ISSUES FOR DISCUSSION OR INVESTIGATION

• Read carefully any one of the poems cited here, consulting the manuscript version (Franklin or hypertext version) if at all possible. How do you think Dickinson is using images of the exotic, the faraway, or the tropical?
• Research the representations of exotic locales in Harper's, or another contemporary U.S. periodical that the Dickinsons would have been familiar with. How are images and descriptions of such places contrasted (implicitly or explicitly) with the U.S.?
• Read any of these other poems (again, in a manuscript version if you can): "A Moth the hue of this"[ 841], "Talk with Prudence to a Beggar" [119], "The Heart has narrow banks" [928], "A still- volcanic life" [601], "When Etna basks and purrs" [1146].