I'm Nobody! Who are you?

When I was a child, I discovered a fantastic poem by Emily Dickinson in which she celebrates anonymity-- her "I'm Nobody! Who are you?"(or #260). Encountering such a passage brought me great delight; I felt as if I'd heard the poem straight from Emily herself, as a young school girl whispering it in my ear on the playground. As a rather introverted, bookish child, I really connected with the passage-- "Yes, who wants to be Somebody after all?", I thought. Suddenly, it was okay that I wasn't as well known as the prettiest girl in school or the boy who told the best jokes. Like Emily, I was just Nobody. And that seemed to be quite alright. Actually in this case, it was even better-- since now I knew there was someone else who felt like me. Two kindred souls. Two Nobodies.

Of course, I never really told anyone about that (until now). That was the fun of the passage. Even today when I read this poem I imagine Emily feverishly sharing her secret with me. And this effect, this intimacy that Emily creates with her reader is constructed quite carefully in the opening stanzas: "Are you nobody too?/Then there's a pair of us?" I love how she first engages her reader directly and then, assuming an affirmative response to her query, she implicates the reader as part of a pair.

And here's the fun-- even if you thought it was cool to be Somebody before you read this simple phrase, now you end up wanting to be Nobody. Because, to be Somebody is so dreary. Of course, the twist to this poem is this: our traditional take on the label "Nobody" is that the word implies blankness, nondescript, overlooked-- yet, in joining in community with Emily as a pair of Nobodies, the reader becomes somebody (not Somebody). In becoming somebody, as in one that is not overlooked but not a celebrity, I gained a sense of identity. I had a story. That's why I love this poem.