Emily Dickinson

answer a 3rd question this week for 10 points extra credit.

1) You saw my video on the sublime (here: Sublime Definition Video (originally for ENGL 2230, but works for 2130 as well). Find an example of either the Kantian or the Burkean sublime in Emily Dickinson's poetry, and quote the lines and then explain why you read it as the sublime? Don't just quote! Quote and then tell me how you are interpreting/ what you got out of it.

2) Many readers of Emily Dickinson have tried to put the poet in a box. In other words, they've tried to read her one specific way. However, Dickinson's poetry is full of ambiguity. We know she had a religious education. We know ideas about her religion seem to have been important to her.

But we also know that she struggled with total acceptance of some of these ideas. Her poetry then appears to be a space for her to explore the contradictions of her own feelings about religion and the afterlife and so on. Please use at least three lines of poetry from any poems to discuss an example of how Emily Dickinson seems to struggle with ambiguity in her beliefs (so feeling to contradictory ways at once, or just feeling unsure).

3) How is Death characterized, described, or otherwise explored in the poems of Emily Dickinson? Use as least two different poems in your response. It is okay if the ideas contradict each other as you move from one poem to another.

4) Emily Dickinson's poetry contains interesting punctuation-particularly the dashes- Find at least one example where the punctuation or the dashes create interesting possibilities when interpreting the poem.

What I mean by that is there may be some poems that have more than one meaning-depending on how long you pause on a dash or what follows the dash. If you are not familiar with the dash, it can operate with the power of a period or more like a comma. It can emphasize what comes after it or create a bridge between two concepts. How does Emily Dickinson use it in the example that you discussed?

5) How can you compare or contrast Dickinson with Whitman? Are they more alike than they are unalike? What do they share in common and how do they differ? One way to answer this is to focus on your own reaction to their poems.