As Jack L. Capps mentions, although Emily Dickinson says of her poetry, "This is my letter to the World/That never wrote to Me," she also declares that "There is no Frigate like a Book/To take us lands away" (vii). Considering the Book as what the World wrote to her, one is certainly inclined to speak of the first citation as "an overstatement" (Capps 1). And yet, this logic takes us to a couple of necessary proposi-tions : first, the World that never wrote to her makes her "letter" quite marginal, "circumferential" in the Dickinsonian sense, to the World, and, second, it is not the World but the Book that wrote its "letter" to her. Indeed Dickinson might have kept reading books, all the more because the World never wrote back to her, but, simultaneously and paradoxically, it might have been her reading that made her writing marginal. We are unable to decide whether her alienated life in the world led her into the life within the Book or whether her (mis ) reading of books led her into her (mis) writing in the World (Paul de Man 69). This paper is concerned with clarifying how the cause and effect relationship between writing and reading becomes indeterminate in the poet. Here the place to start may be with a reconsideration of herkey-concept of "circumference". Did she write (about) circumference or read (something into) it ?  In one of her famous "letters" Dickinson writes: "...My business is Circumference" (To T. W. Higginson, July 1862, Selected Letters 176). And her original intention of circumference has often been located in Poem 883:    The Poets light but Lamps-   Themselves-go out    The Wicks they stimulate   If vital light    Inhere as do the Suns    Each Age a Lens    Disseminating their    Circumference -A conventional way of interpreting this poem has long been based upon theological perspective. Charles Anderson states: "The literal meaning of `Circumference' as the boundary of a circle (like the disks of the lamps) has been expanded by her special meaning into a sphere like the sun, radiating its light outward to infinity. If poets can light such lamps they are content to `go out' themselves, for death then becomes a means of going outward to illuminate the darkness surrounding the genera-tions of man. The mortal life has been transfigured into the enduring life of their poems" (Emily Dickinson's Poetry: Stairway of Surprise 58-59). The poets are, however, not necessarily religious. Anderson's mistake lies in his regarding this poem as representative of her visionof infinity. This poem rather reflects Dickinson's poetics, revealing its self-reflexive and metapoetical characteristics. Accordingly, it might be more aptly suggested that as the poets go out and their poems' margin invites the dissemination of meaning, so it is not the wicks of the lamp but their circumference that enjoys its dissemination.  Another metapoem of hers makes this point clearer:This was a poet -it is That Distills amazing sense From ordinary Meanings-And Attar so immenseFrom the familiar species That perished by the Door-We wonder it was not ourselves Arrested it-before-(P 448)What attracts us here in the first place is the metaphorical equation of "sense" with "Attar" and of "Meanings" with "species". In terms of distilling "Attar so immense/From the familiar species" Dickinson allegorizes the act of writing as well as the act of reading ; although poetry always smells sweet, distilling its amazing and immense sense is, just like reading (amazing and immense sense into) /writing (amazing and immense) poetry, not so easy as it looks at first glance. To find the extraordinary (= "amazing") in the ordinary ("sense") is precisely to hover around the circumference of the ordinary, prolonging the dura-tion of the "extra-ordinary".  This hovering of the poet is skillfully expressed in another poemabout poems:Shall I take thee, the Poet said To the propounded word? Be stationed with the Candidates Till I have finer tried-The Poet searched Philology And when about to ring For the suspended Candidate There came unsummoned in-That portion of the Vision The Word applied to fill Not unto nomination The Cherubim reveal(P 1126)While the Poet writes a poem, he reads Philology, suspending "the propounded word" as the "Candidate". Then, he succeeds in reading "That portion of the Vision" into "The Word". This formula cannot but remind us of her reading something into "circumference"; if the Poet primarily writes a poem out of Philology which consists of numerous candidates, he is invariably confronted with circumferential words, not central. Exactly as words precede intentions, so circumference precedes center. In this respect the Dickinsonian writing and reading converge, as will be examined later. Put simply, her rhetoric springs from the obsession of "decentering".