Blog Archives

A Rhyme in Time Saves Lines

2/28/2025

When Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson edited Emily Dickinson’s poems for publication in the late 1880s, they attempted to maintain the integrity of her lines; however, in order to make the poems palatable for public consumption, they also felt the need to wield a somewhat heavy hand with issues like grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and – in particular – rhyme.

“Her apparent indifference to it (i.e., rhyme) bothered them,” wrote Millicent Todd Bingham in Ancestors’ Brocades.

“In the nineties (i.e., the 1890s), rhyme, particularly in a lyric, was the first necessity – as now (in 1945) it appears to be the last.”

Here is an example of the kind of change they felt called upon to do for the poem “That is solemn we have ended.” Here’s the poem as Dickinson wrote it:

Higginson and Todd knew that the public would not accept “explained” as a rhyme for “World,” so they changed the last line to “Still it be unfurled.”

How important was rhyme?

Here are lines from Denis Wortman’s review in “The Christian Intelligencer” (May 1891) about Dickinson’s wayward rhymes: “What shall one say of rhyming ‘tell’ with ‘still,’ ‘arm’ with ‘exclaim,’ ‘own’ with ‘young,’ ‘pearl’ with ‘alcohol’? all of which are fair examples of many instances. There is a frequent scorn of traditional rhyme."

To access a copy of the paper online, click HERE.

My Cousin Emily

2/27/2025

Surely you’ve seen the movie “My Cousin Vinnie.” You remember that question the prosecuting attorney throws at Mona Lisa Vito to try to disqualify her as an expert witness?
It went like this:

Well, picture Emily Dickinson on the stand, and Mr. Trotter interrogates her:
Trotter: Now, uh, Ms. Dickinson, being an expert on your own poetry…how many poems did you write that used the word “February.”
Emily Dickinson: It’s a trick question.
Trotter: Does that mean you can’t answer it?
Emily Dickinson: No, it’s a trick question!

Is it a trick question? How many poems did Dickinson write which include the word “February”?

Well, it is indeed a bit of a trick question. “February” does show up in three poems (“White as an Indian Pipe,” “Although I put away his life,” and “No Brigadier throughout the Year”); however, Dickinson always spelled the month as “Febuary,” not “February” (and various volumes of her poetry have retained her spelling of “Febuary”).

Sooo…on one hand, “zero” poems include “February” – but they do use the word “Febuary.” On the other hand, one could say that “three” poems include “February” ( it’s just that the name of the month is misspelled). Also, “A February Day,” line 6 in “No Brigadier throughout the Year” is actually “A January Day” in one variation of the poem sent to Dickinson’s sister-in-law Susan – so maybe the answer is “two” poems?

Anyway, below are the three poems which include “February.”

The Lang and Short of It

2/26/2025

I’ve been writing about Andrew Lang’s January 1891 harsh review of Emily Dickinson’s poetry in the London Daily News, and most scholars tend to agree that Lang’s fury was aimed more at William Dean Howells.

The American Howells – who had written positively about Dickinson’s debut – had earlier attracted the Brit Lang’s ire when he (Howells) published a controversial essay in support of the emerging school of realism and against the romance tradition: “the art of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray.”

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE IS HERE.

“Rut roh – ‘them’s fightin’ words,’” I wrote yesterday – and then I read this in Marysa Demoor’s “Andrew Lang versus W. E. Howells: a Late-Victorian Literary Duel” (1987): “(Howells) returned to journalism after the failure of his literary agent, J. R. Osgood in 1885, and then it was he came to full blows with that most influential British critic, Andrew Lang.”

Turns out my boxing parallel to pugilism was spot on!

In Marietta Messmer’s “Reviewers’ Despair: The Politics of Dickinson's Critical Reception during the 1890s” (2000), there’s this: “In this context of an ongoing ‘Realism War,’ it is hardly surprising that, when Howells’s enthusiastic promotion of Dickinson’s poetry reached London, some of the major British journals and magazines could not separate the reviewer from the reviewee.”

Lang wrote various reviews in reference to Dickinson’s works, and – this also from Messmer’s research – “five of Lang’s seven articles directly refer to and address ‘Mr. Howells’ throughout, while two of them quote only those poems which had appeared in Howells’s review, and, with one exception, even mirror Howells’s order of arrangement.”

And get this: The entire first paragraph of Lang’s first review featured Howells’s name in every sentence. Throughout the rest of the article, Howells’s name is mentioned another ten times.

In her book Friends Over the Ocean: Andrew Lang's Letters to J. B. Matthews, H. H. Furness, F. J. Child, William James, J. R. Lowell, 1881-1912, Demoor noted that Lang's appraisal of Emily Dickinson's poetry perhaps reached the nadir of his critical acumen for lines like this: "Miss D. has an occasional good line or two, but she is astonishingly silly and anarchic."

