If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

Emily Dickinson did not title her poems. “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking” is actually the first line of the poem appearing as S07.10.051, meaning it was the 51st poem found within Set 7 on the 10th sheet among the bundles of poems Dickinson’s sister recovered after the poet’s death. Some scholars identify her poems by the numbers given to them by various editors: This poem was identified as 919 in the 1955 Thomas H. Franklin edition. The most definitive, recent edition is the R.W. Franklin variorum edition of 1998, and in it, this poem is 982. This said, it’s not difficult to see why many people identify Dickinson poems by their first lines. But it is important to know that the versions of some poems published in different forms over the years have substantive changes. In the Emily Dickinson Archive, the original handwritten version of “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking” shows the text to be consistent with most published versions, though editors have changed line breaks and added punctuation.

This poem’s initial reading stands as a statement of service and sacrifice—a contrast to Dickinson’s own biography. The speaker may or may not be Dickinson; the speaker may