Deja View?

I’m experiencing a bit of déjà vu this morning.  I know I’ve posted much of today’s info before, but I also stumbled upon a YouTube video yesterday – for which I’ll post a link later – and I THINK I’ve seen it before?  (Deja VIEW?) MAYBE I’ve even shared it before? 

Anyway, yesterday I posted info related to “The Parlando Project,” HERE.

Then I looked into the number of poems Dickinson wrote that included the word “opera” (which, BTW, is the plural of “opus”).  The answer is three.  Er, two.  No, three?

Well, the word “opera” does, in fact, appear in “I think I was enchanted,” and it does appear in “I cannot dance upon my toes” (a poem which, by the way, was included as an enclosure in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson in August 1862 – and I’ll post info about that letter in the coming days). 

So that’s two poems. 

The word “opera” also appears in “A feather from a Whippoorwill” – but ONLY in the Johnson edition of Dickinson’s “complete poems.” 

In the Franklin and Miller editions, the word “opera” is replaced by the word “stanzas” (after all, Dickinson called birds “Nature’s little poets”).   

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The Franklin and Miller editions also include the title “Pine Bough” because Dickinson herself titled the poem in her fascicle which included this work.

In exploring all of this, I stumbled upon a YouTube video of excerpts from an opera entitled, “Divide Light,” words taken from Dickinson’s poem “Banish Air from Air.” 

I suppose I’ve rattled on enough this morning, so for now, I’ll leave the link to the video, and then I’ll discuss it later this week (SPOILER ALERT:  I'm just not a big opera fan).

Tomorrow’s topic for the Fourth of July:  Did Dickinson ever used the word “America” in a poem?

BTW:  Let me be the first to say, "July the Fourth be with you!"

Anyway, the link to the video is HERE.