The Full Text of “Publication — is the Auction”
1Publication – is the Auction
2Of the Mind of Man –
3Poverty – be justifying
4For so foul a thing
5Possibly – but We – would rather
6From Our Garret go
7White – unto the White Creator –
8Than invest – Our Snow –
9Thought belong to Him who gave it –
10Then – to Him Who bear
11Its Corporeal illustration – sell
12The Royal Air –
13In the Parcel – Be the Merchant
14Of the Heavenly Grace –
15But reduce no Human Spirit
16To Disgrace of Price –
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“Publication — is the Auction” Introduction
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"Publication — is the Auction," by the American poet Emily Dickinson, argues that publication is a "foul" practice, akin to selling one's own mind or the very "air" one breathes. The speaker insists that all thought (and thus creative inspiration) comes from God, and, as such, isn't people's to profit off in the first place. Writers are just vessels through which God's grace and wisdom flow, and putting a price on writing simply degrades both the author and their work. Dickinson wrote this poem in 1863; like most of her work, it was published posthumously.
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“Publication — is the Auction” Summary
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Publishing one's work is like selling one's own mind to the highest bidder. Facing poverty might be a reasonable excuse to do something so revolting.
But it's better to be pure when we die—and leave our cramped attic rooms to meet our pure, perfect creator—than to profit off the pure white "snow" that is our writing.
God gave us thought, and all thought thus belongs to him. Human beings are the physical manifestation of that thought, and selling it would be like trying to sell the very air we all breathe.
A writer's job is to deliver God's heavenly blessings and wisdom through their work, and it would be utterly degrading to the human spirit to put a price on God's grace.
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“Publication — is the Auction” Themes
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Writing as Sacred and Publication as Degrading
In “Publication is the Auction,” the speaker argues in no uncertain terms that selling one’s writing is degrading. To do so is akin to putting a price tag on one’s own thoughts (and perhaps even tailoring them to suit public appetites). Even worse, the speaker argues, these thoughts aren’t people’s to sell in the first place: all thought comes from God, and human beings are simply vessels that God’s love and wisdom pass through. Writing, then, is sacred, and profiting off of this process is akin to selling the very “[a]ir” one breathes—nonsensical and immoral, defiling both the work and its author.
The speaker compares publication to auctioning off one's mind to the highest bidder. The only possible justification for doing something so “foul” would be to stave off poverty, but the speaker insists that it's much better to “go / White — unto the White Creator”—that is, to remain unpublished throughout life, so that one can be pure ("White") upon meeting God in heaven.
To sell one's work is to tarnish it and oneself, the speaker believes, because creative inspiration is a gift from God. “Thought belong to Him who gave it,” the speaker argues, adding that human beings only carry the “[c]orporeal”—that is, bodily or worldly—"illustration” of these divine thoughts. People don’t actually own anything, and writers are mere “[m]erchant[s]” of God’s “Heavenly Grace.” That is, they're simply delivering a “Parcel” (or package) that has been entrusted to them by God. God puts the thoughts in their minds, and they then write them down.
Selling one’s writing is thus like “invest[ing]” one’s “Snow,” or trying to profit off of the very thing that connects people to divinity. Publication, to this speaker, is practically sacrilege. One might as well try to “sell / The Royal Air”—something that belongs to no one yet benefits everyone, passing in and out of lungs and sustaining life. As such, the speaker concludes, one must “reduce no Human Spirit / To Disgrace of Price”—that is, people mustn't insult the human spirit, which comes from God, but putting a price tag on it.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Publication — is the Auction”
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Lines 1-2
Publication – is the Auction
Of the Mind of Man –The speaker wastes no time in saying exactly how they feel about publication: the poem's opening metaphor compares selling one's work to holding an "Auction," a public sale in which people try to outbid each other for goods, services, or property. But instead of selling things, this "Auction" involves selling the "Mind" itself; publication, to this speaker, is like putting a price on one's very thoughts. What's more, this metaphor implies that the desire to publish encourages writers to cater to public opinions and tastes (so that people will make higher "bids") rather than stick to whatever they themselves find meaningful.
Note how the use of alliteration and capitalization draw attention to the phrase "Mind of Man," suggesting that the speaker isn't just referring to the thoughts and perceptions of an individual writer, but to the entire idea of the "Mind" in general. In other words, when writers sell their work, the speaker believes they're actually insulting the human capacity to think and observe.
Note, too, the passionate and persuasive tone of the poem: the speaker's strong opening statement is underlined by a forceful, trochaic meter (meaning the main poetic unit here is the trochee, a foot that moves from a stressed syllable to an unstressed syllable—like the word "trochee" itself!). The first line of the poem more specifically uses trochaic tetrameter, meaning that it consists of four trochees—four DA-dums—in a row:
Publi- | cation — | is the | Auction
The second line is then written in trochaic trimeter, meaning it has three trochees instead of four. It's also catalectic, which simply means that it's missing its final syllable:
Of the | Mind of | Man —
Trochees lend the poem a driving, pounding rhythm, which that catalexis intensifies by ending the line on a stressed syllable. This pattern will continue throughout the poem.
