The goal of this chapter is to reconcile two competing camps of thinking regarding Dickinson’s poetry. According to the first camp, the form and content of her poems cannot be pulled apart. What she says is tightly bound up with how she says it. According to the second camp, her poems can be paraphrased; what they say can be said in other words. To resolve the tension between these views, the chapter defends the following two claims. First, poets and critics tend to ask too much of paraphrases, wrongly demanding they reproduce everything contained in the original poem. Second, poets and critics are engaged in different kinds of activities. These activities are governed by different norms. In particular, form and content must be tied together for a poet such as Dickinson but not for a critic intent on a paraphrase.