We never know how high we are

“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” by Emily Dickinson (ca 1861)

Like “We never know how high we are,” this poem is something of a puzzle. Dickinson upends conventions about what it means to be a somebody and a nobody. In Dickinson’s world, the two switch places. It’s greater to be nobody than somebody. A nobody is a somebody, and a somebody is a nobody. This poem spotlights the depth of Dickinson's trickiness and subversiveness. Read alongside "We never know how high we are," this poem helps demonstrate why a straightforward interpretation of heroism is hard to pull off. As with a nobody and a somebody, a hero can be a number of things.

“The Brain—is wider than the Sky” by Emily Dickinson (ca 1862)

This poem supports a reading of “We never know how high we are” in which Dickinson casts off the warping cubits. In “The Brain—is wider than the Sky,” Dickinson declares that the human mind is larger than the sky, deeper than the sea, and equal to the weight of God. What lifts a person to great heights isn’t their stature but their brain. To live like a king, a person must build their mental powers, not their reputations. Only those incapable of building up their brains find themselves warped by physical limitations.

“The Man-Moth” by Elizabeth Bishop (1946)

Elizabeth Bishop is a well-known American poet. This poem often pops up in poetry anthologies intended for children. A typo in a New York Times article inspired the title and topic. Instead of “mammoth,” the article wrote “man-moth.” Bishop turns the man-moth into a creature who tries to scale buildings and reach great heights. Like Bishop’s man-moth, Dickinson’s hero aims to ascend to higher terrain. Similar to Dickinson’s humans, Bishop’s man-moth confronts constraint and warping.