In the poem written by Emily Dickinson “The brain- is wider than the sky-” Emily writes about the importance of the brain and what it is capable of. In the first line of the poem Emily states that the brain is wider than the sky. At first glance, you could catch a small glimpse of what Emily is trying to say about the brain. As you continue to read the rest of the poem, you could understand almost all of the poem and what Emily is trying to say about the capabilities of the brain. This sentence implies that the subconscious person has the ability to think, perceive, and create, implying that the mind can accomplish everything it sets its mind to. In other terms, the brain’s imagination is boundless. The sentence ‘The Brain—is wider than the Sky—’ offers a crucial significance, indicating that the brain when it comes to thought and imagination is wider than the open space in the air. This jumps out to me as being important to the question of “what is literature” because it contains the rhetorical device metaphor and this piece of work written by Emily is a form of art, poetry, and can be instantly recognizable through the use of literature. The poem continues on to metaphorically talk about the brain capabilities as she states that the “brain is deeper than the sea.” Again, Emily writes this line as a way to show how the brain is deep in the sense of gaining knowledge. Dickinson’s symbolic analogy of the brain to the sea suggests that humans are capable of profound insights. The speaker of the poem goes on to explain that the mind is capable of observing, absorbing, and processing a large amount of information by comparing the brain to a sponge that soaks up a bucket of water. The use of language that is written in this line makes it easier to grasp and understand and has us the reader distinguish characteristics of the poem which leads to the importance of the question “what is literature?”