No, that’s not the name of a poem of hers–that I know of anyway–rather it’s what my first introduction of the reasonably famous Hope is the thing with feathers did to me today. Cathy had added it to our family classroom’s poem of the month, and this month, I happened to be at the table too, for the first reading. (I happen to be at home recovering from 2020’s final gratuitous jab, a case of the shingles on the left side of my head. Oi.)
I probably haven’t paid any real attention to Dickinson since…whee, high school, probably, and of course since then I’ve learned a lot more about how to really make myself available to art for the first time. So, I put my ears on and let Cathy’s reading come while truly ready to receive.
I had no real reason to expect it would just completely take me apart like it did–but oh, man…
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
Emily Dickinson (reproduced from The Poetry Foundation)
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
Robert Fripp famously used the word “luminous” to describe his meeting Jimi Hendrix, and somehow that word comes to mind for me here. The lyric goes right to the meaning of what it means to be, the very blazing center of it all–the gift of it–and the power of the image just plain overwhelmed me. (Kinda freaked the poor kids out a bit, too; it’s hard to explain that the rush of emotion can be entirely positive and still knock you right back on your keister. “Okay? Oh goodness yes; Dad’s actually much better than just okay here…this was just more beautiful than I was prepared to handle at this moment, whoo.”)
I puzzled a bit afterwards, on the question of why these words might have hit me as hard as they did, today–as it did surprise even me. It may partly be that they cracked through the modern authenticity problem of this historically lovely idea of “hope”*. Well, maybe. Dickinson of course wrote long ago, before that problem was so mainstream; and, that alone wouldn’t account for all of it, since I’m pretty committed to, and even practiced at, evaluating a piece of art on its own merits first.
Maybe instead it’s my personal relationship with birds, having lived in Alaska now a dozen years and having become rather fond of the little brutes? Hm…could be part of it. Certainly the imagery and symbolism I associate with birds, now, is pretty rich compared to so many years of my absolute ignorance. (I may not hold a candle to the rest of my family, in bird knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t learned a lot…)
Still, a much more plausible idea came a little bit later. I realized that the image of the Bird, in this lyric, reminded me of my Aunt Rinny, who is suffering from a progressive cancer. Some who know Rinny just a little bit might not see the connection, pointing out that her tendencies as a known worrywart would seem to make her not at all like the Bird…
…but for me, that’s exactly the thing. She shows the world the worrywart, and indeed she is probably limited by its influence, but underneath the worrywart is and always has been exactly, precisely, the Bird. I may not have had as much time with her as some others, of course, but over my years I’ve had enough to see this clearly enough, and really it’s always been how I think of her in the first place. Such a lovely human being; right at the very bottom of the list of people who should have to endure any sort of ill health.
That idea, now, may well have contributed to how intense this first experience with Dickinson’s lyric was. I’ve been struggling with what I could possibly say to bring her any comfort now–and maybe I just heard it from an unlikely source.
I do hope her little, unlikely Bird keeps right on belting ’em out. That little critter inside us has got it right.
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* For the record, I bristle at the cynical, even outright mendacious, twisting of the word’s meaning beyond nearly all recognition by (hock, spit) political types. The two ideas–hope and politics–have absolutely no Venn intersection at all; anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is attempting to co-op the former in service to the latter.
Kevin Wilmeth 