Them's Fightin' Words

2/25/2025

My recent posts have focused on Andrew Lang’s scathing review of Emily Dickinson’s literary debut in 1891 in the London Daily News.

It is interesting to note, though, that the first British edition of Dickinson’s poems wasn’t published until the summer of 1891, but the harsh words from Lang, the leading British critic of the time, appeared six months earlier, in January 1891.

Scholars these days tend to think that Lang’s screed – or should I say “screeds” as Lang published seven harsh reviews of Dickinson’s work prior to its release – was actually targeted at American novelist and literary critic William Dean Howells.

Lang’s literary tastes were marked by a preference for traditional British writers (particularly Dickens) and the romance tradition, and he had a strong distaste for the emerging realism in fiction.

In 1882, William Dean Howells published a controversial essay that, in the words of his biographers, “would make him the prime target in a bitter international quarrel and plunge him for thirty years to come into the Realism War.”

In this essay, Howells argued against the romance tradition, and said, “the art of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray.”

Rut roh – “them’s fightin’ words,” as we say across the pond, for Lang took off the gloves and punched it out with Howells for years to come – and Emily Dickinson got battered and bruised along the way!
More on this tomorrow.

Previous posts on this subject can be found HERE and HERE.

Here's the Scoop

2/24/2025

Yesterday, I posted a portion of Andrew Lang’s harsh review of Emily Dickinson’s “Poems” (1890) for the London Daily News (HERE).

Here’s a bit more of what he said when he picked apart one of Dickinson’s most famous poems:

I taste a liquor never brewed
From tankards scooped in pearl

Of this poem, he said the following:
“It is literally impossible to understand whether she means that she tastes a liquor never brewed at all, or a liquor never brewed ‘from’ tankards scooped in pearl. By ‘from’ she may mean ‘in.’ Let us give her the benefit of the doubt, and she still writes utter nonsense. It is clearly impossible to scoop a tankard from pearl. The material is inadequate.”

He then turned to these lines:

How many times these low feet staggered,
Only the soldered mouth can tell;
Try! can you stir the awful rivet?
Try! can you lift the hasps of steel?

Lang said this:

“We could, perhaps, if we tried, but we cannot make sense out of balderdash. What are ‘low feet’? The words are meaningless. This remarkable composition ends thus:

Indolent housewife in daisies lain!

This is no more English than it is Coptic. “In Daisy’s lane” might have a meaning….”

Ouch!

First of all, who was Andrew Lang? This site, HERE, states, “Lang is best known today either for the twelve color fairy books that bear his name or for his periodical writings, though he was also a poet, a translator of Homer, a historian and biographer, a scholar with interests in myth and folklore and anthropology, and the author of various works of fiction…..”

Second – and this is a bit odd – the first British edition of Dickinson’s poems wasn't published until the summer of 1891; however, Lang’s scathing review appeared six months earlier – in January 1891.

More on this tomorrow.

Plan to Fail

2/23/2025

He's pardoned and released violent criminals from prison. He's threatened to take territories away from other countries. He's palled around with Putin and accused Ukraine of starting Putin's war. He's put unqualified and unethical loyalists in positions of power in an attempt to weaponize every facet of our government. He's tried to silence media organizations. He's retaliated against those who have investigated his crimes -- and he has proclaimed that he is above the law. He is allowing a foreign national billionaire and a team of neo-Nazi frat boys to infiltrate and dismantle our government.

And this is just ONE MONTH into his HighnAss'
hostile take-over of our democracy!

Oh -- and the price of eggs keeps going up and up and up (but Trumpy has lots of think-time on the golf course -- maybe he'll figure something out?

By Emmett Lee Dickinson:

A concept of a plan for Health and a concept of
a plan for the Economy
So differ his knee jerk reactions and shooting
from the hip
Incompetent Perspective –
A Foot inside his Lip

Resistance, and Appeasement, strain
One Foot upon the Grave?
For that we pray conclusion
The twist of fate we Crave.

By Emily Dickinson:

As plan for Noon and plan for Night
So differ Life and Death
In positive Prospective --
The Foot upon the Earth

At Distance, and Achievement, strains,
The Foot upon the Grave
Makes effort at conclusion
Assisted faint of Love.

For Your Review

2/23/2025

Emily Dickinson died in 1886. Her sister discovered her poems, and she enlisted the help of Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson to get them published. The first book of selected poems came out in December 1890.

The first British review of Dickinson’s work to reach Amherst from the London Daily News arrived in early January 1891.

Are you ready for this? Grab a strong cup of coffee and sit down.

