Poem Archive Notes

Scope

The Poem Archive shelters 230 poems, represented by 350 manuscript versions, composed by Dickinson and marked by the presence of birds. 

The Emily Dickinson Archive, an open-access resource containing the largest single source of digital surrogates of the manuscripts of Dickinson’s poems and letters, is the primary source for the manuscript images reproduced in Dickinson’s Birds. For information 0n the individual libraries and institutions that have contributed to this project, see Project Map. 

Manuscripts  

Every poem gathered here appears on a virtual leaf that includes, whenever possible, a digital facsimile of its manuscript. Currently, only those manuscript leaves/surfaces containing writing are presented; a later iteration of Dickinson’s Birds will present all surfaces to enable a fuller visualization of each manuscript’s physical structure.

Headnotes identify the manuscript by archive cataloging number and Franklin variorum number, and offer information, when known, on the manuscript’s date of composition, copying, or circulation; its medium (ink, pencil, ink+ pencil); its state (draft or fair copy); its setting in Dickinson’s archive (bound; unbound); its paper type; and its circulation status (retained or sent). In cases where a manuscript has circulated, the recipient(s) is/are identified and further information about them reported. All manuscripts affiliated with the poem are identified and linked. 

In addition to textual and bibliographical information, each poem is also accompanied by a list of the birds it names. In instances where a specific bird is identified, an audio file of the sound of the bird is included and a link to the Bird Archive enables further tracking of the bird both inside and outside Dickinson’s work and century. In instances where unnamed birds appear in a poem, a link opens to the Bird Archive as a whole.

Finally, a partial, ever-evolving list of the environmental/atmospheric phenomena reported in a poem appears to the right of the MS facsimile, the space conventionally reserved for a transcription. Clicking on any specific environmental phenomenon associated with a given poem generates a list of other poems in the archive including that phenomenon. 

Dating the Poems

The dates assigned here derive pricipally from R. W. Franklin’s 1998 variorum The Poems of Emily Dickinson [2]. Since the Poem Archive is an archive of Manuscripts rather than Works, moreover, the dates assigned are to each manuscript witness of a given work rather than to the work itself—i.e., the manuscript of a draft will bear the composition date; the manuscript of a copy will bear the copying date; and the manuscript of a poem circulated to a recipient will bear the circulation date. When no manuscript is extant, but the poem is accessible in an early (C19) printed source, the date given is the date of its printing.
 
The temporal focus of this project—the importance of the seasons [3]—has led us to treat the dates assigned by Franklin in the following way: poems assigned to “late” in the year are assigned to fall; poems assigned to “early” in the year are assigned to winter.  We have not attempted to assign poems dated “first half of the year” or “second half of the year” to a specific season.

Transcriptions 

In transcribing Dickinson’s poems our aim has been to render as precisely and accurately as possible in the typographic medium Dickinson’s orthography, punctuation, and physical line and stanza breaks, as well as the disposition of her writing across leaves and other surfaces. 

Manuscript and Textual Features Reported in the Transcriptions

State

Medium

Leaf breaks

Missing MS Leaves

Tears in MS Leaves 

Manuscript Sectors

Material Fasteners

Enclosures

Orthography & Capitalization

  • Dickinson’s alphabetic forms are not fully regularized, and the distinction between minuscules and majuscules is often ambiguous. Additionally, Dickinson’s orthography and punctuation often seem to function expressively, that is, in excess of the denotative meaning of the marks. While we do not knowingly emend any instance of capitalization or orthography our use of standard typographic forms to represent handwritten forms may at times limit Dickinson’s original meaning. Moreover, while our primary guidance on orthography and punctuation always issues directly from the manuscripts, we recognize that our judgments in these matters—especially in ambiguous cases—is also mediated by our experience of and participation in the long print tradition of her work, which culminates in R. W. Franklin’s Poems: A Variorum Edition (1998). 

Dashes, Commas, Quotation Marks, Periods, Exclamation Points, Question Marks, Variant Markers 

  • Like her orthography, the identity of Dickinson’s punctuation marks is not always unambiguous, with dashes, commas, and periods often being difficult to distinguish definitively from one another. Here again, we have first reckoned with Dickinson’s manuscripts to determine the identity of these marks, but we have also turned to the print tradition for guidance about how the mark in question has been interpreted. Once we have settled upon an interpretation for a given mark, we have used one typographic mark to represent all instances of the mark occurring in the manuscripts: i.e., one form of period, one form of comma, one form of quotation marks, one form of exclamation point, and one form of dash. 
  • Dickinson often marked words or phrases for variant readings (or, on occasion, possibly for another reason) with one or more of the following symbols: x, +, o. While the print tradition has not previously included these marks, we have done so in the belief that they are part of the lexical system of meaning in Dickinson’s poems. 

Line breaks

  • All physical line breaks are reported; metrical line breaks are not presumed. 

Underlining

  • Instances of underlining are indicated with the underscore function, with the many variant forms of underlining (e.g., multiple underscores) present in Dickinson’s MSS identified in the Textual Notes. 

Canceled text

  • Instances of authorial cancelation are indicated with <angle brackets>. While editorial symbols are generally color-coded black,  brackets (<>) indicating cancelations are color-coded to indicate Dickinson’s medium of cancelation (< ink cancelations>; <pencil cancelations>). Since Dickinson’s forms of cancelation are almost as distinct as her other orthographic forms, readers are encouraged to take note of the many variant forms of cancellation (e.g., multiple strikethroughs, cross-hatchings, etc.) present in her manuscripts.
  • Instances of editorial cancelation/censorship are indicated visually in the following way: cancelled text.

Overwriting

Parentheses

Supplied Text

Disposition of the Text

By use of the symbols below, the transcriptions seek to render the disposition of Dickinson’s writing across her manuscript pages as fully and literally as possible; they do not attempt to visually associate additions or possible variant readings dispersed across a given manuscript, though some associations that are spatially inscribed necessarily emerge:

Note: In cases where the interlineation is not immediately above or below the principle word/line, double arrows indicate the distance.

Boundary Lines

Leaf Rotations 

Writing Omitted from the Transcriptions

  • We have not transcribed text inscribed on Dickinson’s manuscripts by other hands or marks made by her earliest editors.

Textual Notes

For a complete list of archival and scholarly sources, please see the Project Map.