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—So she's lamenting this susceptibility to splinters as a weakness of an otherwise powerful human brain? All the while I thought she was celebrating this (as she does the Brain's native powers in the Sky poem), but now I'm seriously considering your reading (and appreciate that you've anchored it on "true").
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—I think so. Or that thought is naturally rebellious. In addition to this, perhaps ED was also framing poetry as rebellious thought. As something that intrinsically splinters or multiplies the mind.
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—Yes I do. Your two points did indeed sound affirmative to me. In scooping a turnpike, the waters usurp the very instrument that was supposed to direct them. Your note on form says that, yes, this poem likewise "benefits" from splinters, and itself attempts to be a splinter in the reader's brain and in literary tradition as a whole.
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—You gave weight to the word "true" from tell all the truth but tell it slant. And so perhaps, the poet favors the brain before the splinter and would have had the brain be more resistant to splinters. I remember though that the poet said the truth should dazzle gradually. There's progression there, from states of less bedazzlement to states of greater bedazzlement. Could it not be that the "true" in the brain within its groove is a provisional truth? That yes, the brain is in part correct, has already achieved something, has trued, and so forth, but it is only on the way to "all the truth" and if truth is superb surprise, then the brain can't stay in that groove for much too long.
