My recent posts have focused on Emily Dickinson’s poem “After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside.” The poem was not published in the early editions of Dickinson’s poetry published by Mabel Loomis Todd; however, her daughter Millicent Todd Bingham included it in her 1945 book “Bolts of Melody, New Poems of Emily Dickinson.” Aside from minor changes to punctuation, the version in the book matched the copy as is published in the Franklin and the Johnson editions.
 | Bingham also included this footnote: “A version of this poem was printed in ‘The New England Quarterly,’ April, 1932. One variant of the last two lines had previously appeared in ‘Letters,’ 1894,” a book of Emily Dickinson’s letters previously published by her mother. |
Below is a copy of the poem as appeared in The New England Quarterly along with five other previously unpublished poems.
Below is page 222 from Mabel Loomis Todd’s book of “Letters,” and sure enough, a letter to “To Mrs. Bowles” shows the variant of the final lines at the bottom of the page. However, a copy of the letter I found online to “Mr. Bowles," HERE, does not include those lines.
I searched for a letter with the lines “If we die, will you come for us, as you do for Father? ‘Not born’ yourself, ‘to die,’ you must reverse us all,” and I found this correspondence, also to Mr. Bowles, HERE.
However, the variant of the poem’s final lines is not there either. So what’s up with that?
I found Thomas Johnson’s comments linked to the letter above, and he said, “The ‘letter’ (in Todd’s 1924 book) is in fact a montage of three separate items.” Johnson’s comments are HERE.
For you ED die-hards that would like to know more about the evolution of her poem “After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside,” more of Johnson’s comments are HERE.
Additionally, here is the letter Dickinson sent to Higginson in which she enclosed four poems; in the letter (HERE) she states, “I send you a Gale, and an Epitaph - and a Word to a Friend, and a Blue Bird, for Mrs Higginson. Excuse them if they are untrue.”
The poem "After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside" was the “Blue Bird.”
However, the variant of the poem’s final lines is not there either. So what’s up with that?
I found Thomas Johnson’s comments linked to the letter above, and he said, “The ‘letter’ (in Todd’s 1924 book) is in fact a montage of three separate items.” Johnson’s comments are HERE.
For you ED die-hards that would like to know more about the evolution of her poem “After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside,” more of Johnson’s comments are HERE.
Additionally, here is the letter Dickinson sent to Higginson in which she enclosed four poems; in the letter (HERE) she states, “I send you a Gale, and an Epitaph - and a Word to a Friend, and a Blue Bird, for Mrs Higginson. Excuse them if they are untrue.”
The poem "After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside" was the “Blue Bird.”
RSS Feed
