Dear Class, here are the two poems we will discuss this week together, which your mates will introduce on Monday and Wednesday. Your early conversation may help them to begin formulating their thoughts. Any comments on this post will be for week two of class.
Dickinson did not title her poems
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,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Poem 2
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!
February 9th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
This poem reminds my how having hope in God can get people through hard times. The poem uses symitery to discribe hope as feathers. Birds remind me of hope. The Christain symbol of hope is a dove. Birds are great symbol of hope because they fly freely in the clouds. This is a good symbol to remind us to trust God. Birds trust that God will provide them with their basic needs. This is how human should trust God. Humans don’t rely on God as much as they should. They worry ab
February 9th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
about where their getting their next meal or how their going to pay their bills. Birds trust God for their basic needs.
February 10th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
In the second stanza, hope is described as being sweetest during the storm. What exactly does that mean? To me, it means that in which Who do you turn to when life gets rough and things get difficult? Always making sure to maintain hope during the storms in life is so important. Sure - it seems as though one maintains hope when things are well, but it is brought about more when one is going through trials and tribulations. I think that what goes hand-in-hand with that is that people provide hope to others when they are going through difficult situations. People see the strength of others and recognize their own strength and that it is brought about through other’s trials.
February 10th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
It’s interesting to me that this poem has no title, so instead we refer to it as “Hope is the thing with feathers”—the exact contents of the first line. Isn’t this how we title a lot of songs and hymns as well? Amazing Grace, All Who Are Thirsty, Be Thou My Vision, etc.
I also interested in Dickinson’s use of stanzas here. She breaks up her first sentence, and I don’t understand why; she’s writing about a bird singing a tune (line 3) that never stops (line 4) and sounds sweet in the gale (line 5), but she separates the last part of the idea—line 5—by including it with the second stanza. The rest of the poem seems to follow the pattern that each stanza represents one idea or sentence, with the exception of this first stanza. The remainder of the second stanza speaks of a storm, and the third stanza is about the varied presence and the needs of the bird. But why doesn’t the first stanza follow the nice, neat pattern?
February 11th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
In the first stanza, hope is referred to as a bird (a thing with feathers) that “perches in the soul.” My question is why is this bird (hope) only perched in the soul and not flying? One reason may be as simple as that birds typically only sing songs while they are perched and not while they are flying. But I think that there could be a deeper meaning than this. If we picture our soul as a cage with a bird sitting within it, there is no room for the bird to fly. Why would we be too afraid to let our hope out and fly around for all to see? Hope is a sacred thing for many people. When everything else they have is taken from them, hope is often the only thing they can still hold on to. This could be the reason why people never let hope go. Instead they allow this bird of hope to sing loudly so that even though the bird is not seen flying around, it can still be heard.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
The poem “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” reminds me of something that I often think about. I have an idea of a melody which plays in my head and it something that I always strive for although it may be something that is unreachable. In the poem this melody is sung by a bird which represents hope. This melody in my head is a song of hope, which is deep in my soul and heart. It is an idea of perfection that is something to hope and work for whether times are good or bad.
In the 2nd and 3rd stanzas there are several tough times that the bird must get through. Like…gale, a sore storm, being abashed, the chillest land, and the strangest sea. But through all of this hope still remains. That idea of the perfect melody which continually plays still exists. In the first stanza she says that the bird sings a tune…and never stops at all. So even in good times that hope remains, because for me this hope is something unreachable but is most desirable.
Even though all these bad things happen to the bird, it makes it through. I like the line that says “that COULD abash the little bird”. Dickenson could have easily used would or should but she decided to use could. This implies that all of this could kill our hope and spirits and even stop that everlasting melody in my head, but it doesn’t. Our hope continues through thick and thin.
February 11th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope is a thing with feathers,” obviously deals with hope and its existence on the lives of humans. This poem seems paradoxical to most. For me, there are several things that Emily seems to be portraying about what hope is. She states that “hope is a thing.” She is suggesting that hope is not connected to our emotions. Hope is like a human’s will to live. Hope is not dependent upon us, it is beyond us. In class, someone commented about how hope is connected to love and faith; things that simply exist and are not dependent upon human’s emotions. Dickinson uses a bird to symbolize hope. The connection that I make about this image is that there are many different kinds of birds; therefore, hope is different for everyone. Also, Hope will survive without our emotions. If there is a storm, a bird does not seek out a human for help, it will survive on its own. In a way, it is kind of saying that hope never dies, or it only dies whenever the will to live dies. I think that Emily is saying that hope is like living another day and that it is not dependent upon our emotions, but that it, meaning our own personal hope, dies with us when we leave the earth.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
I am going to comment on Dickinson’s poem that begins, “Wild Nights-Wild Nights!” I most certainly believe that this poem has a sexual meaning. It is impassioned and full of wild desires. I believe with the line, “Were I with thee”, Dickinson is referring to a past night of out of control pleasure or perhaps dreaming of a night like that. The night’s purpose is to fulfill each other’s desires. The metaphor to the ocean fits quite nicely. I see “the Winds” trying to pound on the boats, but they are safely in harbor. It is almost as though the two lovers, their hearts, when together are safe from the trials and struggles of the world around them. The compass and a chart are very important tools for a sailor. And I am sure that Dickinson had many rules and morals that she lived by. Perhaps she has had enough. She is done with her beliefs, and ready to give into the night of pleasure. She also refers to Eden, a beautiful and pleasureful place. With her lover, Dickinson is traveling through her own Eden. On her wild night, she throws away the things she once held dear (the compass and chart) and secures and finds herself through her lover.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
“Hope is a thing with feathers” really connected with me as a poem of great depth and beauty. The tone of this poem seems to be one of gratefulness, as indicated by the last two lines–how the “bird” never asked anything of the speaker. The last line in the second to last stanza (that kept so many warm) also appears to me to be a grateful acknowledgment of what hope has done for people.
