I’m Nobody! Who Are You?
Two quatrains that make a boast out of self-erasure. Dickinson defends anonymity, recruits the reader into a secret club, and reduces fame to a frog in a bog.
Form
lyric
56 poems
lyric
In the Bleak Midwinter
Christina Rossetti’s frozen Christmas poem is stranger and bleaker than Holst’s tune lets on. A close reading of the world that refuses to receive.
Daffodils (I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud)
William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1807), better known as “Daffodils” — full text plus summary, background, analysis of themes, form notes, notable lines, and a glossary of older terms.
Loveliest of Trees
A twenty-year-old does the math on how many springs he has left and decides to spend them looking at a tree. The least dramatic carpe diem in English, and one of the most exact.
The Flea
A man argues a woman into bed using a flea that bit them both. It’s the most dazzling sophistry in English, and a sly comedy in which she acts while he only talks, kills the flea, and demolishes his logic with a fingernail.
To His Coy Mistress
Vegetable love, worms, and birds of prey — Marvell’s seduction poem is stranger and more aggressive than “seize the day” suggests, and the mistress never gets to answer.
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Robert Herrick’s To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time is the classic “gather ye rosebuds” carpe diem lyric — a close reading of its imagery, its songlike common meter, and the warning hidden in its final line.
A Bird Came Down the Walk
A bird eats a worm raw, then rows off through the air like an oar through silent water. Dickinson’s most exact nature poem watches a wild thing right up to the moment it flees.
The Soul Selects Her Own Society
From a whole nation the soul chooses exactly one, ignores a kneeling emperor at her gate, then closes the valves of her attention “Like Stone” — Dickinson’s most absolute poem about choosing.
When I Was One-and-Twenty
At twenty-one, the speaker ignores a wise man’s warning not to give his heart away. A year later, heartbroken, he admits the advice was right. A reading of Housman’s folk-song lyric on love, youth, and regret.
There’s a Certain Slant of Light
A particular angle of December light gives a hurt with no scar. Dickinson’s most precise poem about despair treats a winter mood as a message from God.
I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died
Everyone in the room is braced for the sacred moment. What arrives is a fly. Dickinson’s most devastating poem is about what death looks like when the King doesn’t come.