This selection of essays, news articles, media, and digitized primary source material provides a free, open source introduction to Dickinson. Explore her life, poetry, and place from your own home.
1. “This is a Mighty Room”: Exploring the Poet’s Room
We begin our syllabus with a meditation on Dickinson’s room. The small bedroom in the northwestern corner of the Homestead provided creative space and sanctuary for the Poet, just as it sparks the imagination of visitors today. In this section, you will take an immersive tour of Dickinson’s room, learn about the restoration process, and reflect on how scenery from the Homestead’s windows offered so much scope for a keen-eyed writer.
- Learn about the Dickinson Homestead, where the poet lived for most of her life.
- Read a passage from Dickinson’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, recalling time spent in her aunt’s room.
- Take a peek at Dickinson’s second-story view through the imagery of poems:
- “The Angle of a Landscape” (F578)
- “By my Window have I for Scenery” (F849)
- “When I hoped, I recollect” (F493)
- Savor these Dickinson poems, which capture moments of light and shadow, tumult and calm, all observable from the poet’s bedroom windows. Notice how some of the same observable features (steeples, hills, meadows, chimneys) appear throughout the poems in this section.
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- “There’s a certain Slant of light -” (F320)
- “How the old Mountains drip with Sunset” (F327)
- “Blazing in Gold – and Quenching – in Purple!” (F321)
- “The Birds begun at Four o’clock –” (F504)
- “The Wind did’nt come from the Orchard – today –” (F494)
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Writing Prompt 1:
Choose a window in your home from which you’d like to track light, color, sound, or smell throughout the day. Return to your window every few hours and sit quietly for at least five minutes, drinking in the scene. Jot down your impressions under a time stamp. You may keep this as a list poem, or rework the most inspiring moment into a longer piece.
Writing Prompt 2:
Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s description of her aunt’s cozy room, scented with hyacinths and a crackling stove, warmly recalls the setting decades later. Describe a bedroom from your past in a series of descriptive paragraphs or a poem. It could be your childhood room, your grandmother’s room, a college dormitory or another significant space from your life.
2. “Blossom of the Brain”: Dickinson’s Education
Dickinson benefited from an exceptional education for a woman of her time at Amherst Academy and Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary. Learn about her wide-ranging studies, and how they are reflected in her poetry’s rich vocabulary and ingenious allusions.
- Prime yourself on Dickinson’s early schooling at Amherst Academy (1840-1847).
- Explore Dickinson’s own account of her school friends, coursework, and teachers in her letter to friend Abiah Root, May 7, 1845.
- View Dickinson’s beautifully digitized herbarium, circa 1839-1846, which was informed by her botany coursework at the Academy.
- Study Dickinson’s year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1847-1848).
- Examine the 1847 Daily Schedule.
- Learn about College reading lists and regulations in the Eleventh Annual Catalogue of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, 1847-1848.
- Discover details of residential life in the Seminary Building (1837-1896)
- Read Dickinson’s own impressions in a letter to Abiah Root, Nov 6, 1847.
- Consider how Dickinson’s formal education contributed to the ease with which she employs scientific concepts and classical references in the following poems:
- “The Lilac is an ancient Shrub” (F1261), botanical terms
- “ The Chemical conviction” (F1070), conservation of matter
- “ Volcanoes be in Sicily” (F1691), local geology
- “ A precious mouldering pleasure ‘tis” (F569), classical allusion
Writing Prompt 3:
- Take out a sheet of paper and jot down the name of a favorite subject you’ve studied in school.
- Write the names of the first five concepts, people, or events you can think of related to that topic. For example, if your subject was life science, you might write: the Jurassic Period, the food chain, Gregor Mendel, seed germination, and amoebas.
- Choose one of your brainstormed concepts and challenge yourself to make it the subject of a poem. You may need to do a little research.
Writing Prompt 4:
Dickinson was “in love” with words. What are some of your favorite words? Make a list, then challenge yourself to weave them into a poem.
3. “A Petal for a Paragraph”: The Poet’s Garden
Emily Dickinson was born in the Homestead, but she said that she was “reared in the garden” (L206). Throughout her life, Dickinson displayed a reverence for flowers. For her, gardening was more than a pastime; her flower beds and conservatory were sites of creativity where ideas could take root.
- Get grounded with an introduction to Dickinson and Gardening.
- Dig deeper and discover how the Museum is restoring “The Lost Gardens of Emily Dickinson.”
- Learn from Penn Museum what archaeobotanical research can teach us about what plants flourished in Dickinson’s garden.
- Read about the restoration of Dickinson’s three-season conservatory.
- Bite into an essay about the heirloom apples of Dickinson’s orchard.
- Grow your appreciation of Dickinson’s gardening life through verse:
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- Flower Gardens:
- “Within my Garden, rides a Bird” (F370)
- “The Trees like Tassels – hit – and swung –” (F523)
- “Longing is like the Seed” (F1298)
- Conservatory:
- “I tend my flowers for thee –” (F367)
- “The Products of my Farm are these” (F1036)
- “The Frost of Death was on the Pane” (F1130)
- Orchard:
- “Some keep the Sabbath” (F236)
- “A Solemn thing within the Soul” (F467)
- “Forever honored be the Tree” (F1600)
- Flower Gardens:
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Writing Prompt 5:
Dickinson was a master of shifting her perspective from the macro to the micro, from the movements of the heavens to the small dramas that take place right under our noses–or our feet! In “A Single Clover Plank” (F1297) she immortalizes the flight of one bee. Go outside or look outside your window and imagine the world from a new vantage point, such as a chipmunk burrow, gutter, or treetop. How does the environment shift? How would sun, rain, wind, or even sound seem different in this new place? What action can you imagine unfolding?
Writing Prompt 6:
Read the poem “The grass has so little to do” (F379), which recounts the life, acquaintances, occupation, death, and final resting place of some hay. Think of a different plant, and tell the story of its life. Where does it reside? Who does it meet? What are its jobs (for instance, the hay “bows” and “threads the dews”). Does it make its way into our homes or into an animal’s stomach, or meet some other end? Should the tone be jovial or more solemn? Some ideas: potatoes, mint, ivy, blueberry.