Because I Could Not Stop for Death

1. Emily Dickinson is known for her use of dashes and capitalization. However, when her poems were first published in 1890, the publishers removed these elements.

Write a new copy the poem, leaving out the unconventional capitalizations and dashes. Read the poem again.

How does the absence of the dashes affect the poem’s rhythm? How does a lack of capitalization take away from your understanding of the poem’s “characters” and concepts? Write your responses to these questions.

Next, read the poem “Grief” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This poem also deals with death but takes a more serious tone. Re-write the poem, and, taking a cue from Dickinson, use dashes and irregular punctuation to play with the poem’s rhythm and possible meanings of words. If you’re feeling inspired, feel free to make other changes to the poem. Some ideas include: breaking up stanzas, adding other punctuation, putting line breaks in different places, and switching up the spelling of words.

Trade poems with a partner, and read his or her reimagining of the poem. Take turns explaining your choices to each other. State what changes you made, and why you made them. How do those changes affect the way the poem is understood?

2. “Because I could not stop for Death” includes many images recounted by the speaker as she looks on at the passing landscape. Create a comic strip of what you consider to be key scenes from the poem (choose from the list below). Feel free to be creative! You may want to make your comic serious, funny, spooky, dreamlike, etc. Whatever you choose, maintain the core scenes from the poem, but feel free to add dialogue, thought bubbles, and additional details not mentioned in the poem to put your own spin on the carriage ride scenes.

• Scenes to choose from:
• the speaker boarding the carriage
• sitting in the carriage alongside the driver (Death) and passenger (Immortality)
• passing the school where children are playing at recess
• passing the fields of grain
• the setting sun passing by
• the air growing colder
• the speaker looking down at her clothing
• pausing before the house in the ground
• noticing the horses are heading towards eternity