There is no Frigate like a Book

“On Imagination” by Phillis Wheatley (1773)

Phillis Wheatley, born an enslaved person, was one of the best-known poets in America prior to the Civil War. Her poem “On Imagination” highlights the imagination’s ability to allow one to escape their circumstances. Like Dickinson’s “There is no Frigate like a Book,” Wheatley’s speaker emphasizes the “swiftness of [imagination’s] course” (Line 14) compared to conventional travel. Wheatley’s engagement with the imagination predates and foreshadows ideas developed by British Romantic and American Transcendentalist thinkers, who argued for the imagination’s power in the intellectual mainstream.

“Foreign Lands” by Robert Louis Stevenson (1913)

This children’s poem by Robert Louis Stevenson provides a different perspective on the imagination. Rather than traveling to distant lands through works of literature, Stevenson’s child speaker sees “foreign lands” (Line 4) by climbing to the top of a cherry tree. Stevenson’s poem ends with his speaker imagining themselves finding a higher tree where they can see to the imagination’s limits.

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant" by Emily Dickinson (1945)

Dickinson likely wrote “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” around the same time as “There is no Frigate like a Book.