Night Flight : New York
1:8:2:“Futility stands”. Apparently in error, “futility” was not capitalized in the 1978 CP as it was in TF.
For Memory
Life and Works
3:6 and 3:12: TF reads “Remember” and CP prints:“Remembering”.
Holy Dying
2:7: TF reads “the young days” and CP changes this to “the younger days”.
Child and Mother
3:4: In TF, the end of this line has a semicolon, and the CP changes the punctuation to a colon.
Burlesque
6:3: In TF, stanza six is six lines in length; CP inserted a stanza break after line three of stanza six, creating an additional stanza.
Cats and a Cock
9:1:1–2: Before the quote by Melville, TF inserts a section break and CP does not. We followed TF here, to parallel the section break preceding the quoted passage from Rosa Luxemburg (at 5:1:1–2).
The Blood Is Justified
10:2 (penultimate stanza): TF reads “those other lands” and CP prints: “these other lands”.
U.S. 1 (1938)
The Face of the Dam: Vivian Jones
4:4: By typographical error, CP changes “into” to “innto”.
George Robinson: Blues
8:1: CP removes the stanza break between the stanza beginning “The water they would bring” and the stanza beginning “Looked like somebody sprinkled”.
A Flashing Cliff
4:4: US1 and CP print “catalept!” and SP replaces the exclamation point with a period. Rukeyser marked this correction on SP TS 2464.
Boy with His Hair Cut Short
1:1: US1 reads “on this twentieth” and SP changes this to “on a twentieth”. Rukeyser indicated this correction on SP TS 2464
1:2: CP changes the letter “L” to the word “El.”
The Cruise
25:22: US1 reads “The voice of life” and CP prints: “That voice of life”.
32:5: In the line “‘Now,’” wrote the captain, “‘boats of madness’”, CP corrects the misplaced closed quotation mark in US1 following the word “captain” and moves it to be an open quotation before “boats.”
33:6: By typographical error, CP changes “ineffective rancid idle” to “ineffective racid idle”.
Mediterranean
Prose introduction: US1 reads “the Americans with Anti-Fascist Olympic Games” and CP corrects this to read “Americans with the Anti-Fascist Olympic Games”.
1
3:3: US1 reads “during machinggun battle” and CP changes this to read “during machine gun battle”;
2
2:4: CP erroneously adds a period after “and pale”.
3:4: reads “Machine-gun marks” and CP changes this to “Machine gun”.
3
1:1: US1 reads “Seething, and falling black” and by editorial decision we are following the CP: “Seething, and falling back”.
2:4: CP changes “plaster” to “plastic”.
4
2:5: US1 reads “France, Cost Brava” and CP corrects this to “France, Costa Brava”.
A Turning Wind (1939)
Reading Time : 1 Minute 26 Seconds
TW includes a final line in this poem that does not appear in either the 1951 SP, following Rukeyser's request, or the CP. In TW, the final two lines read: “the yellow joy after the song of the sun, / aftermath proof, extended radiance.”
Song, the Brain-Coral
3:1: TW reads “Let the great night” and CP prints:“Let the green night”.
Otherworld
Landing at Liverpool
1:1:1: TW reads “dream-journey” and CP, in typographical error, prints: “dream-journal”.
1:6:3: TW reads “the great island,” and CP prints this without the comma:“the great island”.
The Island
1:1:16: TW reads “winding the,” and CP prints this without the comma: “winding the”.
1:1:22: TW reads “Lancelot Andrewes” and CP erroneously changes the spelling to “Andrews”.
2:1:10: TW reads “see the street see the marchers” and CP reads “see the street see the marches”.
Correspondences
Correspondences
1:14: In TW, the end of the line reads “the dust-land,” and in CP “the dust”.
8:3: In TW the end of the line reads “brick,” and in CP “bricks,”.
Noguchi
1:3: TW reads “turning up” and CP shows a variant printing: “turned up”.
4:2: TW reads “did you walk down?” and CP reads: “did you walk,” and omits the question mark.
