Much Madness is divinest Sense—

Emily Dickinson’s poem is only eight lines long, so it’s short and compact. As her speaker takes aim at the majority and their uncritical views of “Madness” Versus Sense, the poem’s many dashes help give the poem a quick and sharp form to be fired at the multitudes. In other words, the poem’s concentrated form becomes a way for the singular speaker to punish the majority in the small way available.

As the poem also deals with Conformity Versus Singularity, Dickinson reinforces the juxtaposition by not conforming to one strict meter and instead using two different meters. Lines 1 and 7 feature iambic tetrameter—that is, there are four sets of unstressed-stressed syllables. Lines 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8 use iambic trimeter, or three sets of unstressed-stressed syllables. The two meters reflect the majority’s imputed argument that senselessness and sensibleness are reducible to a binary: “Assent — and you are sane — / Demur — you’re straightway dangerous —” (Lines 6-7). Line 3, however, doesn’t conform to either meter (“Much Sense — the starkest Madness”), and as Dickinson gives the trimeter five lines and the tetrameter two lines, she makes them unequal, just like the singular person isn’t equal to the majority—they’re above it, in her speaker’s eyes.