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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.
The form of Poem 937 is itself a bravado act of defiance, really against itself. In a poem that tests and even flaunts the limits of the intellect to contain and control the riotous passions of the vulnerable and open heart, that celebration of emotional extremes is cased in the tidiest of poetic forms: the quatrain. The rhyming pattern—ABCB DEFE—is as conventional as it is tight and reassuringly regular and even predictable. The poem expresses the uncertain aftermath of the intellect’s decimation in two tight, clean quatrains that reassure despite the upheaval, despite the anxious feeling of the mind being cleaved into uselessness, that the intellect survives to record its own chaos. The poem, then, questions the power of the mind that has, since the Renaissance, been the metric for culture and advancement in Western civilization, in a form that has since the Renaissance been the highest expression of the mind to discipline and contain anarchy. How better to explore the tensions between head and heart than by casing that emotional contest in a form that can reassure the continuing viability of the very intellect that appears in the poem itself in fragments.
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