Form and Meter
Dickinson's poems, for the most part, are written in what's referred to as "ballad stanza," which means that they have a singsong, hymn-like quality. It's no coincidence that you can sing pretty mu...
Speaker
If you've read any other Dickinson poems, you may be familiar with the mysterious nature of the speaker. We don't get any hints about who or what is telling us about books "There is no Frigate like...
Setting
The setting here is a kind of fantastical imaginary landscape. It's a pretty spectacular one, populated by magnificent ships sailing away to far-off lands and knights trotting around on prancing ho...
Sound Check
Okay, so maybe we're just getting super excited because we just saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, but this poem is sounding fun, swashbuckling, and frankly piratical to us right now....
What's Up With the Title?
Nothing unusual here – Emily Dickinson didn't give any of her poems names (though some more conventional editors did), so in this day and age, we just refer to her poems by their first lines. The...
Calling Card
Since she didn't get out much, Emily Dickinson spent a lot of time seeing magic in ordinary things. Many of her poems creatively transform the most normal-seeming, everyday happenings (like the buz...
Tough-o-Meter
This is a kind and gentle, entry-level Emily Dickinson poem. While some of her other, stranger poems are way up there in the alpine meadows, this poem is like a nice, ambling walk up a grassy slope...
Trivia
Dickinson's poem inspired a (now non-existent) online literary magazine, Frigate – check it out here.Dickinson attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, but she left after only a year because she w...
Steaminess Rating
Move along… there's nothing to see here.