A Select Society

Dear reader, the sun sets on my discussion of the Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson with today’s post – at least for the time being. I’ve written about it for the past couple of days, but before I move on, I thought I’d share a final few comments. First and foremost – **a drum roll, please** – I’ve ordered a copy for myself. I suspect the bookseller is probably wondering “who the hell bought this thing.” LOL.

​As a reminder, the book is an 899-page volume edited by S. P. Rosenbaum and published by Cornell University Press that provides the context and exact line for every significant word used across Dickinson’s 1,775 poems based on Thomas H. Johnson’s definitive three-volume edition from 1955. It also includes an appendix that ranks words by usage frequency – revealing, for example, that the poet used the word “I” 1,682 times. You know Dickinson – she was always, “me, me, me, me!”

Of her top five words, three of them are “I” (1682), “my” (755), and “me” (616) – totaling 3,053 times. “You” shows up 378 times – so don’t “you” feel left out?

​Below: The words used most often by Dickinson:

The book was edited by S. P. Rosenbaum and dedicated to S. E. Whicher, so I wondered who they were. Concerning Rosenbaum, I found this:

“Stanford Patrick Rosenbaum (1929-2012) was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was educated at the University of Colorado (B.A. with Honours in English and General Studies, 1951), Rutgers University (M.A. 1955), and Cornell University (Ph.D., 1960).”

Remember that “Cornell – 1960” bit – I’ll get back to it in a minute. ​S. E. Whicher, to whom Rosenbaum dedicated the book, was a 1936 graduate of Amherst College. While there, he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, plus he sang bass in the Amherst Musical Club, he was a member of the swimming team, and he performed with the Amherst Masquers – their 1936 season is depicted below.

Whicher’s senior yearbook entry states, “His work in English shows creative ability,” and that must have been true because to this day, Amherst College awards the Stephen E. Whicher Prize, “established in memory of Stephen E. Whicher, class of 1936, for the best essay by a senior in the interpretation of American literature. [Awarded by the Department of English in even-numbered years and the Department of American Studies in odd-numbered years.]”

Later in life Whicher became a highly regarded Professor of English and a leading scholar of 19th-century American Transcendentalism. He wrote several definitive texts on Ralph Waldo Emerson. His most famous work is Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, which explores the philosopher’s intellectual journey. Other notable works include Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Organic Anthology and the essay collection Emerson.

Hmm…I noticed that Whicher’s middle name was “Emerson.” Was he related to Ralph Waldo Emerson? Evidently not. At least nothing I could find suggested that the two were related.

​Alas, in 1961, Which committed suicide. I found this article in the New York Times:

Sooo…Rosenbaum edited the Concordance, first published in 1964 by Cornell University Press, and he dedicated it to Whicher, a professor at Cornell who died in 1961 – AND – Rosenbaum earned his PhD from Cornell in 1960 – so I suspect Rosenbaum studied under Whicher?

​Well, I looked into this, and I found the info below from an EDIS “Bulletin” from 2002:

NOTE: See my travelogue, "Dial 'Em' for Emily," for the complete article, HERE.

07.21.2026: DOUBLE ETERNITY, CLICK HERE.

07.20.2026: THE ORACLE WORE A WHITE DRESS -- PART DEUX, CLICK HERE.

07.19.2026: ALL THINGS MATTER, CLICK HERE.

If you missed yesterday’s post, a noir adaptation of my discovery of the Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson, click HERE.

In today’s sequel, “Double Eternity,” hailed by critics as “the quintessential noir blog post of a retired middle school principal and a seductive femme fatale,” I deliver further info on the Concordance, the 899-page volume edited by S. P. Rosenbaum and published by Cornell University Press that maps out every word in Dickinson’s poetry based on Thomas H. Johnson's definitive three-volume edition from 1955.

Below: A particularly steamy scene from "Double Eternity" starring James Asher and Emily Dickinson, the Belle of Amherst:

ASHER (His eyes have catches a glimpse of her anklet): That's a honey of an anklet you're wearing, Mrs. Dickinson. (Emily smiles faintly and covers the anklet with her slacks.) EMILY: You think you’re a pretty smart poetry man, now don't you, Mr. Asher? ASHER: I've had many years of it. EMILY: Doing pretty well?

ASHER: It keeps me off the streets. EMILY: You blog only about my poetry – or all kinds? ASHER (Ignores her question): I wish you'd tell me what's engraved on that anklet.

EMILY: Just my name. ASHER: As for instance? EMILY: Emily. ASHER: Emily. I think I like that. EMILY: But you're not sure? ASHER: I'd have to drive it around the block a couple of times in my two-horse curricle, baby. EMILY (Standing up again, a bit vexed): There's a speed limit in this town, Mr. Asher. Fifteen miles an hour. ASHER: How fast was I going, officer? EMILY: I'd say about fifty -- and those horses heads are toward Eternity. ASHER: Suppose you slow me down and give me a ticket.

​EMILY: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time? ASHER: Suppose it doesn't take. EMILY: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles. ASHER: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder. EMILY: Suppose you just get back into that curricle of yours and roll off – past the school where children play. (They both move toward the archway and head to the entrance door.) ASHER: Suppose I roll on back tomorrow – say around noon. Will you be here? EMILY: Noon – the hinge of day? I suppose so. I usually am. ASHER: Same chair, same perfume, same anklet? EMILY (Blushing): I wonder if I know what you mean, Mr. Asher. (She opens the door and motions for him to leave.) ASHER: I wonder if you wonder. (He walks out.)

Pretty sizzling stuff, huh? No wonder critics call Dickinson one of the most haunting female figures in the history of poetry. Her performance in that scene was dripping with saucy yet haunting nuance. Dickinson’s physical choices for the role were highly scrutinized, particularly the notorious white dress she wore throughout much of the film; many contemporary reviewers and early critics found it glaringly artificial. However, modern literary scholars often point out that this was a deliberate artistic choice on the part of Dickinson – and all agree she gave a masterclass in writing poetry in “Double Eternity,” proving her immense range and her ability to completely astound her audience. Now...back to the topic at hand:

Features of the Rosenbaum Concordance

Alphabetical Index: The book provides the context and exact line for every significant word used across Dickinson’s 1,775 poems.

Frequency Count: It includes an appendix that ranks words by usage frequency (e.g., revealing that she used the word “I” 1,682 times and “heaven” 143 times).

Variant Spellings: It cross-references Dickinson’s eccentric contractions, unconventional variants, and misspellings

I noted yesterday that the book did not include the words “the,” “a/an,” and “and.” However, take a look at this – it also excludes these words:

NOTE: The above pics are from the preface of the Concordance, and I will post all sixteen pages of the preface on my travelogue, “Dial ‘Em’ for Emily,” HERE.

