While this may seem to be an unlikely topic, in fact a closer examination reveals just how related these elements are. The most powerful influence in Emily Dickinson’s education was Edward Hitchcock, her geology teacher at the Amherst Academy. Geological terms occur in over 200 of Dickinson’s 1,789 surviving poems and are central to understanding her vision of the world. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a book intimately tied to the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1816. Mark Twain visited Hawaii and reported extensively on Mt. Kilauea’s eruptions, then later traveled to Italy and explored Mt. Vesuvius. Furthermore, while historical accounts and media reporting on volcanic eruptions have conditioned us to focus on the destructive and disruptive consequences of volcanoes, the reality is that a multitude of important benefits result from volcanic activity; in fact, without volcanic eruptions life on planet Earth would have been impossible! This dual nature of volcanic eruptions fits in perfectly with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s concept of compensation as expressed in his 1841 essay of the same name— an essay which Phil Devlin’s English students consistently ranked as the most meaningful selection that they had read in my class during my teaching career. We’ll see why.

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