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Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Even for contemporary readers not familiar with the magnitude and reach of her oeuvre, Emily Dickinson is a known commodity. She is simply the Un-poet: unmarried, unloved, unhappy, unsatisfied, unknown, unattractive (she famously compared her face to a kangaroo’s), unread and unpublished, unappreciated. It is tempting to let the poem rest on the simplification of a quasi-literal reading that reflects the Un-poet. In this reading, Dickinson, herself long seen as a troubled individual, the prototype of the emo-goth hermit who wrestled with depression and melancholia, lays out how it feels to be slowly, steadily faced with mental health conditions, perhaps clinical depression, among others. In this reading of the poem, the cleaving of the brain represents a kind of metaphor for the difficult reality of the onset of psychiatric disorders, perhaps even schizophrenia or the first irreversible signs of a fast-approaching dementia, how in the second stanza the poet simply bids farewell to even the hope that her mental acuity might ever return, that her mental health has forever rendered hope itself ironic. She is forever left with pieces. Within this reading, the poem becomes a claustrophobic echo chamber, encroaching confusion contemplating the agonies and ironies of, well, encroaching mental health experiences.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson