Unplucked by the Copy Editor

The Gardens of Emily Dickinson by Judith Farr sports a close up of the stamens of a daylily on its cover and a fragment from Dickinson (1058) "Bloom — is Result" (in Emily's hand?)

It is up close that some differences are noticed.

I was delighted in my reading to come across a paragraph (bloom) almost duplicated on the same page (p. 78).

With the rise of interest in highly specialized flower gardens of sophisticated cultivars, oil portraits of women both before and long after the Civil War depicted them in the presence of luxurious blooms.

[...]

With the rise of interest in highly specialized flower gardens of elegant cultivars, oil portraits of women immediately before and after the Civil War envisioned them in the presence of luxurious blooms.

This is a record of the paragraph-blooms in situ.

Dickinson (1058) ends with a dash —

To be a Flower, is profound
Responsibility —

One sports "sophisticated" where the other displays "elegant". And can one detect a pruning hand where "long after" is reprised as simply "after"? Where "depicting" becomes "envisioning" here gardening/writing takes on the domain of music and variations on a theme.

And so for day 2428
06.08.2013