Maggie's Farm

I don't know how long Dickinson tended to linger over her dispatches, but so many of them, like this, have the character of something that entered her brain - like that lightning - and she wrote it down just as it struck and let it be. Her poems often contain some slight inconsistency or apparent metrical flaw that more deliberation might have erased, and probably to the the poem's detriment. I think those awkward turns actually show the peculiarity of her mind in action, and is why they make their mark.

Of course she also might have sweated over every syllable.

She is also a modern example of the artist's person becoming more famous and more discussed than the art due to contemporary social and political fascinations. I have resolutely refused to know more about her biography other than the barest skeleton; she, if anybody, who she was is in those poems. That is what she had to say.