I also mentioned yesterday that the text does not include the word “no,” and I found this: “Because ‘no’ is such a high-frequency filler and negation word, most standard abridged concordances omit it to save space.” Concerning the Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson, I uncovered this:

“The 1964 Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson omits the word ‘no.’ Poet and visual artist Jen Bervin responded to this oversight in 2020 by creating an artist book, Concordance Omission. In it, Bervin documents the 395 times Dickinson used the word ‘no’ in her poetry. Dickinson famously referred to ‘no’ as ‘the wildest word we consign to language.’ The original 1964 concordance, edited by S.P. Rosenbaum, omitted it based on the assumption that it was a ‘nonsignificant’ word, leaving a striking gap in Dickinson scholarship.”

Jen Bervin’s site is HERE, and her artwork “Concordance Omission” is below. Hmm…I see “395” and “NO,” and 3, 9 and 5 are punched – but there are also additional punches for 5 and 6. Do 5 and 6 on a computer punch card represent "n" and "o"? Can any computer-punch-cardiologist explain that?

UPDATE: I figured it out -- the numbers on the card represent the letters as follows:

I also found her book, “Concordance NO,” HERE. Hmm…it’s priced at $2,750.00, so the publisher didn’t have me in mind when the book was released -- LOL!

On her site, Bervin includes this information about her book:

Did you catch that? Dickinson used “no” 395 times and “yes” just four times? I checked that out – the “yes” info (not the "no") – on the Dickinson archive, and – LOL – wait till you see what happened: * I typed “yes” into the search field, and fourteen entries popped up representing six poems. Could Bervin have been wrong? Did Dickinson use “yes” six times, not four? Continue, dear reader. * The six poems identified in the search results were the following:

Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead I showed her heights she never saw If I could bribe them by a Rose Sweet mountains – ye tell me no lie 'Tis so much joy! 'Tis so much joy!

* I next checked the six poems for the word yes, and – **a drum roll please** – Dickinson used the word four times in four different poems:

Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead I showed her heights she never saw If I could bribe them by a Rose 'Tis so much joy! 'Tis so much joy!

So why do “Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine” and “Sweet mountains – ye tell me no lie” appear on the list? I ran a word search for "yes" in each of the poems, and the results are below. Take a look:

For some reason, my search for “yes” picked up “eyes” in these two entries – but NOT for the other 232 of the 234 entries for “eyes” on the archive. It also picked up “mayest” in “Awake ye muses nine,” but not the poet’s use of “mayest” in “No rack can torture me.” Oops. I think some tweaking might be needed on the archive’s search feature. ; ) I’ll have a few more bits of info about the Concordance tomorrow; for now, though, the hour is growing late so I’ll close today’s post with lines from the final scene of “Double Eternity”: Asher’s wife enters the office. They stare at each other for a long moment. WIFE: Can you come and help me with the dishes? ASHER: I’ve got a different idea. Look here. Suppose you went back to bed and didn’t find those dishes till later, when I’m done here. From then on we’ll play it any way you like. Would you do that much for me? WIFE: Give me one good reason. ASHER I need like thirty minutes to an hour to finish up where I’m going with this. WIFE: You’re not going anywhere except the kitchen to help me. ASHER: But I’ve gotta get this thing done. WIFE: You’ve been on that computer for hours. That Dickinson stuff can wait. Now c’mon. Asher gets up and starts to move towards the kitchen, staggering a little, holding himself upright with great effort. He looks back at his computer and then goes out his office door, leaving it wide open. The camera follows his staggering walk toward the kitchen.

When last we met (HERE), it was nearing 2:00 PM, and I was biding my time in the Brook Russell Astor Reading Room in the North Hall of the Stephen A. Schwarzman building of the New York Public Library for my appointment with destiny in the Rare Book Division. The clock on the wall didn’t just tick; it mocked me. Waiting in this room was a full-time job that paid exclusively in whispers and suspects all bound in leather – like a morgue for dead trees.

Welcome to part two, dear reader. Pull up a chair – but keep your hands where I can see ‘em. It’s about to get weird.

The room smelled like dust and dried ambition. I was perusing editions of Dickinson’s work – row after row of hardcovers like stoolies in a lineup. They kept their mouths shut. They held their secrets tight. But then I reached for one tome, Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson, and it dropped a clue into my lap like a hot shell casing!

Below: I picked her out of the line-up, and when she stepped into the light, the rest of the world just melted away. She looked like an forgotten prayer someone never finished. Her cover was the color of cheap whiskey, but I was thirsty enough to drink it down anyway – and she held enough secrets to sink a fleet of ships.

That's the funny thing about this town. You think you're holding all the aces, and suddenly the deck starts dealing. Nobody wins, but everybody keeps playing.

Well, I kept playing. I’d started this thing, so it was up to me to finish it. The answer was out there. I just had to find it. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. I was close. Real close. So close I could taste it.

Okay – LOL – so what the hell am I talking about?

On July 10, the day before my trip to New York, Boston, and Amherst, I published a post entitled, “Earth Wind or Fire?” HERE.

In that very post, I wondered which word Dickinson had used most often in her poems – earth, wind or fire. The answer, my friend, was blowing in the “wind,” with 80-plus poems. However, I confessed that I had researched various weather-related terms back in 2022, and when I went back to the archive now, in 2026, to double-check my work, I searched the word “wind” and 172 entries popped up; plus, the plural “winds” generated 118 entries. It was too much to sift through. “Therefore,” I said, “let’s suffice it to say that Dickinson used ‘wind’ in 80 poems or more.”

Then, the very next day, July 11, as I was “waiting in the Brook Russell Astor Reading Room in the North Hall of the Stephen A. Schwarzman building of the New York Public Library for my appointment with destiny in the Rare Book Division,” I pulled from the shelves the “Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson.” I had no idea this book existed. LOL. It provides statistics on every word used by Dickinson in her poetry (except for “the,” “and,” and – evidently – “no,” which I’ll get to later).

Pick a word, any word, and this book tells you how many times Dickinson used it in her poetry and in which poems – plus it provides all of the lines in which the word appears.

OH. EM. GEE.

"Concordance," I whispered, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

All these years I’ve been sifting through the archive for individual words, omitting duplicate entries, checking on actual usage and meanings – and I could have just turned to the pages of this book? I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. (“at what I was looking” for you pedants.) It was then – as I was holding the Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson and waiting in the Brook Russell Astor Reading Room in the North Hall of the Stephen A. Schwarzman building of the New York Public Library for my appointment with destiny in the Rare Book Division – that I remembered my recent post “Earth Wind or Fire.”

I looked up the word “wind” and “winds” in the Concordance and guess what. The word “wind” appears in 81 poems – that eighty-first word is “wind’s,” with an apostrophe. It appears in “Like Flowers, that heard the news of Dews.” Line 10 of that poem reads, “Or Wind’s bright signal to the Ear.”

It all clicked into place. The dame in white, the poems, the concordance. I didn't need any more puzzle pieces. I had my answer. But then – I should’ve known the deal was too sweet. I thought I had it all wrapped up in tissue paper, with pink ribbons around it. It was perfect, except that it wasn't, because I suddenly remembered that in my post of June 10th I’d tacked this on at the end: “Now, what about Dickinson's use of ‘boogie,’ ‘wonder,’ and ‘land.’” Remember now – I was in New York – the city that doesn’t sleep. It just changes shifts – and the clock was still ticking. I knew there was more work to be done.

