#johnson edition

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.

To recap: Yesterday (HERE) I shared a Reels from a young man who posts videos celebrating cinematic history and Hollywood. He declaimed his views on AI filters used on old Hollywood images – “modified to modern taste” – because these new filtered images overtake search results. 

“It’s becoming more and more difficult to do research and see the past,” he said, “because we are replacing the past with this AI filtered junk.”  He further warned “we are down a really dangerous path where it’s going to become impossible to find anything that is original without looking in books, and it’s going to be harder and harder to find those books.”

His comments called to mind the history of the publication of Dickinson’s poetry.  Back in the 1890s, editors Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson “filtered” and modified her poems from the start to satisfy public taste, and it took years to sift through and publish them as she wrote them.

In her book Ancestors’ Brocades, The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson, Millicent Todd Bingham shared what her mother had told her surrounding the editing recommendations and rulings she and Higginson had to make:

When Emily Dickinson was unknown, her acceptance by the literary world problematical, such decisions were weighty.  The poems chosen to introduce her must not be too queer.  The editors never ceased to feel handicapped by this limitation.

Due to the “problematical” nature of Dickinson’s work – including form, punctuation, capitalization, syntax, grammar, and more – established publishers in 1890 weren’t keen on printing her work.  Bingham’s father, David Peck Todd, told her that Colonel Higginson first recommended the poems to Houghton Mifflin Company for publication, as he was one of their readers at the time. They declined.  The poems, they said, “were much too queer – the rhymes were all wrong.”

Whenever I come across a tome of Dickinson’s poetry, the first poem I check – to determine if the book contains original versions (i.e., as written by Dickinson) or the filtered versions – is “Because I could not stop for Death.”

If the third stanza reads, “We passed the school where children played / Their lessons scarcely done / We passed the fields of gazing grain / We passed the setting sun,” then I know the book contains edited versions of Dickinson’s poetry. 

How do I know?  Because Dickinson began the stanza with “We passed the School, where Children strove / At Recess – in the Ring.”  Yes, in the original version of the poem, Dickinson rhymed “ring” with “sun” – and that was deemed “too queer” to publish in 1890.  By the way, Todd and Higginson also completely deleted the fourth stanza from the poem.  I have no idea why.  

This editing – sanitizing? – of Dickinson’s poems went on for years. A first series of poems was published in 1890, a second series in 1891, and a third in 1896.  The chart below shows dates of other editions, and it wasn’t until 1955 that a “complete” collection of her poems was edited and published by Thomas Johnson – and by this point, Johnson and other editors strived to present the poems as written.

Of his compilation, Johnson said, “The order of the poems is that of the Harvard (variorum) edition.  There, where all copies of poems are reproduced, fair copies to recipients are chosen for principal representation.”

R. W. Franklin updated the “complete” edition in 1998, and he reported, “About three fourths of the poems exist in a signal source.  For the rest, with from two to seven sources, the policy has been to choose the latest version of the entire poem, thereby giving to the poet, rather than the editor, the ownership of change.”

A recent update, published in 2016 by editor Cristanne Miller, is called “Emily Dickinson’s Poems as She Preserved Them.”

The poems as originally written.  No filter.

Well…

Things do get a bit foggy with some of the poems because Dickinson recorded numerous alternative word choices and phrases.  The Miller edition includes the alternate possibilities on the right side of the page. 

Callooh! Callay!  Today is Emily Dickinson’s 195th birthday. 

We are so very lucky that Emily’s sister Lavinia did not, in fact, burn all of Dickinson’s personal effects – all of her letter and poems – as Victorians were wont to do – or we would not even know that one of the great world poets had lived in that place of Amherst, Massachusetts, and in that time of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman.

Oh, Lavinia had, indeed, begun the accepted practice of burning everything, starting with a pyre of Dickinson’s letters (those that had been dispatched to her), but something gave her pause when she realized the sheer volume of poetry her sister had left in her room.

