Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –

– from Dickinson’s “I dwell in Possibility” (466)

1. Entertaining Dickinson’s mysticism is dangerous. In several poems, she demonstrates a dark realism at odds with flowery diction and a sometimes singsong tone. On the surface, “This is my letter to the World” (519) pleads “Sweet countrymen” to judge her “tenderly.” Yet she shows no tenderness in her judgment of them. The World never wrote to her, she says, and her time was spent gathering the “News” of “Nature.” The countrymen neglected Nature; they neglected her deepest concern, not just her. Her plea is withering criticism: neglect of Nature is neglect of rationality. The word physics comes from Greek phusis, nature. Aristotle identifies man’s nature as potentially that of a rational animal. Dickinson’s world is cruel and stupid, in the last analysis.

A stark outlook also governs “Hope is the thing with feathers” (314). The thing with feathers, “Hope,” is neither immediately identified as a bird, nor its tune as melodious. Only in the face of a vicious storm are these more positive attributes brought forth. “Hope” may be nothing more than a reaction to the absence of hope, its reality always questionable.

2. Still, “the spreading wide my narrow Hands / to gather Paradise” calls forth wonder. Coupled with “Of Visitors – the fairest,” the lines invite speculation of an angelic visitor. How does the mystical emerge from hard, difficult truths? We need to see what questions are at stake in “I dwell in Possibility.” The first stanza, at first glance, resounds with joy:

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Dwelling in Possibility sounds lovely. “A fairer House than Prose,” it feels like a purely imaginative state, not bound by words. Only obliquely does the topic of poetry manifest itself, as a counter to prose. The “fairer House” with “more numerous” windows and “Superior… Doors” stands on its own, refusing to reduce to a simple symbol.

3. Only as the House progresses do we understand the speaker and her concern. Numerous windows speak possibility, but superior doors present a challenge:

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –

Reading “Doors of Chambers as the Cedars” or “Chambers as the Cedars” makes little difference, I suppose. Something is sealed, inaccessible to the eye, or simply inaccessible. “Impregnable,” combined with the room imagery, tells the story: to choose is to favor one possibility over another. The others stand tall, perhaps bloom elsewhere, but yield no fruit for the speaker. One can only enter one room at a time, if that.

Choice means limits, even within a realm of possibility. Those limits constitute potential. Certainly, the poem illustrates that strange merger:

And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

“Roof,” “Gambrels” establish structure, while “everlasting” mocks any earthly doing and “Sky” obliterates the very notion structure ever mattered. It’s too positive, too bright, too temptingly beautiful, though in a way reflective of how we work with limits to transcend them. The speaker has revealed something crucial about herself, while hinting strongly at the darkness choice in itself presents.

4. Why was this poem ever uttered? “I dwell in Possibility” at first sounds like bliss, at last may actually be bliss. Considered carefully, however, possibility means commitment to a decision. The speaker wraps herself in Nature, adopting the rhetoric of its freedom. But she herself has made a decision:

Of Visitors – the fairest –

The most beautiful visitors are not earthly, not real. To dwell in Possibility is to choose loneliness. Not so subtly hiding is her lack of materials for building:

For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –

You could say she’s lonely, has nothing, and has written a poem out of self-delusion. It isn’t quite that simple. Poetry in its original signification, Greek poesis, meant “making,” in the simple sense of making anything. Despite the presence of Nature, all making is in some sense ex nihilo, a gathering neither present before, nor again.