I make a daily post on Counter Social with trivia, facts, and poetry of Emily Dickinson (FYI: I joined Counter Social over a year ago when Melon Husk allowed for the proliferation of hate speech and misinformation on Twitter, now my EX; I deleted my account there and joined CoSo).
Here's the post from today, 11/19/23:
Two days ago, I posted “The Future never spoke,” and @Marc_T_Benedict replied, “Interesting on the page. The proliferation of dashes.”
I jokingly wrote back that Dickinson’s motto when writing poetry was, “Dash it all!”
Of course, that made me wonder which poem of hers contains the most dashes – so I ran a Google-search: Which poem by Dickinson contains the most dashes?
Well, no specific answer popped up, but I did find various commentaries on Dickinson and the dash – including one that states this:
“Most of Emily Dickinson’s poetry contains anywhere from eight dashes, as seen in poem 269, which begins ‘Wild Nights — Wild Nights!’ to 48 dashes, as seen in poem 522, which start with the line ‘I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl—’”
The site is HERE.
Well, I checked “I tie my Hat – I crease my Shawl – “ and in the Franklin edition of Dickinson’s poems, it has 41 dashes. In the Johnson it has 48 dashes.
Why the difference? Well, the Franklin does include one dash at the end of Line 9 that is not in Johnson; however, the Johnson edition includes 5 lines (with 8 dashes) that do not appear in the Franklin version of the poem.
Here's the post from today, 11/19/23:
Two days ago, I posted “The Future never spoke,” and @Marc_T_Benedict replied, “Interesting on the page. The proliferation of dashes.”
I jokingly wrote back that Dickinson’s motto when writing poetry was, “Dash it all!”
Of course, that made me wonder which poem of hers contains the most dashes – so I ran a Google-search: Which poem by Dickinson contains the most dashes?
Well, no specific answer popped up, but I did find various commentaries on Dickinson and the dash – including one that states this:
“Most of Emily Dickinson’s poetry contains anywhere from eight dashes, as seen in poem 269, which begins ‘Wild Nights — Wild Nights!’ to 48 dashes, as seen in poem 522, which start with the line ‘I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl—’”
The site is HERE.
Well, I checked “I tie my Hat – I crease my Shawl – “ and in the Franklin edition of Dickinson’s poems, it has 41 dashes. In the Johnson it has 48 dashes.
Why the difference? Well, the Franklin does include one dash at the end of Line 9 that is not in Johnson; however, the Johnson edition includes 5 lines (with 8 dashes) that do not appear in the Franklin version of the poem.
The Dickinson archive shows the poem in Dickinson’s handwriting through line 24 (“For their – sake – not for Ours –”) – and here’s what it says about the publication history of the poem – if you can make sense of it (BUT it does mention the “five other lines”):
FP (1929), 180, as six quatrains, without the final four lines (on h 157) and without the transposition. The lines were restored in Bingham, New England Quarterly, 20 (March 1947), 34-35, from transcripts of A (a tr344, 344d-f), with the transposition, and in Poems (1955), 341-43, from the holograph, without the transposition; both of these texts were preceded by five other lines on h 157 belonging to "A pit but heaven over it"; CP (1960), 212-13, without the transposition, with the five other lines. The text was established in Franklin, Harvard Library Bulletin, 28 (July 1980), 245-57. MB (1981), 553-54, 555, in facsimile. (J443). Franklin Variorum 1998 (F522A). -History from Franklin Variorum 1998"
So there you have it!
More on Dickinson's dashes tomorrow!
NOTE: @grayman on Counter Social responded: "Perhaps she was influenced by Clement Clarke Moore?
"Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!" LOL!
PART 2 IS HERE; PART 3 IS HERE.
RSS Feed
