Ch-Ch-Changes

Yesterday I posted some of Millicent Todd Bingham’s comments on the difficulties of editing the poetry of Emily Dickinson.  She even included lines from Dickinson herself on the topic of word choice:

“I hesitate which word to take, as I can take but few, and each must be the chiefest; but recall that Earth’s most graphic transaction is placed within a syllable, nay, even a gaze.”

Take the poem “Two butterflies went out at noon.”

According to Franklin’s research (1998), there are at least three manuscripts for this poem, with “one lost”:  “The lost manuscript was sent to Louise and Frances Norcross, perhaps about summer 1863.  The first two lines survive on a list Frances made of poems received.”

Franklin also noted that one copy of the poem was recorded in Fascicle 25 about the summer of 1863, and that “a version from about 1878 begins with the same first two lines but differs thereafter”: 

“It is a clean copy from a preceding draft, with alternatives ordered and transcribed onto the verso, at the end of the poem.  Having accomplished this, ED began to try new readings for lines 7 and 8, using available space at the end and writing neatly.  She then turned to lines 5 and 6, her writing becoming less controlled as she proceeded.  She filled the space here and returned to the recto, writing vertically in the margins and then in the text of the poem itself.  Throughout this effort, no word was canceled, though the last version of line 7 satisfied enough for her to underscore it.”

Franklin’s research then includes two full pages of alternative phrases and word choices. Bingham mentioned many of the same alternatives in her introduction to “Bolts of Melody" (shown at the right; click the image to enlarge). 

Which words, images, phrases would you have landed on?