I identified the first stanza with a bird called the common potoo. These birds are nocturnal with large eyes and they feed on insects. The cool thing about this bird is the way it feeds; it will sit on a perch and spot an insect, then dive out to get it. Whether or not it is successful, it will return right to the same perch in the exact same spot. This hope the speaker is talking about is like that; no matter what, we can be sure it will return. This bird is also not easily startled; one can possibly get as close to them as 8-10 feet. This also reflects a characteristic I see in the poem; that the bird is unabashed; it takes a sore storm to ruffle its feathers, so to speak.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
My favorite out of the two poems is the second poem, where it talks about being in the sea. It seems like Dickison is portraying a sailor, the nights are wild and chilly, and your not really sure what’s going to happen next. A sailor who has a very deep love for the ocean, because to them that is their version of eden, their heaven.
However it could also just be relating to the feeling of a person in general, the open sea being life and the uncharted being the unknown of the future. Some who is not really sure were they are going, are lost in decision and in thought. “Futile Winds” turning into the meaning of decisions or choices a person has to make that could change the path that they are going down.
Or when she writes “done with a compass, done with a chart,” it could mean that yes even though the sea is so vast and so open, they know exactly were they are going, their lives are planned out for them, and to have a wild night would be something new and fun. t
It just seems like this poem could relate in more than one way, and I’m unsure of which one exactly works for me.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I was very interested in the conversation that took place in class about Dickinson’s first poem about hope. I loved that there were many different views as to what Dickinson could have been referring to. In the end, I agreed with the conclusion we came to as a class, which is that hope is something outside of us, something that exists whether we feed its existence or not.
I loved the comparison to a bird. Someone in our class mentioned that to each person the bird could be different, and I really liked that Dickinson left the kind of bird unknown to the reader. I picture a very small bird, one that is resilient and can withstand the hardships of a storm despite its size, simply because it has no other choice. I am amazed at how God could create the tiniest of animals that have the toughest of skin because they are forced to remain strong despite their surroundings.
This kind of bird is, I believe, what Dickinson is comparing hope to. Hope exists. This is fact. It exists because without it, we wouldn’t. It exists because it must. It is bigger than us, than our emotions, than what happens to and around us daily. It is a song that is constantly sung, and that continually keeps us warm, without expecting anything in return.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
In Emily Dickinson’s poem entitled “Hope is the Thing With Feathers,” hope is described as a bird, a metaphor. The reader can begin to visualize a bird that “perches in the soul,” and “sings the tune - without words, and never stops at all.” This bird continues the song even in the gale, or storm, which “could abash the little bird.” One of the greatest revelations comes at the end of the third stanza in which Dickinson writes, “Yet, never, in extremity, it asked a crumb of me.”
Hope does not take away from people, but provides a person with a sense of confidence and strength that blessings will fall and evil will give way to goodness. Hope rests within the soul, offering an ever audible tune that is present in even the worst circumstances. Hope is in harm’s way, always at the risk of being “abashed” or destroyed by doubt and/or reality. Hope doesn’t always succeed, for one reason or another, yet it never completely disappears. A comment was spoken of in class that made me realize that, more or less, hope blooms in the season of troubles. Under these circumstances hope has the opportunity to come alive, or it can be entirely forgotten, which would cause someone to walk down a darkened path. I tend to be optimistic about life, but I’ve had my hopes dashed. ife is full of ups and downs.
Emily Dickinson’s poem describes a wonderful image of hope, a fragile bird that sings an everlasting tune, and doesn’t ask of anything from her.
February 12th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
When thinking about the first poem. There were several images that came into my mind. The first came from the stanza about hope singing. It makes me think of a bird that is in the complete and under darkness of the soul and with each note that the bird sings, light shines through the darkness. In the same way, hope it the thing that keeps our souls from being in complete and utter darkness. Without hope, there would be no reason to have any joy. To not have hope is to not live.
The bird seems to be able to weather any storm. Though I would envision the bird as small and fragile, it must have considerable strength to be able to be surviving in the storms of the soul. I think that we are given an innate sense of hope. There is no way to truly get rid of hope because are not the ones who place the hope inside of us. Because of this hope will always be there.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I thought I’d shift my topic of conversation to the second poems, Wild Nights! Wild Nights. I found this poem to be extremely interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, she could be addressing either of two topics, friendship, or love. Either one I find to be strange because of the life she lived. She lived in her parents house, save for a year or two, until she died. She had only a small handful of friends, all of which (except her dog) either left her or died. She had no romantic relationship (at least that we know about) and she lived an extremely secretive life. To write about something that is that unattainable in this sort of tone seems like it would be a very hard thing to do. With lines such as “Done with the compass Done with the Chart” it seems like she wanted to just throw away everything that she had to just be with someone, anyone perhaps. I thought that was very interesting since she still lived with her parents and had a very normal life, without much change or chance.
February 12th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
One image that came to my mind from the first poem, was the image of a bird covering its young with its wings. I feel like this image is often used in biblical language in reference to God covering us and protecting us. This image came to me from the line that says “that kept so many warm.” While the majority of the poem gives images of a bird simply singing in a storm, I think that this image of a bird protecting something could also be implied through the words, and that it really adds another dimension to the metaphor. Dickinson seems to be saying that hope is consistent, is not easily destroyed, and is not conditional. This coincides with the image of a mother bird, who doesn’t ask anything of the baby birds it protects and stays to cover them even more when the storms and gales come.
