Britney Spears, uh, no uh, Lindsay Lohan, uh, no uh, Paris Hilton, uh…

I’m Nobody. Who are You?

by Emily Dickinson

I’m nobody. Who are you?

Are you nobody too?

Then there’s a pair of us–don’t tell!

They’d banish us you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public like a frog

To tell your name all the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

I love this poem by Emily Dickinson. Hard to believe she wrote it in the late 1800’s. It sounds like she wrote it yesterday somewhere in California or New York City or Palm Springs.

It is one of Dickinson’s most famous poems. I have to ask myself which socialites or celebrities of her time was she addressing.

I could name a few from our own time that fit the criteria. In fact, we have a lot of frogs croaking out their own names all the livelong day… to an admiring bog.