The Wider Sky — Dickinson Poems Journal

Dickinson wrote this in the 1860s, in a house she rarely left, and still chose the word "Brain" over "mind." That distinction was the whole argument.

Emily Dickinson — manuscript, c. 1862

"The Brain—is wider than the Sky—"

She wrote it around 1862 — during her most prolific stretch — and sent it to no one, keeping her poems in hand-sewn booklets, in a trunk, in a house she rarely left. The brain didn't need to travel; it was already wider than the sky. A journal is where you find out if she was right — where the thinking that happens in private turns out to be larger than anything visible from where you're sitting. The poem wasn't published until 1896, a decade after her death, in an edition that tidied away the dashes she'd meant to keep.

The Design

THE BRAIN— dominates the cover in capitals, the em dash attached, the rest of the poem following in a smaller voice beneath it — exactly as Dickinson punctuated it. The dashes weren't restored to print until 1955, but they were always hers.

Also on the Wider Sky Tee, Mug, and Phone Case. More Dickinson: Possibility Tee and The Every Door Tee.

About This Journal

• 5.5″ × 8.5″ hardcover — 120 lined pages, acid-free paper
• Elastic band closure, ribbon bookmark, lay-flat binding

Who It's For

• The thinker who writes to find out what they think — who's written their way to an understanding they couldn't reach by thinking alone
• Anyone who's filled a journal and been surprised at what was in it
• The Dickinson reader who keeps a journal because it's the widest space they have access to

Open it. THE BRAIN— is already wider than the sky. Prove it.

Emily Dickinson, in Plain English

• Lived: 1830–1886, Amherst, Massachusetts
• "The Brain—is wider than the Sky—" was written around 1862, during her most productive years
• Corresponded with Thomas Wentworth Higginson for 24 years, showed him her work, called him her "preceptor," and never let him publish it
• She never saw her poems in print as she wrote them; within a decade of her death they were in classrooms and already being argued about
• Died at 55, having never left Amherst for more than a few days; her work has never gone out of print