WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.640 Um, I have to start today's deep dive with a 00:00:03.640 --> 00:00:07.400 bit of a confession. And, uh, I might get some 00:00:07.400 --> 00:00:08.839 hate mail for this, but I just have to be honest 00:00:08.839 --> 00:00:12.019 with you all. Oh boy, that sounds ominous. What 00:00:12.019 --> 00:00:14.359 did you do? Well, it's not what I did. It's, 00:00:14.359 --> 00:00:17.160 uh, it's what I feel. Whenever I walk into a 00:00:17.160 --> 00:00:19.339 bookstore or, you know, a library gift shop, 00:00:19.539 --> 00:00:22.559 and I see a coffee mug with the phrase, hope 00:00:22.559 --> 00:00:24.399 is the thing with feathers written on it. Oh, 00:00:24.460 --> 00:00:26.260 I think I know where this is going. My immediate 00:00:26.260 --> 00:00:29.079 reaction is to just roll my eyes. Skepticism. 00:00:29.949 --> 00:00:33.250 For Emily Dickinson, that is a really bold stance 00:00:33.250 --> 00:00:35.850 to take right out of the gate. It's not skepticism 00:00:35.850 --> 00:00:37.630 about her talent. I mean, she's brilliant. It's 00:00:37.630 --> 00:00:39.689 the context. It's become kind of the live, laugh, 00:00:39.689 --> 00:00:42.030 love of American literature. Right. It's on tote 00:00:42.030 --> 00:00:44.490 bags. It's on magnets. It's on those little inspirational 00:00:44.490 --> 00:00:47.469 posters in guidance counselors' offices. It just 00:00:47.469 --> 00:00:51.109 feels so, I don't know, safe. Like an embroidery 00:00:51.109 --> 00:00:53.390 sampler. Exactly. It feels like the literary 00:00:53.390 --> 00:00:56.270 equivalent of a warm cup of herbal tea that doesn't 00:00:56.270 --> 00:00:58.070 really taste like anything. Well, that is actually 00:00:58.070 --> 00:00:59.990 the perfect setup for what we're doing today. 00:01:00.270 --> 00:01:02.350 Because if you sit down with the source material, 00:01:02.530 --> 00:01:05.250 and for this deep dive we are heavily pulling 00:01:05.250 --> 00:01:07.810 from the Wikipedia analysis of the poem, along 00:01:07.810 --> 00:01:09.890 with its publishing history and literary mechanics, 00:01:10.129 --> 00:01:13.269 you realize that safe is the absolute last word 00:01:13.269 --> 00:01:15.390 you should use to describe it. See, that's the 00:01:15.390 --> 00:01:18.560 part I really struggle to believe. Because on 00:01:18.560 --> 00:01:20.659 the surface, it's a poem about a little bird. 00:01:20.859 --> 00:01:23.980 It's about hope. It feels very greeting card. 00:01:24.219 --> 00:01:26.060 That's the trick, though. That is the genius 00:01:26.060 --> 00:01:29.159 of Emily Dickinson. She is an absolute master 00:01:29.159 --> 00:01:31.700 of disguise. What do you mean by disguise? She 00:01:31.700 --> 00:01:33.439 takes a concept that feels soft and sentimental 00:01:33.439 --> 00:01:35.620 on the surface, and she packs it into a structure 00:01:35.620 --> 00:01:40.079 that is mechanically aggressive. weirdly punctuated, 00:01:40.079 --> 00:01:43.700 and logically very rigorous. If you look at the 00:01:43.700 --> 00:01:45.680 closed transcription, meaning the version she 00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:47.620 actually wrote and not the one usually printed 00:01:47.620 --> 00:01:49.819 on the mugs, it's a completely different animal. 00:01:49.939 --> 00:01:51.819 Okay, so our mission today for the listener is 00:01:51.819 --> 00:01:54.379 basically to rescue this poem from the gift shop. 00:01:55.099 --> 00:01:57.560 Exactly. We're going to look at the physical 00:01:57.560 --> 00:02:00.040 artifact, the actual paper it was written on, 00:02:00.099 --> 00:02:02.840 which tells a pretty wild story about how she 00:02:02.840 --> 00:02:06.040 quote unquote published. We'll break down the 00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:08.020 hymn meter she used and why it might actually 00:02:08.020 --> 00:02:10.659 be a parody. And we have to talk about the dashes. 