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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. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
The poem opens with a simile comparing how the speaker will brush aside summer as a housewife brushes away a fly. The contrast between the enormity of summer and the insignificance of a fly adds immediate weight, intrigue, and complexity to the poem, and it hooks the reader with the imaginative, tangible, and imagistic comparison.
Dickinson also uses metaphor when the speaker imagines months as a yarn-like substance that can be mound into balls and the uncertainty of time to the goblin bee. These metaphors work well because she is taking a non-tangible thing like time and using physical images to help the reader feel this unknowable thing. By utilizing concrete metaphors to paint a picture for the reader, Dickinson communicates intangible feelings with physical sensation. This adds relatability to her thoughts, making her emotions much easier to feel and understand than if she simply spoke about them literally.
One subtle use of repetition in this poem is at the beginning of each stanza. Dickinson repeats the word “If” at the beginning of every stanza until the last one. While not an immediately obvious detail, once the final stanza comes in, this repetition adds another dimension of doubt to the poem.
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
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
There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson