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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.
Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 2,000 poems during her lifetime, but published less than a dozen. “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” did not see readership until well after her death, in 1935—many decades after its estimated time of writing. Even today, this poem is relatively unknown in Dickinson’s studied canon among other poems like “I'm Nobody! Who are you?” and “Hope is the Thing with Feathers.”
Dickinson wrote a large body of her work during the American Civil War. This was a time of unprecedented darkness and may be what the poet had in mind when she wrote of the “Bravest” (Line 13). Although Dickinson was not directly part of the war efforts, its influence would have been felt around her all the time. It is worth considering, also, that people in the time period would have had a different relationship with light and dark than we do today, as this was prior to widespread electricity and household illumination. Therefore, many of Dickinson’s personal activities, and very possibly her poetry writing, would have been done in relative darkness by candlelight.
In addition to the limitations of her physical space, Dickinson was also a person whom, as a local physician noted, seemed to sometimes experience a nervous complaint.
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
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
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