March Is the Month of Expectation

March Is the Month of Expectation - meaning Summary

Anticipation Laid Bare

The poem presents March as a season of eager anticipation and uncertainty. It treats expectation as an active state: people await unknown outcomes and try to appear composed. That effort at seriousness, however, is undermined by conspicuous joy, which reveals an underlying naïveté. Dickinson likens this exposure to a boy’s clumsy first engagement, suggesting both vulnerability and the human tendency to betray composure when hope or excitement takes hold.