Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, November 19th, 2004.

Today's poem is from Emily Dickinson.

It is number 543 in her poetic works, also known by its opening line.

I fear a man of frugal speech.

I'll read it once, say a few things, and read it one more time. I fear a man of frugal speech. I fear a silent man. Her anger I can overtake, or babbler,

entertain. But he who weigheth, while the rest, expend their furthest pound of this man, I am wary.

I fear that he is grand.

This is one of the Emily Dickinson poems I love most because it is so representative of Emily

Dickinson. I fear a man of frugal speech, she says, but Dickinson is a woman of frugal speech,

and her whole body of work is evidence of how powerful that approach can be. Measured words and few are sometimes the means

for plumbing the deepest depths. Here she gives us two kinds of talkers in contrast with the man

of frugal speech, the silent man or the man who speaks little, the babbler who talks

on and on, sometimes to no purpose, and he's easy enough to deal with, he can be entertained

by a clever woman. And then the harangor who's treated first, and for my money, is worse, the man who believes that intelligent or even masculine discourse involves obscenities involves domination of his intellectual opponents.

Everyone who doesn't think as he thinks is an enemy and must be converted

at the end of the sword, which is his tongue. But those types can be easily overtaken,

our speaker says, with confidence. And perhaps she means that she's confident her wit is equal

to that task, or perhaps she means and understands that sometimes to be silent, to be the person of

frugal speech, is to be the de facto victor in those kinds of encounters. And perhaps it's precisely

because of the contrast that he draws between himself and the man who weighs his words.

Because the talker, whether the babbler or the harangor,

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