Other than this image, I also really enjoyed the structure of the poem, the flow, and the way it can be sung to a basic hymn tune. It seems to fit this poem as well as many of her others, and match the tone of not being too emotional, pretty constant, and matter-of-fact. Especially in “Hope is the thing with feathers,” the structure and meter relates to the constancy of hope. Also, the meter varies slightly between lines, which can compare to circumstances of life changing, the winds and the storms, and hope following those changes. I really agree with Dickinson’s view of hope and the way she presents it because it seems not too optimistic (it seems to imply that a strong enough storm could abash the little bird) but still optimistic enough to give truth and show the substance of hope.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dickinson’s first poem “Hope,” however the second one, “Wild Nights!” intrigued me even more. Not only was it talking about the sea and sailing, but it was more along the lines of using that terminology to speak of a passionate or perhaps sexual intimacy. I loved the connections that Dickinson made between the two! I also found it fascinating how the relationships in her personal life are not anything like the relationships she portrays in the poem. As others have said, she no romantic social life; therefore I feel as though it would be extremely hard to write about something that you have little or no experience in. I also think that Dickinson is struggling with wanting something more out of life, like this is more of a fantasy for her. This poem is full of imagery for her desires that she has maybe shared with a special someone possibly in a dream.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
When we discussed this poem in class I was very overwhelmed with all of the different view points. It was nice to get into a good discussion and hear a bunch of sides, but I feel that I now have too many opinions floating around in my brain. I feel that the one that I most identify with though, is the idea that hope is connected to us. I do not agree with Dickinson that hope doesn’t ask of anything. I feel like it does take part of us away with it, but it is a part of us that we can always get back and always renew. I feel that the online time that hope is completely gone is when people completely give up and don’t ever try again i.e. suicide, fatal diseases that people just succumb to, etc.
Hope is definitely something that people find in God. Those of us that do not believe in God find that hope within the ‘spirituality’ of others. Hope is not a thing, even though Dickinson thinks so, I feel as if it is a feeling that sort of surrounds us. It isn’t tangible, and that’s why I say that people who don’t believe in God find hope from the ‘spirituality’ of others. Just as spirituality is not palpable, neither is hope. I think that the poem is beautiful, but I do not agree with Dickinson.
February 13th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Hope’s expression goes beyond its own definition in this poem. I think hope in Dickinson’s poem is portrayed as what develops or is achieved by having hope. I will try to explain what I mean.
Hope is present within the possibility of changes in the world. In the last stanza, when Dickinson wrote about hearing things in the chillest land and on the strangest sea, I got a picture of places that Dickinson probably had never been; my image for her was of Africa with all its injustice. She knew of the things that went on in there, she had “heard” of them. She knew that hope in Africa sings a sweeter tune than it may sing in America; in Africa it is so unique, so foreign to wrongdoing and is in short supply. The sweet things that are in short supply are generally demanded over what is commonplace. For many in Africa, the storm of injustice had abashed the little bird, which makes the rare appearance of the bird hope all the more special.
The last two lines are the most interesting to me. I feel like Dickinson was trying to materialize a feeling of disappointment in herself with these. She had heard of hope in the chillest of lands and on the strangest sea. The fact that it had never asked a crumb of her points to her own seeming inability to have even the smallest affect on change in those places she saw as needing hope. She maybe thought that she was unable to influence the ascension of hope; that was why it never asked her for any sustenance. Possible is the fact that she was disappointed in herself because she maybe had never even tried to feed the bird of hope for the foreign place. Also, maybe the bird did not ask her for a crumb for Africa because, as Dickinson is so often a writer of sorrows, she has never fed a crumb to her own bird of hope.
I don’t know. I think that I missed Dickinson’s meaning completely, but I like what I extracted from the poem anyway. Sorry this was so long.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:04 am
Oh, Emily. What to say about you, Emily.
Let’s start with this. Who is the speaker in this piece? A prostitute. A siren of sorts, luring sailors away and taking their money. Some might say “How dare you assert that a woman would write such things!” I would say, how dare you offend her by not looking deeper into her words.
One could tell the audience was the seafaring type because of the allusion to the compass and chart, which are marked in capital letters due to their importance. More on that later. But how is she in any way a prostitute? Well, look at the pick up line that is line five and six. We must all agree that Emily Dickinson is a gifted woman. She writes with utmost elegance. This pun is amazingly beneath her. It clearly isn’t her talking, it is a woman trying to butter up a man. Can’t you imagine a beautiful woman speaking to a drunken, rich sailor. She leans over and gets an inch from his face and says-
Futile–the Winds-
To a Heart in port!
What a load of garbage.
Dickinson also uses capitalization to stress a battle between the sailor’s job and his temptation for a “wild night.” If one were to break down the capitalized words into those two categories, it would look something like this:
Sailing Sex
—– —
Winds Wild Nights
Compass Heart
Eden
Sea
Tonight
Thee
Clearly, the speaker is banking on the sex.
Dickinson uses another play on words here that can be charted back to the oldest of literature. The speaker comments “Ah, the Sea!” This is a reference to the sea of passion so often found in literature. The speaker, in a sense, is saying “Do you want that cold, salty water or some hot, steamy passionate love?”
Finally, the tone and rhyme suggests a luring of the audience. The constant use of the “W” in the first stanza gives it a smooth, soft appeal. The constant rhyming throughout appeals even more to the senses. The meter lends itself to that of a chant or spell, as though the speaker is attempting to mesmerize the audience.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:05 am
For what it’s worth, the chart I mapped out above looked a lot better when I was typing it.
February 13th, 2008 at 7:38 am
I also thought it was interesting that Dickinson led a recluse life, yet in “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!” it seems like she is talking about a passionate relationship, and it appears she knows what she is talking about. Ususally people write about what they have experienced themselves because then it is easiest to find the right words. But knowing Dickinson’s background it is hard to believe that she has had this kind of intimate relationship with someone. I think she was writing out of longing. I believe in the moment she wrote this poem she was tired of being alone and longed for some passionate excitement from someone else. She wanted a “Wild Night” where she let loose, forgot about all other hardships or setbacks in the world (the wind) and let someone come into her heart (dock in the port). Maybe she looked around herself and envied those she saw with relationships such as these and she wrote about her own longing to throw caution to the wind (done with the compass, done with the chart) and let herself get swept away in love. It’s easy to create for yourself an imaginative world with words where one can get lost in writing and create their own fantisies. I think Dickinson did that when she wrote “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!”.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I really enjoyed the poem, “Hope is a thing with feathers,” but I did not find the metaphor all that creative. Since biblical times, hope has been portrayed as a bird, because of the story of Noah and the flood, and then Noah and His family knowing that the flood was over, because of the dove with an olive branch in its mouth. On that note though, I did really enjoy the poem’s portrayal of hope. The last line in the first stanza, “And never stops at all,” gives a sense of constancy that all humans ache for in this world. When disappointment comes, it is because we are putting our hope in the wrong thing, or in something that Christ is not in. But we are guaranteed by Jesus Christ that if we put our hope in Him, that it will not fail, and it will continue to seeing those wordless songs every moment, even in a storm. Dickinson did a wonderful job creating a poem for this biblical idea.
