Janet Krauss Discusses The Poetry of Emily Dickinson, Part 2 (Zoom)

Part one covered the approachable Dickinson. This session goes after the poems that fight back.

Janet Krauss leads an online discussion of a selection of Emily Dickinson's longer poems, the ones that look more difficult, which is exactly why they repay the attention. Links to the poems and a set of discussion questions are emailed in advance, so the hour and a half is a conversation rather than a lecture.

Dickinson is among the most original poets America has produced. She took definition as her province and challenged the existing definitions of poetry and of the poet's work, experimenting with expression to free it from conventional restraints much as Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman did. Like Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she built a new kind of first-person persona: sharp-sighted observers who see both the limits of their societies and the escapes they can imagine. She wrote an elliptical language for what was possible but not yet realized. The first volume of her poetry appeared in 1890, four years after her death, went through eleven editions in under two years, and carried her far past her first household audiences.

Krauss has published two books of poetry, Borrowed Scenery with Yuganta Press and Through the Trees of Autumn with Spartina Press, and has retired from teaching English at Fairfield University.

Good to know. This one is online. It is free, advance registration is required, and you need to supply an email address: register online and the Zoom invitation link comes to you.

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