You probably know this poem. For me it is one the poems that shows what poems can do, a marvel of incision, concision, practical insight and ecstatic yearning, breathtaking in its brevity. The accident of a moment – I doubt she spent long making it – it concentrates a lifetime of experience into a burning beam, as a magnifying glass does the sun. If one unraveled it into theses, each would blunt the honed edge of its forty-one words. To an author, especially a confessional author, its advice is as perplexing as it is precious.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant –

All the truth? Isn’t that an infinitude? And isn’t one’s utterance limited by a listener’s capacity to hear? Do you talk of human wretchedness to a tot?

Yet isn’t that the confessional urge, to express all, me in my entirety? But wait! You are not to blurt, “but tell it slant.” What does that mean! Tell all by not telling it, by hinting, as an iceberg’s tip hints at the vastness below?

Success in Circuit lies.

Hamlet urged something similar: “By indirection find direction out.” The trick of art – and yes, it’s a trick – is to bypass Reason, circle it, and implant the emotion in a hearer’s mind, so that the feeling becomes theirs, a discovery not a submission. Tell me what to think and I must accept or reject. Get me to think and I exclaim “A-hah!”

(But beware the sneaky ambiguity of that verb “lies”.)

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth’s superb surprise

The first two lines having exhorted the author, the next two explain the advice. The antecedent of “our” is us, we the reader. Who of us is strong enough to endure Truth’s force? Its intensity would incinerate us as Jupiter did Semele.

That adjective “superb” transforms Truth into a royal personage, disdainful of the infirmity of the riffraff. T. S. Eliot made a similar point when he wrote: “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”

In the second quatrain, the poet practices what she preached in the first line, making her point indirectly – with an analogy -- aslant:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAs Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle gradually

We explain Lightning to children with an implausible story lest they freak out – and aren’t we all children before Truth’s immensity? To acclimate children to the truth, mustn’t we lie? Aren’t God, Heaven, Eternity, Purpose all “explanations kind”?

If we don’t lie about the Truth, that is, tell it “aslant,” what will happen to us? We’ll be blinded – “every man” – by Truth’s enormity. So (the implicit punchline) to save the world from sightlessness, makers of art must “dazzle gradually.”

Inspiring – intimidating – awful – this advice. We are charged with rescuing mankind but we must do so honestly – “tell all the truth” – yet warily, lest we afflict our fellows with more truth than they can bear. We writers cannot bullshit – but we cannot bully either. We must ingratiate, insinuate, conveying our deep truths, perhaps, in a pretty packet of eight sing-song lines. The girlish modesty of Emily Dickinson’s diction belies the fierce passion of her core. How cute, we may think first hearing her poseys, then ouch, she summons us to an impossibly high calling.

This poem, as vividly as any, explains my passion for the form. Here is art as dart – to the heart. When a poem “works,” which isn’t often, it wounds and heartens like no other medium. How to achieve this magic I have no idea, but surely Emily’s right, we must try for “all the truth – but tell it slant”.

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedTell all the Truth but tell it slant –Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth’s superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind –