17 pages • 34 minutes read
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 poem is a lyric: It’s short and the product of personal feelings—in this case, the speaker contemplates the end of one’s consciousness. As the poem focuses on death and funerals, it also borrows from the genres of dirge and elegy—though it is not about a literal funeral. As the poem is tricky to decipher, the riddle genre applies as well; the poem’s lesson (if there is a specific lesson) depends on how the reader solves the puzzle.
The speaker is elusive. The poem doesn’t supply a name, a gender, or much information about who is speaking and why they feel there’s a funeral in their brain. Nevertheless, the dramatic and exaggerated diction (or, choice of words) gives the reader a clue that the speaker is confronting something serious—perhaps grave. Due to Emily Dickinson’s intense, personal relationship with her poetry, many people equate her with the speaker; however, critical consensus is to separate her poetic personas from the real-life Dickinson. Even if Dickinson were the speaker, neutral pronouns still make sense: As the American cultural critic Camilla Paglia notes in Sexual Personae, Dickinson frequently embraced boyish identities in her letters (Paglia, Camille.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson