There is no rest for the weary on this Labor Day!
No, I’ve found a new issue for which I must labor to find answers.
Today my plan was to discuss how often Dickinson used the word “labor” in her poems, and then tomorrow – since many schools open the day after Labor Day – I was going to look into how often she used “school.”
It dawned on me pretty quickly that perhaps Dickinson’s most famous poem of all uses both terms, “labor” and “school.” Do these lines sound familiar:
Lines 6 & 7: And I had put away / My labor and my leisure too
Line 9: We passed the School, where Children strove
Sooo…I decided, at first, to focus on “Because I could not stop for Death” today; however, when I looked up how often Dickinson used the word “labor,” my thoughts shifted.
According to the online Dickinson archive, Dickinson used the word “labor” in eleven different poems – or is it twelve? Eleven and a half?
Here’s the issue: The poem “His feet are shod with gauze,” a short ode to the bee written c. 1864/1865, includes the word “labor.” A later poem written c. 1871/1872, “Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush – also an ode to the bee – does NOT include the word “labor.”
However, the first posthumous edition of Dickinson’s poems published in 1890 includes the poems together as one poem – so “Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush” (given the title “The Bee” in this edition) does, indeed, include the word “labor.”
Was this simply a decision made by publishers Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson?
There are even sites today that still publish the two poems together as one; case in point, HERE.
No, I’ve found a new issue for which I must labor to find answers.
Today my plan was to discuss how often Dickinson used the word “labor” in her poems, and then tomorrow – since many schools open the day after Labor Day – I was going to look into how often she used “school.”
It dawned on me pretty quickly that perhaps Dickinson’s most famous poem of all uses both terms, “labor” and “school.” Do these lines sound familiar:
Lines 6 & 7: And I had put away / My labor and my leisure too
Line 9: We passed the School, where Children strove
Sooo…I decided, at first, to focus on “Because I could not stop for Death” today; however, when I looked up how often Dickinson used the word “labor,” my thoughts shifted.
According to the online Dickinson archive, Dickinson used the word “labor” in eleven different poems – or is it twelve? Eleven and a half?
Here’s the issue: The poem “His feet are shod with gauze,” a short ode to the bee written c. 1864/1865, includes the word “labor.” A later poem written c. 1871/1872, “Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush – also an ode to the bee – does NOT include the word “labor.”
However, the first posthumous edition of Dickinson’s poems published in 1890 includes the poems together as one poem – so “Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush” (given the title “The Bee” in this edition) does, indeed, include the word “labor.”
Was this simply a decision made by publishers Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson?
There are even sites today that still publish the two poems together as one; case in point, HERE.
Oh – I have one final question re: line 4 of “His Feet are shod with Gauze”: Who here knows what “Chrysophras” is? LOL.
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