The Bee by Emily Dickinson

I love having students work on seasonal activities here in the library. As I work in a high school, I have a group of students that I see regularly because they have off periods during the school day. To celebrate spring this April, I wanted to have the students interact with a springtime nature-based poem. One of my students recommended Emily Dickinson because she is a big fan of her work! I chose Emily Dickinson's 'The Bee' to create a mini lesson for my small group. My goal was to combine literacy with makerspace art so students could enjoy a seasonal poem in a low-stress, relaxing environment. Together, we identified the poem’s contrasting sensory details and translated those rich metaphors into visual concepts, culminating in personalized mixed-media collages they could take home. The lesson took about 20 minutes.

In this mini-lesson, students analyzed Emily Dickinson's "The Bee" by moving beyond the basic insect imagery to explore Dickson’s metaphors of mechanical knights, floral fortresses, and jewels. After reading the poem aloud we annotated the poem to highlight the stark contrasts between heavy/hard and soft/light sensory details. Then the group broke these elements down into visual categories. From there the students used the concept of juxtaposition to create their own mixed-media collages, to transform the poem into physical art! Some students chose to use paper while others created their collages on Canva. 

The Bee

By Emily Dickinson

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush

I hear the level bee:

A jar across the flowers goes,

Their velvet masonry

 

Withstands until the sweet assault

Their chivalry consumes,

While he, victorious, tilts away

To vanquish other blooms.

 

His feet are shod with gauze,

His helmet is of gold;

His breast, a single onyx

With chrysoprase, inlaid.

 

His labor is a chant,

His idleness a tune;

Oh, for a bee’s experience

Of clovers and of noon!

Dickinson, Emily. “The Bee.” Poetry Foundation,www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/1728572/the-bee. Originally published in Poems,edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, Roberts Brothers, 1890.








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