By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Emily Dickinson (1830-86) rarely did things the simple way. She used rhyme, but just as often used half-rhyme or pararhyme; she almost always wrote in quatrains, but sometimes broke away from these to write longer stanzas; when she writes about snow she does so without ever actually mentioning that that is her subject. In ‘Ah Moon – and Star!’ she writes a love poem, but, as we might expect from Emily Dickinson, she does so in a quite unexpected way.