| Yesterday I posted Emily Dickinson’s poem “Would you like summer? Taste of ours" (HERE). The Johnson & Franklin editions of her “complete poems” use that as the poem’s first line; the Miller edition opens the poem with “Would you like summer? Taste of ours – Spices? Buy here!” as the first line (the equivalent of lines 1 and 2 from Johnson and Franklin). Plus, when you look at the draft of the poem in Dickinson’s own handwriting, there’s the word “Liquors” at the start. What’s up with all of that? Well, this particular poem was included in a letter to a friend in 1861 (or possibly 1862). Samuel Bowles, the publisher of the Springfield Republican, was sick in bed, Dickinson got word of this, and she wrote to him – and the letter includes the poem. As a matter of fact, the letter morphs into the poem. |  |
Here’s info from Miller’s volume of Dickinson’s poems: “What other editors print as the first two lines of this poem are written as prose and represented here as one line; the poem follows a sentence that moves in and out of meter: ‘We offer our cups – stintless – as to the Bee – the Lily, her new liquors’”
There’s that word “liquors.”
Miller surmised that “this poem may echo health remedy advertising in his paper.”
The complete letter online is HERE; however, (a) it’s dated February 1861 while Miller dates the letter as February 1862, and (b) this version separates the poem from the letter – though you can see from the handwritten version (above) that the lines just continued to flow from the letter.
As a matter of fact, I’ve also included a transcript of the letter from Miller & Mitchell’s “The Letters of Emily Dickinson” – so you can see how the letter segued into the poem.
There’s that word “liquors.”
Miller surmised that “this poem may echo health remedy advertising in his paper.”
The complete letter online is HERE; however, (a) it’s dated February 1861 while Miller dates the letter as February 1862, and (b) this version separates the poem from the letter – though you can see from the handwritten version (above) that the lines just continued to flow from the letter.
As a matter of fact, I’ve also included a transcript of the letter from Miller & Mitchell’s “The Letters of Emily Dickinson” – so you can see how the letter segued into the poem.
By the way, the fact that this poem was part of a letter/poem package sent to an ailing friend explains that penultimate line, “Even for Death, a fairy medicine.” Perhaps a bit morbid to throw that in there – but hey, there it is!
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