Daily Log

Thursday, March 31

We compared three of Emily Dickinson's poems about nature, and concluded that the third of them, "Apparently with no surprise," was much darker and raised troubling questions about God's universe, than the other two ("Some keep the Sabbath . . . " and "I taste a liquor never brewed").

We also compared the original text of "Because I could not stop for Death" in our textbook (we discussed it yesterday) with "The Chariot," the poem as edited and published by Higginson and Todd shortly after Dickinson's death, and concluded that it is a darker poem than its original editors wished it to be.

In periods 2 and 3 students received the assignment sheet for a comparison between Whitman's and Dickinson's treatment of death in the form of an imaginary dialogue between the two poets, to be written in class on Friday, April 15.