Comment 5 of 6, added on February 18th, 2008 at 3:44 PM.

"Fundamental", "elemental", and "formal" --these descriptors of "Devil's Work", one in each stanza uniting the poem, are chilling in their scientific detachment. "Crash's Law" becomes a grim take off on scientific principles and mathematical rules (such as X's Law, the Law of Gravity). The word "crash" carries a bit of an "accidental" connotation that ED challenges. No accident, a crash follows an accumulation of little "slip"s ("slipping", 12). Putting the Devil into this implies both that little slips are evil and that evil exists in the middle of all our busy-ness, work, and thoughts. The words "processes" and "organized" and "consecutive" add to this sense of evil always calculatingly at work, always elbowing in in the form of any not quite right short cuts -- "The Devil is in the Details"? The word "Cuticle" used here requires a good dictionary but the idea of a little chip or cut in an unimportant place destroying the whole is also fitting.
What kind of Crumbling and Crash can this poem apply to? Surely to the sudden revelations that destroy a character, as we are so used to reading about in the news and in historical muckraking. Also to personal, psychological breakdown, as is so often assumed in reading this poem as if it is "Just another Dickinson depression piece." But so many impersonal and cold adjectives emphasize the public and institutional crash over the personal and psychological. Surely little individual misdemeanors count in a social or economic or political system. Those little cheats and quick and dirty solutions are
not forgivable errors of individuals. They involve the "Soul", and that is individual, but they bring down a world too as each is a "Borer in the Axis" (7). This image conjures a picture of the world, a globe spinning on its axis. So one individual stretch of ethical or moral boundaries can have devastating global consequences.
This timely poem could be applied to current financial crashes as well as to the way the War in Iraq keeps going and seems to be bringing down ("crumbling") the country's reputation, economics, and functioning although it was built on apparently deliberate deceptions. This poem is a guide to the way an institution and an individual become corrupt and, of course, being Emily Dickinson, can be applied to any seemingly sudden "Fail"ure.

N Sullivan from United States