Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Tell all the Truth but tell it slant’

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Tell all the Truth but tell it slant’ is poem number 1129 in Emily Dickinson’s Complete Poems. It’s immediately recognisable as an Emily Dickinson poem: the use of the quatrain form, the characteristic dashes, the almost telegraphic style. But what does it mean to ‘tell all the Truth but tell it slant’? The short analysis below attempts an answer to this question. What is the meaning of this short and justly celebrated poem?

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