Study Questions on Emily Dickinson:

1. What odd habits or idiosyncrasies do you notice about Dickinson's poetry?  Name at least three and explain how they affect your reading of the poems.

2.  Choose one poem and explain each stanza in your own words.  Translate each line for your audience as a way of getting to the heart of the matter.

3. In "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers," how does the speaker describe the tombs? How does Dickinson undercut the feeling that the dead are "Safe"?

4. In "I'm nobody! Who are you?" (503-504), how does the speaker define her relationship to the reader?

3. In "Because I could not stop for death" (505), consider the following questions.

a. Why is death described as a gentleman?

b. What details suggest that the speaker is in a state between life and death?

c. What circular images are there in the poem?  How do they suggest a different or altered perception of time for the speaker?

d. Has the speaker reached her goal by the end of the poem?

5. In "Some keep the Sabbath going to church" (505), how does her notion of religion differ from other people's?