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Lines 3-4
Poverty – be justifying
For so foul a thing
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Lines 5-8
Possibly – but We – would rather
From Our Garret go
White – unto the White Creator –
Than invest – Our Snow – -
Lines 9-12
Thought belong to Him who gave it –
Then – to Him Who bear
Its Corporeal illustration – sell
The Royal Air – -
Lines 13-16
In the Parcel – Be the Merchant
Of the Heavenly Grace –
But reduce no Human Spirit
To Disgrace of Price –
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“Publication — is the Auction” Symbols
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Snow/Whiteness
In the poem, the color white symbolizes purity. When the speaker calls God "the White Creator," they're emphasizing God's holiness and perfection. And when the speaker says that they'd rather "go / White — unto the White Creator," this means that they hope to be pure themselves when they die and meet God.
Part of remaining pure throughout one's life, the speaker continues, is refusing to profit off one's "Snow"—a metaphor for the thought/creative inspiration that sprinkles down on writers from God above. Selling this "Snow" would symbolically dirty it, and profiting off the pure connection they have with God would tarnish the writer as well.
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“Publication — is the Auction” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Caesura
The poem's frequent caesurae create moments of drama and anticipation, and they also emphasize certain words or ideas. Take a look at the first stanza, for example:
Publication — is the Auction
Of the Mind of Man —
Poverty — be justifying
For so foul a thingThe dashes after "Publication" and "Poverty" push readers to linger on these words, calling attention to their importance in the poem. In creating a bit of a parallel between "Publication" and "Poverty," the caesurae here might also suggest that the speaker finds both things abhorrent. That is, the speaker thinks that people shouldn't sell the thoughts given to them by God, but they also think that people shouldn't be put into a position where they have no other choice than to do so.
Because the caesurae here always take the form of dashes rather than more traditional periods or commas, they tend to feel less like grammatical pauses and more like evidence of the mind in motion. Through the use of caesura, the reader can perhaps feel the visceral way in which this speaker is wrestling with their convictions around publication. This isn't merely an intellectual argument; their disgust for the way publication degrades the "Human Spirit" is something they feel deep in their core.
For instance, the caesura in line 8 ("Than invest — Our Snow") seems to evoke a grimace or a contorting of the spirit as the speaker thinks about what it means for someone to profit off of the very thing that connects them to their "Creator." It's as if the thought of such a thing brings the speaker physical discomfort; the speaker repeatedly struggles to articulate themselves, so flummoxed are they by the idea of publishing one's work.
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Enjambment
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Metaphor
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Diacope
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Alliteration
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Sibilance
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Consonance
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“Publication — is the Auction” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Auction
- Foul
- Justifying
- Garret
- Corporeal illustration
- Parcel
- Merchant
- Disgrace
Auction-
A sales event where people bid on things; the highest bid (that is, the largest amount of money offered) wins the item or service.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Publication — is the Auction”
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Form
The poem's 16 lines are divided into four quatrains (a.k.a four-line stanzas). These look a lot like ballad stanzas that Dickinson was so fond of: they follow an ABCB rhyme scheme and alternate between lines of tetrameter and trimeter (lines with four vs. three poetic feet—more on that in the Meter section of this guide).
The poem's alternating lines and rhymed quatrains call to mind the church hymns that informed much of Dickinson’s poetry, which makes sense: this poem is, after all, arguing for the sacredness of human thought and writing.
That said, these stanzas don't use the typical iambic (da-DUM) rhythm of a ballad. Instead, the poem's forceful trochaic rhythms (its falling DA-dum beats) evoke the passionate conviction of this speaker, who believes that publishing one's work is not only wrong but an insult to the "Human Spirit" itself.
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Meter
"Publication — is the Auction" alternates between lines of trochaic tetrameter and trochaic trimeter. Odd-numbered lines are made up of four trochees, metrical feet consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Take a look at line 9 for an example of perfect trochaic tetrameter:
Thought be- | long to | Him who | gave it
Even-numbered lines are then more or less in trochaic trimeter: they still follow that stressed-unstressed rhythm, but they have just three feet (three DA-dums) instead of four. However, most of the even-numbered lines in this poem are catalectic, which means that they're missing their final beat—the last unstressed syllable is simply absent. For example, here's line 10:
Then — to | Him who | bear
The poem's trochaic rhythm feels forceful and insistent, which is fitting for a poem that's trying to persuade the reader of something. It evokes the speaker's passionate feelings about publication. The use of catalexis adds to the poem's forcefulness as well, in that it allows those trimeter lines to end on the firmness of a stressed beat.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem follows a simple ABCB rhyme scheme, meaning the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme.
This rhyme scheme is common not only in church hymns and nursery rhymes, but also in a great deal of Romantic poetry. The simplicity of the rhyme scheme adds musicality to the poem without making it feel overly rigid.
As with most of Dickinson's work, however, some of the rhymes here aren't perfect. In the first stanza, for instance, the rhyme between "Man" and "thing" is decidedly slant—there's really only a faint echo of rhyme here! "Grace" and "price" in the poem's final stanza is an imperfect rhyme as well. Moments like this add interest, surprise, and excitement to the poem, keeping it from becoming too predictable. The near-lack of rhyme between "Man" and "thing" might even subtly suggest how degrading "[p]ublication" is: it can demote the "Mind of Man" to "thing" that barely resembles (or sounds like) that "Man" at all.
