[“It dropped so low- in my regard”] There are countless ways to interpret any given poem. While the author of the poem knows exactly what they are saying, the reader may decide that it is entirely different for them. Emily Dickinson’s poems are very highly interpreted, due to the fact that she is one of the best loved and most celebrated American poets. Each of her poems is seamlessly woven to create an image that can be both beautifully literal and metaphorical. Her poem [“It dropped so low- in my regard”] is a fine example of this. While literally about a broken piece of crockery, this poem can actually be interpreted as a metaphor for Emily Dickinson’s complicated, lonely love life. To fully understand Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and this poem in particular, we must understand a bit of her life. Emily is known for having been a recluse, her life a deliciously obscure mystery. She was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts to a respectable family. Her early childhood seems to have been a happy one. She was the middle child and rather the pet of her older brother and her lawyer father. Dickinson was always an eccentric, even at a young age. While she attended church regularly with her family, she refused to officially join the church, and she never called herself a Christian. She was reported to be a good student, but she was always sickly, and only spent a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before having to leave because of her health. She began writing poetry around 1850, and while her poems were originally traditional, she began to experiment with the established form, something else that she is well known for. Her famously reclusive life did not fully begin until 1861, when she suffered from a nervous breakdown after having been left by a man she loved. Emily met Dr. Charles Wadsworth, who was a married reverend, in Philadelphia. While there is no