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 the idea of "exploration" and "discovery" in the poem?
• Since exploration was primarily a male activity during the nineteenth century, how do you think gender affects Dickinson's use (or a reader's understanding) of these metaphors?
• Research the 19th-century explorations that Dickinson would have read about.
• Read any of these other poems (again, in a manuscript version if you can): "I have never seen 'Volcanoes'" [Johnson 175], "Alone, I cannot be" [298], or "Bloom upon the Mountain-stated-" [667], and consider her use of geographical metaphors.