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I want to move now to
"Her Dance with Herself."

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"Who am I within and
through these words?"

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Dickinson asks periodically or
in some ways, continuously, who

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am I, what am I, where am I,
within and through her words

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and sometimes, directly.

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Sometimes, it seems
she is the world itself

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or the voice in the poem is.

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As in this poem, number
397, "When diamonds

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are a legend and diadems--

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a tale, I brooch and
earrings for myself,

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do sow and raise for sale.

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And though I'm scarce
accounted, my art, a summer day,

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had patrons.

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Once, it was a queen.

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And once, a butterfly."

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Dickinson's poems
are her jewels--

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for herself, sown
and grown, risen.

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She feels scarce, small, yet
her jewels are valuable ones.

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And her art calls forth
queens and the best nature

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has to offer.

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So while she posits
herself as small,

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somewhere in her, she says,
along with a massive figure

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like Whitman, I am large.

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I contain multitudes.

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Whitman was somewhat scandalous
in the Dickinson household,

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as was, in some
ways, even Emerson.

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Yet Dickinson does not seem to
have shared their castigation

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with her father
and others, and may

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have learned from them, as
well as from Shakespeare.

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She dances with herself from
the minute to the grandiose,

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tiny to large, spreading
through that universe.