We also explain the history of critical reception so that they can begin to see how critical views are culturally situated and how it is impossible to arrive at any one, authoritative reading of a poem. They can then explore the many variant words, handwriting details, order of poems, and lineation. Once the students have made their way through the background information and manuscripts, we suggest strategies for reading the poems and leave them to figure out what and where they think a particular poem really is. They are at once pleased and a little frightened by being given so much power over the texts. I felt challenged and it was nice to feel like you trusted us with that challenge, that we were adept enough.
Students begin to think through the issues and complexities themselves.
They begin looking closely at Dickinson's handwriting and summon all their graphology skills in an effort to figure out what the long, wide capitals, the long, short, and curvy dashes, and the wavey w's might purport. They think about biographies and poems together, and some begin to imagine themselves in the poet's place and feel all the anger and resentment that they imagine the poet would feel at being so blatantly misrepresented. We'd like to show you an example. Let's take a look at the handout . This poem is particularly interesting because of the many variant words and the substantial changes they make to the poem.