The Emily Dickinson Museum’s Poetry Discussion Group meets monthly, September through May, for lively conversation about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters. The Poetry Discussion Group meets at the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, on the second floor of Amherst College’s Frost Library. Participants should proceed directly to the Library and do not need to stop at the Museum. While no RSVP is required, participants are invited to email edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org to receive a list of poems for discussion. Attendees are welcome to bring a bag lunch. Beverages and a sweet snack are provided.
November Poetry Discussion Group will meet on November 8, 2019 at 12PM.
November’s discussion will consider how the nineteenth century dramatic lyric monologue, developed by Browning and Tennyson, impacted Dickinson’s poetry. In many letters, Dickinson underlined how important these British poets, along with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were for her work. In July 1862, Dickinson even echoed Browning’s well-known definition of the dramatic lyric when she told Higginson: “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse – it does not mean – me – but a supposed person” (L268). Together, we will consider how Dickinson employs—and complicates—the lyric monologue in her own poetry by focusing on a range of poems from the 1860s.
Facilitator: Páraic Finnerty is Reader in English and American Literature at the University of Portsmouth. He is the author of Emily Dickinson’s Shakespeare and co-author of Victorian Celebrity Culture and Tennyson’s Circle (2013). He is currently working on a monograph entitled Dickinson and her British Contemporaries, forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Emily Dickinson International Society and serves on the Editorial Board of the Emily Dickinson Journal.
Meeting Notes
- Center of Humanistic Inquiry Address: 61 Quadrangle Dr, Amherst. This event will be held in the seminar room, the classroom on the left at the top of the stairs.
- Parking – attendees may park in the Amherst College Alumni Lot and walk to the library free of charge. Metered parking is available closer to campus on the Town Common. Some select spots and accessible parking are available on campus, around the quad and behind the Frost Library. Participants with a state-issued handicap placard may park in any accessible spaces on campus. See the Amherst College campus parking map for more information.
- Program cost – Drop-in fees are as follows: $12 for EDM Friends (Members); $15 for Non-Members.