Emily Dickinson's I KNOW SOME LONELY HOUSES OFF THE ROAD

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Funding

This work was funded by the 2015-16 US-China Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar Program [Grantee ID: 68150131].

Notes

1. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Emily Dickinson's Letters,” Atlantic Monthly, October 1891, cited in Dickinson in Her Own Time (105–106).

2. Given her willingness to make changes, it may be inferred that her choice of robber for this poem about burglary must have been out of careful consideration, for what she intended to convey is the criminal's psychology but not a description of a burglar's action breaking down the door.

3. Such a situation reminds me of a Chinese expression, “风声鹤唳, 草木皆兵”, literally meaning that the whispering of the wind and the cries of cranes are enough to make every plant appear as enemy troops lying in ambush about to attack while figuratively describing the panicky situation that demoralized troops find themselves in.