Emily Dickinson

They Shut Me Up in Prose

They Shut Me Up in Prose - meaning Summary

Confinement and Creative Freedom

The poem presents a speaker who feels confined by prose and by other people’s expectations. The narrator recalls being sequestered as a child and imagines inner thought as a caged bird and a restless brain forced into silence. Yet the speaker insists creative freedom is possible by will: imagination can abolish confinement as simply as a star dissolves darkness. The tone is defiant and self-asserting about poetic autonomy.

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They shut me up in Prose As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet Because they liked me still Still! Could themself have peeped And seen my Brain go round They might as wise have lodged a Bird For Treason in the Pound Himself has but to will And easy as a Star Abolish his Captivity And laugh No more have I

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