Here is some of what reviewer Andrew Lang said:

“Mr. (William Dean) Howells has been captivated by a minstrel who subdues grammar to rhyme, and puts even grammar before sense…Of course the idea occurs that Mr. Howells is only bantering; that he cannot really mean to praise this farrago of illiterate and uneducated sentiment…. There are no words that can say how bad poetry may be when it is divorced from meaning, from music, from grammar, from rhyme; in brief, from articulate and intelligible speech. And Mr. Howells solemnly avers that this drivel is characteristic of American life! …If poetry exists it is by virtue of original, or at least of agreeable thought, musically and magically expressed…The verses adored by Mr. Howell’s are conspicuously in the worst possible words, and the thought, as far as any thought can be detected, is usually either commonplace or absurd…It is, in itself, a touching thing that a lady of extremely solitary habits should have solaced herself by writing a kind of verses; but to proclaim that such verses as we have quoted are poetry, and good poetry, is to be guilty of ‘the patetic fallacy’ in an original manner, and is to encourage many impossible poets.”

Pictured below: Writer, poet, journalist, scholar and critic, Andrew Lang:

NOTE: I attempted to contact the paper to see if they’d ever retracted this statement or if they ever wrote a statement of apology. Alas, the paper went out of business in the late 1980s, so I do not know if they ever rescinded their statement.

Three on Three

2/22/2025

Houghton Mifflin turned down the opportunity to publish Dickinson’s poetry in 1890. They said her poems “were much too queer – the rhymes were all wrong.” A representative at Roberts Brothers said, “It has always seemed to me that it would be unwise to perpetuate Miss Dickinson’s poems.”

Arlo Bates, a poet and reader for Roberts Brothers, said that Dickinson combined "the insight of the civilized adult with the simplicity of the savage child.”

A review of Bates’ work by the Boston Herald in the 1890s stated that he “gives greater promise of high and enduring power than almost any other American poet of our own generation.”

I thought it might be interesting to compare a few poems by Dickinson and Bates.

Here are also a few poems by Bates compared to three poems of Dickinson’s with similar themes. Let me know what you think.

Remarkable Defects

2/21/2025

My recent posts have focused on the difficulties faced by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higgins in the late 1880s as they were preparing Emily Dickinson’s poetry for publication.

Yesterday’s post included a quote from Millicent Todd Bingham detailing 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 (i.e, in form, punctuation, capitalization, syntax, grammar, etc.), 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.”

Her father added, “they thought that Higginson must be losing his mind to recommend such stuff.”

Ultimately, Roberts Brothers agreed to publish the poems. However, take a look at this letter from company representative Thomas Niles to Higginson from June 1890:

Dear Mr. Higginson:

It has always seemed to me that it would be unwise to perpetuate Miss Dickinson’s poems. They are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities. If, however, Miss Dickinson (i.e., Emily’s sister Lavinia) will pay for the plates, we will publish from them at our expense a small ed, say 500, which shall be exempt from copyright, all future issues to be subject to 15% copyright on the retail price of all sold.”

Mr. Niles, by the way, had shared copies of the poems with poet Arlo Bates. Niles’ letter continues:

“I enclose Mr Arlo Bates’ criticisms, not, however, for any other purpose than to shew (sic) you the opinion of a poet who is not apt to be optimistic.”

Who, exactly, was Arlo Bates?

According to a footnote by Bingham in “Ancestors’ Brocades, the Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson”:

“In view of Mr. Bates’s estimate of Emily’s poems it is well to recall his own standing as a poet at that time. A review of his book, “The Poet and His Self” (1891), in the Boston Herald contained these words: Arlo Bates ‘gives greater promise of high and enduring power than almost any other American poet of our own generation.”

Take a look at Bates’ book HERE – the work from the poet who gave “greater promise of high and enduring power than any other American poet.” Let me know what you think.

Slow Progress is Still Progress

2/20/2025

THIS POST UPDATES MY POST "ALL ABOUT EVE" from 12/30/24, HERE

At the end of December 2024, I looked up how often Dickinson used the word “eve” in her poems. This was for a post on New Year’s Eve.

If you type in “eve” on the online Dickinson archive, 11 entries pop up, and they represent 5 poems:

Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine (also known as “Valentine Week”)
Besides the autumn poets sing
Better – than music! For I who heard it –
I bring an unaccustomed wine
She went as quiet as the dew

However, only four of these poems includes the word “eve.” That fourth one, “I bring an unaccustomed wine” does not.

Say what? Then why does it appear on the list?

It turns out that the archive has accidentally merged the first three lines of “I bring an unaccustomed wine” with the final fourteen lines of “Beside the autumn poets sing” (the portion of the poem with the word “eve”).

I emailed the archive peeps at the end of the year, and I heard back from them today:

“Thank you for reporting this issue and I apologize on the delay in my response. I have forwarded along your message to our Emily Dickinson Archive team to take a look. Please let me know if there is anything else that I can assist with in the meantime.”

Sooo…slow progress is still progress! ; )