Last fall, I took a class on American Lit from 1776-1865. While the majority of our time was spent on prose produced in a young and conflicted United States, toward the end we shifted our focus to poetry, and this led us to the subject of today’s post: Emily Dickinson.
I had not read much of Dickinson’s work prior to this course, and what I knew of her came from “The Bustle in a House” and “Because I could not stop for Death—”. Thus, I only knew her to be a poet concerned with death. Little did I know that her oeuvre includes nearly 1800 poems whose topics include reflections on love, pain, science, religion, and volcanoes (she loved a good volcano metaphor!).
Similarly, I was surprised by the number of approaches one can take to reading and teaching Dickinson’s poetry. (I love TPCASTT as much as the next English teacher, but it can leave students with a sour taste for poetry if they’re not poetically inclined.) Rather than just analyzing her words and trying to wrestle meaning from them, why not set them to music? Why not use her words as an exercise in refracting meaning through lateral thinking? Or use her poetry as an entry point for debate? Her body of work is so expansive and profound that it seems there as many approaches to analyzing it as there are poems to analyze.
Thus, in honor of the new year, I’d like to share three new-to-me approaches for teaching Emily Dickinson’s poetry that not only illuminate her words, but also challenge students to think differently about the work of this most reclusive poet.
Three Approaches to Emily Dickinson's Poetry
1. Lateral Thinking
"Tell all the truth, but tell it slant —" (F1263)
Reading Dickinson is like entering a maze that may or may not have an exit—or perhaps the exit exists and also doesn’t. She uses elliptical language, which is to say that she’s able to express multiple meanings with just a few words. For this reason, her poetry can be frustrating to read if you’re trying to pull a single, linear message from it.
Instead of trying to make Dickinson fit into a neat box of meaning, why not allow for multiple meanings? Professor Ivy Schweitzer of Dartmouth University calls this a “lateral thinking” approach to Dickinson, which “fosters an attitude of openness, wonder and curiosity, not the instrumentalist need to find the ‘right’ answer, which demonizes failure, forestalls surprises, and ends investigation” (12). Just like a lateral thinking puzzle asks the listener to consider multiple possibilities to solve the riddle, a lateral thinking mindset helps uncover multiple meanings in Dickinson’s poetry.
So what does this look like in practice? Let’s take a look at “The going from the world we know” (F1662):
The going from the world we know
To one a wonder still
Is like the child’s adversity
Whose vista is a hill,
Behind the hill is sorcery
And everything uknown,
But will the secret compensate
For climbing it alone?
Lateral Thinking Annotation
Here’s how one might annotate the poem with a lateral thinking mindset:
In this annotation, the writer allows for words and phrases to contain dual meanings. For instance, “The going from the world we know” could mean moving to a new place and it could mean dying and leaving the world. With this duality established at the outset, the poem could be read as the contemplation of an intrepid speaker who wishes to forge a solo path, and it could be read as the anxious reflection of a speaker on the precipice of a lonely death. In these ways, the lateral thinking mindset can activate students’ creativity and increase their confidence because they’re looking for multiple answers in the text, not just the “right answer.”
2. Musicality
"Bind me – I still can sing –" (F1005)
@maskedmotif Day 2 of 30 Days of Poetry: Setting Emily Dickinson’s Poetry to Music Get an example chord sheet for uke here: https://super-ela.com/emily-dickinson-hymn-verse-chord-sheet/ #nationalpoetrymonth #emilydickinson #poetrysong #ukulele #uke #teachingresources #english #languagearts ♬ Sparkling sound effect (notice, refreshing) - MATSU
Teaching meter in a high school classroom can be about as fun as getting a filling at the dentist—without novocaine. However, whereas students struggle to wrap their minds around syllabic patterns and metrical feet, many have no trouble understanding music, and this is a perfect entry point for teaching Dickinson’s meter.
Dickinson wrote in hymn or ballad verse, or alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. Many church hymns are written in the same meter, which means you can set her words to music. Instead of having students complete the regular scansion exercises, have them listen to songs written in the same meter and then set her words to those songs. This is an opportunity for the singers in your classroom to shine!
Alternatively, if you have budding DJs, you can challenge students to create an original mix with the appropriate meter and set a Dickinson poem to it. In these ways, her brilliant use of meter becomes more accessible and relevant to students in that they can apply it to something they already love—music!
Try it out! Listen to the following songs (“O God, Our Help in Ages Past” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”).
Using the tune of “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” sing the words of “As by the dead we love to sit—” (F78).
As by the dead we love to sit—
Become so wondrous dear—
As for the lost we grapple
Tho’ all the rest are here—
In broken mathematics
We estimate our prize
Vast — in it’s fading ratio
To our penurious eyes!
