What is the meaning of J 435?

Answer 1

The title is most certainly NOT "J. 435". Thomas H. Johnson was the first scholar to prepare a complete edition of all known poems by Emily Dickinson. It is regarded as a standard work. He made an effort to date them as precisely as documentary evidence allowed and to publish them in chronological order. I think he did a good job. The two numbers in the last line indicate the year of writing (circa 1862) and the year of first publication. The poem appears as No. 435 in his book "Emily Dickinson - The Complete Poems". For this reason it may be referred to as "J. 435", with "J." standing for "Johnson".

Emily Dickinson normally didn't give her poems titles. Most people treat the first lines as if they were the titles. There are advantages to both methods. Where the first line is given, the poem can often be found by people even if they don't have Johnson's collection. For people like myself, who use Johnson's book all the time, referring to the poems by number is much more useful, because it saves the effort of looking up the number from an index of first lines.

Though English isn't my first language either, I have lived in England for the past 30 years. If you live in an English-speaking country, asking you to do a school project of this nature certainly seems legitimate. If you live in (say) a Spanish-speaking country, your teacher is probably too demanding. You will know where you are and be able to decide how much can be expected from you.

Be that as it may, as I can not do your project for you, I will now give you a very brief explanation of the meaning of the poem. If you then study it again in detail, you will hopefully find out how Dickinson conveys the intended meaning and be able to take things from there:

Emily Dickinson is complaining that conformity is treated as if it were mental health, no matter how crazy the fashion to which people conform, while private reasoned eccentricity (like her own) is treated like madness.