Even more material will continue to be added. There are two versions from Houghton Library’s collection and two others from Amherst, so already the single poem has multiplied into several the variability of Dickinson’s line breaks and stanza divisions across the multiple versions of this poem alone could inspire several dissertations.Īlthough Dickinson wrote 1,789 poems, the archive includes more than four thousand images: completed poems, but also the drafts and altered versions that reflect her constant editing and meticulous revisions. It’s delightful now to see that same poem in her loopy cursive in the archive. The poem appeared in my ancient inbox all those years ago in simple sans serif type.
Ten years ago, on what would be one of my last true snow days, when school was cancelled and all the world was covered in possibility, a teacher sent me an e-mail: “Don’t forget to put down the books and enjoy some of this winter wonderland,” she wrote, and then beneath her signature included the text of Emily Dickinson’s “It sifts from Leaden Sieves.”
The first poem I ever received by e-mail was one by Emily Dickinson. For the first time since her death, almost all of her poetry, published and unpublished, finished and unfinished, appears together in high-resolution scans, just waiting for readers and scholars to page through it electronically. I collected all these copies of her poetry so that no matter where I went, I would be ready for those dangling conversations.īut the books I gathered have gotten to rest these last few days as I’ve spent hours clicking away in the Emily Dickinson Archive. I dreamed of sitting by the fire with my Emily Dickinson while someone I loved sat reading Robert Frost. A few complete editions, two selected volumes, and one pocket collection: new and used, hardback and paperback, her poetry has always been something for which I was willing to pay. Dickinson wrote in one poem that “Publication-is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man-” and indeed she seems to have felt there was something crass, even violative about fixing one’s words in a particular arrangement of type, surrendering them for a price.Īnd yet, I am grateful to have been able to pay small sums of money for her poetry. It was not some failure of contemporary taste but her own decision that kept the rest of her poetry private. Printed in various newspapers, her verses all appeared anonymously. Emily Dickinson published only ten poems.
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