00:02:10.680 --> 00:02:13.280 The aggressive punctuation. The aggressive punctuation. 00:02:14.319 --> 00:02:16.219 Let's start with why you think it's a greeting 00:02:16.219 --> 00:02:18.860 card poem. Because for a really long time, the 00:02:18.860 --> 00:02:21.139 world didn't even know this poem existed. That 00:02:21.139 --> 00:02:23.219 was the part of the background info that really 00:02:23.219 --> 00:02:25.539 surprised me. Because I assumed this was just 00:02:25.539 --> 00:02:27.300 published in The Atlantic or something during 00:02:27.300 --> 00:02:29.539 her life and everyone clapped. But the source 00:02:29.539 --> 00:02:32.520 says it wasn't published until 1891. Right. Years 00:02:32.520 --> 00:02:35.360 after she died. During her lifetime, Dickinson 00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:38.379 was basically a ghost to the literary world. 00:02:38.500 --> 00:02:40.479 She didn't publish in the traditional sense at 00:02:40.479 --> 00:02:43.219 all. But, and this is a really key point, she 00:02:43.219 --> 00:02:45.590 did. publish. She just did it for an audience 00:02:45.590 --> 00:02:47.750 of one. You're talking about the fascicles? Yes, 00:02:47.870 --> 00:02:51.169 specifically fascicle 13. I love this detail 00:02:51.169 --> 00:02:53.789 so much. Can we paint the picture for the listener? 00:02:54.150 --> 00:02:56.150 Because fascicle sounds like a medical term, 00:02:56.210 --> 00:02:58.509 like maybe something to do with a muscle, but 00:02:58.509 --> 00:03:01.189 it's actually really craft core. It is. It really 00:03:01.189 --> 00:03:04.389 is. So imagine this. It's roughly 1861. The American 00:03:04.389 --> 00:03:07.289 Civil War is ramping up and you have Emily Dickinson 00:03:07.289 --> 00:03:10.430 in her room in Amherst, Massachusetts. She takes 00:03:10.430 --> 00:03:13.710 sheets of cream colored stationery. Specifically 00:03:13.710 --> 00:03:15.849 woven stationery. The source mentioned it has 00:03:15.849 --> 00:03:17.830 blue rule lines on it, right? Kind of like notebook 00:03:17.830 --> 00:03:20.990 paper. Blue rule lines, yeah. And a watermark. 00:03:21.569 --> 00:03:24.210 It's actually embossed with a queen's head above 00:03:24.210 --> 00:03:26.469 the letter L. So this wasn't just scrap paper 00:03:26.469 --> 00:03:29.229 she found lying around. Not at all. She sat down, 00:03:29.430 --> 00:03:32.169 wrote out fair copies of her poems, including 00:03:32.169 --> 00:03:34.789 Hope is the Thing with Feathers, stacked the 00:03:34.789 --> 00:03:37.469 sheets, poked holes in the spine, and hand -sewed 00:03:37.469 --> 00:03:39.509 them together with thread. That's the image that 00:03:39.509 --> 00:03:41.289 sticks with me. Yeah. The needle and thread. 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:43.680 It's just so deliberate. She wasn't stuffing 00:03:43.680 --> 00:03:45.800 poems in a drawer because she was shy or insecure. 00:03:46.139 --> 00:03:48.939 She was binding her own books. Yeah. There were 00:03:48.939 --> 00:03:51.879 40 of these booklets found after she died. And 00:03:51.879 --> 00:03:54.879 Fascal 13 contained this poem along with there's 00:03:54.879 --> 00:03:57.719 a certain slant of light, which is just a powerhouse 00:03:57.719 --> 00:04:00.120 collection. Yeah. But think about the psychology 00:04:00.120 --> 00:04:02.740 of that. You aren't submitting to an editor. 