20 pages 40 minutes read

Emily Dickinson

I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1890

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Literary Devices

Form

The form of Poem 937 is itself a bravado act of defiance, really against itself. In a poem that tests and even flaunts the limits of the intellect to contain and control the riotous passions of the vulnerable and open heart, that celebration of emotional extremes is cased in the tidiest of poetic forms: the quatrain. The rhyming pattern—ABCB DEFE—is as conventional as it is tight and reassuringly regular and even predictable. The poem expresses the uncertain aftermath of the intellect’s decimation in two tight, clean quatrains that reassure despite the upheaval, despite the anxious feeling of the mind being cleaved into uselessness, that the intellect survives to record its own chaos. The poem, then, questions the power of the mind that has, since the Renaissance, been the metric for culture and advancement in Western civilization, in a form that has since the Renaissance been the highest expression of the mind to discipline and contain anarchy. How better to explore the tensions between head and heart than by casing that emotional contest in a form that can reassure the continuing viability of the very intellect that appears in the poem itself in fragments.

Related Titles

By Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

A Bird, came down the Walk

Emily Dickinson

A Bird, came down the Walk

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

A Clock stopped—

Emily Dickinson

A Clock stopped—

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

After great pain, a formal feeling comes

Emily Dickinson

After great pain, a formal feeling comes

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)

Emily Dickinson

A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)

Emily Dickinson

STUDY + TEACHING GUIDE
logo

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Emily Dickinson

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

"Faith" is a fine invention

Emily Dickinson

"Faith" is a fine invention

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)

Emily Dickinson

Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

Hope is a strange invention

Emily Dickinson

Hope is a strange invention

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers

Emily Dickinson

"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

I Can Wade Grief

Emily Dickinson

I Can Wade Grief

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

Emily Dickinson

I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

Emily Dickinson

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

If I should die

Emily Dickinson

If I should die

Emily Dickinson

STUDY + TEACHING GUIDE
logo

If you were coming in the fall

Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the fall

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died

Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

I'm Nobody! Who Are You?

Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who Are You?

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

Much Madness is divinest Sense—

Emily Dickinson

Much Madness is divinest Sense—

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

Success Is Counted Sweetest

Emily Dickinson

Success Is Counted Sweetest

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

Tell all the truth but tell it slant

Emily Dickinson

Tell all the truth but tell it slant

Emily Dickinson

Study Guide
logo

The Only News I Know

Emily Dickinson

The Only News I Know

Emily Dickinson