I've always liked this poem, and the story behind it--according to most literature textbooks, Emily Dickinson went off to college and fell in love with an older, possibly married man who never acknowledged her infatuation for him. This poem seems very much like a statement on her desperation during, or shortly following, the period of time when she realized he would never return her feelings. I particularly like the way she talks to her heart, as if it is a sentient being who can be reasoned with; I also appeciate the way she needs her heart to start the forgetting, "lest [she] remember[s] him," in the meantime. What a perfect portrait of someone who is frantically, despairingly trying to escape their pain--and failing miserably.
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