In the poem “Taking off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes”, Billy Collins divulges how he came to understand Emily Dickinson through her poems he studied. He begins the poem out by using an extended metaphor which compares the reading of an Emily Dickinson’s poem to the undressing of a 19th century Victorian lady. A Victorian era lady was notorious for having many complicated step in order to get out of her daytime dress. In the first stanza, he takes off “her tippet made of tulle” (line 1), or her shawl, thus opening the front cover of one Emily Dickinson’s books. Then when he goes to remove her bonnet in the second stanza, he is flipping the pages to get to the first page of the poem. In the third stanza, he is starting the analysis of the poem
