Poetry in America: Dickinson
INSTRUCTOR
Elisa New, PhD, Powell M. Cabot Professor of Literature, Harvard University
POETRY TEAM
Leah Reis-Dennis, HarvardX Lead Course Developer
John Radway, PhD candidate in English, Harvard University
Adrienne Raphel, PhD candidate in English, Harvard University
Emily Silk, PhD candidate in English, Harvard University
Caitlin Ballotta, HarvardX Content Developer
ABOUT THIS COURSE
This course, the fourth installment of the multi-part Poetry in America series, explores the poetry of
Emily Dickinson, one of America’s most distinctive and prolific poets. While Dickinson wrote nearly
2,000 poems during her lifetime, she chose never to publish, opting instead to revisit and revise her
works throughout her lifetime. Keeping this dynamic of self-revision in mind, we will consider a
number of Dickinson’s poems—many seemingly in tension with one another—concerned with
Nature, Art, the Self, and Darkness. We will travel to the Dickinson Collection at Harvard's Houghton
Library, and to Amherst, Massachusetts, paying a visit to the house in which the poet lived and wrote
until her death in 1886. Distinguished guests for this module include NBA athlete Jason Collins,
dancers Damian Woetzel and Charles “Lil Buck” Riley, and President and CEO of the New America
Foundation Anne Marie Slaughter, among others.
Led by Harvard Professor Elisa New, Poetry in America surveys nearly 400 years of American poetry.
Through video lectures, archival images and texts, expeditions to historic sites, interpretive seminars
with large and small groups, interviews with poets and scholars, and conversations about poems
with distinguished Americans, Poetry in America embarks on a journey through the literature of a
nation. Distinguished guests, including President Bill Clinton, Elena Kagan, Henry Louis Gates, Eve
Ensler, John McCain, Andrea Mitchell, Michael Pollan, Drew Faust, Tony Kushner, and Nas, among
others, bring fresh perspectives to the study of American Poetry.
COURSE/CERTIFICATE EXPECTATIONS
This course will run for five weeks, from March 18 to April 24.
Many of you have expressed an interest in taking this course for a certificate. We wanted to explain
clearly the standards for receiving a certificate from edX.
Students who complete 75 percent or more of their Coursework Portfolio will receive certificates. To
accumulate credit toward a certificate, students complete readings, view the videos, post twice per
part in the discussion forum, and complete the free response and annotation exercises. Students may,
of course, participate in all of these activities without submitting them for portfolio credit, but those
who are working towards a certificate can simply submit their work for credit at the end of an
exercise or part, and the assignment will be recorded in their portfolios.
It is difficult for a course in which learning occurs through reading, listening, writing, and discussion
to render this sort of participation into a score. Rest assured that the teaching staff have been reading
through your comments with great interest and responding to many of them, and we will continue to
do so.
Students who can’t complete all of the course materials and assignments are welcome and
encouraged to audit this class by engaging with the course materials to the extent that they can.
All content for a given week will be released by 12 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST) on the day
indicated on the syllabus.
For more detailed information about the course structure, certificates, and additional resources, we
invite you to visit the FAQ tab HERE and the Resources tab HERE.
READINGS
Students will have access to the poems being covered each week under the Course Info tab (printerfriendly). The entire collection of poems is downloadable as a PDF for those who wish to print
them. Clicking on any poem in this syllabus will bring you to a printer-friendly PDF version of that
poem.
You will notice that the reading load varies from section to section. The poems for the entire module
will be available throughout the duration of the module, and so we invite you to read ahead if you so
choose.
QUESTIONS
All questions should be made on the FAQ thread in the Discussion Forum. We will do our best to
respond quickly!
SCHEDULE:
Week 0: Introduction to Poetry in America: Dickinson -- releases March 18, 12 PM EST
Readings: No assigned reading. Feel free to get a head start-- you'll find all of the poems for this
module in the links below in this Syllabus. If you have extra time, we recommend that you check out
the Resources tab HERE, which includes suggested reading on Dickinson's poetry and her cultural,
historical, and literary context.
Week 1: Introduction to Dickinson's Life and Poetry -- releases March 25, 12 PM EST
Readings:
"Split the lark and you'll find the music" (F905)
"Remorse is memory awake" (F781A)
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers" (F314)
"After great pain, a formal feeling comes" (F372)
"A bird came down the walk" (F359)
"Pain expands the time" (F833)
"My life had stood a loaded gun" (F764)
"I dwell in possibility" (F466)
"A solemn thing it was I said" (F307)
"This world is not conclusion" (F373)
"I never lost as much but twice" (F39)
"My faith is larger than the hills" (F489)
"A clock stopped" (F259)
Week 2: Dickinson and Nature -- Releases April 1, 12 PM EST
Readings:
"A narrow fellow in the grass" (F1096)
"A bird came down the walk" (F359)
"There's a certain slant of light" (F320)
"A spider sewed at night" (F1163)
"How the old mountains drip with sunset" (F327)
"Bring me the sunset in a cup" (F140)
"There came a wind like a bugle" (F1618)
"I think that the root of the wind is water" (F1295)
"It sifts from leaden sieves" (F291)
"Apparently with no surprise" (F1668), aka "The Blonde Assassin"
"The wind begun to rock the grass" (F796), aka "The wind begun to knead the grass"
Week 3: Dickinson and the Psyche -- Releases April 8, 12 PM EST
Readings:
"On a columnar self" (F740)
"A solemn thing it was said" (F307)
"I breathed enough to take the trick" (F308)
"He put the belt around my life" (F330)
"What soft cherubic creatures" (F675)
"Much madness is divinest sense" (F620)
"I'm nobody! Who are you" (F260)
"I am alive I guess" (F605)
"We grow accustomed to the dark" (F428)
"Pain expands the time" (F833)
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers" (F314)
Week 4: Dickinson and the Arts -- Releases April 15, 12 PM EST
Readings:
"I dwell in possibility" (F466)
"This was a Poet" (F446)
"The poets light but lamps" (F930)
"Your thoughts dont have words every day" (F1476)
"I cannot dance opon my toes" (F381)
"They shut me up in prose" (F445)
"I would not paint a picture" (F348)