Abstract

The argument in this chapter is that Dickinson’s poetics of inner life makes us see anew the long-standing philosophical problem of expression. Dickinson’s poetry invests itself in an understanding of subjectivity that rearranges the anchors we often turn to in thinking about how lives and identities take on shape in expressive forms. Poetry forces this essentially inward poet to conclude that introspection leads to blindness and rather than to self-knowledge and understanding. Dickinson presents us with a new picture of a human subject unable to find comfort or satisfaction in pursuing itself on the inside. Poetry, instead, gives Dickinson evidence of herself and allows her to encounter the particular _what_ and _how_ of her own inner life as it takes shape outside of her. What literature and philosophy at their crossroads can gain by engaging the idea that poems probe hypotheses about subjectivity is a central concern in the readings.