I turned back to the Concordance and flipped through the pages: * “Boogie” was never used by Dickinson, so no surprises there. * “Land” (and “lands”) landed in 38 different poems. * “Wonder” (plus “wondered” and “wondering”) showed up in 27 different poems.

It was as easy as that. All too often, answers play hide-in-seek in the fog, but not on this day. Nope, on this day, the puzzle pieces snapped into place like the echo of a leather-bound volume slapping shut in the Brook Russell Astor Reading Room in the North Hall of the Stephen A. Schwarzman building of the New York Public Library.

It all made sense. Truth doesn’t just walk through the door of a library. You have to dig for it, buried deep in dusty stacks and brittle pages. I reshelved the Concordance and glanced at the lonely scholars hunched in their chairs playing hide-and-seek with their research. None of them realized I’d just wrapped up a mystery in the middle of a concrete jungle with a jagged skyline, rattling subways, rushing heels, and desperate souls. I realized around here a guy could break his neck staring at a blinking cursor, seductive footnotes, tangled syntax and contradictory findings, and nobody would lose any sleep over it. You close one book only to realize you have to open another. I took a deep breath of the musty air and headed to the Rare Books Collection. It was two-o’clock. My next adventure was about to begin.

For more pics of the Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson -- and misc shots from New York AND the Earth Wind & Fire/Lionel Richie concert at Madison Square Garden -- click HERE.

Somehow, New Yorkers always seem to know when my wife and I are coming for a visit, and following their delightful and extremely accurate welcome to the island of Manhattan (see pic below), we experienced a few memorable highlights to our trip early on, including the peach margarita at Blue Maiz (on our first night) and the Tea Cake at Charlotte Patisserie (on our first morning). Then, following a stroll through Chelsea in the morning and lunch at our hotel at noon, I headed over to the Stephen A. Schwarzman building of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. The Rare Books and Manuscripts opened at one o’clock, and I got there right as they unlocked their doors.

I didn’t have an appointment, so the desk librarian told me I would have to take a number. I got number “1,” and in a matter of a few minutes, a reference librarian, Kyle, called me over to his desk.

I inquired about the 1924 edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, and that text was available for review (unlike the 1890 and 91 editions of Poems which are noted as “exhibition only”); however, Kyle explained that I would first have to register for a NYPL library card and give them time to retrieve the book. Therefore, I returned to the main reference desk, applied for the card, opted for the US semiquincentennial edition, and then explored the shelves in the Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room. Kyle had recommended that I return to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at 2:00 p.m., so that gave me about 30 minutes to check out the various Dickinson editions on the reading room’s shelves.

The first books I spotted were the three-volume Franklin Variorum (to the right in the first picture below). Interestingly, they were next to the “University of Virginia Edition of the Works of Stephen Crane.” Go Hoos!

The first book I thumbed through was Selected Poetry of Emily Dickinson Chosen by the New York Public Library, published by Doubleday in 1997. I loved the section titles in the book, including “The Poet’s Choice,” “The Miracle Year,” “Elegy,” and “Immortality.” I turned to “Because I could not stop for Death” first. It’s my “go to” poem when examining a book of Dickinson’s poetry. I check to see if the poem used is Dickinson’s original version – or Mabel Loomis Todd’s altered version from 1890. In this case, it was Dickinson’s.

Next, I picked up All Things Dickinson, An Encyclopedia of Emily Dickinson’s World, a two-volume set (A-H and I-Z) published in 2014.

Because I’d recently (HERE) learned that Mabel Loomis Todd’s father, Eben Jenks Loomis, had edited at least one of Dickinson’s poems for publication in the first edition of Dickinson’s poetry, “It will be Summer – eventually” (he omitted the first stanza and made modifications to the second and third stanzas) – and since I’d also published recent posts about letters from Dickinson to Loomis in the fall of 1885 and winter of 1886 (HERE) – I thought I would check to see what the two-volume encyclopedia had to say about old Mr. Loomis; however, nothing was there! Oops – seems that the “All Things Dickinson” tomes are really “Most Things Dickinson.”

Next up: Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson, published in 1978 -- but I’ll get to this book tomorrow! More pics related to today’s post are on my “Dial ‘Em’ for Emily” travelogue, HERE.

Last week I visited New York City, Boston, and Amherst, MA, and much of the trip centered on Dickinson-related exploration: a rare book at the New York Public Library; the Dickinson room in the Houghton Library at Harvard; Dickinson’s grave in West Cemetery in Amherst; Dickinson’s bedroom in her home; and more. I’ve started posting pics and info from the trip on my travelogue (linked at the conclusion of this post), and I’ll be adding more to it in the coming days (weeks?) – PLUS – I’ll be publishing posts here on my Dickinson plog (poetry blog) and linking them on the “Dial ‘Em’ for Emily” page. In addition to my review of all-things-Dickinson from my trip, I’ll also include other highlights – like a visit to Boston’s “Museum of Bad Art” (OMG – so funny – you won’t want to miss it); info on the Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment, a bronze relief sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the edge of the Boston Common; the exhibit of glass flowers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (truly incredible); and more – even a mention of the best sauteed green beans I've ever eaten (at Asian Taste in Amherst), the smallest elevator I’ve ever ridden in, and even a bit on Edgar Allan Poe.

Below left to right: "A Bird in the Hand" from the Museum of Bad Art; the Shaw Memorial; glass flowers and plants

Below left to right: Asian Taste, home of the best sauteed green beans; inside the tiny elevator (with blue light); Edgar Alan Poe

​I will say that there are various topics I had planned to cover in the coming days that I will now have to put on hold, including “10 Poetic Devices You Should Know," introduced in a post on July 9th, HERE – AND – an assortment of “loose ends” I need to tie up. In this post, HERE, I listed eight bits of unfinished business. I addressed the first four in various posts between June 28th through July 7th; however, the other four will have to wait -- including the story of how I came upon the giant coffee cup in Milwaukee. Fret not, though, dear reader. The story will be well worth the wait.

So let’s roll the credits and rev up the reel of “Dial ‘Em’ for Emily.” Supreme suspense unfurls! Wonder and awe are calling – and if Emily Dickinson answers – hang on for dear life! Click HERE.

This is my last daily post until about July 17th or so – I’ll be travelling. As part of my trip, I’m attending a concert at Madison Square Garden with Lionel Ritchie and Earth Wind & Fire.

Hmm…if you know me, then you won’t be surprised – I wondered which Dickinson mentioned most often in her poems – earth, wind or fire.

EARTH:

When it came to heavenly bodies, Dickinson most often referred to the sun – “sun” appears in 164 poems – followed by “star” in 63 poems. “Earth” comes in third, appearing in 58 poems, and our satellite, the moon, shows up in 23 poems. Other heavenly orbs appear in other poems, including Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and a handful of other astronomical bodies.

