What's your favorite poem or set of lines from Emily Dickinson?

Answer 1

I love the poem "I Heard A Fly Buzz":

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

Answer 2

"Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me."

I don't like the entire poem, but wow, what a great opening line.

All roads of American poetry start with either Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman. Dickinson, for her introspection and compact lines, and Whitman for rendering the longer line and making poetry a vehicle of the people. In contemporary poetry, Dickinson's way has been the most travelled; sadly, poets aren't nearly as revered as they used to be.

Answer 3

Are you joking?

Where does one start... I didn't know what a "bobolink" was!

I spent some time arguing that had Emily not been agoraphobic, she might have crossed 'the pond' and been accepted as a Romantic. Indeed, still should wear this appelation: AMERICAN Romantic.

When she describes death as a caller at her door, as suitor (complete with carriage) my heart melts.

But it also melts for this woman who, apparently, was a prisoner of her own mind and of her family.

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Vale Ms Dickinson

Paul

Answer 4

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!

How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one's name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!



Being a terribly shy (yet cynical) teen, that one moved me right away. I still love it.

Answer 5

The Chariot (I could not stop for death)