If What We Could Were What We Would - Analysis

A wish that collapses the standard

The poem’s central claim is blunt and a little devastating: if our ability matched our desire, we wouldn’t need big standards to judge ourselves by. Dickinson sets this up with the tight paradox of If What we could were what we would. Could is capacity; would is will. The speaker imagines a world where the two align, and in that world Criterion be small—the measuring stick shrinks because the main reason we invent grand criteria is that we keep failing to reach what we want.

The tone feels cool and absolute, like a theorem spoken without ornament. There’s no comfort here, only a crisp diagnosis of what disappointment does: it forces us into constant evaluation. The line Criterion be small isn’t celebrating simplicity; it’s suggesting that our elaborate talk about standards is, at root, a symptom of mismatch.

Talk as the final refuge

Then the poem turns from the hypothetical to the present reality: It is the Ultimate of Talk. That phrase makes conversation sound like a last stop—what you do when action has already failed. Talk becomes an Ultimate not because it’s noble, but because it’s what remains when the desired alignment between could and would doesn’t happen. Dickinson’s emphasis lands oddly: the “ultimate” isn’t achievement, but discussion about it.

The contradiction: speech as both everything and not enough

The closing line names the poem’s central tension: The Impotence to Tell. Talk is called the end-point, yet the speaker insists we are unable to truly say what matters. That contradiction sharpens the poem’s bleak humor: we talk the most where we are least capable—where desire outruns ability, and where our language can’t carry the full weight of that gap. The poem’s logic pins us in place: we compensate with criteria and conversation, but what drives both is an inarticulate lack.