Emily Dickinson wrote 1,775 poems of which we have record. Her poetry was drastically different from other poetry at the time. Unconventional rhyme, punctuation, and playful use of hymn meter define her style. One very interesting aspect of her poetry is her use of variants. A variant can be the author's decision not to choose one particular word; rather, to include a choice of words that can be substituted for the word included in the poem. Dickinson marked the word for which variants occur with an "+", and the variants are found at the end of the poem (See "He fumbles at your Soul", below). In other cases, variants were changes in entire stanzas. In either case, the use of variants was very radical for her time; perhaps one reason why she did not publish many poems within her lifetime. Below is an example of the poem "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—", in two of its variant forms. Note that the entire second stanza is different between the two poems.

Note: When this version of the poem (above) appeared in the Springfield Daily Republican on 1 March 1862--anonymously--it had gained the title "The Sleeping" and lines 3, 5, and 10 were indented.

One of the questions that Dickinson scholars ask is: "What is the purpose of the variants?" The answer does not come easily, and theories range from the idea that variants act as different parts of the same poem, to the thought that each variant is a separate poem in itself. See what the 1999 seminar thought on this issue.

Below is the text of one of her poems, "This was a Poet—". Note that, like many of her poems, this poem has no variants within the text.

The manuscripts found in her fascicles were considered by our class to be the most accurate version of each poem, as they were final drafts of poems recopied by Dickinson. Therefore, we assumed that these are the poems as she meant for them to be read.

Below is the poem "He fumbles at your Soul", notice the variants, their places marked with an "+" above the word and the alternate words found at the bottom of the poem.