One of my favorites of the “earth” poems is “Frequently the woods are pink.” Interestingly, you can see from line 9 of Dickinson’s manuscript that she almost said, “And the world – they tell me / On its axis turned” instead of “And the earth,” but she crossed out the word “world” rather forcefully and replaced it with “earth” (which I think works better). I set this poem to music in a song called “Wonderful Rotation!” – the title taken from line 11 of the poem.

WIND:

As far as weather-related terms are concerned, “wind” tops the list – it appears in at least 80 poems (and “windy” in two more). Coming behind the wind, are “snow” (57 poems) and “frost” (40 poems). “Cloud” appears in 26 poems, and “lightning” and “storm” each appear in 15 works. Of course, there are a whole host of other weather-related terms in other poems including “ice,” “rain,” “sleet,” “thunder,” and more. Admittedly, I researched all of these terms back in 2022, and this week, when I went to double-check my work on the Dickinson archive and searched the word “wind,” the results included 172 entries – and the plural “winds” generated 118 – so it was too much to sift through at this time; therefore, let’s suffice it to say that Dickinson used “wind” in 80 poems or more. For some of Dickinson’s most famous poems of wind, check out my post from February 2025, HERE.

FIRE:

A search for the word “fire” on the Dickinson archive generated 61 results representing 25 poems, 22 of which used the word “fire.” I also checked for the plural, “fires.” That search brought up 18 results representing 7 poems, 3 of which includes the word “fires.” Therefore, the words “fire” & “fires” appear in 25 different poems. One of my favorite “fire” poems is “The largest fire ever known.” Interestingly, it’s not about a fire; instead, it’s about the sunset, a glorious daily natural phenomenon that is all too often overlooked “without concern."

Then, take a look at Helen Vendler’s discussion of “Ashes denote that Fire was” from the introduction to her book Dickinson, Selected Poems and Commentaries:

Wow. Just – wow. I feel as if the top of my head were taken off.* I have to catch my breath and compose myself.

Okay, I've steadied my nerves and regained my composure -- so to recap today's tally: EARTH: 58 poems WIND: 80-plus poems FIRE: 25 poems

Now, what about Dickinson's use of “boogie,” “wonder,” and “land.” LOL – I’ll save that research for another day! See you later this month!

I saw this post on Reels the other day,:“10 Poetic Devices You Should Know.”

I know two of them. LOL. I know of a third one, though not as a “poetic device," but as a perceptual phenomenon. Interestingly, for that particular “device,” Synesthesia (#6), the person who put this list together used a line from Dickinson as an example: "With Blue -- uncertain -- stumbling buzz" (from "I heard a Fly buzz when I died").

I remember I first heard of synesthesia, the neurological trait, when I learned of American composer Michael Torke. He has reported that he composed his orchestral work “Bright Blue Music” because he sees the key of D major as bright blue.

About the work – and his compositional process – Torke said this:

Listen to "Bright Blue Music" HERE.

The two poetic elements from the list with which I am familiar by name are Assonance (#1) and Metonymy (#7).

The “Glossary of Poetic Terms” on the Poetry Foundation’s site offered two examples of assonance from poems by Amy Lowell: “In a Garden”: “With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur” “The Taxi”: “And shout into the ridges of the wind” However, to truly immerse yourself in an experience of assonance, you can’t beat “Vowel Movements” by Daryl Hine. Check out the long “a” sound in just the first four lines of the poem:

Take a statement, the same as yesterday’s dictation: Lately pain has been there waiting when I awake. Creative despair and failure have made their patient. Anyway, I’m afraid I have nothing to say.

Concerning “metonymy,” examples are everywhere: "The White House" refers to the U.S. President or their administration; "Hollywood" stands for the entire American film and television industry; "Suits" is used to describe corporate businesspeople, and "Wall Street" refers to the U.S. financial and investment community. A closely related figure of speech is “synecdoche,” where a part of something stands for the whole; for example, “I’ve got wheels” for “I have a car,” or a description of a worker as a “hired hand” – or “all hands on deck.”

There are, of course, the other seven elements – though I don’t have time this morning to discuss them all. Therefore, for now, I’ll post below what was included on the Reels so you can see them all, and then at some point in the future I’ll get back to the ones I haven't covered. ​​ I do have one post coming tomorrow, but then there will be a break in daily doses of Dickinson until about July 17 – so I’ll return to the “10 Poetic Devices You Should Know” around that time.

In yesterday’s post, I discussed Helen Vendler’s take on Dickinson’s use of the dash. In brief: “Her dashes served a multitude of purposes,” noted Vendler in Dickinson, Selected Poems and Commentaries. She added, “The dash becomes especially significant when it concludes a poem.”

Also in the post, I discussed one poem, “If recollecting were forgetting,” of which Dickinson wrote two versions – one with dashes (published in Miller 2016) and one without (published in Franklin 1998). Furthermore, I shared “‘Lethe’ in my flower,” a poem with no dashes, but a work which survived only in the form of a transcription produced by Mabel Loomis Todd – the original manuscript either lost or destroyed. Did Todd alter the poem to “clean up” Dickinson’s punctuation and eliminate the dashes? After all, she was known for modifying the poet’s punctuation and grammar to make her poems more palatable for public taste.

Vendler provided an interesting twist on this theme:

Vendler concluded her proposed transcription with this:

“As we compare the two possibilities, which seems more Dickinsonian? And what inference does a final dash allow that Todd’s terminal period does not?”

As I prepared today’s post and revisited Vendler’s text, I observed that I’d written a note to myself on the page, “LOL see recent post on the…”?

“Bunny”? Does that say “bunny”? Or does it say “bumnyl”? What the hell did I write – and what was my past-self trying to remind my present-self? It took me a bit to figure it out, but it does say “see recent post on the bunny.” Thisnote to myself was a cue to revisit a post from the end of April which focused on one individual’s query, “How would famous writers rewrite this sentence in their style: A bunny was looking for a carrot.” I didn’t think their proposed response for Emily Dickinson sounded very Dickinson-esque, so I attempted to compose one myself that sounded more Dickinsonian (a la Vendler’s reflection above). My post is HERE.

Below: Variances in punctuation and spelling in Dickinson's "My life closed twice before its close":

NOTES RE: ABOVE CHART:

* From Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Variorum Edition. ** I have no idea why Johnson added a dash at the end of the opening line of the poem. # Franklin: At the time she transcribed the poem, Todd wrote “[disclose}” next to line 3, apparently as a potential editorial alteration. Emendation: 1 it’s] its even numbers 2-8] indented 6 befell] befel ## Miller: “Befel” may be MLT’s mistake (it was emended by RWF), but it may also be ED’s anachronistic spelling; it is used by Shakespeare and by Isaac atts, albeit rarely.

Below: "My life closed twice before its close" in the 1924 "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson; the title "Parting," given my Mable Loomis Todd, was not used in this edition.

