Emily Dickinson and Me

“I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there’s a pair of us – don’t tell!

They’d banish us, you know!

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong June

To an admiring bog!”

Oh that Emily Dickinson. Say “poetry” to me and this one comes to mind, although I did have to research the actual poem.

Dickinson here sees herself as a nobody, apparently unaware that her works would be taught in high schools all over the United States after her death. Being “nobody” is situational. One can be invisible in some circumstances but shine in others. Easter dinner reminded me that my siblings are more boisterous than I am. But I live, work and thrive in noisier, more urban environments than they do. Maybe we’re all different kinds of somebodies at our own optimal times and places.