Yesterday’s post included three of Robert Frost’s favorite poems by Dickinson: “The Clouds their Backs together laid,” “My life closed twice before its close,” and “The Mountains – grow unnoticed.” Frost’s favorites among Dickinson’s works called to mind a statement made by Thomas Wentworth Higginson in a letter to Mabel Loomis Todd in 1890 after the first edition of Dickinson’s poetry proved so popular. In his correspondence, Higginson shared the following:
“I have just been going over the reviews & noting in the book who quotes each poem. Have you observed how they are distributed? Sooner or later each poem, it would seem, must find its one admirer.”
Later in the letter, Higginson mentioned, “Yet some of the finest are not yet picked out by anybody.” However, before he made this observation, he did disclose three poems (among the 116 poems in the 1890 edition of “Poems” – or about 6.5% of Dickinson’s poetry) which garnered great favor among reviewers: “This is the land the sunset washes” (“on the whole the favorite,” wrote Higginson); “The soul selects her own society”; and Alter! When the hills do.”
Those three poems are shown below, and I’ve presented them as they appeared in the 1890 volume and as they are published in R. W. Franklin’s 1998 “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson” (sans Mabel Loomis Todd’s edits). Take a look, and I’ll discuss them a bit tomorrow.
“I have just been going over the reviews & noting in the book who quotes each poem. Have you observed how they are distributed? Sooner or later each poem, it would seem, must find its one admirer.”
Later in the letter, Higginson mentioned, “Yet some of the finest are not yet picked out by anybody.” However, before he made this observation, he did disclose three poems (among the 116 poems in the 1890 edition of “Poems” – or about 6.5% of Dickinson’s poetry) which garnered great favor among reviewers: “This is the land the sunset washes” (“on the whole the favorite,” wrote Higginson); “The soul selects her own society”; and Alter! When the hills do.”
Those three poems are shown below, and I’ve presented them as they appeared in the 1890 volume and as they are published in R. W. Franklin’s 1998 “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson” (sans Mabel Loomis Todd’s edits). Take a look, and I’ll discuss them a bit tomorrow.
Also, on the subject of “favorites,” Higginson himself preferred “The nearest Dream recedes – unrealized.” He called the work “most exquisite.”
 | He included the poem in an article for “The Atlantic,” and prior to its publication, Higginson sent a proof to Todd to review with Austin Dickinson; the two then sent back a few corrections and recommendations. They suggested printing the poem as a single thirteen-line poem, not as two stanzas, one of ten lines and one of three. Higginson responded with this: “Thanks for yr. criticisms — all to be adopted except that about the mocking sky & steadfast honey [in “The nearest dream recedes, unrealized”]. In my copy it’s very distinct as a second verse or detached moral. It wd. belittle it to attach it to the boy only.” |
| I concur. In a letter to Higginson, Todd reported to him the poem “most often verbally quoted to me as a favorite,” lines which Todd confessed, “Oh how could Emily epitomize life so perfectly and with such bitter force! With hardly a shadow of form, this poem almost breaks my heart!” And that poem is… To be revealed tomorrow! |  |
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