The Shortest Way Home
4:11: TW reads “leaps the rose” and CP prints this with a comma: “leaps the rose,”.
Paper Anniversary
1:1: TW reads “the crash” and CP reads “the Crash”.
7:1: TW reads “no golf tomorrow” and CP corrects this by capitalizing “No”.
M-Day's Child
Title: TW and CP have the title “M-Day's Child is Fair of Face”. In SP, the current title appears and MR's TS 2464 confirms that she intended this change.
Gibbs
6:11: In TW, “Years of driving” read “In livery, driving”. In a letter to Jan Berg, June 23, 1978, Rukeyser wrote: “I made one howler in the GIBBS poem when I wrote ‘in livery, driving’—this is a line spoken to me, and repeated out of ignorance. It is totally out of character, and I have tried to remove it whenever the poem is reprinted. If you are translating GIBBS, I shall be grateful if you will delete the words ‘in livery’” (LC).
6:16: In TW, “plotted curves” read “platted curves”. CP emended this.
11:4: CP omitted the period at the end of the line after “spiralling through a dream”.
Chapman
2:4: CP erroneously added a period from TW's “he writes” to “he writes.”
Ives
4:8: TW reads “great to greater” and CP, apparently erroneously, reads: “greater to greater”.
Beast in View (1944)
Mortal Girl
2:1: In a variant printing, the CP adds two spaces after “Sang:” and before the word “When”.
2:4: BV reads “In whiteness lay” and CP reads “In whiteness I lay”.
Darkness Music
Rukeyser cut all but the first and concluding lines of this poem before its reprinting in the CP. The BV version reads:
The days grow and the stars cross over
Drawing you nightly
Along my human love.
Alone at the vertical wall and wild with tears
I watch your line of windows.
Dance of eyes,
Their constellation steers me from my death,
Away, persuading me of
Wavering dawn.
Breeze of lilac in the sleepless night;
Here overflown by bells
Black altitudes,
And my wild bed turns slowly among the stars.
Chapultepec Park—2
4:3: CP changes end punctuation from a period to a comma.
A Game of Ball
Title: BV reads “A Game of Ball,” while CP reads “The Game of Ball.”
Evening Plaza, San Miguel
6:3: In BV, the last stanza is six lines; CP emends this by adding a stanza break after the third line to create two tercets.
Letter to the Front
3
4:2: BV reads “Ideas of peace are bargained for.” CP prints this line with a comma: “Ideas of peace are bargained for,”.
5:4: CP changes “make” to “makes”.
4 Sestina
Title: “Sestina” as a title for section 4 was added to the CP.
The Soul and Body of John Brown
6:1: JB reads “O my scene! My mother!” and we have followed this. BV, CP do not capitalize the second “my”: “O my scene! my mother!”
The Green Wave (1948)
A Charm for Cantinflas
&nbs
p; 1:9: GW reads “Slow. Slow. Slow.” and CP omits third “Slow.”
Then I Saw What the Calling Was
Title: In her manuscript, Rukeyser titled this poem, “The Road Past Los Altos” (“Before 1945” folder, LCII).
Private Life of the Sphinx
4
1:11: CP, apparently erroneously, added a period after “our two faces” and before the em-dash.
Orpheus
1
1:8: O reads “treetrunks” and SP, CP reads “treetops”.
2
1
2:2: SP, CP read “unity,” and O reads “unity—”.
2:5: O has a stanza break following this line and SP has a page break so we cannot determine whether this is also meant to be a stanza break. The CP does not have a stanza break here.
3
1:9: O and SP show a stanza break after this line but CP does not.
6
2:3: SP, CP read “murder,” and O reads “murder”.
2:5: O, SP read “in circus” and CP corrects this to “in the circus.”
3:2: O reads “the shape of plants”. We have followed this. SP, CP read “the shapes of plants”.
7
2:6: Following this line, O has a stanza break. SP, CP do not.
8
1:9: O reads “tree of air.” This was changed to “tree of nerves” in SP and indicated by Rukeyser in her SP galleys (PP 2467).
