35 pages • 1 hour read
If you were coming in the fall
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Because I could not stop for Death –” by Emily Dickinson (1890)
In perhaps Dickinson’s most famous poem, she personifies death as a young man riding a carriage. In the poem, death takes the speaker on a ride to the afterlife as the speaker passes scenes from her life. While the speaker is traveling with Death, the tone is calm and peaceful, making death feel like a natural thing not to be feared. This poem is also a lyric ballad.
“‘Hope’ is the thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson (1891)
Another famous Dickinson lyric ballad, this poem focuses on hope and salvation through the metaphor of a bird. While the poem is generally considered to be focused on the idea of salvation, it is one of Dickinson’s most complex, and it allows for multiple interpretations.
“A wounded deer leaps highest” by Emily Dickinson (1890)
This cryptic lyric ballad uses the image of a deer that has just been shot to comment on the way people put on brave faces when they are in anguish. This is similar to the feeling she expresses throughout “If you were coming in the Fall,” as she tries to express bravado in the face of crushing despair.
Further Literary Resources
This website houses scans of original manuscripts of all of Dickinson’s surviving poems and letters. This resource gives the reader a sense of Dickinson’s voice and the way she wanted her poems to be viewed. The database also has a dictionary for terms used in Dickinson’s poetry. The searchable database makes it easy to see Dickinson’s original manuscripts for all of her work.
“Emily Dickinson's Love Life” by Emily Dickinson Museum
This article explains the history of Emily Dickinson’s love life by analyzing the manuscripts and letters still available to scholars. In this article, the authors identify a few possible lovers from Emily’s life, including her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert and Judge Otis Lord, a friend of hers in her later life. The article also discusses the “Master Letters” and their significance. This short article provides historical background for any reader interested in knowing more about Dickinson’s love life.
“The Poetry of Emily Dickinson” by Martha Hale Shackford (1913)
In this early 20th-century critical review and defense of Dickinson’s poetry, Shackford argues that Dickinson belongs in the canon of great American writers because of the depth of her expression and the complexity of her spiritual awareness. Shackford goes through a number of poems to illustrate the beauty of Dickinson’s verse and the value of her spiritual and psychological observations of the world. Shackford argues that Dickinson’s poetry borders on the indecipherable while also providing mystery and inversion for readers, and this is the primary reason her poetry continues to resonate with readers.
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By Emily Dickinson
