18 pages • 36 minutes read
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
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Summary and Study Guide
Overview
Along with Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson is considered by many to be the genesis of modern American poetics. Her poems still sound radical today in their singular voice and originality; few poets can achieve a comparable voice without sounding imitative. That resounding individualism gained her notoriety as a hermetic, isolated eccentric; though her biography has its dramatic aspects, as with most legends, the reality is more nuanced than the stories would indicate. Memorialized in biographies, museums, countless works of art, movies, dolls, puzzles, refrigerator magnets, and finger puppets: Dickinson’s image may well be more familiar to many people than her poems are. “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking” may be compact (though it isn’t her shortest work), but it demonstrates many of the themes, imagery, and style for which she is known. In the poem, Dickinson’s speaker searches for the source of grace and meaning—a question she daily explored.
Poet Biography
In the realm of American writers whose lives have been overrun by myth, perhaps only Edgar Allan Poe’s is more misconstrued than Emily Dickinson. As with most public myths, the sources for the Dickinson Unlock all 18 pages of this Study Guide Plus, gain access to 8,900+ more expert-written Study Guides. Including features:
Related Titles
By Emily Dickinson
