I Dwell In Possibility: The Life And Language Of Poetry

Emily Dickinson begins one of her most famous poems, “I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose….” What are the possibilities that Dickinson might be referring to here, both for the poet and the poem? When we begin a poem, its possibilities are limitless. Our skills with language, our attentiveness toward the subject, our choices about structure, among other things, will all determine whether or not the poem realizes its potential. In this course we will examine a number of poems, both our own and those of published poets, to discover the possibilities inherent in the poems and in our lives.