Title Search

Recently I acquired a copy of “Bolts of Melody,” a 1945 publication of 600-plus poems by Dickinson published for the first time – 59 years after the poet’s death (click HERE for info). 

Before the book arrived, I figured the title of the book must have come from a line from a Dickinson poem, but I couldn’t find it.  

On the online Dickinson archive, I ran a search for the word “bolt,” and there were 21 entries representing seven different poems.  Within those entries, I searched for “melody,” and nothing popped up.

I then ran a search on “melody.”  43 entries popped up representing seventeen different poems (plus one additional poem that does not include the word “melody” but was later given the title “Melodies Unheard”). Within those entries I searched for the word “bolt,” and nothing popped up.

Click the images below and to the right to enlarge.

So for a time, I wasn’t sure where editor Millicent Todd Bingham got the title, “Bolts of Melody.”  

Then, when the book showed up, on a page just after the book’s foreword and introduction, there was the poem “I would not paint a picture” with its final line “With Bolts – of Melody!”

I have no idea why the online archive failed to find that connection between “bolts” and “melody,” but – mystery solved!

LOL – having figured out that matter, I then moved on to the next mystery:  the first section of poems in Bingham’s book is entitled, “The far theatricals of day.”  

Using the online archive, I determined that that line comes from Dickinson’s poem “Like mighty footlights burned the red.”  However, that particular poem is NOT included in Bingham’s book. 

Hmm. Now why would she have done that?