Image arrangement by lynn Dombrowski on Flickr.com.

Today, I would like to introduce you to a famous American writer and one of her poems. Emily Dickinson was poet who lived a solitary and introverted life (introverted = inward focused), but who wrote innovated and distinctive poems. Here is her story.

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson’s family was well off (well off = successful) and able to send her to a good school, but in her teenage years she stopped attending school. At that time and for most of the rest of her life, she was frequently ill and suffered from depression. From an early age, people who knew Dickinson thought she was different or odd.  She was known for always wearing white colored clothing and not liking to be around other people. She spent much of her time in her room, in her family’s home, even as an adult.  She lived in her family’s home all of her adult life.

Dickinson began writing poetry as a teenager, but she was not a famous poet during her lifetime. In addition to writing poetry she wrote letters to a few close friends on a regular basis. It is partly from those letters that we now know about the details of her life.  Although only a few of Dickinson’s poems were published during her lifetime, she wrote close to 1800 poems in total!  Her writing style was very unique. It was especially different from other poetry written during the 1800’s.  Her poems were written with short lines (or sentences), and capitalization, and punctuation that are not normal for English grammar. These are some of the reasons many of her poems were not published during her life – because they were so different.  Her poems, which were published while she was alive, were usually changed by the publisher to look more like other popular poems of the time. The topics of Dickinson’s poems were also controversial; most of her poems were about death and immortality, although some were about nature.

Emily Dickinson died in 1886, she never married, and had no children.  After her death, her sister discovered all of her unpublished poems and shared them with others.  The first collection of Dickinson’s poetry was published in 1890, but it was not until 1955 that the first collection of her poems was publish unchanged or unedited.

Image by Michael Dolan on Flickr.com

Today, Emily Dickinson’s poems are considered some of the best of all American poets.  Here is one of her most famous poems.

Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson
“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 chilliest* land
And on the strangest sea,
Yet never, in extremity*,
It asked a crumb of me.

*to perch = to sit
*gale= a strong wind
*abash = embarrass
*chilliest = very cold
*extremity = the most extreme point

Here is what this poem means:
In this poem “hope” is described as a bird (a thing with feathers) that lives in the soul. It is in the soul that the bird (or hope) is always singing. The bird’s songs are said to be nicest in a storm (in the gale). The bird (or hope) is said to be heard even in the darkest, coldest, and strangest times.  And no matter how bad things get the bird never asks for anything (not even a crumb).

If you like this poem I recommend you look up others by Emily Dickinson, one of America’s greatest poets.