The Very First Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson: Poems (1890)

Anthony Madrid

When I first got into Emily Dickinson, I learned quickly that the early editions of her poems are, without exception, useless. The received wisdom was that any ED book printed before 1960 was bound to contain material she never wrote. The editors of those books were supposedly a bunch of interfering bunglers and perverts, who felt no hesitation in rewriting ED’s poems in order to make them more acceptable to the nitwit public of the 1890s. They switched out rhymes, they added titles, they flipped pronouns, they misread her handwriting. In one famous case, they even printed a couple stanzas out of a George Herbert poem as if they were Dickinson’s. Get the picture? Idiots. 

It has taken me twenty-five years to find out how unfair the above assessment is.

. . . Which is not to say it’s 100% unfair. They were guilty of all that stuff I just mentioned, with one key exception. That place where I say “they had no hesitation.” They had plentyof hesitation. They would have very much preferred to leave the poems as they found them. The reason they didn’t isn’t because they thought they were smarter than ED, or better poets, or anything like that. In fact, if you actually look at the 19th-century editions of Dickinson, the thing that’s gonna strike you hardest is how much the editors didn’t change. They left loads of jarring rhymes absolutely intact, and they also let in poems that barely rhyme at all. Also? They let in poems that are REALLY hard to understand.

See, their conception of Dickinson’s specialness was that she was challenging as PHUC. Their fear was their initial selections were gonna be “a bit much” for people. They suspected—and this is completely reasonable—that maybe you had to know ED (as they did) to see why these poems were so fascinating. And so, occasionally, they tried to soften things a little bit, so the poems wouldn’t be doomed. They wanted people to love their weird friend.

You have to imagine their circumstances. ED was not a world-famous poet, translated into all modern languages, etc. There was nothing established about which of the poems were best, which were most worth discussing, any of that. Nowadays, there’s a more-or-less standard set of forty or fifty ED poems with which every educated English-speaker is ’sposed to be familiar. If one were creating a “selected,” one simply could not leave out any member of the standard set; it would be missed. But the original editors had only their own sense of goodness to go by.

Maybe picture it this way. Imagine a graduate student, working on English language and literature in a foreign university—someplace where they don’t speak an Indo-European language, and where they don’t use the Roman alphabet. The graduate student discovers in her school’s library, at random, a copy of the three-volume modern variorum edition of ED (Franklin’s thing, 1998). The edition says nothing about which poems are famous; they are all treated equally. The student, never having heard of ED before, gets interested in the poems entirely for their own sake. She checks, and can find no translations into her own language of ED’s bizarro English. Just nothing. So she decides to publish a selection….

Who knows what a person like that would choose! What are the odds that she will choose all fifty of the standard-to-us set? Prettymuch zero. The exciting thing that might happen instead—is she might pick stuff that would have been in the standard set if we had been thinking for ourselves, as she did. (I know, I know, the first thing she would do is look at selections done by English speakers, consequently allowing her judgment to be corrupted, etc. But this is a thought experiment; just pretend she doesn’t do that.)

Anyhow this is the warrant for taking a close look at Dickinson’s first book, Poems. That thing was a selected poems—selected by intelligent and accomplished people who had no choice but to think for themselves about which of the poems available to them (like 1100 pieces) were going to do it for people. They very much wanted to create public demand for a second book.

I have right here a 1905 British edition of Poems. Maureen McLane brought it back from London for me. A bibliographer would call it “Myerson A 1.1.x2.” Earlier printings tend to be five or six hundred bucks; this li’l guy was like forty-five. Quote from Myerson: “pp. iv-152 are the same as in A 1.1.a.” In other words, I can be confident that when I look at page 138 in this thing, and see the poem that we call “Because I could not stop for death” (here titled “THE CHARIOT”), I would see the exact same thing if I were looking at a first edition / first printing of the book. 

And here I have done you a service. I’ve created what is not easy to get elsewhere: a first-line index of Poems (1890). This way, you can check and see if any given poem appears in ED’s first selected. There were 116 poems total, of which maybe one in six went on to become ED “standards.” Anyhow, here are nineteen of these future “standards,” arranged alphabetically in sets of five:

• a wounded deer leaps highest

• because I could not stop for death 

• I cannot live with you 

• I died for beauty but was scarce 

• I like a look of agony

• I never lost as much but twice 

• I taste a liquor never brewed 

• I’m wife I’ve finished that 

• mine by the right of the white election 

• much madness is divinest sense 

• pain has an element of blank 

• safe in their alabaster chambers 

• some keep the Sabbath going to church 

• success is counted sweetest 

• the heart asks pleasure first 

• the soul selects her own society 

• there’s a certain slant of light 

• this is my letter to the world 

• two swimmers wrestled on the spar 

Also worth noting about the editors’ choices: They make it look like Dickinson was obsessed with seafaring. LOTS of poems with oceanic metaphors. They also made a special effort to show ED writing in forms besides her standard XAXA XBXB quatrains. 

As for the homemade first-line index…. The book was divided into four sections; I have listed the sections’ names and page numbers, so you can determine the “heading” under which any given poem was placed. For example, the first entry,

a drop fell on the apple tree 1890: 81

. . . means if you go to page 81 in the book we’re talking about, you will find a poem whose first line is “A DROP fell on the apple-tree.” By checking the section domains, you can see at a glance that the poem occurs in the “NATURE” section of the book.

