If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

"To Emily Dickinson" by Hart Crane (1924)

Modernist poet Hart Crane pays tribute to Dickinson, who dramatically influenced his own work. He directly addresses Dickinson, almost in letter form, and borrows several of her most frequently-used devices: personification, Biblical references, and her much-noted dashes.

Opportunity by Helen Hunt Jackson (1917)

Writer and Native American rights activist Helen Hunt Jackson published one of Dickinson’s few poems to see print in her lifetime. Like Dickinson, Jackson was raised in the Calvinist tradition. Also like Dickinson, Jackson was sensitive to the disadvantages of being a woman writer and pseudonymously published her work for a time. The poem “Opportunity” shares many style elements with Dickinson’s work, including the use of devices like personification and synesthesia. The subject of “Opportunity”—a fleeting vision of the divine in nature—is one of Dickinson’s most favored topics.

"After the Poetry Reading" by Maxine Kumin (1996)

Contemporary feminist poet Maxine Kumin imagines Dickinson transplanted into a modern world, one possibly more able to accommodate her dynamic poetic voice.

The poem is both whimsical and wistful; knowing Kumin’s friendship with Anne Sexton and her tragic circumstances, it’s certain Kumin knows the world still holds its hazards for creative women.

"Poem Beginning with a Line by Dickinson" by Alicia Ostriker (1983)

Poet and foundational feminist critic Alicia Ostriker expands on the idea of Dickinson’s use of the literal meaning of “formal” in the poem “After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes” by inverting the entire premise. In Ostriker’s poem, she proposes that after great happiness, an informal feeling might follow. The poem depicts several scenarios in which “informal” moves from meaning “casual” to meaning “chaotic,” then back to the more conventional meaning. Ostriker suggests that mastery of language, including wordplay, is a means to stave off darkness. This sentiment echoes Dickinson’s use of some of her own favorite devices in a poem that is stylistically very different from Dickinson.