Hope

"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,"

--Emily Dickinson


Emily Dickinson is my absolute, all-time, most favoritest poet!!!

I think I love her because she was never published in her lifetime. She was never tempted or corrupted by fame. Rather, her writing evolved naturally. She kept her writings a secret and would just jot down whatever came to her head and then stuff the scraps of paper into drawers and books and pretty much everywhere! After she died, these little musings were discovered stuffed anywhere and everywhere by her family.

Her poetry is confusing and expressive--but what I love most about her poetry is that there is truly no wrong answer when it comes to interpretation. English professors throughout my life have always "taught" that poetry is really subjective. That the meaning of each poem will vary from person to person--that interpretation is only about what you glean.

HOWEVER, I have found (as the half-English major I was in college) that poetry is all about what some scholar somewhere has decided it should be. If you disagree with the scholar or the professor they find your arguments to be lacking in substance. Not to say that this isn't always true, but I could never wrap my mind around someone else telling me my opinion deserved a C or a B.--as a perfectionist, these grades were simply unacceptable. As a person afraid of failure, poetry was my worst subject and absolutely terrifying.

To me, poetry is and always has been, all about the exploration of opinion and personal growth. When I first read this poem, I got something totally different from it than I'm getting today--and when I read it in 5 years, it will mean something else altogether. It's about feeling.

With other poets who were published--whether famous or no--during their lifetime, there are documents commenting on their writings. Letters exist to where scholars can pull correlations from one to the other. With Emily, it's different. It's pure speculation. There is no right or wrong answer because she never really commented on her poetry! She didn't offer insights. So any analysis is pure speculation.

or opinion... however you want to phrase it :)