Personality clashes and what one insider calls "the perennial cultural divide between the creative and the corporate" have plunged Australia's most prestigious literary prize into discord. Miles Franklin Literary Award
Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Ach Santa, wishes are horses and readers can ride
Everywhere, being popular seems like the most important thing in the world. We often think that being the center of attention would be fantastic — like being a famous movie star or an Olympic Swimmer.
That's what Jesse Aarons thinks in Bridge to Terabithia until he meets Leslie Burke. Yet the speaker in Emily Dickinson's poem, "I'm nobody! Who are you?" readily admits to being an outsider. What's more, she even seems to like it. She says it would be "dreary" to be "somebody."
Is she crazy? Who would want to be an outsider?
Think about it for a moment. Who would really want to be an insider?
As an outsider, a "nobody," the speaker is not forced to be "public." She does not have to face the scrutiny or disapproval of people who are likely to be jealous of her popularity. She does not have to play games, put on an act, or keep trying in order to be a somebody. She can be herself and be comfortable.
What's more, she is not alone.
Are you nobody?: Everyone feels like a "nobody" at some point in life.
What Does It Mean?
The poem's first stanza tells how the speaker meets a fellow "nobody" — a friend. Together, the two nobodies can enjoy each other's company and their shared anonymity.
Anne Shirley, the heroine of L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables book series, knows what it is like to be an outsider and to have a special friend. Her best friend and kindred spirit is Diana Barry.
As a pair, they aren't really nobodies anymore. That's why the speaker says, "Don't tell! / They 'd banish us, you know." She understands that once you have another "nobody" at your side, you aren't really a "nobody" anymore. And she doesn't want to be banished or kicked out from what she sees as a society of nobodies.
She's comfortable there.
In the second stanza, the tone of the poem changes. The speaker sounds confident. Perhaps it is her discovery that there are other people like her — other "nobodies"-- that makes her feels strongly that being a "somebody" isn't such a great idea.
She realizes that having a friend who understands you and accepts you as you are is more important than being admired by a lot of people or being in the "in" crowd.
In the poem's second stanza, the speaker also makes a strange comparison. She says that being a somebody is like being a frog. What does this simile mean? Aside from Kermit, there aren't many celebrity frogs around.
A lot of people -- kids and adults -- feel lonely sometimes. Emily Dickinson's poem "I'm nobody! Who are you?" expresses how being a loner can sometimes be a positive thing.
Why does the speaker choose that amphibian as her representative of a public creature?
It's because frogs make a lot of noise. The poem says that frogs, though they can croak and make themselves heard and be noticed, are noticed only by "an admiring bog." The b(l)og is the frog's environment, not the frog's friend. So who cares what the b(l)og thinks?
That's what the poem says about being a "somebody" who gets noticed by an admiring public. Frequently, the relationship is impersonal and distanced, not like a real friendship. Somebodies may have many admirers, but they might not be able to make those personal connections that real friendship offers.
Being "nobodies" helps bloggers, writers, storytellers, find each other.
Imagine this: a stack of books in every bath house, big house, cat house, clearing house, dog house, dream house, glass house, lower house, rooming house, trade house, upper house, and outhouse.
Imagine this: every parent reading to every child every night; a dog-eared, rumpled book on every teenager's night stand; real books in book bags; books (in use) in every boat, bus, cable car, subway, streetcar, subway, train, trolley.
• Santa, you can imagine all of them, create all of them, dream all of them, and then see, hear, smell, touch, taste and even intuit the resulting world of wonder from all of them [I might be rich yet I am Nobody]
• · The largest Canadian Double Dragon (epublishers) is bucking the trend ... Bookworms turning to internet bore into local profits ; [Humans will download their minds into computers one day. With a new robotics firm, Hans Moravec begins the journey from warehouse drones to robo sapiens ]
• · · Mark A. R. Kleiman The pro-war-novel-of-high-literary-merit category seems to be rather thin.
• · · · Shakespeare described imagination as "a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater; and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it." An enjoyable article about the work involved in reading and how it devolops the imagination
• · · · · The New York Times released the winners of the 2004 Best Librarian Awards. Congratulations to them all!. Here's The List of the Guilty
• · · · · · The Polish Librarians Association has issued an "Appeal for Cuban Librarians" calling for the release of their Cuban colleagues Solidarity of the Underground Stack