February 13th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
The poem Wild Nights- Wild Nights I found to be liberating. I see Dickinson as describing some of the best times or her life, or a part of her life she would like to have done. Sometimes in life our greatest luxuries are the times we spend being wild and crazy with friends, or maybe a lover. It’s about allowing the wind to take us where ever it leads us, not focusing on a compass or anything to do with the charts or directions. I think its about allowing the soul to be free. I love the description of rowing in Eden, after reading that I got the most beautiful mental picture of what that could mean. With all the beautiful trees, creatures, endless green grass, and seas of crystal blue waters, basically being the most peaceful place on earth is a description of the soul and its being able to wander about aimlessly without any direction at all. This takes me back to the days in highschool when I would go out with my girl friends all day and night, living our lives kind of aimlessly every now and than, and how liberating it was. It was really nice to reflect back onto that, because so easily I get caught up into work and school, I seem to forget how to have wild, fun times! This was a refreshing poem that brought back good,fun memories for me.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
The part of the poem “Wild Nights–Wild Nights” that I find most interesting is Dickinson’s word choice of “compass” and “chart”. And based on my idea that the poem is about love in a relationship, I can somewhat conclude why Dickinson may have chose those two objects.
A compass is an object an adventurer uses while on the journey. A compass holds the direction, and guides the adventurer when he or she is lost. How could this object relate to a relationship? The object could be friends that counsel a person during the good and bad times in a relationship. These friends buffer the person back onto the better path.
A chart is a tool used as a type of map. Which means that someone from the past constructed the chart to be used in present situations. In a relationship, a chart could be past experience that shows a person how a relationship is going to progress. The relationship could lead to smooth sailing or hazardous waters.
But Dickinson is saying that she is done with the compass and the chart. This means that she is done with the tools from the past and the objects to be used in the present; which is why I think that this poem is about a relationship in which the speaker is so in love that he or she can only look towards the future.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
If not about love specifically, this piece generally describes any sort of risk we take to indulge in something we’re passionate about. In describing the purpose of metaphors in class, we said they can either be specific non-negotiable comparisons, or can be open to interpretation. So I think once again Ms. Dickinson has given us to power to decipher her meaning.
My favorite, favorite idea/concept is in the last stanza “Rowing in Eden–Ah, the Sea! Might I but moor–Tonight–In Thee.’ The sexual innuendoes are unbearable! First off, I feel that her reference to Eden denotes forbidden passion (such as Eve’s of the apple). So…forbidden love is sexy. So is being MOORED to your lover–tied up like a boat to someone–now! tonight! in thee! Wow.
Regardless of whether or not this poem is an account of Dickinson’s hot juicy love life or not, its imagery, for me, seems to point to love. We don’t have compasses or maps, the winds are futile and dangerous. This is what makes love exciting, forbidden, risky, and of course, Wild.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
“Hope is a Thing With Feathers” was a little confusing to me, but yet were uniquely written. After having the poem introduced to me in class, I liked it even more. It gave me something to really think about. I never thought really about braving any kind of storm but this kind poem, written like it was gives me hope, as cliche as it sounds. I remember someone saying in class that things would have to get really bad for there to be hope involved. I agree completely and I really think this poem shows that. There’s a storm coming and the bird must hope that everything will be ok.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
For the most part, I really enjoy poetry. I find to be a very noteworthy art form - skilled poets have mastered the craft of language, a craft requires deep thinking and a mastery of human speech. I also appreciate many fine poets. But to be frank, I’ve never really been able to wrap my mind around Dickinson. Her poems are so abstract, so complex, and it’s hard for me to understand and enjoy them.
But let me see if I can unpack anything here –
The poem “Hope” is likely one of her simpler poems. It isn’t quite as riddle-like as much of her other work. Dickinson describes hope as “the thing with feathers,” the bird that “perches in the soul.” It continually sings a little whimsical tune, and can only be subdued with the most intense “storm.” Interestingly enough, many of the greater concepts of the world are compared to things of seemingly small stature. Hope is a little bird, just as faith is a mustard seed, or love is a drop of rain with strength and might of the ocean - I read that comparison in a poem when I was younger. The poem seems to express an affection for hope, an endearing little friend that keeps “so many warm” in the most desperate situations.
“Wild Nights-Wild Nights!,” from what I gather, is very authentically Dickinson. I feel Dickinson to have led a life of internal disarray and a troubled spirit. It is no wonder then that her love life would be something full of anxiety and longing. She seems to deeply desire her beloved, who would accompany her on wild nights. I presume these nights to be representative of a romantic ecstasy of sorts - Dickinson is fantasizing about being in a perfect place with the one she loves. Yet her beloved is so far away from her — she wants to be “done with the compass, done with the chart,” done waiting for his return with her heart “in port.” She’d rather “row” softly in “Eden,” but “ah, the sea” is all she has now, and longs for the nearness of her love among the wild nights of her troubled existence.
February 14th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Regarding the first poem, if i was the storm I would be quite annoyed at hope. It would be very frustrating if i was a big bad gale or storm and this little bird wouldn’t die or get blown away, it would just keep singing. I absolutely love to think that that is the case for us, that in terms we are in one long storm and yet because we have hope in Christ we will keep singing and nothing evil can do will completely destroy us. It is good i believe to to look at life throw the eyes of our enemy and see how scared they might be, this makes our job of fearing evil a lot easier. Another aspect of the poem that i enjoyed was how the little symbol of a bird held so much power. That hope being a small thing in this poem kept many warm and gave life to so many, it was also, as said above, invincible. I love the fact that so much power can be found in such a small thing, i like this because it is such a paradoxical thing just as so much else is in this world. Any way i am a fan of the poem.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
These poems filled with metaphors, rhythm and meaning come from a woman who lived in isolation. I wonder if she wrote in metaphor so well because she couldn’t connect with people, and her metaphors were her legacy to the rest of the world?
