[W T Clark]

David: Dickinson doesn't deserve conceit, she deserves reality.

[Julie Steiner]

I take the poem to be about the inadequacy of the narrator's value system, and not about Emily Dickinson at all.

I'm reminded of the Army engineer Joseph C. Ives' infamous assessment of the Grand Canyon, when he was the head of the first U.S. surveying party to it (1856-1860): "This region can be approached only from the south, and after entering it there is nothing to do but to leave. Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality."