Even Death Had an Editor

A Poetry Tale about Emily Dickinson, told by Hello Doggo.

Death pulls up in a carriage. He’s terribly polite. And there’s room for one more.

It’s one of the most famous rides in poetry: Emily Dickinson’s Because I could not stop for Death. But when it first appeared in print, in eighteen ninety, four years after she died, her editors had given it a little valeting.

First, a new title. The Chariot. Rather grand.

Then the schoolchildren. Dickinson wrote that the carriage passed a school, where children strove, at recess, in the ring. Strove. Even at playtime, they’re struggling. The editors had them simply play, their lessons scarcely done. Much nicer children.

Then the grave. Dickinson’s house has its cornice in the ground — a building, sinking. The editors gave it a cornice but a mound. Tidier.

And then they took out a whole stanza. Just after the carriage passes the setting sun, she corrects herself. Or rather, he passed us. The dews drew quivering and chill. And she notices what she’s wearing. Only gossamer, my gown. My tippet, only tulle.

In other words: she’s dead, she’s cold, and she’s dressed for a summer evening, not for eternity.

Gone. The whole shiver, quietly removed.

Her own version, stanza and all, only became the standard text with Thomas H. Johnson’s edition, in nineteen fifty-five.

So when you hear that Death kindly stopped for her, remember. For sixty-five years, in most people’s books, he’d also put the heating on.