"No doubt I now grew very pale;

--but I talked more fluently,

and with a heightened

voice.

Yet the sound increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick

sound--much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton."

"I have more memories than if I'd lived a thousand years."

"Paris changes! but naught in my melancholy Has stirred! New palaces, scaffolding, blocks of stone, Old quarters, all become for me an allegory, And my dear memories are heavier than rocks."

Suddenly made fruitful my teeming memory, As I walked across the new Carrousel.

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sittingOn the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floorShall be lifted--nevermore!

"When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid"

Emily Dickinson1830-1886

Biographical Notes

politician-father & homemaker-mother

Amherst education, emphasized natural science & philosophy

rebellion against Christian dogma & “households”

“The soul selects her own society”

epistolary relationships w/friends (lovers?) & editors (“Masters”)

came to be called a “recluse”

dedicated her days to making poetry books (“fascicles”)

“Publication - is the Auction / Of

the Mind of Man”

very few poems published during her lifetime

at the time of her death, her family found her hand-sewn books containing over 1,800 poems

1890 selected poems, 1955 complete volume in 1955, 1998 restored original

“I have dared to do strange things--bold things”

freedom of form = freedom of mind

ellipsis ... the possible

dashes -- part to whole

supersenses --> relative values

space/time metaphors: limits & escape

10 Dickinson poemsRead your group's assigned poems aloud

Make what sense you can of them

Connect the poems to any of our themes/concerns/ideas that come to mind

Choose 1 that you really "get" and prepare to share your reading (with the details that support it)

10 Dickinson poemsBecause I could not stop for death

I felt a funeral in my brain

I sing to use the waiting

While I was fearing it, it came

Unto my books so good to turn

The show is not the show

There's a certain slant of light

For Death, -- or rather

A thought went up in my mind today

I felt a cleavage in my mind