Blog post 2

Usually poems have rhyme in it, and there are specific sounds are repeated to increase the effect of one emotion. In Emily Dickinson’s poem, this feature is especially obvious. For her poem Hope is the thing with feathers, the last word of each lines has a slant rhyme. There are totally three stanza, four lines each, and 1 sentence in total. The slant rhymes are in the pattern of ABAB,CDCD,EFFF. Another feature is that for most lines of this poem, it starts with “that” and “and”, which has a regulation and makes the poem to continue.

The Poem Hope is the thing with feathers tells the process of a hope grows up in a person’s mind then crushed by storm. Each stanza expresses different emotion. For the first stanza, it expresses the emotion of happiness and joyness. Dickinson uses metaphor and describe hope as a feather, which is the figure of bird. This little bird lives in one’s soul and perches. It sings a song with no word and never stop. By using the word soul, it portraits how deep a person could believe in hope. It also means that hope is inherent; it is the origin of happiness, as the poem says, the little happy bird sings all the time. The last word of each lines in the first stanza are “feathers” “soul” “words” “at all”. They all have the really deep O sound. Through this repetition, it heighten the consistency of this stanza. As a result, when people are reading each lines, this repetition acts the role of leading readers to resonate with the happiness of hope. In the second stanza, the emotion has a big turning point. Suddenly, there is a big storm comes and bashes the hope. Here is another metaphor that describes the matters that may make one hopeless as a big storm in the gale. This big storm beat back the birds and make them no longer able to enjoy the warmness. The warmness in the poem also represent the happiness, which creates a contrast between cold storm and warm nest. As the first stanza does, the second stanza also has a slant rhyme scheme. “heard” “bird” “storm” “warm” has a pattern of CDCD. It has a different rhyme from the first stanza, so people can easily distinguish the emotional difference in these two parts. The main character is usually be introduced at the beginning of a poem, but in this poem, Emily Dickinson introduces herself in the first sentence of the last stanza: “ I’ve heard it in the chillest land - /And on the strangest Sea - /Yet - never - in Extremity, /It asked a crumb - of me.” It has a pattern of EFFF. She tells the readers about her own life experience that she knows the feeling of hopeless. The repetition of this stanza is not about the rhyme scheme but about the superlatives. She uses “chillest” and “strangest” to creat a feeling of desperation, lonelyness, and hopeless. She then uses the word “never”, which is not a superlative but still heighten the sadness.

Because of Emily Dickinson’s special life pattern, this poem of her could be interpreted as a portrayal of her life. She lives alone, unlike the other women in her time who get marry and take care of everything for the family. The reclusive life gives her loneliness but also freedom of doing whatever she wants. Herself is just like the feather, or the bird, in this poem. The bird is positive, sings all the time. Even sometimes storms may come, it still continue singing, “And never stops - at all.”