“I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” is Emily Dickinson’s playful eight-line poem, written around 1861, in which the speaker proudly calls herself a nobody and compares being famous to a frog croaking its name to a bog. It was first published in 1891, five years after her death, in Poems: Second Series.
Our reading is that the poem is a joke with a serious core. It turns obscurity into a secret club and fame into something ridiculous, and it was written by a poet who chose privacy and published almost nothing while she lived. That she became one of the most famous poets in English is the irony the poem seems to predict.
At a Glance
- Poet
- Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
- Written
- About 1861
- First published
- Poems by Emily Dickinson: Second Series (Roberts Brothers, 1891), untitled, in the section “Life”
- Collected in
- The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson (1955), as J288, and by R. W. Franklin (1998), as F260
- Form
- Lyric in two quatrains
- Length
- 8 lines
- Meter
- Loose common meter, with longer and shorter lines alternating (“then THERE’S a PAIR of US, don’t TELL”)
- Era
- Victorian
- Best-known lines
- “I’m nobody! Who are you? / Are you nobody, too?”
ON THIS PAGE
Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · Related Poems
Summary
The speaker introduces herself as a nobody and asks whether you are one too. If you are, there are two of you, and the two of you should keep quiet about it, because the world would banish you if it knew.
The second stanza turns the joke on the famous. Being somebody is dreary and public, like being a frog that spends the whole day croaking its own name to a swamp that admires it. In eight lines, Dickinson defends obscurity, mocks fame, and recruits the reader into a conspiracy of the unknown.
The Poem
The text below follows the poem’s first printing, in Poems by Emily Dickinson: Second Series, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Roberts Brothers, 1891).
I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!
Background
Dickinson wrote the poem around 1861, near the start of her most productive years, and like nearly all of her roughly 1,800 poems, it stayed unpublished in her lifetime. After her death in 1886, Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson edited selections of her work, and this poem opened the section “Life” in the second of them, published in 1891.
The 1891 editors changed more than punctuation here. Dickinson’s manuscript, restored in the modern editions of Thomas H. Johnson (1955) and R. W. Franklin (1998), capitalizes “Nobody” and “Somebody,” breaks the lines with dashes, and differs in three words. Where the first printing has “banish,” she wrote “advertise.” Where it has “your name,” she wrote “one’s name,” and where it has “the livelong day,” she wrote “the livelong June.” Many readers know the poem in that later form, so both versions are worth knowing.
The poem is the closest thing Dickinson left to a statement about her own life. She published only about ten poems while alive, most of them anonymously, and spent her later decades at home in Amherst, Massachusetts. The woman who wrote “don’t tell!” became one of the most widely read poets in the language.
Analysis and Themes
The poem works in two moves. First it builds a private bond out of shared nothingness, then it turns outward to ridicule the alternative.
A Conspiracy of Nobodies
The first stanza is built on direct address. “Who are you? / Are you nobody, too?” pulls the reader into the poem and assigns a role before we can object. By the third line, the speaker has formed an alliance: “Then there’s a pair of us.” Being nobody, which sounds lonely, turns out to be the basis for friendship. The warning that follows treats anonymity as a secret worth protecting. In the 1891 text, the danger is that the world would “banish” the pair. In the manuscript, it is that the world would “advertise” them, which makes fame itself the threat.
The Frog and the Bog
The second stanza drops the whisper for open mockery. To be somebody is “How public, like a frog,” croaking its own name all day long. The audience is “an admiring bog,” a stagnant swamp that applauds anything loud enough. One image strips fame of its dignity: the celebrated self is a frog performing for mud. Dickinson’s contempt is not for being known but for the need to be known, the endless repeating of one’s own name to a crowd that is not really listening.
Two Versions, Two Emphases
The textual differences change the poem’s edge. “Banish” makes the nobodies outcasts who must hide from a hostile world. “Advertise” makes them private people who must hide from publicity, a sharper and more modern fear. “The livelong day” is a familiar phrase. “The livelong June” turns the frog’s croaking into a whole season of self-promotion. The 1891 version is gentler, and the manuscript is sharper, but both share the same joke.
Form and Technique
The poem has eight lines in two quatrains of loose common meter, the alternating longer and shorter lines of the hymns Dickinson grew up singing. The bouncing rhythm is close to a nursery rhyme, which suits the poem’s playful tone and helps explain why it is so easy to remember.
The rhymes are loose in the first stanza, with “you” and “too” chiming and “know” only nearly matching, and exact in the second, where “frog” lands squarely on “bog.” Exclamation marks and questions give the poem the sound of excited conversation, and the dash in line 3 in the 1891 text marks the moment the speaker lowers her voice to say “don’t tell!”
Notable Lines
Three moments carry the poem.
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Lines 1 to 2
Are you nobody, too?
One of the most quoted openings in American poetry. The exclamation makes a boast out of being unknown, and the question hands the reader a part to play.
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
Lines 3 to 4
They’d banish us, you know.
Two strangers become conspirators. The secret is not a crime but simply being private.
How public, like a frog
Lines 6 to 8
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
The whole case against fame in one image, faintly absurd and more than faintly pathetic.
Themes
Four ideas run through the poem.
Privacy. Being unknown is presented as a freedom to protect, not a failure to fix.
Fame and its emptiness. Being somebody means endless self-announcement to an audience that does not discriminate.
Identity. “Nobody” and “somebody” become two kinds of self, one inward and one performed.
Connection. The poem finds companionship in shared anonymity, turning two nobodies into “a pair.”
Frequently Asked Questions
These are the questions readers most often ask about “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?”
What is “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” about?
It is about the pleasures of being unknown and the silliness of fame. The speaker happily calls herself a nobody, welcomes the reader as a fellow nobody, and compares being famous to a frog croaking its own name all day to a swamp.
What do the frog and the bog represent?
The frog stands for a famous person, or anyone eager to be known, who keeps announcing their own name. The bog stands for the public: a stagnant, undiscriminating audience that admires whatever makes the most noise.
Why does the speaker prefer being nobody?
Because being nobody is private, free, and shared with like-minded people, while being somebody is “dreary” and “public.” The poem treats fame as a kind of exposure and noise, and obscurity as a quiet freedom worth keeping secret.
When was “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” written?
Emily Dickinson wrote it around 1861, and it was not published in her lifetime. It first appeared in 1891, five years after her death, in Poems by Emily Dickinson: Second Series, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
Why do some versions say “advertise” instead of “banish”?
The two words come from different texts. The 1891 first printing reads “They’d banish us, you know,” while Dickinson’s manuscript, restored in modern editions, reads “they’d advertise,” along with “one’s name” for “your name” and “June” for “day.”
Glossary
A few words are worth a closer look.
- banish (line 4): Send away or exile. Dickinson’s manuscript has “advertise” here instead.
- livelong (line 7): Whole or entire. “The livelong day” means all day long.
- bog (line 8): Wet, spongy, stagnant ground, the frog’s home and its audience.
Related Poems
If this poem speaks to you, these make good companions.
- The Soul Selects Her Own Society by Emily Dickinson: Another Dickinson poem about choosing a small, private circle and shutting the door on the rest.
- Hope Is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson: The same compact wit, pinning an abstraction to a small creature, a bird instead of a frog.
- To an Athlete Dying Young by A. E. Housman: A darker look at fame, which argues that glory fades before the famous do.
- Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson: Her quieter, graver voice, in her most famous poem about death.