I LIKE TO SEE IT LAP THE MILES: RESEARCH PROJECTS
Certain words in the middle of the line, like Miles, Valley, Pile and Quarry, are capitalized. Imagine what products these might have been brand names for in the nineteenth century, and describe these products in detail. Where would Emily Dickinson have heard of such products, if she never left the house?
Write a poem in Dickinson’s style comparing another mode of transportation to an animal. For instance, what animal would she have compared a car to? how about a Segway scooter? or a space shuttle? or a pogo stick? Okay, that last one is obviously “a kangaroo,” but do the other ones.
Dickinson says that the train arrives at its destination “punctual as a Star.” Study the astrological charts from her era, and determine which stars were the most punctual, and which stars were lazy slackers that could never show up on time of their light-yeared lives depended on it, laughing when they arrived that “I must be on SPT!”.
Emily Dickinson was known for her liberal use of the dash in her poetry. Find out how many dashes she used in all of her poems added together, and how wide a dash is. Then calculate the distance they would span if strung together. State your conclusion as a geographical distance, such as “laid end-to-end, they would create one long lone going from X to Y,” where X and Y represent cities with funny names, like Cucamonga.
Write an imagined dialog between Emily Dickinson and a horse, with the horse explaining its feelings about being compared to a train. Perform your skit before your class, using four actors: the actors playing the horse’s and Emily’s hind legs do not have to speak.
Research the causes and effects of the Mad Cow outbreak in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. Based on the evidence, do you think the disease was God’s wrathful punishment on animals who had ceased to follow His laws?
Watch the film Air Bud, Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch, or Air Bud: World Pup. Explain the debt that the directors of these modern classics of the cinema owe to Thomas Hardy.