Her description of passion in “wild Nights! Wild Nights!” brought words to an experience and feeling which few do an efficient job. Even though she most likely never physically lived this, her imagination and foresight of the experience becomes real to the reader in such that I never doubt her description. If I had not known more information about Dickenson’s life, I wouldn’t even think to speculate on her actual experience with Wild Nights. I find it invigorating that a young woman can live life through her imagination. All humans have some capacity to imagine.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
The minute I saw this poem was entitled “Wild Nights” I wanted to read it. Of course Dickinson didn’t title any of her work, but knowing the first line was about wild nights made it sound intriguing. It was particularly intriguing after already researching her quiet peaceful life spent sheltered. What did Emily know of wild nights? Nights of spontaneity, passion, and possibly regrets.
Emily says that wild nights are a luxury. A luxury. Something that is enjoyable because it is rare. Wild nights aren’t great to have all the time, every day, or it wouldn’t be special or a luxury.
Okay, I’m reading too literally into this poem. I know it’s not about wild nights but passion. I can see that too. I can see passion engraved into the poem. But truly, I also see wild nights. I see the need to throw away the compass, the chart, and approach the open sea. To live the moment in life for all it’s worth.
I am utterly fascinated by Dickinson’s personal life. I wish she had facebook so I could stalk her. Just kidding. It’s amazing that a woman of such seclusion, of such introversion, can accurately describe such an experience that can not possibly be experienced alone.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Wild Nights Wild Nights…
Oh how the words connect together like a fine thread stitching a quilt of a lyrical masterpiece in which to keep warm on a cold night! It begins with “Wild nights Wild nights” which makes me believe are the innocent days of young lovers. No cares in the world, just the very thought of being with that certain someone is enough to quench the thirst of love or lust.
“Were I with thee, Wild nights should be, Our luxury!” again reiterating the fact that someone who in the world can only be with that special other. If I were with you, the night would be Nothing less than a journey, an adventurous time, when the very moon itself stops for love. Our luxury, this is all the world to be had. To take ones hand and put forth the trust to pursue what the night has to offer.
“Futile the Winds, To a Heart in port!” Now this is beautiful… I believe Emily wrote this on one of those nights when all the cares in the world were lifted by some supernatural power. We have all experience these nights, when we feel a deep and powerful life dwelling within us that makes us feel light as air. The only advantage is, I believe, is that she was able to use this feeling to write and portray to us a new verse and to forever feel a moments time. “Futile the Winds,To a Heart in port.” To me this signifies the realm of space and time. The wind, “the world and everything that holds you back,” may try to stop you from reaching your love. But no matter how much it steps you down, love shall overcome.
“Done with the compass,
done with the chart” The port is reached and you are now with your love… No longer do you have to deal with these tools. What once guided you on your way now become paper-weights as they have no more value. The only thing left is you and your love.
“Rowing in Eden” This is by far the boldest statement in the entire poem and it to me is the most lovely metaphor. When “rowing,” your body makes a certain motion that can be described as a pulsing… or making love. Rowing in Eden, to me this shows that now, with your love, the two fulfill their desires with one another in a place that is pure heaven…
Ah! the Sea!! There is something mysterious and unexplainable about how the sea makes one feel. Being on the water, tossed around from side to side, back and forth back and forth… the waves gently caress you and make you helplessly relish in the moment. Such a beautiful beautiful way of describing something that is indescribable!
“Might I but moor, To-night in thee” What a strong was of saying how one person needs to hold fast and lock themselves with another. A gorgeous way to bring about and sail off into the distance… A way to gift us, a way to bless our imagination.
thank you Emily~
February 14th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I’m going to go out on a limb with Emily Dickinson’s Wild Nights! Wild Nights! Let me know what you guys think. Is it possible that she writes this poem in the perspective of a male sailor? This may not make sense, but I will try to explain it. It seems to me that the character of this poem is one who was once in love with the sea but has now found something better. He has found love and passion in a woman, and therefore he leaves that which he has formerly loved, the sea. We see this perfectly with the first half of the last stanza. What is Dickinson trying to communicate with the line “Rowing in Eden?” I believe that this sailor views his love for this woman as if he were sailing in Eden. He has taken that which he has formally loved and made a metaphor to what his love is now with this woman. But this sea that he creates in the last stanza is much greater than the sea he feel in love with before. I don’t know if this makes sense, but I would be interested to see what you guys think. I also believe the last two lines are much more sexual than we may think. The image of a boat docking and mooring is very erotic.
February 14th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
“Hope is the Thing With Feathers” is an extremely metaphorical poem, which deals with the idea of hope as it pertains to humans and human experience. Hope is something which we all think we understand well and can easily defined. However, this poem may call into question some of assumptions about this very interesting characteristic. In the poem, Emily Dickinson likens hope to a bird. When I read the poem I was quite taken with the metaphor which she uses. I found myself asking what the song which the bird sings is supposed to be. What sort of song would hope sing to the soul? Perhaps this is taking the metaphor farther than the author intended. It seems that maybe the bird hope merely sings a reassuring sort of song to the soul, which is really quite similar to hope itself. Perhaps hope the bird sings a song of hope, or maybe the author had other ideas about the song which are beyond my understanding. Another aspect of the poem which I found interesting is the idea set forth in the last two lines. “Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.” I think that Dickinson is trying to say that even in the most difficult of times, hope has never left her. It has always survived evn the sorest of storms and the worst of extremities. Hope is a wonderful gift, which I have grown to appreciate more thanks to this poem.
