"Heaven'--is what I cannot reach!"

In the poem "'Heaven'--is what I cannot reach!," Emily Dickinson expresses a vision of heaven as beyond the reach of the human being. The poet's vision of heaven is of something unreachable, like an apple on a tree higher than she can reach. In one way, Dickinson sees heaven in mundane terms, as hiding behind the things of her world. At the same time, it remains always behind these things and so out of reach. Heaven may be something to which human beings aspire, but it is also something they can never achieve.

The way the word "heaven" is set off in the first line emphasizes that heaven is the subject of the poem. At the same time, using the word in this fashion creates an instantaneous image in the mind of the reader, who will have his or her own vision of heaven supported by the vision that is prevalent in the community. The quotation marks set the word off even more, as if the poet were savoring the word and considering all that it might mean. The way the word is set apart and followed by a dash causes the reader to savor the word as well, and following the pause is the comment by the poet--"is what I cannot reach." The word has been analyzed, and it has been determined to mean that which the poet cannot reach. Clearly, heaven is something we would like to reach and that we have been told is within our grasp, but the poet denies this.

The next line sets out another image to be equated with heaven--"The Apple on the Tree" (The poet capitalizes all nouns and p

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