Misprints — Are they serendipity, inspiration or embarrassment?
Curiouser and curiouser.... I’ve exchanged some further correspondence with Lia Booth, the lit student who alerted us to our replication of an old misprint in W.B. Yeats’ poem “Among School Children” — and her list of references for what turns out to be a famous typo has led me to a compendium of such errors: An Embarrassment of Misprints (Fulcrum Publishing, 1995) by Max Hall, still available online directly from the publisher. Here’s what Hall had to say about Yeats’ mangled line: “W.B. Yeats, in his poem ‘Among School Children,’ mentioned Plato and then ‘solider Aristotle,’ but the printer made it ‘soldier Aristotle.’ That version went unchanged in several printings of Yeats’s complete poems while he was still alive, suggesting that he may have decided he could live with ‘soldier.’ In the edition of 1947, eight years after his death, ‘solider Aristotle’ was substituted.” The Yeats typo is a relatively minor member of Hall’s collection, which “showcases comical and disastrous typos from ancient times to the present day (including a few choice flubs from the Bible) and funny misprints from our nation’s most revered publishing institutions such as The Washington Post and The New York Times.”
In her note to us, Ms. Booth raised the question of how such a misprint can change a reader’s interpretation of the poem — and of course, this is the whole reason for proofreaders and text editors. The viral replication of typos has skyrocketed on the Net, where everyone can be a publisher, but of course mistakes are also more easily corrected on a Web page than on a printed paper one. We’re committed here at About Poetry to convey the poets’ intentions as accurately as we possibly can. But I’m also interested in how this issue looks from the other side, from the point of view of the poet. What do you think, poets?
- Has one of your poems ever suffered a misprint in publication? How did you feel about it? Was it later corrected?
- Have you ever made a typo during the writing of a poem, and then decided to keep it? Do you think typos can reveal a subconscious intention or a chance bit of inspiration?
Comments
Elizabeth Bishop’s famous poem “The Man-Moth” was inspired by a typo for mammoth she saw in in the New York Times. At times like these, typos should be celebrated!
Random typos and outright misspells are serendipidous gifts. They’re sometimes a way to bridge unknowing.
Typos can be an absolute gift in the drafting process. I once typed “failing” instead of “falling.” The two words do have a basic similarity of meaning and I played with this concept in the poem.
Dear Margery and Bob:
I was honored to have my poem, “Dejection on a Florida summer afternoon” chosen for your Summer Poems
collection. However, it contains a misprint (probably my fault from the original submission). The seventh line of the poem should read “Over our fail-safe houses”rather than Our our fail-safe houses”. I e-mailed you a few times about it but it still appears today with the misprint. Since we’re on that subject, now might be the time to correct it.
Thank you for your support and recognition.
Joe Pacheco
Pamela, thanks for reminding me of “The Man-Moth” — certainly a cause for celebration!
W. Yoder and J. Mercer, your comments point to exactly what I was thinking when I wrote this post — typos as the gift of randomness in the writing process, and the poet’s talent is to recognize and play with that gift.
Joseph, my apologies for the misprint that has lingered so long in your poem, and thanks for reminding me of it — it’s fixed now.
I once held a beautiful edition of the Collected Poems of Archibald MacLeish, a resonant and attractive piece of work in itself, except that his best-known poem, “Ars Poetica” contained an extra letter. “A poem” was not “wordless as the flight of birds”, rather it was “worldless”, certainly an intriguing reading, but one that jars with the world-focus of the rest of the poem.
If we take the “l” in “worldless” from a later word in the couplet, we’ve got a (mis)reading somebody could do an Elizabeth Bishop on: “worldless as the fight of birds”. Any responses?
Ross Clark
“Salt Flung into the Sky” 2007(www.ginninderrapress.com.au)
One of the strangest typos occurs in the poem “Ruben Bright” by E.A Robinson.
In the poem, Ruben is a butcher:
And thereby did earn an honest living (and did right)
and when told his wife is dying, he
– stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,
And cried like a great baby half that night
And made the women cry to see him cry.
After the funeral, he packs up her things
– and put some cedar boughs
In with them, and tore down the slaughter house.
Now, some wag at the printers changed the line to read “tore down to the slaughterhouse.” So persistent was the line that it remained for years and continued to be included in editions, despite Robinson’s objections, & was still found in some collections long after his death, all the way up into the 50s!
Dear Margery:
Thanks for correcting the misprint in my poem. Now I’m free of the compulsion to visit Summer Poems every two or three days to see if the misprint has been corrected. I can concentrate more on enjoying the other wonderful poems and poets you feature on your website.
Thanks again,
Joseph Pacheco