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First-line index of Emily Dickinson Poems (1890)

LIFE 13–40

LOVE 43–65

NATURE 69–106

TIME AND ETERNITY 109–152

a drop fell on the apple tree 1890: 81 

a little road not made of man 1890: 80 

a precious moldering pleasure ’tis 1890: 22

a train went through a burial gate 1890: 118 

a something in a summer’s day 1890: 82 

a wounded deer leaps highest 1890: 20

afraid of whom am I afraid 1890: 135 

alter when the hills do 1890: 45

angels in the early morning 1890: 90

apparently with no surprise 1890: 98 

as children bid the guest good-night 1890: 89

as if some little arctic flower 1890: 53

at last to be identified 1890: 141

because I could not stop for death 1890: 138 

Belshazzar had a letter 1890: 39

come slowly Eden 1890: 65

death is a dialogue between 1890: 143 

delayed ’til she had ceased to know 1890: 110 

departed to the judgment 1890: 112 

doubt me my dim companion 1890: 47

Elysium is as far as to 1890: 46

except to heaven she is naught 1890: 142

exultation is the going 1890: 116

glee the great storm is over 1890: 17

God permits industrious angels 1890: 127

have you got a brook in your little heart 1890: 52

he ate and drank the precious words 1890: 35

how many times these low feet staggered 1890: 120

I asked no other thing 1890: 25

I cannot live with you 1890: 55

I died for beauty but was scarce 1890: 119 

I had no time to hate because 1890: 36

I hide myself within my flower 1890: 50

I know some lonely houses off the road 1890: 28

I like a look of agony 1890: 121 

I lost a world the other day 1890: 148 

I never lost as much but twice 1890: 152 

I never saw a moor 1890: 126 

I reason earth is short 1890: 134 

I shall know why when time is over 1890: 151 

I taste a liquor never brewed 1890: 34

I think the hemlock likes to stand 1890: 104 

I went to thank her 1890: 123 

if I can stop one heart from breaking 1890: 18

If I shouldn’t be alive 1890: 149 

if you were coming in the fall 1890: 48

I’ll tell you how the sun rose 1890: 94 

I’m ceded I’ve stopped being theirs 1890: 60

I’m wife I’ve finished that 1890: 63

it makes no difference abroad 1890: 92

it was too late for man 1890: 144 

I’ve seen a dying eye 1890: 124

like trains of cars on tracks of plush 1890: 87

look back on time with kindly eyes 1890: 117

mine by the right of the white election 1890: 43 

much madness is divinest sense 1890: 24

my cocoon tightens colors tease 1890: 115 

my river runs to thee 1890: 54

new feet within my garden go 1890: 69

no rack can torture me 1890: 147

not in this world to see his face 1890: 132

of all the sounds despatched abroad 1890: 96 

on this long storm the rainbow rose 1890: 114

one dignity delays for all 1890: 109 

our share of night to bear 1890: 14

pain has an element of blank 1890: 33

perhaps you’d like to buy a flower 1890: 72 

pink small and punctual 1890: 70

presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn 1890: 88

read sweet how others strove 1890: 32

safe in their alabaster chambers 1890: 113 

she rose to his requirement dropped 1890: 64 

she went as quiet as the dew 1890: 140 

sleep is supposed to be 1890: 150 

so bashful when I spied her 1890: 91

some keep the Sabbath going to church 1890: 74

some rainbow coming from the fair 1890: 76

some things that fly there be 1890: 27

soul wilt thou toss again 1890: 15

success is counted sweetest 1890: 13

that I did always love 1890: 51 

that short potential stir 1890: 122 

the bee is not afraid of me 1890: 75 

the brain within its groove 1890: 40

the bustle in a house 1890: 133 

the butterfly’s assumption gown 1890: 95 

the clouds their backs together laid 1890: 125 

the daisy follows soft the sun 1890: 146 

the grass so little has to do 1890: 78 

the heart asks pleasure first 1890: 21

the last night that she lived 1890: 130 

the morns are meeker than they were 1890: 102 

the mountain sat upon the plain 1890: 93 

the murmur of a bee 1890: 71

the pedigree of honey 1890: 73

the sky is low the clouds are mean 1890: 103 

the soul selects her own society 1890: 26

the sun kept setting setting still 1890: 136 

there came a day at summer’s full 1890: 58

there is a flower that bees prefer 1890: 85

there’s a certain slant of light 1890: 106 

these are the days when birds come back 1890: 100 

this is my letter to the world 1890: xiii

this is the land the sunset washes 1890: 84

’tis so much joy ’tis so much joy 1890: 16

to fight aloud is very brave 1890: 30

to know just how he suffered would be dear 1890: 128

’twas a long parting but the time 1890: 62

’twas later when the summer went 1890: 99

’twas such a little little boat 1890: 37

two swimmers wrestled on the spar 1890: 137

when I was small a woman died 1890: 145 

when night is almost done 1890: 31

whether my bark went down at sea 1890: 38

within my reach 1890: 19

you left me sweet two legacies 1890: 44