If you were coming in the fall

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

What do you know about rhythm and meter in poetry and songs? Do you know any specific meters? Think about rhythms in the choruses of songs or in nursery rhymes and try to describe them.

Teaching Suggestion: This exercise can be used as a launching point to help students understand the metrical form of Dickinson’s poetry, and it could serve as a connection to other poets, including the Romantic poets. If students have had some exposure to Shakespeare, it might be helpful to bring in an example of iambic pentameter from his plays as you review a definition and/or examples of meter. Nursery rhymes provide quick, clear examples of meter. You might also encourage students to look up lyrics to songs with which they are familiar and to sound out the meter.

• This webpage from Oregon State provides a video, images, and text describing various metrical terms that will be useful when doing scansion of this and other poems.
• This page from Poetry Foundation offers a simple definition of the ballad stanza with other poems that follow this format.