February 15th, 2008 at 1:15 am
I liked the exercise that David had us do in class on Wednesday. He asked us to define passion. No one could come up with a single word or phrase that defined passion the way that each of us thinks of it. This was an excellent way to help us think about metaphors in a different way. Dickinson’s use of metaphor is constant throughout her poetry. Her poem about hope is an excellent example of Dickinson’s metaphoric genius. By comparing hope to a bird, Dickinson gives us a multi-faceted image with which we may compare to hope. Taking what we know of birds and then applying it to what we think we know about hope, we can enhance our understanding of the word hope. For instance, we know that birds fly and land and then take off again. In the same way, hope can rise and fall and rise again. The image that Dickinson paints of the bird facing a storm clearly connects with our idea of the need for hope when facing a “storm” in our lives.
February 15th, 2008 at 2:03 am
Some might think this is a stretch, but perhaps another way of reading Dickinson’s “Wild Nights” is as a metaphor to our spiritual lives. In this case, “wild nights” would not be in reference to strong sexual desires, but to times in our lives where we are on fire for God. When we are in this state of spiritual ecstasy, nothing else matters in our lives; the compasses and charts of life (what people expect from us) are all done away with, leaving us steadfast in the embrace of our lover like a ship secured at port. When we pursue this type of relationship with God and come to know him more, we often lose ourselves in the sea of his awesomeness, and the more time we spend with him the more we realize that we need to keep on rowing for there is so much more to Him. Every minute in his presence compels us to desire more, leaving us with an unquenchable desire to have more of Him. Just a thought…
February 15th, 2008 at 3:00 am
In regards to poem number two, I have trouble seeing it as a poem about love at all. I see it as a declaration of freedom. “Wild nights” makes me think of craziness and reckless abandonment—and the voice is claiming that she is indulging in this spirit of freedom or limitlessness. Here there is no influence (the winds) that can affect her because she is at peace (or at port) in her heart. Done being guided by the conventional, she throws out the compass and the chart leaving her with no direction, yet freedom! Eden even is now a forbidden place, much of where reckless nights may take one. This forbidden land is strange and foreign yet still serene because it is where the voice wants to be. The reader now seeks to moor or settle in this spirit of freedom and recklessness yet knows that she is not able to.
February 15th, 2008 at 9:40 am
When I think of Dickinson’s poetry, usually it is fairly negative. This is probably because she writes about the beauty of death a lot. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing; I just find it slightly morbid.
The first poem seems to be something rather contrary to what I thought Dickinson’s poetry was like: it contains a message of hope. Beginning with stanza one, Dickinson describes hope to be like a bird. Interestingly, she does not outright call it a bird (that is, until stanza two), but she gives it the qualities that a bird has: “feathers,” “perches,” “sings a tune… without… words.” I think it’s a great analogy; I feel that hope is something that clings to the soul. It remains a quality of our lives that allows us to push on until tomorrow and gives us a drive; it never stops its sweet melody that things will indeed be better later. Additionally, in the subsequent stanzas, Dickinson talks about the “storms” and “gales” of life and the “chillest land” and “strangest sea.” Despite the storms, people still cling to hope in the harshest of situations. I like what Derek Sipe said about the line “…could abash the little bird,” that Dickinson chose not to let the storms kill the bird. It seems like many trials we encounter in life could destroy our hope, but mysteriously they do not. Personally, I find it nothing short of a miracle. Hope really is a thing with feathers: it could be fleeting and it isn’t very large (it could be killed by storms), but it clings to the soul and sings us a song to keep moving towards tomorrow.
February 15th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Wild Nights. I agree that this poem is, indeed, a love poem. Beginning with stanza one, I don’t exactly know why the poet refers to the nights as “wild.” Is it sexual in nature, or is it just such good times that she refers to them as wild times. Regardless, the poet describes these times as “luxur[ies].” Interesting choice of word. To me, a luxury implies something over-the-top great, yet is not a necessity. I checked with dictionary.com for a definition of “luxury.” Interesting that one of the definitions is “a foolish or worthless form of self-indulgence.” Could that play a factor? I am unsure.
Stanza two and three seem to both use significant nautical themes in them. It appears that one has found his or her love: the “Heart in port” is protected from the Winds. Furthermore, he or shee no longer has a need for the “compass” or “chart,” which may possibly be metaphors for searching for love or companionship or something of that nature. Stanza three holds an interesting paradox that I did not notice until class: the fact that the poet is “rowing in the sea” which he/she considers Eden, yet at the same time, he/she desires to moor with (in) “thee,” perhaps a lover. I am unsure as to the reason behind this, though I could speculate that one has regrets about moving on? Or, perhaps one is later in life and has found his/her Eden, but looking back, does desire to be with a beloved? I wish I knew.
February 15th, 2008 at 10:36 am
When Emily Pratt read us “Hope is the Thing With Feathers,” I realized something that I never realized before. I usually just thought as hope as a thing that gets us through the rough times, and that everyone just needs hope. What I realized is that hope does not need a human to survive, that’s why I think Dickinson say “doesn’t ask a crumb of me.” I also think that everyone does not have hope, those who are ready to die or are sick of what world we have give up hope, refuse to contain it so that way they can pass through this life more quickly. Hope is like the moon and the ocean. The ocean is still the ocean without the moon, but without the moon, there will be no waves. That is what I think hope does in us, we can still be, but we will not be our whole selves, like an ocean without waves.
February 15th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
This poem is about one’s venture at sea in parallel to one’s experience with love. I believe this poem describes the rather dangerous encounters that people face at sea just like one faces when searching for love. One would assume that these dangers are a bad thing; however I believe that Emily describes them as a good thing by using the word luxury. I feel as though she is saying that if sea travel was easy, than everyone would be doing it and the few brave sailors who successfully made their runs safely, would not prosper like they did if everyone could do it. I believe that is part of what makes love so rewarding to. When you know you have weathered the storm and found the love of your life, it brings about a good feeling of satisfaction.
