Emily Dickinson

Don't put up my thread and needle,

DON'T put up my thread and needle,
I'll begin to sew

When the birds begin

Spring as metaphor for mental recovery. Dickinson's sewing isn't postponed for winter—it's postponed for sanity.

When the birds begin to whistle,
Better stitches so.
These were bent, my sight got crooked.

my sight got crooked

Physical symptom or mental state? Dickinson had actual eye trouble in the 1860s, treated in Boston. But 'crooked' sight suggests distorted perception.

When my mind is plain
I'll do seams a Queen's endeavor
Would not blush to own.
Hems too fine for lady's tracing

sightless knot

The knot you can't see on the underside of perfect needlework. She's promising invisible perfection—when she's well.

To the sightless knot,
Tucks of dainty interspersion
Like a dotted dot.
Leave my needle in the furrow,

Leave my needle in

'Furrow' turns sewing into plowing. The unfinished work stays ready, waiting in the field of fabric.

When I put it down—
I can make the zigzag stitches
Straight, when I am strong.

dreaming I am sewing

She'll work in sleep what she can't manage awake. The unconscious finishes what consciousness can't handle.

Till then, dreaming I am sewing,
Fetch the seam I missed
Closer, so I, at my sleeping,
Still surmise I stitch.

Still surmise I stitch

'Surmise'—to guess, to imagine. Even sleeping, she's only guessing at completion. The work remains hypothetical.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Depression as Disrupted Domesticity

CONTEXT In 19th-century New England, needlework wasn't optional—it was how women clothed their families and proved their competence. Dickinson is describing incapacity in the one domain where women were supposed to be unfailingly capable.

The poem's central conceit is radical: she's too mentally unwell to sew, and she knows it. 'When my mind is plain' treats mental clarity as a future condition, not a present one. The crooked sight in line 5 could be her documented eye problems (she spent weeks in Boston for eye treatment in 1864-65), but 'my mind' makes the real diagnosis clear—this is psychological distortion affecting physical ability.

Notice what she promises when well: seams a 'Queen's endeavor / Would not blush to own,' hems 'too fine for lady's tracing,' tucks 'Like a dotted dot.' These aren't real sewing goals—they're perfectionistic fantasies. The 'dotted dot' is particularly telling: a tautology, an impossible refinement. She's not planning to sew; she's planning to be perfect, which is how you know she's still unwell.

The repetition of the opening stanza at the end creates a loop. She's back where she started, still asking not to have her work put away, still postponing until spring. The poem enacts the circular thinking of depression—the promise to begin, the fantasy of competence, the return to the same plea.

Needle in the Furrow

Line 13's metaphor does something sneaky: 'Leave my needle in the furrow' turns fabric into farmland. A furrow is a plowed groove for planting—this makes sewing into agriculture, domestic work into field labor. For Dickinson, who rarely left her house and never married, this metaphor expands her tiny domain into something vast.

The request is specific: don't put the work away. Leave it ready. This matters because putting away needlework was the proper thing to do—you didn't leave it lying around. She's asking for visible evidence of her incapacity to remain visible. The unfinished seam should stay where she can see it, where it can accuse her, where it can wait.

'When I am strong' (line 16) is the poem's only use of physical language for what's clearly mental. She doesn't say 'when I am well' or 'when my mind clears'—she says strong, as if this were a matter of muscle. It reveals how she experiences mental illness: as weakness, as physical inability to perform.

The final stanza's dream-sewing is the poem's saddest moment. 'Fetch the seam I missed / Closer' imagines someone bringing her unfinished work to her sleeping body, so she can maintain the illusion of productivity even unconscious. 'Surmise I stitch' means she'll only suppose, only imagine she's working. The poem ends in fantasy—not recovery, not completion, just the dream of stitching while the actual needle stays stuck in its furrow.