Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

By: Marilou Abe

Benjunne Asuncion
Life Details

● (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886)

● She was an American poet.
● born in Amherst, Massachusetts
● After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her
youth, she briefly attended the
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her
family's house in Amherst.
● While Dickinson was a prolific writer, her only publications
during her lifetime were 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems, and one
● They contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use
slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and
punctuation.
● Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality,
two recurring topics in letters to her friends, and also explore
aesthetics, society, nature and spirituality.
● Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal
acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and
● A 1998 article in The New York Times revealed that of the
many edits made to Dickinson's work, the name "Susan" was
often deliberately removed.
● Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson
in 1955.
Works

1. "I taste a liquor never brewed"

2. "Success is counted sweetest"
3. "Wild nights - Wild nights!"
4. "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain"
5. "I'm Nobody! Who are you?"
6. "'Hope' is the thing with feathers"
7. "A Bird, came down the Walk"
8. "Because I could not stop for Death"
9. "My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun"
10. "Tell all the truth but tell it slant"
 “Hope” is the thing with feathers -
BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
That perches in the soul - And on the strangest Sea -
And sings the tune without the words - Yet - never - in Extremity,
And never stops - at all - It asked a crumb - of me.

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
Short Analysis

Hope is the thing with feathers is a kind of hymn of praise,

written to honor the human capacity for hope. Using extended
metaphor, the poem portrays hope as a bird that lives within the
human soul; this bird sings come rain or shine, gale or storm, good
times are bad.
Major themes in Hope is the thing with feathers: Hope is the
major theme that runs throughout the poem. Emily says that hope
resides in the hearts for good. It liberate us from despair and give us
the strength to move on it only empower as and return demands
nothing
What inspired Emily to do the poem of “Hope is the thing with Feather”?

● Dickinson experienced an emotional crisis of an undetermined nature in the early

1860s.Her traumatized state of mind is believe to have inspired her to write prolifically:
in 1862 alone she is thought to have composed more that three hundred poems.

When was the “Hope is the thing with Feather” written?

● “Hope is the thing with Feather” is believed to have been written in 1861.it was initially
published posthumously in the second collection of dickinson’s work, poems by Emily
Dickinson, second series,in 1891.
Thank you!