Hope is a Thing with Feathers
I enjoyed reading this poem because hope is something that keeps me going. In listening to the news or simply observing what is going on around us in our society one needs hope for a brighter future in order to find peace. In the first stanza, Dickenson describes hope as a bird that is singing an endless song to bring us relief. In the second, Emily goes on to describe how the storm of life is sore at the little bird for not being able to bring us down due to the warmth we receive from the voice of the little bird. Finally, Dickenson describes how vast the song of hope really is. She says that it is in the chilliest land, and the strangest sea. The most amazing part of the poem once in the last two lines when she says “Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.” I believe that here Dickenson is saying here that this great thing of hope comes to us free and asks us of nothing. This is a beautiful poem, however I do see somewhat of a misrepresentation in the last line despite how amazing it sounds. I do believe that hope does force us to pay a price, and that is when our hope in something leads to a dead end. The despair that can come from that is often a terrible price to pay for hoping. I guess that is all dependent on one’s view of how closely related hope for the future and how things in the future pan out really is.
February 15th, 2008 at 11:53 am
“Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson really got me thinking about the definition of the word hope. Until class discussion, I never really contemplated the true meanings of words such as these. Though class discussion was very insightful and thought provoking, I couldn’t bring myself to agree with the conclusion we came to at the end of class. The idea that hope is within us and is something that doesn’t rely on what we give it doesn’t make sense to me. I still feel that in order to have hope you have to make a conscious effort to connect yourself with the optimistic world that some circumstances require. I feel that we have to acknowledge hope in order for it to take place. But again, aside from all this, the poem has really made me think differently about the definition of the word and others.
I also was impressed and became open to the use of metaphors as they were portrayed in the poem. Class discussion was intriguing and helped me to understand how the use of metaphors can be given as a definition to specific circumstances. I love how the metaphors, as compact as they are, can hold so much truth and meaning to a wide range of deep emotional and spiritual concepts.
Kudos to you, Emily Dickinson.
February 15th, 2008 at 11:57 am
After reading Hope is a Thing With Feathers, I thought of how hope is the only thing that can get you through hardship when you think nothing else can. Hope is something that remains in our souls, it is the very thing that drives us to keep going. I love the analogy Dickinson uses in this poem because of how simple it is. She says “hope is a thing with feathers, that perches in the soul.” I think that is so beautiful to think about. It is something that can’t be taken away from us unless we let someone or something have it. We can get through so many things just by having hope. It is only when we give up, that we suffer. All I have to do is remember that when the storm is rough, hope is going to be the thing that gets me through it all.
February 15th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I think maybe this is about the desire to be with a man. She uses “were I”, “should be” and “luxury” as if this is more of a wishful state than real life. On the other hand, I believe that Emily Dickinson is just using her imagination when she wrote this poem to explain her inner desire for passion and love. Wishing and desiring a fear that she can not overcome the fear of people. She could not even interact on a personal level with most of her extended family, so how could she interact intimately with another man or stranger. It makes no sense. If I were to accept this poem then that would be like me taking advice from someone who has never experienced what they are giving advice on. What kind of wild nights has Emily Dickenson ever experienced? After reading her biography, it seems as though she was sheltered and did not interact socially.
February 15th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Mark: good job noting that the speaker in “Wild Nights” need not be female. Especially as we presume Dickinson to be writing from imagination and not experience, I think the voice could be either.
Marianna: the medieval read of Song of Songs in Scripture took very much your line of argument, that the seemingly sexual imagery there is actually a metaphor for the soul’s love of God. I am personally of the opinion that it need not be one or the other, and I think it’s important to see both. After all, love-making and marriage at their best, according to Scripture, ought to be shadows and pictures of God’s kind of deep union.
I find it ironic how many different takes on “Wild Nights” are evinced here. To David and I, reading it from inside a marriage, it had one, blazing, beautifully clear meaning.
Hint: prostitutes definitely never crossed our minds.
February 15th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
So in class on Monday we talked a lot about “Hope…” by Dickinson.
) that she didn’t agree with the idea of hope just dying or leaving us, but it is more like hope fails because we ignore it or quash it.
We talked about how Dickinson seems to be saying that hope is not of ourselves, it is not something that relies on the way we feel, it is not something that requires anything of us - it is somehow an inherent quality of being alive, of existing - and we talked about it being intricately connected to the will to live. So, based on the poem, if your hope dies, or leaves, or stops singing, you lose the will to live, so you die.
And then Maggie said (or at least, this is what I heard when she spoke
And I had to try to reconcile these things, because I agree with Maggie, but I wanted to figure out if the poem could still fit with what I think about hope, because the poem kept sticking to me.
So all of that is to say, here is what I think:
I agree that hope and the will to live are inseparable. So hope is something we have if we are alive, though it may be very very small in some. Faith is also very closely connected to hope. The last two lines of the poem imply that hope never asks or requires anything of us. I think this is basically true in that we don’t HAVE to pay any attention to it. We can ignore our hope. We can also discourage it. But that is not a good choice. There are things that happen in life that severely damage our hope, that attack our hope, like when someone very close to us dies, especially if that person was someone who helped to ‘keep our hope alive’ by encouraging us, etc. This kind of disaster is the kind that can cause people to lose all hope and therefore the will to live. Hope can live through a lot of terrible things, like the poem talks about (”I’ve heard it in the chillest land, /And on the strangest sea”), but a “sore… storm… could abash the little bird.” If we ignore our hope, and allow it grow weak, it is a lot easier for such a disaster to totally destroy our hope rather than just damaging it. However, if we do build up our own hope; if we encourage ourselves and allow others to encourage us and allow ourselves to hope in many things, and have faith, then it will take a LOT more to destroy our hope. So even though hope doesn’t ASK anything of us, it really is a good idea to feed it anyway because that will make it stronger. And the best food comes through faith in God. Hope in God is living hope, it is everlasting hope, it is hope that cannot be even touched, even weakened by the storms of life, because it is hope in something super-natural. So that sort of hope can withstand even the sorest of storms and the hardest of trials.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Well it’s cool that this is the second time I have to rewrite this response because I didn’t write my email address in the appropriate box. First of all I’d like to say I thought David did a great job at presenting the poem “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson. He brought up a lot of good points and ideas that I had never thought about. I took notes as she spoke and wrote down some of my own images and opinions about the poem. Hope is a fragile tune, yet it has a power, and in the last line of this poem it is given freely. I thought it was interesting what was said about labor pains. Poetry, art, and creation can all be painful processes that give birth to something special and new. I thought it was interesting that gale means storm. A sore storm can easily abash a little bird. My image was of a bird with music notes coming out of its mouth. I thought of the bird as God within each of us. And he never stops singing and giving us hope. Hope comes as needed to the person who needs it. There are those storms in life that keep us searching and keep us going. This was a poem with a unique metaphor. After we discussed this poem I realized the importance of metaphor in poems and … in life!