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“Publication — is the Auction” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a writer who, clearly, doesn't believe in publishing one's work! While the speaker admits that people grappling with poverty might have some grounds to sell their writing, in an ideal world, no one would have to publish anything. To do so, in this speaker's view, would be to put a price tag on one's own thoughts. And because those thoughts come from a pure and perfect God, publication is downright "foul"—an affront to the "Human Spirit" itself.
The speaker uses collective pronouns throughout the poem ("we," "our"), which indicate that this issue is much bigger than their personal circumstances. In fact, it affects everyone; human beings are simply the earthly "bear[ers]" of God's thoughts, the speaker argues, meaning that all thought is ultimately the property of God and God alone.
It is worth noting that Dickinson herself had a rather complicated relationship to publication, a relationship that evolved over the course of her life. This poem may or may not be a direct reflection of how she felt at the time.
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“Publication — is the Auction” Setting
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Like so many of Dickinson's poems, "Publication — is the Auction" doesn't have a specific setting; it's dealing with an abstract idea that's meant to apply everywhere, all the time. The speaker argues that thoughts don't "belong" to the people writing them down, but are rather a gift from God. The writer is merely a go-between, a kind of "merchant" between divinity and humanity. As such, readers can broadly think of the poem as taking place in the mortal world—a place separate from God's realm. The speaker specifically envisions writers working in a little attic room (a "Garret") in life, and urges writers not to sell their work so that they can still be "White," or pure, when they die and go "unto the White Creator" (i.e., when they meet God).
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Literary and Historical Context of “Publication — is the Auction”
Literary Context
Dickinson fits into her literary context by standing out from it. Though she wrote in the mid to late 1800s, some critics class her as a proto-Modernist (a 20th-century literary movement) for her psychological subtlety and experimentation with form. She was, certainly, one of the greatest voices of American Romanticism, a school of thought that believed in the importance of the self, nature, and one's individual relationship with God.
Dickinson's thought and work were influenced by the English Romantics of a generation or two before her, including William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge; by contemporary American transcendentalist writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson; by the novels of the Victorian English writer Charlotte Bronte; and by Shakespeare.
Though Dickinson published only a handful of poems during her lifetime, it would be a mistake to view her only as a literary recluse or to think that she didn’t intend for her poetry to be read in the future. She ordered many of her poems into sequences that she then sewed together into fascicles (or booklets), saving many others as unbound sheets. "Publication — is the Auction" was included in one of these fascicles and dated to 1863.
Her manuscripts were written by hand and are often hard to decipher. They also often contain multiple variants, with three or four possible words for each word in the poem. As a result, there are often considerable differences between different published editions of Dickinson’s poems, including their line breaks and punctuation. Serious studies of Dickinson increasingly begin with facsimiles of her manuscripts, as is the case with Jen Bervin and Marta Werner’s recent edition of poems that Dickinson wrote on envelopes, The Gorgeous Nothings.
Historical Context
This poem, like almost all of Dickinson's work, didn't see the light of day until after her death; Dickinson mostly eschewed publication, mistrusting its conformity and commercialism—feelings clearly on display here! Dickinson only became widely known posthumously, when her sister Lavinia discovered a cache of nearly 1,800 secret poems and brought them to publication with the help of a (sometimes combative) group of Dickinson's family and friends. It was a fortunate rescue: Dickinson's poetry would become some of the most influential and beloved in the world.
This poem was written during the American Civil War, a time of great societal uncertainty and darkness. While Dickinson was famously reclusive and didn't get involved in the war directly, she was firmly on the Union side of the conflict. However, Dickinson rarely addressed the political world around her directly in her poetry, preferring either to write about her immediate surroundings or to take a much wider philosophical perspective.
While this poem makes no direct reference to the historical events of its time, its use of an "Auction" as a metaphor for the evils of "Publication" might be understood in relation to American slavery. At slave auctions, white auctioneers sold Black people to the highest bidder as though they were livestock rather than human beings. Since this poem was written shortly before the abolition of slavery, it's possible that Dickinson had the moral repugnancy of these "Auction[s]" in the back of her mind. (This isn't an explicit nor definite reference in the poem, but it also wouldn't be the only time her work alludes to slavery and race; she also wrote about these things in "The Lamp burns sure — within" and "Color — Caste — Denomination —.")
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More “Publication — is the Auction” Resources
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External Resources
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Dickinson's Life and Work — Check out a biography of Dickison via the Poetry Foundation.
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The Poem in Dickinson's Hand — A scan of Dickinson's handwritten poem, from the Emily Dickinson Archive.
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Dickinson's Friendship with Thomas Wentworth Higginson — This Atlantic article describes an in-person meeting between Dickinson and her friend and mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who once discouraged her from publishing.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a recording of Dickinson's poem.
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"The Publication Question" — An introduction to Dickinson's fraught relationship with publication, via the Emily Dickinson Museum.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Dickinson
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