Live and Learn

You learn something every day, right?  At least, that’s the recommended approach.  Sometimes, you might even learn more than one thing in a day which was the case for me yesterday.
 
Frist, I learned that if I search “Emily Dickinson” on Spotify, quite a long list of selections pops up, from readings of her poetry – including a three-plus hour option of Thomas Johnson’s “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson” – to albums of selected poems to episodes of podcasts to audio books about Emily Dickinson and more.

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I clicked on a 2010 selection of forty-seven poems & letters read over the course of 46 minutes by Julie Harris.  Her interpretations weren’t bad – just a little different, perhaps, then the way I hear some of the poems in my head – although one suggestion I would have for Spotify (or perhaps for the album’s producer) would be to have a tone or some bit of music or something between selections – or perhaps a longer pause?  “I reason, Earth is Short” just seemed to blend into “I cannot live with you” which segued into “I’ll tell you how the sun rose,” etc.  If someone is not familiar with the poems, they won’t know where one poem ends and the next one begins.
 
I listened to a few more of the assortment and was about to move on to another of Spotify’s Dickinson options, when I decided to see if “Because I could not stop for Death” was included on Harris’ album.  That’s always my “go-to” poem when I want to check whether or not a book (or in this case a recording) is using poems “as written” by Dickinson or “as edited” by Mabel Loomis Todd, Thomas Wentworth Higginson or some other past editor. 

When “Because I could not stop for Death” was first published in 1890 – and given the title “The Chariot” – Mabel Todd completely omitted the fourth stanza, plus she altered the third stanza to provide a perfect rhyme in line 10 for line 12 to make the work more presentable for public taste. 

Dickinson wrote this:
 
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Mabel Todd published this:
 
We passed the school where children played
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

​Whenever I come across a book of Dickinson’s poetry, I use “Because I could not stop for Death” as a litmus test of sorts to see which versions of Dickinson’s poetry the publisher/editor is using within the collection – Dickinson’s or someone else’s.
 
When I scrolled down Harris’ complete list, “Because I could not stop for Death” was there – so I tapped on the title and listened.
 
Well, paint Martha green and call her a pickle!  I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.  I backed up the audio and listened again, and Harris delivered the third stanza as this:
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We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

​Say whhhaaaat? 

I have never come across this version before.  The fourth stanza was not included in Harris’ readings, and other of Todd’s changes were present – but line 10, “At wrestling in a ring”?  Where in the world of Dickinson did that come from?
 
I checked Cristanne Miller’s 2016 “Emily Dickinson’s Poems as She Preserved Them,” and there was no mention of this substitute line choice.  Next, I perused Franklin’s 1998 Variorum edition of Dickinson’s poetry, and there – just at the conclusion of his discussion of the poem – was this bit in a footnote:
 
10 At Recess – in the Ring] Their lesson scarcely done P90; At wrestling in a ring CP24 P30
 
“CP24” refers to an edition of “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson” published by Little, Brown, and Company in 1924, with an introduction and notes by Dickinson’s niece, Marth Dickinson Bianchi.  I knew of this edition, but I had no idea that it included an altered version of “Because I could not stop for Death” – and evidently, when Julie Harris recorded her album in 2010, someone at Caedmon Records must have thought it a good idea to hand her copies of Dickinson’s poetry from a 1924 edition of her work.  How odd is that?

Okay, okay – maybe it’s not so odd.  Turns out the Harris recorded Dickinson’s poems in 1960, and Thomas Johnson’s edition of “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson” wasn’t published until 1955 – so maybe his edition wasn’t widespread?  I dunno. 

Below and right:  The 1924 edition of "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson" and "Because I could not stop for Death."

Below left: In 1976 Harris starred in “The Belle of Amherst,” a one-woman play written by William Luce based on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson.  Harris won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, and she later won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording for the audio recording of the play. 

Below right:  Todd's 1890 version of "Because I could not stop for Death" and Johnson's 1955 and Franklin's 1998 versions of the poem in their editions of Dickinson's poetry.