Christopher Merrill: Tell It Slant—Notes from the Writing University

The renowned poet, journalist, and director of the International Writing Program on creating and preserving "spaces for truth telling."

Emily Dickinson — Tell all the truth but tell it slant…

By Christopher Merrill 

I keep returning to a poem that Emily Dickinson wrote sometime between 1858 and 1865. This was a decisive period in American history, echoes of which regularly sound today, and this poem, conceived in a time of bitter division, when it was difficult to sort out the truth among conflicting accounts of events and derive meaning from the waves of grief and joy that washed over Americans during the Civil War, speaks to a fundamental issue of this democratic enterprise—how to create and preserve spaces for truth telling, since this is integral to our experiment in liberty:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise 
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind  
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Dickinson’s eyesight declined during the war, which adds a layer of personal meaning to the last line of th…