[John Riley]

Aaron, the fact he calls them visual whatever is an indication of what you’re dealing with here. A poet knows the breaks and dashes are sonic and thematic, not eye candy. May as well give it up.

[Tim McGrath]

Let's get existential as well as metaphysical:

To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.

This is the final stanza of the five-stanza poem "What mystery pervades a well!" As good as it is, the poem would be considerably better if two of the stanzas, II and IV, were cut. As it happens, each of those two stanzas are marred by a pair of off-rhymes, a common occurrence in Dickinson. Many of her poems could be improved if superfluous stanzas were deleted. The rhymes of the stanzas ripe for deletion tend to be, statistically, inexact. A good case could be made that the rhymes of her best poems are perfect.

[conny]

i like that a lot.


reminds me of Wendy Cope, speaking in Dickinsonian...
published with a dash at L.6 just to be clear that's
what it is..


There's not a Shakespeare sonnet
Or a Beethoven quartet
That's easier to like than you
Or harder to forget.

You think that sounds extravagant?
I haven't fineshed yet-
I like you more than I would like
To have a cigarette.

[John Riley]

Tim, share some more of your improvements to Emily Dickinson's work. It will always alter how I read her.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Originally Posted by Tim McGrath

The caps, the dashes, the off-rhymes are, to me, distractions, flaws that interfere with my enjoyment of the poems. The naked poems were as eccentric as the poet herself, but the eccentricities may have been due to carelessness, the curse of the prolific, rather than some modernist tendency attributed to her.

If a paragraph has had more hubristic drivel in it on this site this is bit here is at least its peer if not its master.

[Tim McGrath]

Connny, that's a perfect poem, impossible to improve upon. Wendy Cope is wonderful, a kindred spirit to Dickinson, who was sometimes a cool perfectionist and sometimes on fire.

Here, John Riley, is another poem that would gain by subtraction:

To fight aloud, is very brave-
But gallanter, I know
Who charge within the bosom
The Cavalry of Woe-

Who win, and nations do not see-
Who fall-and none observe-
Whose dying eyes, no Country
Regards with patriotic love-

We trust, in plumed procession
For such, The Angels go-
Rank after Rank, with even feet-
And Uniforms of Snow.

The first and third stanzas are glorious, but the middle one impedes the flow and doesn't contribute to the poem. As is so often the case with her, removing it is easier than trying to repair it.

[W T Clark]

Originally Posted by Tim McGrath

Connny, that's a perfect poem, impossible to improve upon. Wendy Cope is wonderful, a kindred spirit to Dickinson, who was sometimes a cool perfectionist and sometimes on fire.

Here, John Riley, is another poem that would gain by subtraction:

To fight aloud, is very brave-
But gallanter, I know
Who charge within the bosom
The Cavalry of Woe-

Who win, and nations do not see-
Who fall-and none observe-
Whose dying eyes, no Country
Regards with patriotic love-

We trust, in plumed procession
For such, The Angels go-
Rank after Rank, with even feet-
And Uniforms of Snow.

The first and third stanzas are glorious, but the middle one impedes the flow and doesn't contribute to the poem. As is so often the case with her, removing it is easier than trying to repair it.

Maybe removing is easier than trying to get your head around it.

And btw, Dickinson shares nothing with Cope except for a use of quatrains and a gender. One is a comical, somewhat inconsequential Movement writer, the other is a genius.

[John Riley]

Have your fun, Tim. I'm just happy I live in a world where it doesn't matter.

[mignon ledgard]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

Just for my own amusement, I'm going to take the liberty of editing it into quatrains, and getting rid of "and" in S4L1. The Amherst archive doesn't have an image of ED's manuscript, just Todd's "fair copy," so I don't know how ED actually wrote it, but I don't see any reason to depart from her usual ballad stanza presentation in this one.


Dear March - Come in - How glad I am -
I hoped for you before -
Put down your Hat - You must have walked -
How out of Breath you are -

Dear March, how are you, and the Rest -
Did you leave Nature well -
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me -
I have so much to tell -

I got your Letter, and the Birds -
The Maples never knew
That you were coming - I declare -
How Red their Faces grew -

But March, forgive me - All those Hills
You left for me to Hue -
There was no Purple suitable -
You took it all with you -

Who knocks? That April - Lock the Door -
I will not be pursued -
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied -

But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come
That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame -


If people want to see it the way it's usually lineated, here's a link.

It makes so much sense and it pops up the content, beautifully. I hope you share more of your own way to look at ED's work. This is enlightening.

Thank you, Julie!
~mignon

[Tim McGrath]

We all have our internal editors, right? Our minds operate like red pencils on everything we read. ED's internal editor was an "imp of the perverse." Here is another one of her stanzas that I had no choice but to revise.

For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

I don't know why Mabel Loomis Todd left this one alone, but there is an easy way to fix the faulty rhyme.

For each ecstatic instant
There must an anguish be
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

That makes me much happier.