“The Brain” is the poetic brain…

The Brain — is wider than the Sky — (632) by Emily Dickinson

The Brain — is wider than the Sky —

For — put them side by side —

The one the other will contain

With ease — and You — beside —

The Brain is deeper than the sea —

For — hold them — Blue to Blue —

The one the other will absorb —

As Sponges — Buckets — do —

The Brain is just the weight of God —

For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —

And they will differ — if they do —

As Syllable from Sound —

The brain loves imagination could be the main topic of this poem. (Now the neuroscience shows how the brain creates the mind, and the mind makes the idea of the world as a cognitive possibility. All that we know or perceive depends on the brain.) Some literary works anticipate the scientific knowledge. Emilly Dickinson wrote poems that takes form of introspection and that intense process reveals the power of the brain. We have a lot of differences, but at the same time, we have one: the possibility of imagination and thought and poetry.

Three similar stanzas compound this poem; each one has four verses. Dashes are the only one punctuation. The structure appears defined and clear. The first verses enact a comparison: Brain and sky, brain and sea, brain and God. The second verses suggest a direct comparison: put them side by side, hold them…, Heft them… The thirds introduce the superiority of one onto another: one will contain another, one will absorb another; to the third stanza the parallel is broke a little, the superiority appears ironized, they will differ –if they do — . At the end we, the speaker and the reader, do the comparison in the poem although the phrase says –if they do — The fourth introduces a kind of long comparison without verbs only focus to a strange circumstance.

The dashes break the sentences and ideas in parts and that create different ways of reading. Linearity is only one possibility. There are distant connections (as it happens in the brain). For example, vertically brain-brain-brain; on the other side, Sky-sea-God. We can ask the next: What could be wider than the Sky? What could be deeper than the sea? The brain. This parallel again differs at the third stanza: “The brain is just the weight of God”. “Just” refers to exact and strong metaphor: the size of God (so everything depends) is the brain. This reading shows hot the form is the content.

Going deeper, one extraordinary metonymy closes the poem. The brain has a core: language, and language has its own core: Syllable. The counterpart is Sound for God, Sound for sea, Sound for Sky. The correspondence is so coherent. All the poem articulates under recurrence and variation. This is, thought in a wide range, rhythm: repetition and differentiation. Finally, the poem shoes how the brain loves poetry. Poetry includes huge concepts as God (not in terms of religion but transcendent possibilities); sea, the source of life; Sky, the physic world.