Read poems 409, 236, 620, 1096, and 1668, and answer the discussion questions.
1. Dickinson was virtually unknown in her lifetime, and since her discovery has been impossible to categorize among the writers of her generation. From the limited selections you have been assigned, what attitudes to you see emerging in her narrators?
2. In “The Soul selects,” Dickinson assigns gender to the soul. The Spanish term for soul, “alma,” is masculine. Which gender is more appropriately that of the soul, and why?
3. “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church” strikes many readers as a Transcendal poem. Remember, though, that the composer, Dickinson, led an almost sequestered life. Is there more liberation or confinement in the “home” of the poem?
4. What virtues does “Much Madness is divinest sense” attribute to independence? What risks?
5. “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” has a male narrator. Why, given Dickinson as composer, is that fact significant?
6. What is the “blonde Assassin” in “Apparently with no surprise”? How does the assassin’s activity separate Dickinson from the Transcendentalists?
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