By chance, I visited our local Barnes and Nobles yesterday, and every time I’m in a bookstore, I check to see what Dickinson they have on the shelves.  On this occasion, B&N had two volumes of Thomas Johnson’s 1955 “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson” – and no “complete” volumes edited by R. W. Franklin (1998) or Cristanne Miller (2016).  There was also one small collection entitled “Envelope Poems.”

However, right next to Johnson’s editions, I spied with my little eye a book entitled, “One Poem A Day.”

“Hmm,” I wondered, “I wonder what poems they in there by Dickinson?”  -- and I make no apologies for being redundant with the verb “wonder.”

Well, it turned out not to be a “poem a day” book – as in, “here’s a poem for you to read and think about each day.”  No, ’twas a “Writer’s Daily Journal of Words & Inspiration,” a guided journal with prompts and fill-in-the blanks in which one could compose a poem a day.

Nearby on the shelf, though, was “The Best Poems of the English Language,” and of course, I knew Dickinson would be included there.  She was represented by twenty of her poems, some but not all of the expected heavyweights and more than a few surprises.

In another anthology that caught my eye, “A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker 1925 – 2025,”  I didn’t expect I’d see Dickinson.  I assumed that the volume included poems written expressly for the magazine at the time of publication vs. poems already written to be discussed in various articles on poetics – but I checked anyway.  Yep, no Dickinson.  However, another favorite of mine, E. E. Cummings, was found inside with two poems.

NOTE: A recent post discussed Cummings' "who are you,little i," HERE.

Next, I caught a glimpse of “The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy.”

“Hmm,” I wondered, “I wonder if any Dickinson is in there?” (Again, no apologies.)

Nope, no Dickinson.  However, one title caught my eye in the table of contents, “In a station at the Metro,” a work by Ezra Pound.  Okay, that really surprised me – Ezra Pound?  Mindfulness?  Joy?

In a post from mid-November, I made the comment, “(Dickinson) did use terminology more readily accessible to those of her age, and she did write for an educated reader, but I would not aver that she was being deliberately complex so as not to be understood – say, like Ezra Pound.”

Sooo…I turned to Pound’s poem in the book, and there it was – just two lines:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.

What are your thoughts?

I found info on this work, Imagism, and verbless poetry HERE. TBH, I’ll discuss all of this in a future post, and for now I’ll conclude with one other pleasant surprise.

Next to the book on mindfulness, I caught sight of a slim volume called “Dog Poems.”   Just as I had figured, the collection included Dickinson’s “I started early – took my dog” so no surprise there.

However, when I scanned the table of contents, I came upon a poem called “Verses for a Certain Dog”  by, of all people, Dorothy Parker – she, the exemplar of acerbic wit and sharp cynicism.  I turned to it quickly – did she have  barbed and biting words for "man's best friend"?  ( LOL:  Headline:  Woman Bites Dog.) Not at all.  Oh, the poem includes plenty of Parker’s wit and humor, but it’s an affectionate verse dedicated to “God’s kindliest gift of all.”

Some of my recent poems have centered on Emily Dickinson’s use of rhymes – full rhymes, partial rhymes, other types of rhymes.  Some of them have examined whether or not partial or slant rhymes were used for poems of despair while full, traditional rhymes were used in poems of joy.

In “Positive as Sound, Emily Dickinson’s Rhyme,” Judy Jo Small examined other ways Dickinson used rhyme as well. 

“Another tactic Dickinson employs is the deliberate dislocation of a rhyme for a special semantic effect,” wrote Small.  “In the well known ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes,’ the lines are arranged in rhymed couplets, except in the anomalous second stanza.

