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For discussion or writing. Success is counted sweetest






Success is counted sweetest

1. Read Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” and his poem “The Rhodora.” See whether you can find the sorts of parallels with Dickinson’s poem that might have led readers of A Masque of Poets to speculate that Emerson was the author. Point to specific lines or word choices, as well as to philosophical underpinnings.

2. Compare this Dickinson poem with Walt Whitman’s “Reconciliation” and “As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado, ” both poems that appear in the “Drum-Taps” section of Leaves of Grass. In what ways do both poets reflect similar understandings of philosophical and cultural problems associated with war and the achievement of political equality?

3. Identify experiences in your own life when you discovered that failure provoked an increased appreciation for the object of your desire. Or, describe an experience when you were disappointed by success and looked back longingly on the moments of greatest anticipation. Relate both these experiences to the emotions depicted in this poem.

 

I taste a liquor never brewed

1. Locate the references to intoxication in Emerson’s essay “The Poet” and decide whether Dickinson’s poem matches his in tone and meaning. Then state how and why this poem might be a response to Emerson.

2. Identify the ways this poem violates the social decorum of Dickinson’s day and might represent a daring statement for a 19th-century woman writer. Consider the details of Dickinson’s biography that might predispose readers not to expect this sort of poem from her.

3. Weigh the innocent delight expressed by the speaker against the speaker’s overblown rhetoric and decide whether you interpret this poem as a celebration of poetic inspiration or a warning not to take the poet’s assertions of transcendence too seriously.

 

Wild nights – Wild nights!

1. Construct two opposing interpretations of the poem: one arguing that the speaker maintains the appearance of innocence in order to justify a frank discussion of sexual desire and one arguing that the poem is actually about Christian union with Jesus. You may want to compare this poem with “Come slowly – Eden! ”

2. In what ways does Dickinson’s combination of sexual and religious themes in this poem resemble Whitman’s fusion of body and soul in “I Sing the Body Electric”?

3. Look up a definition of the subjunctive case and compare the way Dickinson uses it in this poem to the way she uses it in “I never felt at Home – Below – ” or “The Poets light but Lamps – ”.

 


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