"I'm Nobody! Who are you?" is a short lyric poem by Emily Dickinson first published posthumously in 1891 in ''Poems, Series 2''. It is one of Dickinson's most popular poems.

Summary

The poem is composed of two

quatrain A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines. Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India, Ancient Greec ...

s and, with an exception of the first line, the rhythm alternates between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. The poem employs alliteration, anaphora, simile, satire, and internal rhyme but no regular

end rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...

scheme. However, lines 1 and 2 and lines 6 and 8 end with masculine rhymes. Dickinson incorporates the pronouns ''you, we, us, your'' into the poem, and in doing so, draws the reader into the piece. The poem suggests anonymity is preferable to fame. It was first published in 1891 in ''Poems, Series 2'', a collection of Dickinson's poems assembled and edited by

Mabel Loomis Todd Mabel Loomis Todd or Mabel Loomis (November 10, 1856 – October 14, 1932) was an American editor and writer. She is remembered as the editor of posthumously published editions of Emily Dickinson and also wrote several novels and logs of her ...

and

Thomas Wentworth Higginson Thomas Wentworth Higginson (December 22, 1823May 9, 1911) was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, politician, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with ...

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Critique

"I'm Nobody!" is one of Dickinson's most popular poems, Harold Bloom writes, because it addresses “a universal feeling of being on the outside." It is a poem about "us against them"; it challenges authority (the somebodies), and "seduces the reader into complicity with its writer."Anna Priddy and Harold Bloom. 2008. ''Bloom's How to Write about Emily Dickinson''. Infobase Publishing. pp. 103ff.

References

{{Emily Dickinson American poems Poetry by Emily Dickinson 1891 poems Poems published posthumously