Every Letter Counts
Today we received a note from a student of textual analysis that sent me scurrying to my bookshelf to check the text of a poem we’ve posted in our About Poetry library: “Among School Children” by William Butler Yeats:
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,It turns out that we inadvertently replicated an old typo that appeared in the 1933 American edition of Yeats’ Collected Poems and was not corrected until 1947, after his death. The third line of stanza VI refers to “Solider Aristotle,” not “Soldier Aristotle” — a difference in the placement of just a single letter, but certainly a change in the meaning of that line!
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
With thanks to our correspondent, we’ve corrected our typo — and we ask all of you, dear Readers, to write to us if you notice an error in any of the poems reprinted here at About Poetry. As we’ve said before, “Typos are like viruses.... they replicate on the Net” — but if we work together we can eradicate them from this particular corner of the Net, and preserve every poet’s true intentions.
More on William Butler Yeats:
Profile of Irish mystical/historical poet/playwright Yeats
Poems by W.B. Yeats
Things Fall Apart, a Guide to W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming”
Comments
Dear About Poetry:
As to typos, a persistant one happened in the poem by E.A. Robinson titled Ruben Bright:
Because he was a butcher and thereby
Did earn an honest living (and did right)…
In the context of the poem, his wife dies & he is heartbroken–
And cried like a great baby half that night
And made the women cry to see him cry…
So, Ruben, after the funeral packs up her things
… and put some chopped-up cedar boughs
In with them, and tore down the slaughter house.
When the poem was published, a wag at the printers changed the reading to “tore down to the slaughter house”!
This was a printing error that continued in the poem for many years
& could hardly be erased despite Robinson’s complaints. In fact, so persistent was this error that it continued in editions of Robinson’s poems well after his death & up into the 50s!
Jack Peachum