Reading Response Prompts
 

These prompts are meant to get you thinking about what you have read, and to help focus your thoughts for your reading responses. You can respond to any one of them, or, if you have another idea you would rather explore, you are free to write about that instead. Do not, however, attempt to answer multiple prompts for any assignment. If you choose to pursue an idea of your own or are not writing a response that day, you should still spend at least a few minutes thinking about each of the prompts in preparation for class. For more information, review the listserv assignment.
Emily Dickinson, Poems on Death and Dying (62, 77, 78, 156, 432, 461, 479, 569, 591, 599, 648, 890, 930, 1108, 1132 — all Franklin numbering)

Dickinson writes about death a great deal, and often seems to embody or anthropomorphize death in surprising ways.  Who or what is Death in her poems?

Dickinson writes about others’ deaths and her own eventual death in ways both abstract and concrete. Which do you find more effective and why?

A final chance at an explication:  Choose any one of these poems, and perform a line-by-line reading in which you explain what you think the key words, phrases, and images are.
 
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