Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay
Form and Meter
The meter of "Apparently with no surprise" seems pretty straightforward at first glance, but Emily's got something else up her sleeve. Let's dig in.For starters the whole poem is iambic, which mean...
Speaker
The speaker doesn't tell us a lot about herself. She's more fixated on the flower death going on all around her. Well, really she's fixated on the fact that all humans die, and there's nothing we c...
Setting
This poem takes us to a field of happy flowers. Maybe they have big stupid smiley faces or maybe they're just bright, colorful, and dancing in the wind. How nice. What could possibly go wrong? Oh,...
Sound Check
The main thing we notice here is all the consonance we have going on with the P sounds. Check it out:Apparently with no surpriseTo any happy FlowerThe Frost beheads it at its play—In accidental p...
What's Up With the Title?
Nope, no title here. Emily never named any of her poems. There just wasn't much point to it since she barely tried to get any of them published. These days, we get weak in the knees if poems don't...
Calling Card
In this poem, Dickinson took a few of her pet themes and put them in a blender (which she thankfully never did with her pet mice). Nature, death, God—these topics pop up in tons of Emily's poems....
Tough-o-Meter
It's not the densest poem ever written, but you might occasionally need a machete to help blaze the trail.
Trivia
Emily use to make gingerbread for the neighborhood kids and lower it in a basket out of her window—which was thought of as creepy even in the late 1800's. (Source.)Emily had a little sister named...
Steaminess Rating
Nope, no sex to be found.