for her proclivity in a number of different subjects. From composition to science, Dickinson seemed to succeed in all of her classes. Her botany class even led her to creating her own herbarium, which is a collection of preserved plant specimens.

It was during her teen years when Dickinson began to truly immerse herself and find inspiration in writing. Benjamin Newton, a good friend of Dickinson’s, gave Dickinson a book of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetry. Emerson’s work greatly impacted and inspired Dickinson, and Emerson read and respected her poetry as well. Dickinson also began to share her own poetry with her friend Henry Vaughn Emmons. These early years of Dickinson’s life saw her form close friendships with a number of women, including Abiah Root, Abby Wood, Emily Fowler, and Susan Gilbert. Unfortunately, Dickinson also lost her cousin, Sophia Holland, during this time. Her exposure to the religious revivals of the early-/mid-1800s led Dickinson to ponder such topics as the nature of the soul and the inner workings of faith. Dickinson’s family members were evangelical Calvinists who attended Amherst’s First Congregational Church. However, despite her family’s affiliation with this particular faith, Dickinson never formally joined any religious institution.

Susan Gilbert, one of the women in Dickinson’s female cohort growing up, married Austin, Dickinson’s brother, in 1856. The two newlyweds moved into the property next to where Dickinson, her parents, and her sister lived. While Emmons introduced Dickinson to Emerson, Gilbert introduced her friend to the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a British contemporary of Dickinson’s. When Dickinson entered her early twenties, she began to isolate herself more and more from the rest of society. She began to stay home and only communicated with certain people through letters. Part of this time, from 1855 to 1859, was spent with Lavinia nursing their sick mother who was afflicted with an unknown disease.

From 1858-1865, immersed in her self-seclusion, Dickinson produced the greatest portion of her work. She started to organize her poems, rewriting them on clean pieces of paper and sewing them together to order them. Dickinson wrote approximately 40 booklets of poems during this period, a total of around 800 individual poems. She primarily shared her work with her sister-in-law, Gilbert, and a select few were published without the poet’s permission. The larger part of Dickinson’s work remained private. In addition to Gilbert, Dickinson did also share her poems with another individual, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, beginning around April 1862.

Between 1864 and 1865, Dickinson journeyed outside of Amherst for what would be the final time, traveling to Boston for medical treatment. Dickinson had iritis, which caused pain and aching of the eyes. After returning back to Amherst, Dickinson once more reverted to her isolation, rarely leaving the house. Within approximately the last 15 years or so of her life, Dickinson wrote around 35 poems each year. These poems, however, did not get bound into pamphlets like her earlier work, but remained loose and unintegrated in the larger collection of her poems.

During these final years, Dickinson also experienced much sadness and death. In 1874 her father died, and her mother died a few years later in 1882. Dickinson’s nephew, Gib, passed away in 1883. Dickinson herself had a stroke and died on May 15, 1886, at the age of 55. Speculations surround Dickinson’s death, specifically regarding whether her stroke was brought on by hypertension. Dickinson never married, and there are also speculations regarding her sexual orientation. Some think Dickinson did share amorous relationships with men and possibly a woman.

Lavinia pulled her sister’s poems together after Dickinson’s death and published them all in 1890 as Poems by Emily Dickinson. Mabel Loomis Todd, a family friend of the Dickinsons, assisted in transcribing the poems, and another acquaintance, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, helped with editing. The editing was geared towards the conventions of the time, which affected how Dickinson’s unique stylistic choices were portrayed to readers. In 1955, a full collection of Dickinson’s work was further released.

Poem Text

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee.

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.

Dickinson, Emily. “To make a prairie.” 1896. Poets.org.

Summary

Dickinson’s speaker initially presents readers with a very didactic tone, giving readers something like a “recipe” for making a prairie. The main “ingredients” in this recipe are just a clover and a bee. These are the only two things, according to the speaker, needed in order to create an entire prairie. In the middle of the poem, the speaker adds another element to this list of requirements for prairie-creation. However, while the first two elements are tangible, this last addition is more intangible. While the fertility of flowers and fields is important for creation, visionary and imaginative capacities are likewise essential. In fact, where physical exertion and industry remain lacking, the speaker indicates that mental exercises represent the more important type of work.