Costume Party

Happy Halloween!  A fitting holiday to follow yesterday’s exhilarating National Candy Corn Day!

Yesterday, I looked into “candy vs. corn” in Dickinson’s poetry. Today, I could look into “trick vs. treat,” but I did that last year; you can find the results HERE (the post also includes info on her use of “Halloween” and “pumpkin” too): 

So what about other Halloween imagery?  I checked the online Dickinson archives for the names of traditional Halloween costumes, and the results are below:

Mummy: 0 poems (Not surprising.)
Princess:  0 poems (“Prince” shows up in as many as 8 poems – depending upon variations of certain poems in different editions of Dickinson’s poetry.)
Skeleton:  0 poems
Vampire: 0 poems
Clown:  1 poem (“A little madness in the spring’)
Pirate:  1 poem (“Sweet pirate of the heart”)
Witch: 1 (“Long Years apart - can make no”) (Plus, the word “Witchcraft” appears in 7 poems)
Devil: 2 poems
Fairy: 5 poems
Ghost: 12 poems
Zombie:  24 poems (LOL – just kidding. Dickinson never used the word “zombie” in any of her poems – although recorded use of the word “zombie” dates back as far as 1788.)

Finally, concerning a few other Halloween-related terms, Dickinson never used “boo” or “ghoul”; however, the word “costume” appears in two poems, and  “haunt” shows up in twelve poems.

I’ll close with one of my favorites, “One need not be a chamber, to be haunted.”