Below: The poem as it appeared in the June 1896 issue of Scribner's Magazine. The Scribner's version of the poem is the only one to use the word "this" in line 6 of the poem instead of "these" (which reminds me of the Eurythmics' "Sweet dreams are made of this...vs these" line in their song).

Below: Annie Lennox’s eyes. To hear “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” (not These), click HERE.

At the end of June, I wrote a post which inventoried a list of “loose ends” to tie up, and slowly and somewhat surely, I’ve addressed some of the miscellaneous matters. Here’s a summary of what I’ve parceled up so far:

* Grammar – poem with “syntax”: Check!

I wrote about “Going to Him! Happy letter!” in the very late-June post mentioned above, HERE.

* Eben Loomis' poem "A Sunset Idyl": Check!

I commented on Mabel Loomis Todd’s father’s poem over the course of two days, HERE and HERE.

* Mathematics v. grammar – info on short poem re: ingots/Peru: Check!

At first, I couldn’t remember what this reminder was all about, but I finally figured it out, HERE.

* Dashes – info from Helen V’s book: Check!

That’s the focus for my post today – so cast your eyes and thoughts below, dear reader!

However, before I get to “Helen V’s book,” which is Helen Vendler’s Dickinson, Selected Poems and Commentaries, let me share a crafty little post I came across the other day on Tumblr from the mind of @gnars-house:

Of course, my first thought was, “Dash it all – why didn’t I write that?” So simple. So true. So apparent. My second thought was of Helen Vendler, for Gnars-house’s chef-d'oeuvre reminded me of my record of unfinished business and my pledge to address “Dashes – info from Helen V’s book” – so let's dive in, shall we?

In the introduction to her collection of poems and commentaries, Vendler states this (and I’ve added the bold here and there for emphasis):

Did Dickinson write any poems without a dash? I suspected so, but still – I wondered.

​I paged through my copy of Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Poem number 9, “If recollecting were forgetting” – no dashes. Hmm…but take a look to the right of her name at the bottom of the original manuscript. Do I detect a dash?

Note: Where Franklin uses a comma at the end of Line 2 (as shown above), Johnson provides a period.

STOP THE PRESSES:

When I wrote the "Note" above – about the comma vs. the period – I wondered which appeared in the 2016 Cristanne Miller edition, Emily Dickinson's Poems As She Preserved Them, a comma or a period. I checked the index for the page on which to find the poem, and I was shocked to find that the work wasn't included in the book. Well, it is – but it wasn't when I first checked. Here's the story: Below: Index entries in the Miller edition of Dickinson's poems.

After perusing the index of Miller's edition, I decided to check for the poem in The Letters of Emily Dickinson, also edited by Cristanne Miller. I discovered that the poem had been sent to Samuel Bowles in the summer of 1859. Miller included it in her book with this note: "Fascicle 1; M 40 (beginning 'Oh if remembering were forgetting –')." The "M40" stands for "Miller edition, page 40," and sure enough, there on page 40 of Miller's edition was the poem – although beginning with the word "Oh" (in italics), and not "If.”

Below: The poem as it appears in Miller’s edition.

And did you notice? There are five dashes in the poem! So why no dashes in the Franklin edition?

You see, in Cristanne Miller's edition, she included the poems "as she preserved them" -- so Miller published the poem as it appeared in Dickinson's Fascicle One, from the summer of 1858.

In Franklin's edition, his policy was "to choose the latest version of the entire poem, thereby giving to the poet, rather than the editor, the ownership of change." Since the poem with no dashes was sent to Bowles in 1859, that later version was published.

The next poem with no dashes in the Franklin edition is number 54, “‘Lethe’ in my flower.”

The lower portion of the manuscript (as seen above) was destroyed or lost; however, a transcript of the poem made by Mabel Todd when the manuscript was intact supplies the last six lines of the poem. But think about that for a moment. Todd, the editor of the first posthumously published collections of Dickinson poetry – who modified much of the poet’s punctuation and grammar – transcribed the poem – so who knows. Maybe there were dashes used throughout the poem? Vendler offers a similar – and intriguing – discussion on this matter (a dash-less poem that likely was penned with dashes) – so I’ll get to that tomorrow.

In yesterday’s post, I shared a version of “Because I could not stop for Death” which I had never seen before. It was from a 1924 edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson edited by the poet’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi. I knew of the volume; I’d just not seen one though, nor did I realize it contained previously published works with additional modifications.

Here’s a recap of the early publications through 1924:

1886: Emily Dickinson died on May 15

1890: “Poems,” first series edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson

1891: “Poems,” second series edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson

1896: “Poems,” third series edited by Mabel Loomis Todd

NOTE: Mabel Todd ceased publishing additional volumes of poems (until 1945) due to a lawsuit brought against her by Dickinson’s sister, Lavinia, who successfully sued to reclaim a strip of meadow her brother, Austin Dickinson, had deeded to Todd. The victory caused a permanent rift, leading Todd to lock up Emily Dickinson's remaining unpublished manuscripts.

1914: “The Single Hound, Poems of a Lifetime,” poems and letters by Dickinson edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi

1924: “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson,” edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; this volume included all of the poems from the first, second, and third series and “The Single Hound,” for a total of 595 poems, or about one third of all of Dickinson’s poetry.

Bianchi included this “NOTE” at the start of her volume:

For the convenience of readers familiar with previous editions of Emily Dickinson’s poems the original four divisions have here been retained, each now including all the poems of its own group in the three volumes of the series. The names given to many of the poems by former editors have been dropped, leaving them as they were found in manuscript, — not entitled; but the old landmarks of “Life, Nature, Love, Time and Eternity” remain at suggestion of the publisher, for whose kind consideration I make sincere acknowledgement, as also for the invaluable assistance of Alfred Leete Hampson.

Therefore, this 1924 included all of the poems from the first three series, categorized under the previously applied groupings of Life, Nature, Love, and Time & Eternity, plus all of the poems published ten years earlier in “The Single Hound.”

Below: Bianchi's "Introduction" to the collection:

You learn something every day, right? At least, that’s the recommended approach. Sometimes, you might even learn more than one thing in a day which was the case for me yesterday.

Frist, I learned that if I search “Emily Dickinson” on Spotify, quite a long list of selections pops up, from readings of her poetry – including a three-plus hour option of Thomas Johnson’s “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson” – to albums of selected poems to episodes of podcasts to audio books about Emily Dickinson and more.

