Meyer Robert K GS-9 99 CES/CECT wrote:

>  in current editions of her Complete Poems (and also the "Academy of
> American Poets" web site: www.poets.org ) have it as:
>
> I'm Nobody! Who are you?
> Are you--Nobody--too?
> Then there's a pair of us?
> Don't tell! they'd advertise--you know!
>
> How dreary--to be--Somebody!
> How public--like a Frog--
> To tell one's name--the livelong June--
> To an admiring Bog!
>
> ...which, I think, sounds weird.  I did, however, recently buy a one-volume
> reprint of the first few books of her poems, maybe from the 1890s; and the
> version of the poem in there has the "banish us" phrase in it.  Do you, or
> anyone else, know what's going on?  Like was it some editor changed it?  And
> if that, which version of line 4 is the real thing?  I personally hope that
> the "banish us" version is the more accurate one because it makes more
> sense, to me at least.

Robert,

R. W. Franklin is the editor you'll want to look at.  He has a two vol (1981)
edition of manuscript facsimiles, a three vol (1998) poems with variations, and
a one vol (1999) poems.  The genealogy of the poems is complex.  Franklin's
introductions require more than one reading, and even then ...  But, I'll bet if
you look in the 1998, you'll get a quick history of the banish/advertisement
business.  His apparatus is good and he has a table referring to Johnson's
numbers.  (I just grabbed an online text.)

There are those who argue that each dash should be printed to reflect its length
and shape (wavy or straight).  Tooooo obsessive for me.


Marcia