3
1:18: O reads “they are made mouths” and SP, CP read “they are mouths”.
3:5: O reads “All poets and powers” and SP, CP read “All the poets and powers”.
10:12: O reads “the young and the unborn” and SP, CP read “the young and unborn”.
Elegies (1949)
Third Elegy. The Fear of Form
2:3:10: TW, WF, and CP read “girls by the thousand curve” and E reads “girls by the thousand curl”.
2:8:4: TW, WF, and CP read “optic of grandiose delusion” and E reads “optic of grandiose illusion”.
Fourth Elegy. The Refugees
2:7: TW, WF, and CP read “before the circle” and E reads “before this circle”.
4:2: TW, WF, and CP read “They made a circle” and E reads “They make a circle”.
8:1: E, TW, and CP read “Of bells” while WF reads “O bells.”
Fifth Elegy. A Turning Wind
1:1:1–2: E, TW, and WF read “the midway travels of migrant” and CP, apparently erroneously, reads “the midway to migrant”.
2:11:2: TW, WF, and CP read “stacks” and E reads “stalks”.
2:11:3: TW, WF, and CP read “reflection” and E reads “reflections”.
2:15:2: TW, WF, and CP read “these” and E reads “those”.
Sixth Elegy. River Elegy
This elegy was first published in Twice a Year 5–6 (Fall–Winter 1940/Spring–Summer 1941). The first stanza differs significantly from subsequent publications.
1:5: WF incorrectly places a comma instead of a period following “grief”.
6:9: WF incorrectly prints “slows” instead of “slow”.
Seventh Elegy. Dream-Singing Elegy
2:2:4: BV, WF, and CP read “for a first time” and E reads “for the first time”.
2:2:5: BV, WF, and CP read “our blond fields” and E reads “our blond hills”.
2:7:8: We followed CP's addition of a second and final section break after “And all the dancers answer ‘Yes.’” This break does not occur in BV, WF, or E.
Eighth Elegy. Children's Elegy
1:5:2: BV and WF do not mark the first section break that appears after this line.
2:2:4: CP incorrectly changes “bring” to “brings”.
2:3:4: BV, WF, and CP read “if you” and E reads “if they”.
2:6:4: BV, WF, and CP read “I wish, I wish for home.” and E reads “I wish for home.”
Ninth Elegy. The Antagonists
1:1:8: BV, WF, and CP read “smile, and revenge” and E leaves out the comma.
1:3:9: WF incorrectly prints “redeems” instead of “redeem”.
2:2:13: BV, WF, and CP read “The doubled phantoms” and E reads “The troubled phantoms”.
3:4:4: BV, WF, and CP read “built:” and E reads “built;”.
Tenth Elegy. Elegy in Joy
3:2:4: WF reads, “The blessing is the seed.” We have followed the E, GW, and CP version, which read “The blessing is in the seed.”
Body of Waking (1958)
Phaneron
First appears in OL with the first line as the title.
After Their Quarrel
First appears in very different form in Discovery, No. 3.
Tree
4:6: CP erroneously adds a third “s” to the word “process.”
The Return
First appears as a shorter poem in Discovery, No. 3.
F. O. M.
First appears in very different form in Discovery, No. 3.
[Untitled] (“Make and be eaten, the poet says”)
In BW, this poem is set without a title; the table of contents lists it under its complete first line. The CP shortens the title and includes it within the body of the text.
Of Money. And the Past
3:5: BW reads “For here there is nothing.” CP prints: “From here there is nothing.”
[Untitled] (“Long enough. Long enough”)
As with “Make and be eaten,” in BW this poem is set without a title; the table of contents lists it under its complete first line. The CP shortens the title and inserts it into the body of the text.
2:6: CP, apparently erroneously, changes “May” to “My”.
Suite for Lord Timothy Dexter
1
1:8: BW reads “In whitness” and CP reads “In witness”.
2:1: BW reads “But that power pours here.” CP omits the final period, “But that power pours here”.