In the middle stanza, the unthinking ‘Wooden’ motion that continues in states of spiritual numbness is suggested not only by the idea of feet functioning mechanically without the guidance of the mind and will but also by the steady iambic movement that proceeds dully without regard to (‘Regardless’ of) stanzaic shape or placement of rhyme. ‘Ground’ rhymes perfectly with ‘round,’ but not at the end of the line where it would seem orderly and coherent.  Instead, it falls almost lost amid two unrhymed lines that move as if randomly, aimlessly, like the body whose soul is stupefied by  pain.  The word ‘Feet,’ then refers not only to human feet but, in a subsidiary way, to poetic feet.”

Interesting, huh?  But consider this.

Small’s book was published in 1990, eight years before R. W. Franklin published his “The Poems of Emily Dickinson.”  Therefore, she was likely basing her analysis on Thomas Johnson’s version of the poem in his 1955 edition of “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.”

Oddly enough, there are differences between the Johnson and Franklin versions of the poem, albeit subtle differences. First, the Franklin edition adds quotation marks in lines 3 and 4.  However, the more significant difference involves lines 6 and 7 – the order of these lines is reversed.

In Johnson’s version, “ground” comes just two syllables after “round.”  In Franklin’s version, “ground” comes six syllables later.  Does that matter when it comes to Small’s contention?  I suppose one could say “‘ground’ falls almost lost amid three unrhymed lines’ – or does the probability that Dickinson was aiming for an internal rhyme fall apart?

A bit more trivia about the poem: "After great pain a formal feeling comes" was first published in "The Atlantic" in February 1929. At that time, it was presented in three stanzas of 4 lines, 5 lines, and 6 lines. It later appeared in that same year in "Further Poems of Emily Dickinson.

In both publications, the Franklin/Miller version of the second stanza was used.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to those who wear the green and/or drive snakes out of town!

In tribute to the foremost patron saint of Ireland, I thought I’d check a few SPD terms in the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Did Dickinson ever use the word “shamrock”?

Nope.

However, she did use the word “clover” in fifteen poems – or sixteen if you count the 1890 version of “Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush.”  I think in that version, though, the word “clover” was added when editors Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson combined two of Dickinson’s poems into one. 

Did Dickinson ever mention St. Patrick?  

Nope. 

How about Ireland (or “Eire”)?

Nope. 

How often did she use the word “green”?

Dickinson used the word “green” in fifteen poems – but only fourteen if you check the Johnson edition of her “complete poems.”  The poem “All overgrown by cunning moss” contains the word “green” in the Franklin edition of Dickinson’s poems, but NOT in Johnson’s edition. 

The Miller edition includes both sets of stanzas and makes the following observation:

“May acknowledge the anniversary of the death of Charlotte Bronte (d. 31 March 1855), who published “Currer Bell” and lived in Haworth.  Line 1 echoes Bronte’s “Mementos” (1846):  “all  in this house is mossing over.”  Gethsemane is the garden where Jesus prayed on the night before his crucifixion; asphodel flowers are associated with the Greek underworld, e.g. in The Odyssey.  The “Or” between stanzas between 3 and 4 (where Miller indicated the alternate stanzas) may indicate that stanzas 4 and 5 are alternatives.  In their single volume editions, THJ prints stanzas 1, 4, 5 and RWF prints stanzas 1, 2, 3.”

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.

Happy Father’s Day and Happy Summer Solstice! My plan for today was to write about grammar and syntax (LOL – I’ll explain more about that tomorrow…or whenever I get to it), but when I realized that today was both Father’s Day and the first day of summer, I changed course! I ran a search on the word “father” on the Dickinson Archive and 105 results popped up. This represents about 30 poems which use the word “father,” though almost all instances refer to a “Heavenly Father.”

​[Just FYI: When it comes family relationships, Dickinson also used the following terms – and the number to the right is the number of poems in which the word appears: Sister: 6 Brother: 7 Mother: 9 Mama: 1 ​Grandfather: 1 Papa: 1 Family: 2 Relative: 2 (but in only one does it mean "kin”) Dickinson never used the words "grandmother," "cousin," "nephew," "niece," "uncle," "aunt," or "sibling" in any of her poems. She did, though, mention herself, her brother and her sister-in-law by name: "Emily" appears in three poems, "Austin" in one, and "Susan" in four poems. The word "sue" appears in seven poems; however, in three of them, the term is used as a legal action; the other four are the name "Sue." She never mentioned her sister by name ("Lavinia" or "Vinnie").]

