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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.
Because Dickinson published only seven of her more than 1700 poems during her lifetime, providing any one of her poems with an appropriate (and accurate) historical context is challenging. Dickinson herself in filing her unpublished poems tended to bunch them by category—poems about nature, poems about love, poems about death—rather than in any chronological ordering. As her poems began to find their way to publication long after her death in 1886, it became something of a parlor game to try to find some keys in the poems themselves to when they might have been written.
That endeavor underscores the nature of the historical context of Dickinson’s poems in that they almost entirely lack that reassuring anchorage in the times and era of their composition. The most likely year of composition for Poem 937 is 1862—ish. The year is remarkable in that the poem does not appear to reflect the reality of her nation in the process of coming apart at the seams, a metaphor potentially applicable to the poem itself. It is not as if Dickinson was unaware of her historical moment. Although long framed as some kind of haunted recluse, Dickinson was in fact much engaged with her world, through correspondence and through her role as the kind of de facto administrator of her father’s household.
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