** Summer 2025 course coming soon. Subscribe to the Antrim Literature Project‘s email list to be the first to know. **
Welcome! Whether you’re watching along with this course on YouTube or just stumbled upon this website, I’m excited you’re here. In the summer of 2024, I taught a live version of this introductory course on the poetry of Emily Dickinson for the Antrim Literature Project, and I’m happy to now offer it asynchronously through YouTube lectures and the resources below.
Course Description:
Emily Dickinson only published ten poems in her lifetime, but we know her as one of nineteenth-century America’s most important and prolific poets. In this course, we’ll explore some of the enduring themes in Dickinson’s poetry, getting to know her work, historical context, all the while practicing a variety of strategies for reading poetry. Each class will begin with a short lecture on the theme for the day, but most of our time together will be spent in conversation and collaborative analysis.
Course Goals:
Together, we will…
– Develop skills of close reading and literary analysis
– Examine the relationship between form and content in poetry
– Gain familiarity with the themes of Emily Dickinson’s poetry
– Develop strategies for approaching unfamiliar genres/styles of writing
Tips for Getting Started:
Reading Schedule:
Poems are listed below by number in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Back Bay Books, 1976) and by first line. If you don’t have access to that book, you can find poems online or in another copy of Dickinson’s poetry by searching for the first line. Most of these poems should be available online via The Poetry Foundation and Poets.org. Please note that while it is available for free online, you should not use Poems by Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T.W. Higginson. (We’ll talk about why in Week 6!)
Week 1: Introduction to Dickinson
Guiding Question(s): Who was Emily Dickinson? How should we approach reading her poetry?
288 “I’m Nobody”
657 “I dwell in Possibility—”
1129 “Tell all the truth but tell it slant—”
1263 “There is no frigate like a book”
1287 “In this short life”
Week 2: Dickinson and Nature
Guiding Question(s): How does Dickinson’s poetry represent/interpret/engage with the natural world?
134 “Perhaps you’d like to buy a flower”
175 “I have never seen ‘Volcanoes’”
211 “Come Slowly–Eden”
254 “Hope is the thing with feathers”
324 “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church”
328 “A Bird came down the Walk”
520 “I started Early — Took my Dog—”
1233 “Had I not seen the sun”
1343 “A single Clove Plank”
Week 3: Dickinson and Religion
Guiding Question(s): How does Dickinson deal with religious questions in her poetry? What are her attitudes to religious belief?
61 “Papa above!”
79 “Going to Heaven”
234 “You’re right — ‘the way is narrow”
338 “I know that He exists”
501 “This World is not Conclusion”
528 “Mine — by the Right of the White Election!”
608 “Afraid! Of whom am I afraid?”
683 “The Soul unto itself”
766 “My Faith is larger than the Hills—”
1270 “Is Heaven a Physician?”
Week 4: Dickinson and Death
Guiding Question(s): In what ways does Dickinson’s poetry engage with death? How does she describe the relationship between life and death/the living and the dead in her poetry?
115 “What Inn is this”
216 “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” (both versions)
280 “I felt a funeral in my brain”
341 “After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”
465 “I heard a fly buzz”
510 “It was not Death, for I stood up”
596 “When I was small, a Woman died —”
712 “Because I could not stop for death”
Week 5: Dickinson and Science
Guiding Question(s): What value does science for Dickinson’s poetry? How does she think about the relationship between science and faith/science and the natural world/science and humanity?
70 “Arcturus’ is his other name —”
100 “A science — so the Savants say,”
108 “Surgeons must be very careful”
185 “Faith is a fine invention”
585 “I like to see it lap the Miles—”
700 “You’ve seen Balloons set — Haven’t You?”
954 “The chemical conviction”
970 “Color — Caste — Denomination”
1158 “Best Witchcraft”
Week 6: Dickinson at Home
Guiding Question(s): How does Dickinson engage with gendered expectations in her 19th-century American context? What is the relationship between private and public, the self and society in Dickinson’s poetry?
14 “One sister have I in our house”
219 “She sweeps with many-colored Brooms—”
289 “I know some lonely Houses off the Road”
443 “I tie my Hat — I crease my Shawl”
617 “Don’t put up my Thread and Needle —”
649 “Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead”
670 “One need not be a chamber — to be Haunted”
1078 “The Bustle in a House”
Week 7: Dickinson in Print
Guiding Question(s): What challenges were Dickinson’s early editors faced with? What was Dickinson’s attitude towards publication?
258 “There’s a certain slant of light”
613 “They shut me up in prose”
636 “The Way I read a Letter’s — this —”
709 “Publication is the auction of the mind”
883 “The Poets light but lamps”
1659 “Fame is a fickle food”
Week 8: Digital Dickinson (and you!)
Guiding Question(s): What open-source resources are available to continue our study of Dickinson? How can we apply the skills and strategies we’ve learned in this course to continue to engage with Dickinson’s poetry?
Abigail Scott Rawleigh 