Sample Reading Strategies
for Dickinson's Poetry

1. Dickinson uses several variant words--alternate word choices at the places where she puts crosses--in "The Spider holds a Silver Ball." If a poem were like a pinball machine, and the bouncing ball were a word that made other words light up, then what happens when some words marked with a cross are used instead of the ones already in place in the poem? How does the poem change?

2. What do you notice about Dickinson's punctuation and capitalization? How do her capital letters look? Are the dashes she uses all the same size? Can they all be replaced with a standard comma? Do you think the way her punctuation and capitalization look on the page make a difference in the way you see and understand the poem?

3. As you've learned, Dickinson was well educated. Why doesn't she use the standard capitalization and punctuation rules she learned?

4. Look at the publication history of a poem. Are the different published versions different poems or legitimate translations of one poem? If you were the editor of a book of poems and you wanted to include this poem, which version would you print? Would you print more than one version? What which version would you print? Would you print more than one version? What choices did Dickinson's early editors make? How could you support your choice?

5. If you were editing a new colledtion of Dickinson's poetry, what would you do with the two floating endings on the manuscript page facing the blank page? Do you agree with the current notion that the first piece is the ending to "A Pit--but Heaven over it" and the second piece is the ending to "I tie my Hat"?

Why or why not?

6. Robert Frost once said that in a book of twenty-five poems, the twenty-sixth is the book itself. Can the fasciae itself function as a long poem through common themes, images, or techniques?