Stanza 2
In the second stanza, the speaker comments on
what it must be like to be a somebody. She
laughs at people of rank and public importance
because being a somebody requires continually
advertising oneself, quite like a frog, croaking
throughout a June day to listeners, whom the
speaker describes as an ‘‘admiring Bog.’’
THEMESIdentity
One subject in ‘‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’’ is
identity. One implicit question the poem
explores is how does a person identify herself
in an introduction. Certain labels work by way
of introduction, but no one label covers the
individual’s whole personhood. The nature of
identity involves more than just a person’s
name, physical appearance, and affect. As
soon as a person introduces herself, the other
person may ask, ‘‘What do you do?’’ The infer-
ence is that identifying a person comes also
through knowing what the person does for a
living. A person might also identify herself by
who her parents are, where she lives, where she
went to school, and the like.
In this poem, the speaker identifies herself
by the low social rank she assigns to herself. InTOPICS FOR
FURTHER
STUDY Emily Dickinson wrote three poems in which
she describes frogs: number 288 (‘‘I’m Nobody!
Who are you?’’), number 1359 (‘‘The long sigh
of the Frog,’’), and number 1379 (‘‘His Man-
sion in the Pool’’). Write an essay in which you
describe how the frog and the frog’s voice is
characterized in each poem. Include in your
essaywhatyouthinkeachpoemmeans.
With a partner, choose three poems by Emily
Dickinson and three poems from William
Blake’sSongs of Innocence and Experience
and read these poems aloud to your class-
mates. Lead a discussion focused on identify-
ing the similarities and differences between
the selected poems. If you can, provide pic-
tures of the manuscripts of some of each
poet’s poems to show the differences.
Select any poem by Dickinson that you really
like and using the poet’s first line write an
original poem of your own, using her poem
as a model. Next write a one-page essay in
which you explain what you learned from the
experience and how it may have changed your
understanding of the selected Dickinson poem.
With team members, assemble images of
Dickinson, her family, her home, AmherstCollege, and the town of Amherst, Massa-
chusetts. Give a PowerPoint presentation,
including these images, and discuss each of
them. Introduce your classmates to Dickin-
son’s home and hometown as they were in
her time and how they are today, trans-
formed as a museum and tourist destination.
Do some research on housekeeping tasks of
the mid-nineteenth century. Write a report
in which you describe the various skills a
woman living in Dickinson’s time would
have used in keeping house and make a dis-
play board on which you arrange images
associated with those skills. Housekeeping
skills might include such activities as garden-
ing, various kinds of needlework, baking,
methods used for cleaning and laundry,
and food preparation, including canning.
Research home funerals and burial practices
in the mid-nineteenth century and then write
a report on these practices and how they
were followed for Emily Dickinson herself.
Include relevant poems in your report, for
example, number 364 (‘‘The Morning after
Woe’’) and number 1078 (‘‘The Bustle in a
House’’).I’m Nobody! Who are you?