Can You Dig It?

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 WORD: 

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."

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Did Dickinson ever use the word AMERICA in any of her poems?  The answer is HERE -- and it just may surprise you!