Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)

In Dickinson’s poetry, corn is a symbol often associated with death, harvest, and autumn. In her poem “There is a June when Corn is cut,” early corn harvest marks a too-brief summer. This is accompanied by the appearance of a “Grave” (Line 5) that appears in a similar position to “Corn” (Line 1); both are the second capitalized noun in the first line of their respective stanzas.

The macabre harvesting of corn in “There is a June when Corn is cut” recalls the corn that is owned by the farmer in “Fame is a fickle food.” The possessive “Farmer’s corn” implies that the corn is still on the stalk, where the crows can easily access it. Reading the “it” of Line 10’s “Men eat of it and die” as corn—the closest potential referent noun in Line 9—in addition to fame (the noun that was previously given the pronoun “it”) furthers the association between corn and death.

Also, for Dickinson—who never left Amherst—corn played an important symbolic role in her conception of the American pastoral. Midwestern states, rather than Dickinson’s home state of Massachusetts, contain the corn harvesters of America. The traditional British pastoral also does not include corn. Dickinson contributes to the creation of a pastoral tradition in America, one that is, in her case, specifically imagined from inside her New England home rather than experienced out in the fields of Iowa, Ohio, or Kansas.