Using the tune of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” sing the words of “I started early—Took my dog” (F656).
You can also check out this playlist of pieces that set Emily Dickinson’s poetry to music.
3. Debate: Science vs. Religion
"'Faith' is a fine invention / For Gentlemen who see!" (F202)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that teenagers love to argue. What’s more, it’s an important skill to hone so that students learn to how to assert their opinions and listen to what their counterparty has to say—in short, they need to learn how to conduct civil discourse. For this reason, it’s important to include opportunities for structured debate in the classroom.
Enter Emily Dickinson.
Scholars have long argued over her stance on the question of science vs. religion. Did she believe that knowledge was attainable through empirical observation and measurement or spiritual experience and subjectivity? Some critics claim that she embraced the tenets of empiricism and rejected spirituality outright. Others contend that her work shows that she rejected science as just another form of faith. Still others argue that she accepted both as a means of understanding the world.
If scholars argue about it, I say we let students argue about it too. Two poems that offer insights into Dickinson’s opinions on the subject include “The Brain – is wider than the Sky –” and “A Coffin – is a small Domain.”
Teacher Resource
Watch this video for an analysis of “The Brain – is wider than the Sky –” and “A Coffin – is a small Domain.”
“The Brain — is wider than the Sky —” (F598)
The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —
The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —
The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —
“A Coffin—is a small Domain” (F890)
A Coffin—is a small Domain,
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In it diminished Plane.
A Grave—is a restricted Breadth—
Yet ampler than the Sun—
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon
To Him who on its small Repose
Bestows a single Friend—
Circumference without Relief—
Or Estimate—or End—
After students analyze these poems, have them come to their own conclusions about what they think Dickinson believed. Then they can engage in a structured debate wherein they make claims, support their reasoning with evidence, and listen to the other side’s arguments.
My favorite format for conducting such debates is Point and Refutation.
Here’s a sample of the Point and Refutation format with this debate.
Sample Debate
Student 1 (Science): I believe that Emily Dickinson embraced science over religion because in F598, she chooses the brain as her subject and says it is “wider than the sky.” The brain evokes empiricism and thought as a means of understanding, and the sky evokes the heavens, or faith. In saying that the brain is “wider than the Sky,” I think Dickinson means that the capacity for understanding through empiricism is greater than understanding that comes through spirituality.
Student 2 (Religion): I can see why you would say that Dickinson privileged science over faith because of the line “The Brain — is wider than the Sky”; however, I think you’re misinterpreting it because later in the poem she contends that “The Brain is just the weight of God.” As this is the first line of the last stanza, it is likely that this is her thesis, or main idea. I think this means she’s saying that God created the brain, and the science is part of God’s larger creation.
Student 3 (Science & Religion): You’re right, she starts the last stanza with “The Brain is just the weight of God.” However, I don’t think that suggests she embraces spirituality because at the end of the stanza she says that they differ “As Syllable from Sound.” I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time distinguishing syllables from sounds. Syllables are made up of sounds, and spoken sounds contain syllables, so they’re essentially the same. I think this shows that she actually embraced science and religion as ways of understanding the world.
Student 2 (Religion): If we looked at this poem in isolation, we could make the argument that she was able to hold science and religion together. However, when we look at “A Coffin—is a small Domain,” which was written a year later, it shows that she was definitely shifting toward religion over science. For example, look at the first stanza where she writes that a coffin, even though it’s empirically small, can “contain / A Citizen of Paradise.” By selecting a coffin as her subject, she is invoking death and the question of an afterlife. She confirms her belief in it by bringing up the “Citizen of Paradise,” which I take to mean an angel in heaven. This shows that she embraced religion over science.
Student 1 (Science): Yes, she does bring up heaven by way of “Citizen of Paradise,” but she says that the grave is a “small Domain” that can contain it. A domain is not just a kingdom, but also an area of study, like science or math. If an area of study, or scientific inquiry, can contain the “Citizen of Paradise,” it means that she believed science had more power than religion.
Student 3 (Science & Religion): I agree that she’s using domain to suggest an area of study, but I think we need to also look at the second stanza. Here she is combining ideas of science and religion by writing that even though a grave is a “restricted Breadth,” it’s also “ampler than the Sun.” She uses the conjunction “yet” to say that while it’s one thing, it’s also the other. This shows that she embraced science and religion.
And so the debate goes until students run out of original points to make.
Final Thoughts
The more entry points there are to poetry, the more accessible it becomes for students. By exploding possibility through lateral thinking, engaging students in meter through music, and challenging students to defend their claims in debate, these activities can give even the least enthusiastic student of poetry a way into the maze of Dickinson’s work.
Do you have a creative way of presenting Dickinson in your classroom? Share it in the comments!