Despite Frost's expressions of interest in Emily Dickinson, his critics have said nothing about the ways in which his reactions to Dickinson's poetry might have contributed to the shape of his own early poetry…. [There are numerous] affinities and interrelated differences discernible in Frost's early poems, principally that handful published between 1894 and 1901, and the first Dickinson poems published in the 1890s….

In the spring of 1892, during his final months at Lawrence High School, Frost discovered the poetry of Emily Dickinson, just out in two small volumes, Poems (1890) and Poems, Second Series (1891). He was immediately taken with her, discovering in her poetry the voice of a kindred New England soul. "Although her terse, homely, gnomic, cryptic, witty qualities appealed very strongly to him," writes Lawrance Thompson, "he was again fascinated to find that his new author was also 'troubled about many things' concerning death…. [The] poems which cut deepest...