3 Three Nights I Dreamed
4:3: right margin text: BW reads “sayings, cats” and CP reads “saying, cats”.
4
3:12: CP eliminates a section break after line 12, “My gold spread-eagle on the cupalow.”
5 The Pickle, the Temple
THE PICKLE
6:1:7: CP erroneously modernizes the spelling of “plese” to “please” in the line, “And solt it as they plese.”
Powerplant
CP removes this title, which was printed in BW. Also, BW inserts a stanza break after “water-black” that is not in OL or CP. CP, apparently erroneously, removes the hyphen from “water-black” in 1:5.
Fields Where We Slept
This poem first appeared in OL and was then included, untitled, in the One Life section of BW. Later, Rukeyser also reprinted it with its current title in BO, following “Te Hanh : Long-Ago Garden.”
He Had a Quality of Growth
This poem appeared untitled in BW; it was titled in both OL and CP.
The Speed of Darkness (1968)
Rukeyser's typescripts indicate that the title for SD was initially conceived as “Word of Mouth,” the title of one of the poems in SD. In a drafted table of contents for this volume, thirty-three poems are listed that never appeared in SD, along with a section of translations entitled “The Birds of Attar,” which refers to the twelfth-century Sufi poet Attar and his best-known work, The Conference of the Birds.
The Poem as Mask
Orpheus
1:3: CP, in seeming error, changes “god-hunting” to “gold-hunting.” Common versions of the Orpheus story maintain that the Thracian maidens who attack and kill Orpheus do so because they are angered by his disinterest and inattention toward them. They are “god-hunting” for Orpheus, not gold-hunting as in the CP.
The Conjugation of the Paramecium
9:1: In the final stanza, CP erroneously changes “This is called” to “This called”.
Clues
The manuscript title for this poem was “One Person Said Spots Also Stood for Stars.”
Am
ong Roses
In SD, this poem was titled “Among Grass.” Rukeyser changed the title to “Among Roses” when she reprinted it in her 1972 volume of selected poems, 29P. According to a letter from Carole Fries of Andre Deutsch, Ltd. (April 21, 1971, LCII), Rukeyser confirmed her decision to change the title in the 29P manuscript.
Niobe Now
1:4: In SD, the fourth line reads “at all”. CP corrects this to “as all”.
For My Son
1:31: CP prints, in error, “man play playing” instead of “man playing”.
Cannibal Bratuscha
4:1: The “it's” in “it's Thursday” is missing the apostrophe in SD; CP corrects.
The Outer Banks
On the first page of the page proofs for this poem, commenting on the layout of the individual sections, Rukeyser wrote: “These are to be treated as separate poems with much space.”
5
1:3: SD reads “female line” and CP offers a variant, “female line.”
6
2:1: OB has a stanza break between these lines; SD has a page break between them and thus possibly a stanza break. In the first printing of this poem in Poetry 106.6 (Sept 1965: 381–87), there is also a stanza break. The CP omits this break and we have reinstated it.
9
4:4: In OB, this line reads “Body, eye, head….” We have followed the SD and CP version, which, along with the Poetry edition, have this word in the plural—“eyes”.
Akiba
Akiba Martyr
2:3: In SD, the word “Temple” is not followed by a period. CP corrects this.
The Speed of Darkness
As with “The Outer Banks,” Rukeyser wrote in her page proofs for this poem: “These must be treated as separate poems,” and indicated that she wanted “more spaces between sections” and more than a standard double space between each stanza and between the section number and first line of each section.
Breaking Open (1973)
Waking This Morning
Title: In BO, the title is “This Morning”. In an LC TS and the CP, Rukeyser expanded the title to “Waking This Morning”.
Despisals
4:2: In BO, the sentence reads, “Not to despise…” and in CP it reads, “Nor to despise….”
In Her Burning
1:12: BO reads “off the moon” and CP prints “of the moon”.
Searching / Not Searching
5 Brecht's Galileo
Title: In BO, the name of the play is not distinguished by typeface, and the CP underlines “Galileo.”
Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Page 63