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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.
“I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” consists of eight lines, or two four-line stanzas known as quatrains. While the form is not entirely consistent, there is the presence of iambic trimeter, or a pattern of unstressed/stressed within three pairs of syllables, with two lines following iambic tetrameter, a pattern of unstressed/stressed within four pairs of syllables, throughout the poem. There are certain exceptions in which the syllabic pairs are trochaic, stressed/unstressed, rather than iambic. No consistent rhyme scheme is present in both quatrains, yet a description of the rhyme might be AABC in Stanza 1 and ABCB in Stanza 2, as end rhyme is used: “you” / “too” (Lines 1-2) and “frog” / “bog” (Lines 6, 8). Many of the line endings have an exclamation point, which in today’s email and text culture might seem overused. Here, the use makes clear the speaker’s feelings that she is passionate about the subject—both on what she wants to be and what she does not want to be.
Dickinson uses caesura, or a pause in the middle of a line, through the employment of dashes to show emphasis and even mild hesitation before particular words. For example, in Line 2, she uses dashes around the word “Nobody” (Line 2) as if tentatively asking the reader if they share her “nobody” status.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson