NOTE: Today’s post comes with an entertaining play-at-home version of a game! Before we get to the fun, though, here’s today’s post:
“There were two or three matters of editorial policy,” wrote Mabel Loomis Todd, “on which Colonel Higginson and I did not agree.”
Todd and Higginson, of course, were the first two editors of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and the two together published the first edition of selected poems in 1890, three and half years after the poet’s death. Differences of opinion, though, did not ruffle the cordiality of their relationship.
One of those “differences of opinion” had to do with the naming of Dickinson’s poems.
“Upon this subject,” wrote Todd, “we never wholly agreed, Colonel Higginson looking at it more in the light of the reading public as well as of the publishers, while I, with fewer books and articles to my credit than my much older co-worker, was exceedingly loath to assign titles to any of them which might not be unmistakably indicated in the poem itself.”
Todd reported that she had found about “ten altogether” to which Dickinson herself had assigned names, but after “much consideration between us,” Higginson did indeed suggest and provide titles for many of the poems.
Okay, so here is where the fun comes in. Today I will share with you four poems by Dickinson, and if YOU were to give them each a title, what would you call them? Then tomorrow, I’ll tell you what Higginson wanted to (or did) name them, and see if you get a match!
The four poems are “I meant to have but modest needs,” “I lost a world the other day,” “The bee is not afraid of me,” and “A little road not made of man.”
Jot down your titles on a scrap piece of paper, and then I’ll divulge Higginson’s titles tomorrow! Match all four and win a 1970 four-door AMC Gremlin – your choice of color – with a Levi jeans interior!
Good luck!
Todd and Higginson, of course, were the first two editors of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and the two together published the first edition of selected poems in 1890, three and half years after the poet’s death. Differences of opinion, though, did not ruffle the cordiality of their relationship.
One of those “differences of opinion” had to do with the naming of Dickinson’s poems.
“Upon this subject,” wrote Todd, “we never wholly agreed, Colonel Higginson looking at it more in the light of the reading public as well as of the publishers, while I, with fewer books and articles to my credit than my much older co-worker, was exceedingly loath to assign titles to any of them which might not be unmistakably indicated in the poem itself.”
Todd reported that she had found about “ten altogether” to which Dickinson herself had assigned names, but after “much consideration between us,” Higginson did indeed suggest and provide titles for many of the poems.
Okay, so here is where the fun comes in. Today I will share with you four poems by Dickinson, and if YOU were to give them each a title, what would you call them? Then tomorrow, I’ll tell you what Higginson wanted to (or did) name them, and see if you get a match!
The four poems are “I meant to have but modest needs,” “I lost a world the other day,” “The bee is not afraid of me,” and “A little road not made of man.”
Jot down your titles on a scrap piece of paper, and then I’ll divulge Higginson’s titles tomorrow! Match all four and win a 1970 four-door AMC Gremlin – your choice of color – with a Levi jeans interior!
Good luck!
RSS Feed
