I’m Nobody! Who are you?
(by Emily Dickinson).......... I’M NOBODY! WHO ARE YOU?
you?’’ was included inThe Complete Poems of
Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson
and published in 1955; however, this poem like
most of the approximately 1,775 poems Dickinson
wrote appeared in earlier, partial collections, edited
by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mary Loo-
mis Todd, and a handful (perhaps seven in all)
appeared separately in periodicals during the
poet’s life. In the Johnson edition, the poems are
numbered, and ‘‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’’ is
number 288. Major collections of Dickinson’s
manuscripts are housed at Amherst College and
in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.
‘‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’’ consists of two
quatrains and displays the poet’s characteristic
use of dashes in place of standard punctuation
and her idiosyncratic capitalization. The speaker
addresses an implied listener with a question and
comments on the difference between being a
‘‘nobody’’ and being a ‘‘somebody.’’ In this brief
dramatic monologue, the poet equates the publi-
city that people of importance generate with their
speeches to frogs that croak endlessly in a swamp,
tirelessly identifying themselves by their sounds to
those who can hear them.
Author Biography
Emily Elisabeth (also spelled Elizabeth) Dick-
inson was born December 10, 1830, in Amherst,
81EMILY DICKINSON
1955