Dickinson Poetry Analysis

Poetry naturally lends itself to incorporating emotion into the writing. Sharing the specific people and places that have certain memories attached to them can become very powerful poems. Emily Dickinson does this very well in her poem titled “‘Hope is the thing with feathers.” Although it does not directly describe a certain place, we can use it to reveal different parts of her life, where she lives, and how she feels about these different aspects of her life. For example, she writes, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers - / That perches in the soul - / And sings the tune without the words - / And never stops - at all -” This quote shows a lot about her thoughts on her surroundings. I know from the background that I did on Dickinson that she wrote a lot about nature and connecting the physical world to her own ideas. She lived alone in her family’s house with a garden and looking over it while writing probably gave her a lot of inspiration for her writing. In this quote, Dickinson compares the concept of hope to a bird and its behaviors. She shares how she believes that hope stays in the soul, and just sings, never stopping. I can tell that she feels positively about hope, that it can be a very powerful feeling. This comparison of birds to an inanimate object such as hope is very effective because she is able to highlight feelings that come with hope through the means of a bird. For example, she says that the bird sings its tune in the soul without ever stopping. This shows that when you have hope in your heart, it never dies out; it will always be there. It would be very difficult to put this thought into words otherwise, but approaching it in this way allows for more people to understand what she was trying to say.  

It is clear from this poem that she takes a lot from the environment around her. Making analogies with nature seems like it comes rather naturally for her. She writes, “I’ve heard it in the chillest land - / And on the strangest Sea - / Yet - never - in Extremity, / It asked a crumb - of me.” She is saying that even when you are at the very end of your belief when you are in a really bad place, there will always be hope and it will never ask for anything in return. Through her words, I can feel as though I understand how she felt when writing this. I thought that she felt almost in awe of this power that did so much for no reason. There was also a small realization of the power hope has and the circumstances that it works in. Using words like ‘strangest Sea’ and ‘chillest land’ clear creates a picture in the readers’ mind about how bad the situation really can be. Dickinson’s connection to nature and her ability to use it in her writing is a valuable aspect of her poems. It allows readers to makes these connections for themselves to render her feelings to her audience. This is very important for the readers because of the fact that poetry can sometimes be so abstract. On the other side, it lets the readers makes their own decisions based on their background, giving each reader a different opinion about her pieces. This is part of the joy that is poetry.