I clicked on a 2010 selection of forty-seven poems & letters read over the course of 46 minutes by Julie Harris. Her interpretations weren’t bad – just a little different, perhaps, then the way I hear some of the poems in my head – although one suggestion I would have for Spotify (or perhaps for the album’s producer) would be to have a tone or some bit of music or something between selections – or perhaps a longer pause? “I reason, Earth is Short” just seemed to blend into “I cannot live with you” which segued into “I’ll tell you how the sun rose,” etc. If someone is not familiar with the poems, they won’t know where one poem ends and the next one begins. I listened to a few more of the assortment and was about to move on to another of Spotify’s Dickinson options, when I decided to see if “Because I could not stop for Death” was included on Harris’ album. That’s always my “go-to” poem when I want to check whether or not a book (or in this case a recording) is using poems “as written” by Dickinson or “as edited” by Mabel Loomis Todd, Thomas Wentworth Higginson or some other past editor. When “Because I could not stop for Death” was first published in 1890 – and given the title “The Chariot” – Mabel Todd completely omitted the fourth stanza, plus she altered the third stanza to provide a perfect rhyme in line 10 for line 12 to make the work more presentable for public taste.

Dickinson wrote this:

We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun –

Todd published this:

We passed the school where children played Their lessons scarcely done; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun.

Whenever I come across a book of Dickinson’s poetry, I use “Because I could not stop for Death” as a litmus test of sorts to see which versions of Dickinson’s poetry the publisher/editor is using within the collection – Dickinson’s or someone else’s. When I scrolled down Harris’ complete list, “Because I could not stop for Death” was there – so I tapped on the title and listened. Well, paint Martha green and call her a pickle! I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. I backed up the audio and listened again, and Harris delivered the third stanza as this:

We passed the school where children played At wrestling in a ring; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun.

Say whhhaaaat?

have never come across this version before. The fourth stanza was not included in Harris’ readings, and other of Todd’s changes were present – but line 10, “At wrestling in a ring”? Where in the world of Dickinson did that come from? I checked Cristanne Miller’s 2016 “Emily Dickinson’s Poems as She Preserved Them,” and there was no mention of this substitute line choice. Next, I perused Franklin’s 1998 Variorum edition of Dickinson’s poetry, and there – just at the conclusion of his discussion of the poem – was this bit in a footnote: 10 At Recess – in the Ring] Their lesson scarcely done P90; At wrestling in a ring CP24 P30 “CP24” refers to an edition of “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson” published by Little, Brown, and Company in 1924, with an introduction and notes by Dickinson’s niece, Marth Dickinson Bianchi. I knew of this edition, but I had no idea that it included an altered version of “Because I could not stop for Death” – and evidently, when Julie Harris recorded her album in 2010, someone at Caedmon Records must have thought it a good idea to hand her copies of Dickinson’s poetry from a 1924 edition of her work. How odd is that?

Okay, okay – maybe it’s not so odd. Turns out the Harris recorded Dickinson’s poems in 1960, and Thomas Johnson’s edition of “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson” wasn’t published until 1955 – so maybe his edition wasn’t widespread? I dunno.

Below: The 1924 edition of "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson" and "Because I could not stop for Death."

Below: In 1976 Harris starred in “The Belle of Amherst,” a one-woman play written by William Luce based on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson. Harris won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, and she later won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording for the audio recording of the play.

Below: Todd's 1890 version of "Because I could not stop for Death" and Johnson's 1955 and Franklin's 1998 versions of the poem in their editions of Dickinson's poetry.

July the Fourth be with you!

Saturday in the park I think it was the Fourth of July Saturday in the park I think it was the Fourth of July People dancing, people laughing A man selling ice cream Singing Italian songs Eh Cumpari, ci vo sunari Can you dig it? (Yes, I can) And I've been waiting such a long time For Saturday

The Fourth of July falls on a Saturday this year – obviously – making this the last time until 2037 that the title of Chicago’s classic “Saturday in the Park” lines up perfectly with the calendar year. It’s one of those quirky little moments that only comes around every 11 years. Is the song on your playlist this weekend?

I thought, just for fun, I’d check the Dickinson archive to see how often the poet used the words “Saturday,” “park,” “fourth,” and “July” in her poetry. I gotta say, as a result of the results (pardon my repetitive redundancy), my flabbers were completely and utterly gasted! Here’s the outcome of my investigation:

To be honest, all of this ties into my post from yesterday (HERE), directly related to the one frustration I have with the updated online Dickinson archive: The search feature allows for a word search in the firs"t lines/titiles" of Dickinson’s poetry – OR – in all of the information on the separate pages for each of the poems, but not exclusively in the bodies (i.e., the stanzas) of the poems.

SATURDAY:

For the most part, the 26 entries that popped up for a search of “Saturday” did so because many of the poems were published in various issues of the “Saturday Review of Literature.” For example, information for one poem stated, “Publication: Saturday Review of Literature, XIII (9 November 1935), 12; UP (1935), 11.” Also, Mabel Loomis Todd gave one of Dickinson’s poems the title “Saturday,” and publication info on the archive stated, “Publication: Youth's Companion, LXV (22 September 1892), 468, titled ‘Saturday’; Poems (1896), 34, titled ‘Saturday Afternoon.’”

PARK:

Dickinson never used the word “park” in any of her poems, so why did one poem pop up in my search? Because the “Publications” info for the poem “It struck me – every day” states this: “The first stanza only was printed in the Amherst Literary Monthly, June 1891, among ‘Suggestions from the Poems of Emily Dickinson’ by Henry Park Schauffler. All three stanzas are in Poems (1896), 189, titled ‘The Soul's Storm.’” Did you catch Mr. Schauffler’s middle name?

FOURTH:

Just one poem by Dickinson uses the word “fourth,” “Finding is the first act.” So why all of the other results? Many of the pages for the other poems included statements like these:

Mrs. Todd wrote Col. Higginson to suggest a few changes and corrections which might be made in the fourth impression of the volume, shortly to be printed a note explains how the fourth stanza is attached and queries whether it may not be a substitute for the third.

In line 9 "Depreciate," rendered "Depreciates" in the first three impressions, was corrected in the fourth.

Three, variant, about early 1883, in pencil; possibly a fourth (lost).

JULY:

Like “fourth,” “July” appears in one and one poem only, “Answer July.” All of the other poems popped up due to statements like these on the various archive pages:

Two fair copies, variant, about summer 1862. ed incorporated the poem into a note written about 20 July 1862 to Eudocia Converse Flynt, a cousin in Monson (y-brbl). Flynt, who had visited Amherst on 10 July for commencement, recorded in her diary that she received the note on 21 July. It was sent with a flower.

She replied in her letter of July 1862

BONUS WORDS:

Did Emily Dickinson ever use the word SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL in any of her poems? Well, my archive search resulted in 426 entries*, but that represented zero poems. *I’m just joshin’ ya. No entries popped up, and it’s true -- Dickinson never used the word “semiquincentennial.”

