Berry Interesting

I’ve been writing about the fruits of Emily Dickinson’s labor – specifically the names of fruits mentioned in her poems.  

Yesterday (HERE) I focused on “I taste a liquor never brewed” because that poem mentions “berries” in the third line (the most often cited fruit in Dickinson’s poems). However, it only mentions “berries” in the Johnson edition of Dickinson’s “complete poems.”  The word “berries” does NOT appear in the Franklin and Miller editions of “complete poems.”  Instead, those compilations include a completely different third line in the poem.

Today, check this poem out:  “Would you like summer? Taste of ours.”  It’s another poem that mentions berries.

Typically, when I post a poem here, I first take a look at it in the Johnson volume of poems (published in 1955), and then I compare it to the Frankin (1998) and Miller (2016) editions.  I then usually post only one version of the poem (often the three editions are very similar if not the same) – OR – I post the three versions side by side – as I’ve done today – so that you can see the differences.

To be honest, the only differences noted today have to do with punctuation and capitalization.  However, something odd has occurred between the Franklin and Miller editions:  the Miller edition combined the first two lines together, shortening the poem to eight lines instead of nine.

By the way, I think these changes help with the reading of the fifth (or fourth) line as “violet” is no longer an adjective modifying “trouble.”

“Would you like summer Taste of ours” is certainly a bit of an odd poem.  It is seemingly an ode to the bounties of summer – but then that penultimate line shows up: “Even for Death, a fairy medicine.”  LOL – what’s that doing there?

And when you compare the work to what Dickinson wrote in her own handwriting, what’s with the word “Liquors” at the start?