Of the “father” poems that popped up from my search on the archive, I thought I would share “It will be Summer – eventually” (shown below on the right) because it includes the word “father” – sort of – and the word “summer.” Plus, the poem called to mind a memory of mine when I attended a conference a few years ago on Emily Dickinson.

​At that time, the movie “A Quiet Passion” had been released, and I participated in a group discussion about the movie. I was surprised how many people in the session criticized the movie so harshly. I admit, the movie is slow paced, and it’s not a work likely to appeal to a mass audience; however, as a Dickinson enthusiast, I loved it! I thought Cynthia Nixon did a great job in her role as Emily Dickinson (though her readings of the poetry were a bit stilted), and I appreciated the director’s attempt to convey the feel and measure of life in the mid-1800s (hence the slow pace).

One gentleman in the group was very upset with the costumes, stating that they did not accurately convey the time nor place of Dickinson – that they were too “southern antebellum.” No way, he said, would Dickinson carry a parasol.

I can’t remember if, at the time, I’d mentioned that “parasols” figure in several of Dickinson’s poems, including the one I’m sharing today – line 2, “Ladies – with parasols.” Of course, the first line states, “It will be Summer – eventually,” and that is most certainly true today! ’Tis the Solstice 2026! To celebrate the season, perhaps I’ll saunter through town with my cane (LOL – see line 3). In addition, as I stated earlier, the poem popped up in response to my search for the word “father” for “Father’s Day.” However, the word “father” is not used in the poem. “Forefathers” is used in line 12, but not “father” – so I was a bit surprised that the poem was included in the search results. Interestingly, “Forefathers” is NOT used in reference to the late-18th-century revolutionary leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, led the American Revolutionary War, and established the United States. Nope. Instead, the word refers to earlier generations of bees who hummed the same tune as this summer’s bees! I love it! The poem has an interesting publication history too. At first it was published in the third series of Dickinson’s POEMS in 1896, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, but not as the five stanza poem “It will be summer – eventually”; instead, it was printed as a four stanza poem entitled “Nature Changes” with the first line, “The springtime’s pallid landscape.” I’m not sure why the first stanza of the poem was omitted as Dickinson printed it in one of her fascicles (on sheet five of fascicle eighteen) as the five stanza poem. In R. W. Franklin’s research, he stated that it was published in 1896 “with stanza 1 omitted and alterations in stanzas 2 and 3 by Mable Todd’s father, Eben Jenks Loomis.” Say what? This is the first time I ever heard that Todd’s father was involved in the editing of any of Dickinson’s poetry. Here’s info from Wikipedia on Mr. Loomis (HERE): “Eben Jenks Loomis (November 11, 1828 – December 2, 1912) was an American astronomer, born in Oppenheim, New York. He attended the Lawrence Scientific School (Harvard) in 1851–53. He was assistant in the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac office from 1850 until his retirement in 1900. During this time he also held the position of special assistant at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.” Sooo…he was alive during the time when his daughter Mabel edited and published the three series of Dickinson’s poetry.

On a whim, I ran a Google search on “Did Eben Jenks Loomis ever edit any of Emily Dickinson’s poems” just to see what might pop up. I wasn’t surprised that the “AI Overview” responded “No,” as I don’t think the info provided by R. W. Franklin is widely known; however, I was surprised when the info provided stated that the poems were “edited by his wife, Mable Loomis Todd” – Mabel Loomis Todd was his daughter. The AI overview also stated that E J Loomis was “a personal acquaintance of Dickinson who corresponded with her during her lifetime.” Well, that’s about 10% true.