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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.
Given the post-Romantic era in which Dickinson created her poetry, an era in which poets, following the cue of the towering figures in British Romanticism such as William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron, had grown comfortable with the idea that the full register of a poet’s emotions is fit subject for poetic investigation, Dickinson’s investigation into emotions suggests that those poet’s singing of the heart and its graceful energy—whether stunned into reaction by a gathering of wild flowers or by the comely face of a lover—was significantly out of line with the actual rending experience of the heart.
Here the impact of strong emotions registers like a hatchet cleaving the brain, severing in effect the ability to sort through, contain, and direct the heart. The violence with which the emotions strike the poet here suggests that impact, whether through the experience of sorrow or joy, is impossible to ever entirely forget. The poet says how she tried to restore the integrity of the head and heart, the intellect and the emotions, but “could not make them fit” (Line 4). Here the poet reflects helplessness—after all, the ax is swung by another. The poet is a victim of her own heart to the point where logic, thought, and rationality itself seems suddenly (and the poet senses perhaps permanently) out of sync.
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