I keep a spreadsheet on the topics I cover with my daily posts on Dickinson so that I’m not repetitive – unintentionally so – and my notes are not meticulous. I just jot down a relevant few words and/or the first line of any poem I’d shared, but nothing overly detailed. I also make note of any idea for a future post or any “loose end” to clear up, and in a post at the end of June I shared a few items from my inventory of outstanding issues. One of the items on the loose ends” said, “Mathematics v. grammar – info on short poem re: ingot/Peru.” However, I confessed, “I’m not entirely sure what this one is all about.” Well, it finally dawned on my what that enigmatic statement was all about. At the conclusion of the post from June 2 (HERE), I shared that Dickinson never used the word “grammar” in any of her works; however, I added, “‘Mathematics’ shows up in three poems.” On that day, I scribbled a note, “Mathematics v. grammar – info on short poem re: ingot/Peru” – but why? What was it about that poem I wanted to impart? It is an odd little poem in that there are several distinct versions. Thomas Johnson’s edition of Dickinson’s “complete poems” includes three of them, one of which includes a mathematical term, “sum” – but that wasn’t why I made the note to myself.

It dawned on me this morning that I made the note because I wanted to call attention to a frustration I have with the “new and improved” online Dickinson archive. I really do like the updated archive – it houses a great deal of helpful information – but there is something about the site’s search feature that aggravates me. The search field has a drop-down menu with two choices, “Everything” or “First Line/Title.” So, for example, when I plugged in “mathematics” and searched for “Everything,” eleven entries popped up representing five different poems. As by the dead we love to sit (4 entries) If I could tell how glad I was (3 entries) One Crucifixion is recorded (2 entries) Why should we hurry – why indeed (1 entry) Brother of Ingots – Ah Peru – (1 entry) However, only the first three poems listed above actually include the word “mathematics.” The other two, “Why should we hurry – why indeed” and “Brother of Ingots – Ah Peru” do not.

Why were those two poems included in the search results?

In the “Manuscript” section for the first poem, the archive included this (I added the CAPS):

“This unfinished poem is a worksheet draft (Bingham 107-90) written probably in 1885. It occupies three margins and part of the back of a letter which ED wrote but never sent to an Amherst friend, Mrs. William C. Esty, wife of the professor of MATHEMATICS and astronomy. In the center of the leaf ED wrote ‘Tragedy,’ and underlined it twice. On the verso is another unfinished poem. (See no. 1643.)”

Concerning the “Brother of Ingots” poem, these comments appeared in the “Manuscript” section (again, I added the CAPS):

“The third (Amherst College) was incorporated in a note to Mrs. Edward Tuckerman at the time of the death of Elihu Root, the thirty-five-year old professor of MATHEMATICS and natural philosophy in Amherst College, on 3 December 1880. ED did not know him, but knew the esteem with which the Tuckermans had regarded him: Brother of Ophir Bright Adieu, Honor, the shortest route To you.”

My recent posts have focused on Eben Loomis’ “A Sunset Idyl,” a work he published in 1903 in a collection of poems he dedicated to his wife, Mary, for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. From the start, I sort of poked fun at Loomis’ use of the word “athwart,” which showed up promptly athwart the second line of his semicentennial work:

All day the drifting clouds had trailed along Their gray, cool wreaths of mist athwart the hills

I checked on Dickinson’s use of the word "athwart" in her poetry, but she never used it. However, in exploring the word, I did find an example of its usage by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his work “A Lover’s Tale”:

the cloud of unforgotten things, That sometimes on the horizon of the mind Lies folded, often sweeps athwart in storm

Turns out that Tennyson also used the word twice in his poem “Mariana.” The first instance comes in the second stanza:

She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats.

And the second use of the word? Well, I’ll get to that momentarily. First, let me share a bit of history about the poem. Tennyson's "Mariana," written in 1830, was inspired by a single line from Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure: "There, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana.” Tennyson took Shakespeare's brief mention of the abandoned character and expanded her into a psychological study of isolation, grief, and prolonged waiting. Then, when I read through Tennyson’s work, I wondered if Tennyson’s poem had, in turn, inspired Edgar Allan Poe to pen his classic, “The Raven.” Take a look at these lines that conclude each of the seven stanzas of "Mariana":

There are numerous other gloomy details as well: blackest moss, rusted nails, falling tears, thickest dark, glooming flats, cold winds, a gray-eyed morn, blacken’d waters, a low moon, shrill winds, and creaky hinges. Then, in the final stanza of the poem comes the second use of “athwart”:

but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping toward his western bower.

I gotta admit – I was gettin’ a mite too big for m’ britches in yesterday’s post. I got all uppity about Eben Loomis’ poh-em “A Sunset Idyl,” and I was razzin’ him about his use of the word “chrysoprase.” Here’s near nuff a-what I said: After the wind’d subsided in Loomis’ yarn, and a few low clouds were a-glowin’ athwart the hills with intensest light, the talker in the poh-em done claimed, “The river flowed like liquid chrysoprase,” and I mocked Eben Loomis and asked, “Chrysoprase? Seriously?” But then purdy quickly on I says, “Okay, I best not be so haughty, because I just checked the online Dickinson archive for ‘chrysoprase,’ and guess who used the word in two poems? LOL – I’ll follow up on that tomorrow.” I was humbled to the tallow. So here I am with my tail tucked, and I reckon I’s got a little confession to make to y’all. Lord a mercy – I done wrote about Dickinson’s use of “Chrysoprase” afore! At least a coupla times. Talk about yer day-zha-voo!

I first mentioned the word – in its alternate spelling – at the tippy end of this post, HERE. I up and asked, “Who here knows what ‘Chrysophras’ is?” I added a li’l smirky “LOL” too.

Yesterday, I discussed a bit of Eben Jenks Loomis’ pastoral work “A Sunset Idyl,” and I provided a couple of side-by-side comparisons to some of Dickinson’s poems with similar imagery. I made it through twelve lines of Loomis’ poem, so I have about 250 more to go. LOL – no, I’m not really going to go line by line. That would be excruciating, as the work is intensely sappy, doggedly melodramatic, and idyllically Victorian with its focus on idealized romance.

Let me begin today by defining what is an idyl (or idyll). The OED defines the form in literature as “a short poem, descriptive of some picturesque scene or incident, chiefly in rustic life.” The earliest written use of the word traces back to 1601:

“Those amatorious eidyls and eclogues of Theocritus among Greek Poets, of Catullus and Virgil among us.”

P. Holland, translation of Pliny, The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus vol. II. 296

The OED included other examples of usage through the years that I found interesting:

From 1859: “The Idyll or Idyl...is, on the whole, Tennyson's favourite form of rhythmical composition.”

J. H. Stirling, Tennyson in Critical Essays (1868) 61

From 1873: “The name of the Idyll sufficiently explains its nature. It is a little picture. Rustic or town life, legends of the gods, and passages of personal experience supply the idyllist with subjects. Generally there is a narrator, and in so far the Idyll is epic; its verse too is the hexameter.”

J. A. Symonds, Studies of Greek Poets x. 306

From 1879: “An Idyl is...not necessarily concerning pastoral matters, though from the prevalence of such topics in the idyls of Theocritus, the general notion is that idyllic and pastoral are almost convertible terms.”

