Background

There were many scholarly articles and essays on Emiy Dickinson’s “Your Riches–taught me–Poverty” and on her life in general. The biggest source of information regarding the structure and intentions of the poem was Christanne Miller’s work Emily Dickinson’s Poems : As She Preserved Them. Miller recreated every Dickinson poem in the exact format and the order in which Dickinson intended the poems to appear. She also included annotations that led me to conclusions about the different exotic countries recognized. Beyond Miller, I also found research conducted by Paula Bennett and the editors of Open Me Carefully. The research that I found that I did choose to omit was the original letters between Emily Dickinson and Thomas Higginson in response to his article in The Atlantic. The reasons I chose to omit this finding was because I think that emphasizing too much that Dickinson also sent the letter to Higginson and not just Susan takes away from the true meaning and emotion of the poem.

The background information in general that I believe is most pertinent to understanding the poem is the nature of the relationship between Emily and Sue. Emily and Sue were emotional companions for decades, and they were next door neighbors for three decades as Susan married Emily’s brother Austin. Their relationship was misunderstood by everyone from the time of their existence until just recently. Once, Emily even remarked to Susan that some people had “the Facts but not the Phosphorescence,” meaning the understanding of their relationship. Their relationship was constant, from the time they were girls until Emily’s death in 1886. The editors of Open Me Carefully remark that for Susan and Emily poetry and love “coeval come”. This poem is a perfect demonstration of this concept and it highlights just how much their correspondence through poems like this one meant to each of the women.