February 15th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
“Wild Nights-Wild Nights!”- by Emily Dickinson was not the easiest poem to understand but the presentation helped me out greatly. I agree that she is trying to get to the heart of passion, there is a sense that she is trying to control the passion by saying “You’re done”. This is a poem of rhyming and meter. It’s about the fight of control of the passion. Often in literature the sea equals passion. We talked about how that it totally unattainable. I also wrote down notes about the Physical and the emotional aspects of Passion. The emotion in this poem is just overpowering. It is a good capture to how passion really feels. Emily Dickinson is good at describing. Although she can be hard to understand at times, she is good at explaining feelings and emotion! I actually didn’t write down anything about the physical part of the poem in my notes. But I agree that the sea is being compared to this passion that she talks about. I sensed a bit of control and emotion throughout the poem.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
So when i read “Wild nights” the first time, before the discussion of its sexual nature, i had not even thought of it as being a poem about wild passion. In my opinion this poem is about a sailor who is wishing he was at sea. I took the line “Wild nights should be our luxury” to mean that the sailor wants to have the excitement of being at sea during a storm or just the anticipation of adventure at sea.
I can however, see how sexuality can play into this poem as well, turning the wild night into something erotic rather than an adventure at sea. Given that intepretation then, the poem seems to be longing for something. The “I” in the poem is longing to have a wild night with maybe a forbidden lover just as the sailor is longing for a wild night at sea.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I really enjoyed the poem hope is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson. She uses an analogy of hope being a bird. I find this analogy great because it does not specify what type of bird it is. For some people the bird may be a roaring eagle while for others the bird could be a small field sparrow, depending on the level of hope an individual maintains. Also the metaphor of hope being a bird gives hope the imagery that it can fly and be free. Also in this Poem Dickinson reveals that hope exists and comes from the soul. I really appreciate the line “and sings the tune without the words”. I feel that this means that hope does not always require reasoning. Sometimes people hope beyond reason and hope without ration on their side. I do however disagree with the final few lines of this poem. I feel that hope askes much more then a crumb of the individual. Hope can encompass the human soul and requires more thought and energy then a single crumb.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Hope is a Thing With Feathers definitely struck me on a deeper level than Wild Nights! Wild Nights! I have always been a sucker for stories, poems, and movies that focus on hope. A great example would be that one of my favorite movies is The Shawshank Redemption for that specific reason. This poem immediately made me think of a direct quote from that movie that doesn’t directly tie in, but makes sense in my own symbolically ignorant head. Towards the end, Morgan Freeman (Red) is narrating about how he misses his friend but knows that Tim Robbins (Andy) was not meant to be in prison because of his beauty as a person. Morgan says “Some birds are not meant to be caged, their feather are just too bright.” I thought this really worked with the poem because throughout the movie, Andy gets beaten down over, and over. Yet after all of the injustices that were performed against him, he kept striving to do the right thing and to press on with his life. So I thought it was very relevant how Andy is looked at as a bird of hope that cannot be brought down. I could be seriously off here haha, but it made a lot of sense to me.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Please forgive me for the tardiness of my entry.
Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
I found Emily Dickinson’s work slightly un-nerving. Her poetry is a bit more complex than Walt Whitman. As a reader, I felt confused but intrigued. I wanted to keep reading to see if a more clear understanding would unfold…but it didn’t. This poem and “Hope” seemed to be the only two that I could even grasp into my mind. In my search for a deeper understanding of her poem “Wild Nights” I ran across a few questions that seemed worthy of acknowledging.
1. Is the “Thee” in line 2 the same “thee” found in line 12? After taking careful consideration to the uses of that word, I realized that there were two different meanings. In line two she is addressing herself as a being; a human. In line twelve, “thee” is a metaphor of something that can be embraced, and indulgent such as the sea that is previously mentioned.
While reading over this poem, I noticed that alliteration was not contained within this text, but could be noticed as part of the “big picture.” I also noticed that the first and third stanzas made use of rhyme while the second one did not.
This poem inspired me to know more about Emily Dickinson’s personal life. Who was she speaking of in this poem? Who was the love of her life? As important as social acceptance is becoming, it makes me wonder how someone like Emily could live in perfect solitude for so long.
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:52 am
It almost seems naive that Dickensen suggests that hope, “the thing with feathers” has “never in extremity asked a crumb of me”. Is that really accurate of the thing we refer to as hope? It seems to me that hope is the only thing that keeps humanity alive most of the time. In a situation like Jews starving in a concentration camp during WWII, hope would literally be the only thing worth living for, and once it was gone, life would be ending soon. To me, this kind of hope, in extremity, requires sincere diligence, and asks everything of a person. It is the waking up every day and choosing to view life optimistically instead of realistically. It nearly violates human nature to be hopeful in situations of extreme hardship. For Dickensen to suggest that hope has ever asked anything of her makes me think that maybe her “in extremity” is not the same as other peoples’ hardships.
Wild Nights!, Wild Nights! seems to have a dual meaning, at least. First it describes a heart (a soul?) in port, so, I guess a sea-faring person who is currently not at sea. It also seems to be talking about wild nights like a way to get away from problems or an outlet to frustration, much the way that people use alcohol to self-medicate and distract from real problems. The poem ends with the narrator asking “might I but moor to’night in thee” which either refers to wild nights like a person, or as a way to distract a person from reality.