World 16 April

Then, in 1903 came Eben Loomis’ “A Sunset Idyl" (the complete book is HERE), and it is quite the hodgepodge of rhythmical composition, schmaltzy reverie, rustic town life, personal recollections, and more.

Do you remember Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor, an establishment that was around from 1963 to 2019? A hallmark feature on their menu was the “World Famous Farrell’s Zoo,” eight pounds of ice cream, bananas, whipped cream, cherries, nuts, and plastic toy animals delivered to your table on a stretcher to the sound of blaring sirens, clanging fire bells, and drumrolls.

“A Sunset Idyl” strikes me as “Loomis’ Zoo,” eight pounds of evening breezes, mighty clouds, bright fields, dark forests, distant hilltops, vapory mists, starry nights, murmuring streams, turbid rills, shadowy vales, sudden waves, dewy air, thunder and lightning and more. To be honest, about the only thing missing is the moon. Seriously – why isn’t the moon in there? In a nutshell, the poem begins with drifting mists athwart the hills. A mighty cloud arises and storms the earth. Suddenly, the squall subsides, sunshine floods the west, and the speaker of the poem stands on the span of a bridge – and dreams. In his vision, he sees a tempest similar to that which he’d just encountered; however, when the winds subside, he sees a hill with a noble oak, a house, and the love of his life. He recalls how he met his soulmate (when she came tripping o'er the shadowy lea), reports how new witching charms made her lovelier each day, and recounts how they would meet atop the hill for sunset trysts. Oh, and somewhere in there he intones an ode to never-ending love. Abruptly, a sudden sound breaks his reverie, and he wends his way home in the darkness. He knows, though, that – bet your bottom dollar – the sun’ll come out tomorrow. LOL – okay, so I slipped in a bit of lyric from “Tomorrow” from the Broadway musical “Annie.” I couldn’t help myself! Besides Loomis’ schmaltzy account and the poem’s jam-packed pastoral imagery, I chortled at a few peculiar lines in the poem which struck me as odd; among them are these: * The opening lines (which I’ve already mentioned):

All day the drifting clouds had trailed along Their gray, cool wreaths of mist athwart the hills

I love that use of “athwart,” and found a similar use in Tennyson’s “A Lover’s Tale":

the cloud of unforgotten things,That sometimes on the horizon of the mindLies folded, often sweeps athwart in storm

* After the wind fell silent and a few low clouds glowed with intensest light, Loomis said this:

The river flowed like liquid chrysoprase

Chrysoprase? Seriously? Okay, I best not get too haughty, because I just checked the online Dickinson archive for “chrysoprase,” and guess which other poet used the word -- in two poems? LOL – I’ll follow up on that tomorrow…or soon. By the way, take a look at when the written use of chrysoprase peaked in usage – right when Loomis published “A Sunset Idyl” – so he was shredding that wave!

* Describing the love of his life, Loomis wrote this:

Her heavy, rich brown hair, Shot through by sunshine with a ray of gold, Lay in great masses on her shapely head

Her shapely head? I thought that was weird. * When the speaker’s darling comes tripping o'er the shadowy lea, he reports this:

I can hear her flying feet Bending down the clover sweet

**sigh** Just another goofy overly-dramatic detail.

* The poem also overflows with soppy passages like this:

A wave of dewy air breathed from the west And, toying with the myriad-needled pine, Broke in a low sweet pulse of dream-like song. Our hearts were thrilled with a diviner life In the deep, starry silence; made more deep By the faint wind-song from the shadowy tree. Then, when the stillness pressed our throbbing hearts, Until the quiet grew almost to pain, Some thought too deep for words alone to speak, Sprang to her lips in a low gush of song.

Just days ago, I learned that Mabel Loomis Todd’s father, Eben Jenks Loomis, helped edit at least one of Dickinson’s poems for the first posthumous publications of her work. I wrote about it HERE. I then investigated Loomis himself and discovered that, above and beyond his work as an astronomer (or whatever it was he did in the field), he also wrote poetry.

“There are eddies from time to time in the current of duty which permit the mind to range out into a field of thought quite about from everyday routine,” Loomis wrote in the introduction to his book “A Sunset Idyl and Other Poems” – and it was during these moments, these “quiet intervals,” where he found the time to dabble in the composition of poesy.

His book was published in 1903, and he dedicated it to his wife Mary in honor of “the fiftieth year of our wedded life.” You can view the entire book, HERE. I took a look at one of his poems, the eponymous work, “A Sunset Idyl,” and I wasn’t surprised at all by what I read.

The first two lines of the work alone called to mind a post I'd published last December (HERE). At that time, I was reviewing a handful of poems by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the very gentleman who, for the Belle of Amherst, predicted “oblivion.” In my post I acknowledged this: “I suppose I’ve been a bit harsh with my reviews of his poems – they’re not bad – but they are certainly what I expected, outdated verse with grandiloquent, pretentious language. Aldrich, like many poets from the 19th century, suffered from what we in the industry call OVP, or Overambitious Versification Pathosis, sometimes referred to as ‘fancy pants syndrome.’” Now, six months later, I read just two lines of Loomis’ “A Sunset Idyl,” and there, as plain as the drifting clouds athwart the hills, I detected Overambitious Versification Pathosis” (OVP).

All day the drifting clouds had trailed along Their gray, cool wreaths of mist athwart the hills

I experienced several allergic reactions: I rolled my eyes. I sighed noticeably. I fidgeted. To lessen these effects, I took a cleansing breath and read on (I won’t lie; I also used some smelling salts to control a mild bout of lipothymia). The next four lines of Loomis’ work reminded me of yet another post I had published about five months ago, one about a poem written by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (HERE). In a letter to Mabel Loomis Todd, Higginson reflected upon his own seven-stanza, twenty-eight-line poem entitled “Decoration” and noted that Dickinson, after reading his poem, had written a similar but much briefer work. Higginson confessed, “It is the condensed essence of that & so far finer.” [Just FYI: Dickinson’s “far finer” poem to which he referred was “Lay this laurel on the one.”] I don’t mean to be persnickety, but – well, yes, maybe I do -- but many of Loomis’ lines seemed like text-book examples of 19th century long-winded poetry and many of his images evoked similarly-themed works by Dickinson that – in Higginson’s words – were “so far finer.”

Lines 3 through 6 from Loomis’ “A Sunset Idyl,” for example, called to mind Dickinson’s “The skies can’t keep their secret,” shown following Loomis’ lines. ​From Eben Jenks Loomis’ “A Sunset Idyl”:

All day the gentle rain with whispering voice Had seemed to tell some secret of the clouds, And the hushed earth had listened all day long To catch the story from the sky-born rain.

Lines 7 through 12 from Loomis called to mind various thunderstorm poems by Dickinson; one example, "A Cap of Lead across the sky," is shown below Loomis’ lines.

Once only waked the thunder and the wind; In the black west a mighty cloud uprose, And from the lurid purple of its mane Shook down the rain and thunder to the earth, And the quick lightning shivering through the gloom Flashed Ike a sudden meteor in the night.