I recently came across Emily Dickinson’s poem, The Brain is Wider than the Sky.
The poem’s short metaphorical views about the brain provide intriguing comparisons worthy of serious and solemn ponderance. I enjoyed the thought-provoking never-ending perspective of an organ that can take us from here, there, and so close to God.
The brain and sky are two fascinating wonders, and scientists are forever exploring and making discoveries about them. We see the unabated, liberated sky in all its glory and splendor, but the grayish, mushroom-shaped brain lies hidden, enclosed in its protective shell.
The incomparability of the brain and sky respective to size couldn’t be more obvious. Although there’s no need to belabor the point, let’s do it for the sake of a bit of information.
The average adult’s brain is 15 cm or six inches long and weighs about three pounds. How is it possible that a human brain has the width to encompass the place where stars and planets reside? Yet, Dickinson poses that the brain’s width exceeds the sky’s.
This sounds pretty nutty, right?
So, why the comparison?
Dickinson, a great American poet, compares the mind or brain power to an infinite unmeasurable expanse that’s visible to all who look upwards, regardless of where one stands or resides on earth.
The sky is immense from where I stand, looking towards the Nort Star, South, East, or West. My peripheral vision cannot encompass it. And there’s no break or line of demarcation, just an unending sky.
Dickinson is talking about the power of the brain’s engine, the mind.
She says the mind can envelop the sky and anything next to it, including you. Like other comparisons in the poem, comparing the brain to the sky is a metaphor, a figure of speech that isn’t literally true.
The comparison isn’t about the width of the brain but the expanse and potential of one’s mind.
When you compare the mind to the sky, suddenly, the analogy becomes more relatable. Who knows the expanse of the mind or the sky? The mind is a sky of imagination, able to perceive and envision almost anything.
Is there a limit to the depth of knowledge the mind can learn, understand, process, and utilize? In this regard, Dickinson says the mind is as deep as the sea.
The last metaphor in the poem compares the brain to God.
In that God is a spirit, weightless and everywhere, the mind is similar in that it can go almost anywhere imaginative, almost without bounds.
Dickinson poses that the human mind and God are similar, but if they differ, the difference may be that of a syllable and a sound. If God is the sound, the mind is a syllable of the sound in the universe.
Enjoy this beautiful poem.
Can you wrap your brain or mind around it all?
Can you imagine!
The Brain is Wider Than the Sky
The Brain is wider than the sky
For put them side by side
The one the other will contain
With ease and you beside.
The Brain is deeper than the sea
For hold them blue to blue
The one the other will absorb
As sponges buckets do.
The Brain is just the weight of God
For heft them pound for pound
And they will differ if they do
As syllable from sound.
Be well.