Abstract
ity, but the multitude of variants standing on her work-sheets make it clear that she never chose words casually-least of all, one feels sure, when communicating, in typically gnomic fashion, her poetic philosophy to a man she designated master. Circumference, then, played a critically important role in the drama of a poet whose closest and most valued companion was her lexicon but who nevertheless felt moved to open an epistolary conversation with the world of letters. This geometric metaphor has attracted comment, and has even supplied part of the title of a recent book on her mind and art.2 But none of these comments has emphasized strongly enough her use of the word to connote the uncapturable. A poet's reach should exceed her grasp, and for Emily Dickinson, the word circumference, a word she used in seventeen of her poems,8 came to stand for the unreachable goal she was always questing toward-the goal of perfect perception and ideal comprehension.
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