Distance-Is Not The Realm Of Fox

By Abhivyakti Tripathi

Distance—is not the Realm of Fox

Nor by Relay of Bird

Abated—Distance is

Until thyself, Beloved.

In the first line of this poem, Emily Dickinson talks about the distance that occurs in any sort of relation, assumingly a relationship with love involved. She compares the scenario of a fox finding and pursuing its prey and how the fox cannot just catch prey without eyeing it or locking its target. The fox cannot capture its prey without doing work to actually get there. Similarly, a ‘relay of birds’ will not get you to where you want to be as a relationship. In the third line, Dickinson says that if distance both metaphorically and literally, is decreased, then it will be somewhat praised as it may work better for the beings in the relationship. Emily also interprets people as obstructions in the distance created. The fact that Emily is able to write such poetry that subjectifies only the relationship ties between two people without actually mentioning any of them is just plain remarkable. Now, if we look at the last line the phrase “thyself” (yourself as opposed to ‘thou’) is generalized and can mean a large variety of things like indirectly pointing to the significant other in her own relationship or it can mean the speaker is indicating toward the reader or metapoetically, it can mean the poem itself. Speaking of metapoetry, the entire poem can also be read metaphorically which is one of Dickinson's honed skills. Starting off with distance meaning the act of writing poetry by which she intends to say that poetry cannot be written without hard work and perseverance nor by repeating the same mistakes over and over again. I can infer this because the term ‘bird’ is general and singular which means that it is the same species throughout. Lastly, if the hard work is put in by the writer, the poem of outcome will be dearly admired for its determined effort. One thing that I find very astonishing about this poem is that the line ‘until thyself’ can also mean multiple things but metaphorically speaking, it again creates a contradiction between the fact that writers or Emily herself

is the key link to being able to write the poem and they themselves are the sole hindrance to not being able to fully write poetry. Observing closely, we can see the period after the word ’beloved’ because Dickinson intends to tell the readers that this topic is simply done with and that there will be no further debate on it as she claims that she has stated the mere facts. To conclude, I think that the most Dickinsonian thing about this poem is when she uses ‘thyself’ because it is sort of pointing to a single object or human being and although as mentioned above, it has many meanings, those connotations seem to be fighting each other for the one position Emily has created, and obviously it is very Dickinsonian to let only the worthy in on the distance created.

By Abhivyakti Tripathi