Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)

“Fame is a fickle food” by Emily Dickinson was published, posthumously, after her death in 1886. One of the earliest collections it appears in is The Single Hound, published by Little, Brown, and Company in 1914, where it is numbered SH14-4 (Single Hound, 1914, #4). The most accurate version can be found in the 1999 edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R.W. Franklin, and published by Harvard University Press. This source numbers it 1702 (FC1702: Franklin, Third Issue, #1702). Other sources number it FA1659 (from the first edition of Franklin’s book). It is consistently referred to by its first line, and can be seen in (handwritten) manuscript on the online Emily Dickinson Archive.

“Fame is a fickle food” is one of Dickinson’s many loose-leaf and undated, but signed, poems. Scholars believe it was written late in Dickinson’s life because she only began signing poems that she did not include in letters late in life. It is a short, free-verse elegiac (elegy-like) poem. Dickinson was heavily influenced by poets like Robert Browning and Helen Hunt Jackson; “Fame is a fickle food” can be read as an elegy for the latter. More generally, its themes are death, fame, and reputation.

Poet Biography

Emily Dickinson was born in December of 1830 to the prestigious Dickinson family of Amherst, Massachusetts, where she lived until her death in May of 1886. Her parents were Edward Dickinson, a lawyer and politician, and Emily Norcross Dickinson. While the family did move from one side of Amherst to the other, they returned to the Dickinson Homestead in 1858. This is where Emily wrote the majority of her poetic output that survives to this day.

Dickinson attended primary school at Amherst Academy with Helen Hunt Jackson, another Massachusetts-native and future canonical poet. While they would not correspond with the intensity Dickinson was known for in her letter-writing until late in both their lives, the friendship founded when they were children would endure.

In 1862, Dickinson read an Atlantic Monthly article by Thomas Wentworth (T. W.) Higginson and wrote him a letter that included several poems. This was the beginning of a long-term friendship with Higginson, primarily through an extensive exchange of letters. Dickinson, at the encouragement of Higginson, named Helen Hunt Jackson as her literary executor. This decision would bear little fruit, however, as Jackson’s early death of stomach cancer resulted in Dickinson retreating from publicity even further.

While Dickinson was famously reclusive, her letters, especially those to people she considered her literary and poetic seniors, show deeper influence in her work. Her relationships with not only Higginson and Jackson, but also Samuel Bowles, show a desire to be published. Dickinson wrote extensively about reading contemporary fiction and poetry. Despite this, Dickinson was not published during her lifetime, with the exception of a handful of unsigned poems.

Before her death, the poet asked Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson, her sister-in-law, to destroy her work after she passed. Susan ignored this request but failed to actually get the poems published. It was only with the intervention of Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd—a dramatic figure in the otherwise quiet lives of the Dickinson family—that the poems were reproduced for publication.

The poems that are available at the present come from one of three sources: 1) those included in letters preserved by their recipient; 2) loose-leaf poems preserved by her sister-in-law; 3) and disordered boxes of small folios, referred to by Dickinson scholars as fascicles, discovered upon the occasion of her death.

Poem Text

Dickinson, Emily. (Ed. Franklin, R.W.) “Fame is a fickle food.” 1999. The Poetry Foundation.

Manuscript version: Dickinson, Emily. “Fame is a fickle food.” c. 1885. The Emily Dickinson Electronic Archive.

Summary

“Fame is a fickle food” is a short free-verse poem with elements from the elegy form. In manuscript form, and in the 1999 edition of Dickinson’s works edited by R.W. Franklin, the poem has no punctuation and no title.

The first line, which also acts as the title, describes the nature of fame—frequently changing and something to be consumed. In the second line, Dickinson develops the presentation of the food. The plate, as well as the food, is described as fickle.

In the third, fourth, and fifth lines, two meals are contrasted. On the first occasion, the table is set for a guest. On the second occasion, the table is not set. If fame is the food being served, this means the guest can only eat, or experience, fame once.

The sixth line introduces another symbol—crows. These animals check out the leftover food of fame. In the next line, the crows caw. Dickinson describes this vocalization as ironic; crows see what people do not—the problems with fame.

In the eighth and ninth lines, the crows abandon the food of fame. They prefer to eat corn that a farmer has grown, presumably still on the stalks.

The tenth and final line contrasts the actions of humans with the actions of the crows. While crows know to avoid the food of fame, people choose to consume it. Then, they perish, demonstrating the finality of their lives despite—or perhaps also because of—experiencing fame.