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Dickinson's Poetry Emily Dickinson
"I'm Nobody! Who are you?"
Summary
The speaker exclaims that she is "Nobody," and asks, "Who are you? / Are you--
Nobody--too?" If so, she says, then they are a pair of nobodies, and she
admonishes her addressee not to tell, for "they'd banish us--you know!" She
says that it would be "dreary" to be "Somebody"--it would be "public" and
require that, "like a Frog," one tell one's name "the livelong June-- / To an
admiring Bog!"
Form
The two stanzas of "I'm Nobody!" are highly typical for Dickinson, constituted
of loose iambic trimeter occasionally including a fourth stress ("To tell your
name--the livelong June--"). They follow an ABCB rhyme scheme (though in the
first stanza, "you" and "too" rhyme, and "know" is only a half-rhyme, so the
scheme could appear to be AABC), and she frequently uses rhythmic dashes to
interrupt the flow.
Commentary
Ironically, one of the most famous details of Dickinson lore today is that she
was utterly un-famous during her lifetime--she lived a relatively
reclusive life in Amherst, Massachusetts, and though she wrote nearly 1,800
poems, she published fewer than ten of them. This poem is her most famous and
most playful defense of the kind of spiritual privacy she favored, implying that
to be a Nobody is a luxury incomprehensible to the dreary Somebodies--for they
are too busy keeping their names in circulation, croaking like frogs in a swamp
in the summertime. This poem is an outstanding early example of Dickinson's
often jaunty approach to meter (she uses her trademark dashes quite forcefully
to interrupt lines and interfere with the flow of her poem, as in "How dreary--
to be--Somebody!"). Further, the poem vividly illustrates her surprising way
with language. The juxtaposition in the line "How public--like a Frog--" shocks
the first-time reader, combining elements not typically considered together, and,
thus, more powerfully conveying its meaning (frogs are "public" like public
figures--or Somebodies--because they are constantly "telling their name"--
croaking--to the swamp, reminding all the other frogs of their identities).
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