Live and Let Dice

This past July, I took a Dickinson-related road trip to NYC, Boston, and Amherst, and I reported on much of the trip in my travelogue, “Dial ‘Em’ for Emily,” HERE, and in many plog (poetry blog) posts (all linked in the travelogue).
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In New York, I visited the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue perused a copy of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson once owned by poet and Dickinson biographer Genevieve Taggard. 

Below left to right: Genevieve Taggard, her book, her name plate 

This particular collection, published in 1924, is a compilation of four books, Mabel Loomis Todd’s three-volume set of Dickinson’s Poems published in 1890, 1891, and 1896, and the 1914 book The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime, a collection of poems edited by Dickinson’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi.

Far right:  Me examining The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, a 1924 compilation of the four books below. 

I first wrote about this 1924 edition back on July 23 (HERE), and then again the next day on Taggard’s comments (below on the left) about the first poem in the book, “Success is counted sweetest” (HERE). Today, let’s take a look at comments made by Taggard (below on the right) on two poems, “Soul, wilt thou toss again?” and “’Tis so much joy! ’Tis so much joy!”

​Click on the images below to enlarge.

Before I get to Taggard's observations on the page of the book, let me share a few comments I came across concerning the poem on a blog, The Prowling Bee, following a perceptive analysis of the poem by Susan Kornfeld, HERE. 

One person – who agreed with Ms. Kornfeld's take on the "interestingly ambiguous word...again of 'toss again.' It implies the Soul has already tossed once and the Self is asking if it won’t give Chance another go" – said this:  

"I agree that the word 'again' is key. The first line is a powerful question we can ask ourselves every time we are faced with familiar temptations. She was living in the land of pilgrim forebears, after all!."

Another commenter offered this: 

"It’s 1859 and ED has to decide whether to be the quiet feminine mouse that her society, her father, and her brother expect of her or to listen to Stephen Bowles’ encouragement that she use her poetic genius to reject the straitjacket of feminine propriety expected of 19th century women. Her head said be a mouse but her heart urged joining forces with Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Marian Elliot to forge frontiers in literature. ED compromised by writing 2000 amazing poems and storing them in her desk until she died."

Still another followed up on that comment with this:

"…or, as Joni Mitchell put it, 'your head says "forget it" but your heart’s still smokin’"

Finally, this interesting observation caught my eye:

In Poems (1890), edited by Todd and Higginson, the poems do come one after the other: 

However, “Soul, wilt thou toss again?” appears in Dickinson’s Fascicle Four, Sheet Two, written around the summer of 1859, and “’Tis so much joy! ’Tis so much joy!” appears in Fascicle Eight, Sheet Three, written around spring 1861 – so written about six to nine months later.

Cristanne Miller, in Emily Dickinson’s Poems As She Preserved Them, includes this note about “’Tis so much joy!”: 

“TWH titles this poem ‘Rouge Gagne,’ after a poem by Julia Ward Howe about a woman gambling for love; Howe’s poem was not published until about six years after ED copied this one.” 

Miller does not make any note about the title given to the other poem, “Rouge et Noir.” 

Back to Taggard’s comments on the page of her book published in 1924. Above the first poem, “Soul, wilt thou toss again?” she wrote the enigmatic statement, “Was Mr. Higginson involved in the toss?” (below left)  What do you make of that?
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Then, off to the side of the page between the two poems, Taggard wrote, “Two gambling poems”  (below right) – so certainly Todd and Higginson paired the two poems together to create a connection – though I can’t say for sure that Dickinson, in her mind, ever connected the two poems in the same way.  Interesting to think about, though. 

ONE INTERESTING SIDE NOTE:
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I'd not heard of George Monteiro until this past March, and my knowledge of him began after receiving this puzzling comment on Tumblr:  "I don't know who you are IRL but I can assure you that my late father, a Dickinson scholar of some renown, would have been an avid and enthusiastic follower…You do yourself, and Emily, proud in both attention to detail and scope of intellectual connections."  I wrote all about it HERE.

In exploring info for today's post, I came upon this "three volumes in one" compilation of  the 1890, 1891, and 1896 Poems, and it includes an introduction by none other than George Monteiro!  Looks like imma have to track that book down!  ; )

BTW, all of my posts since March that mention Monteiro (including this one) are HERE.