She is as in a field a silken tent At midday when the sunny summer breeze Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, So that in guys it gently sways at ease, And its supporting central cedar pole, That is its pinnacle to heavenward And signifies the sureness of the soul, Seems to owe naught to any single cord, But strictly held by none, is loosely bound By countless silken ties of love and thought To everything on earth the compass round, And only by one’s going slightly taut In the capriciousness of summer air Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
This sonnet by Robert Frost (“The Silken Tent”) presents us with an image of harmonious connections between an open, unifying structure and its environs. The lines by which the tent is held, which might otherwise be a form of bondage (and threaten to become so), are here relaxed, are ties not of unwanted imposition, but of “love and thought” that support the soul without interfering with its heavenward orientation. All things are at ease with each other, and so the beautiful is given room in the spaciousness of the tent; perhaps heaven is invited in under the auspices of the pole. Certainly there is an erotic dimension to the poem, as is only fitting for a sonnet depicting an unknown “she.” The images of the tent and the cedar pole are drawn from the Song of Song’s tents of Kedar and cedars of Lebanon, which evoke images of beauty and erotic space wherein the lovers might be joined: “the beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir” (1:17). Is transcendence invited in? Are the connections of love to the things of earth brought together with heaven in the tent, so that the erotic joining of the two might perfect the relationships between things? Is the poem itself the tent wherein the otherwise chaotic and oppressive relations of the world might be harmonized by the heavenward synthesis of the poet?
All such considerations and more are present here, and it is a testament to the power of literature, and art more generally, that fourteen lines of verse are able to prompt such reflections in the splendor of an aesthetic feat, are potentially able to effect a complete transformation of one’s consciousness and perspective of the world and of art.
It is for this reason that I have named this page A Silken Tent, for here I hope to draw together by “ties of love and thought” reflections upon art, particularly literature and film. As the silken tent is an image of openness, however, I do not intend to entirely restrict these reflections to any one field, but to make space for any media, whether religious, historical, scientific, or what have you, that might find a congenial place here. My goal is not to offer definitive readings or scholarly essays, but to engage with my material in as open and receptive a manner as I am able, to allow it to enter into the tent as a place of hospitality.
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My intention is to provide at least two substantive articles a month about various books, movies, or other media born from my own encounters with them. I also intend to offer occasional shorter pieces on a range of relevant and perhaps not-so-relevant subjects, such as reading foreign-language texts, recommended reading/listening, gardening, running, and so on.
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