What mystery pervades a well!

Emily Dickinson’s style is now considered ahead of its time; while her work was unpopular when she wrote, her experimental approach to poetry prompted a resurgence in the study and appreciation of her work many decades later. Despite her use of standardized form and meter—a product of what was available for her to learn from in that era—she uses non-traditional punctuation and syntax, and simple and crystalline word choices. Within this poem and many others, we see an early version of the modern poetry we know today.

Dickinson barely published when she was alive; the small handful of poems that made it into print were often heavily edited to be in line with contemporaneous punctuation, syntax, and poetry rules, removing what was unique to Dickinson as an artist and an individual. During her lifetime, publishers and critics believed Dickinson’s unusual line-level choices came from inexperience; now, after the revived interest in her work from the 1920s onwards, scholars believe her choices were made with precision and vision, heralding the direction poetry would take. Although Dickinson was a contemporary of the poet Walt Whitman, also known for making experimental choices in his work, her gender likely worked against her and prevented her from having a measurable impact on the art form until much later.

In “What mystery pervades a well,” we see several trademarks of Dickinson’s style. She favors em-dashes as closing punctuation in lines 2, 6, and 14, as well as condensed sentences that serve both meter and clarity, such as “I often wonder he” (Line 10) and “The nearer her they get” (Line 24). By streamlining these shorter sentences, Dickinson draws attention to lines that break this pattern, such as “And does no timidity betray” (Line 16). Dickinson used structure to challenge the rigid style of poetry prevalent when she wrote.