Not So Simple: A Reading of a Dickinson Poem

If you ask me to name my favorite American poet, and there are many extraordinary ones to choose from, I will unabashedly reply: Emily Dickinson.

Her recurring themes of deity, nature, and mortality have always held me captive. I grew up in an intensely Christian household, only to rebel later in life as the problem of evil weighed heavily on my mind. Dickinson was herself a rebel. In a time of vestigial Puritanism, she chose to stay home from church and frequently questioned God’s way of doing things.

Like her, I am intimately aware of death’s proximity and its universal scythe. As for her ardent love for nature—count me in.

Above all, I admire her poetry for its enigmatic essence, her finest poems lending themselves to myriad readings and leaving behind a lingering residue.

Like the Bible studies of my youth, her work invites group commentary. Like her elusive life, we probe the lines and never exhaust them.

Perhaps her most universally beloved poem is “Hope is the thing with feathers.” Unlike the vast majority of her 1,776 poems, this one resides in an apparent simplicity, which likely explains its enduring popularity:

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.

Yet, the poem has its detractors. Some critics contend that its smooth surface, aside from the initial personification of hope as a bird, lacks the integrity of a truly well-crafted poem.

They argue that it contains no irony, no paradox, and no resonant dictional elements. In its hymnal quatrains, they hear a sing-song quality that invites parody. They claim it lacks metrical subtlety.

They ask: if the bird sings a song without words, shouldn’t a poem proffering hope actually articulate its basis?

The second stanza, however, belies the poem’s seeming simplicity, introducing an undermining threat to its optimism: “And sore must be the storm / That could abash the little bird.” In short, the stanza introduces the possibility of a duress so severe that even hope cannot transcend it. “Abash” connotes embarrassment, or even shame for having entertained hope in the first place, while “little bird” underscores an acute vulnerability.

I actually admire this stanza precisely for its ambiguity. Are there life interventions that—no matter what we oppose against them, like sandbags piled against a rising river, cannot avail?

Dickinson does not answer, nor should she. The stanza deserves praise for its integrity. Writing in a cultural context that demanded a definitive conversion experience, Dickinson may suggest that hope—or better yet, faith, does not always prevail.

The eminent late critic Helen Vendler, about whom I recently posted (Vendler ), contends that the poem’s seeming simplicity conceals an underlying riddle. The text never once specifies the word “bird”; we are left to discover it ourselves.

While hope carries a massive theological history, the poet bypasses complication with a quotidian analogy drawn from nature. St. Paul famously wrote of the three virtues that abide—or rather, transcend: faith, hope, and love. Dickinson’s analogy is demonstrative of this. Replete in New Testament overtones, this hope “endures all things,” despite life’s vicissitudes of “storm” and “gale.”

It continues, asking for nothing—not a single “crumb.” It does not need to be fed; it requires no logical rationale.

Returning to that challenging second stanza, perhaps the speaker is not acquiescing to the idea that hope will fail under trial. Instead, she may be conjecturing about what unthinkable life tribunal would be required to extinguish it.

The ambiguity remains beautifully unresolved. Is Dickinson admiring the unshakeable faith of her fellow townsfolk—a faith to which she herself could not subscribe? I have a cousin whose faith has remained utterly unaltered, no matter the circumstance, from the earliest days I have known her.

If we exclude Dickinson herself from the poem’s persona, as the most valuable exegesis does, a deeper problematic emerges: is this a poem of distant admiration or personal testimony? The closing words, “of me,” pull us back and forth between a deeply personal confession and the observations of a detached admirer.

Vendler is entirely right about the riddle here that conceals a depth wrought of subtle artistry. Even Dickinson’s dashes perform a vital cinematic role—acting like a panning camera that takes in each angle separately, before finally folding the scene into a consummate plenitude.

–RJ