00:04:02.939 --> 00:04:05.000 You aren't waiting for anyone's approval. You 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:08.080 are curating your own legacy, physically binding 00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:09.900 it together and then just putting it in a chest. 00:04:10.520 --> 00:04:13.740 It feels incredibly modern, actually. It's like 00:04:13.740 --> 00:04:16.740 making a zine or having a private blog that you 00:04:16.740 --> 00:04:19.199 treat with total seriousness. But then her sister 00:04:19.199 --> 00:04:21.779 finds them. Lavinia Dickinson found them. And 00:04:21.779 --> 00:04:23.600 can you imagine the shock? You think you know 00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:25.699 your sister, and then you find hundreds of masterpieces 00:04:25.699 --> 00:04:28.920 sewn together in her dresser. But here is where 00:04:28.920 --> 00:04:30.439 the greeting card problem you mentioned really 00:04:30.439 --> 00:04:32.879 starts. Because the version Lavinia found isn't 00:04:32.879 --> 00:04:34.740 exactly the version the world eventually got. 00:04:34.920 --> 00:04:38.120 No. The first editors, Mabel Loomis Todd and 00:04:38.120 --> 00:04:40.500 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, they looked at these 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:43.800 poems and thought, whoa, this is messy. The punctuation 00:04:43.800 --> 00:04:45.720 was weird. The capitalization was inconsistent. 00:04:46.100 --> 00:04:49.259 It just looked raw. So for the 1891 publication, 00:04:49.579 --> 00:04:51.600 they quote unquote fixed it. They smoothed her 00:04:51.600 --> 00:04:54.449 out. They gentrified the poem. They took out 00:04:54.449 --> 00:04:56.709 all the jagged edges to make it palatable for 00:04:56.709 --> 00:04:59.709 a 19th century audience. They essentially turned 00:04:59.709 --> 00:05:02.949 a wild thing into a tame bird. It really wasn't 00:05:02.949 --> 00:05:06.089 until 1955 when Thomas H. Johnson released the 00:05:06.089 --> 00:05:08.970 scholarly edition and later R .W. Franklin that 00:05:08.970 --> 00:05:11.449 we finally got to see the poem as it existed 00:05:11.449 --> 00:05:15.089 in fascicle 13. OK, so let's look at that unsmooth 00:05:15.089 --> 00:05:17.230 version. Let's look at the mechanics, because 00:05:17.230 --> 00:05:20.490 if we strip away the nice font and the editor's 00:05:20.490 --> 00:05:23.519 polish. What are we actually looking at? We are 00:05:23.519 --> 00:05:25.720 looking at a definition. That is the actual genre 00:05:25.720 --> 00:05:28.660 of the poem. She is trying to define an abstract 00:05:28.660 --> 00:05:31.939 concept, hope, by describing its physical properties. 00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:35.420 Hope is the thing with feathers. Exactly. Notice 00:05:35.420 --> 00:05:38.089 she doesn't say hope is a bird. Right. She says 00:05:38.089 --> 00:05:40.209 it's the thing with feathers. It's a small distinction, 00:05:40.250 --> 00:05:42.810 but it really matters. Bird is a category. Thing 00:05:42.810 --> 00:05:45.029 with feathers is an observation. It's almost 00:05:45.029 --> 00:05:47.209 like she's looking inside her own soul, sees 00:05:47.209 --> 00:05:49.329 this creature, and is describing the texture 00:05:49.329 --> 00:05:52.529 of it first. It feels alien, like an undiscovered 00:05:52.529 --> 00:05:55.009 species. And it perches in the soul. That's the 00:05:55.009 --> 00:05:58.069 roost. It lives inside. But the next line is 00:05:58.069 --> 00:05:59.930 the one that destroys the whole greeting card 00:05:59.930 --> 00:06:03.089 vibe for me and sings the tune without the words. 00:06:03.250 --> 00:06:06.120 And never stops at all. Focus on without the 00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:09.040 words for a second. What does that tell you about 00:06:09.040 --> 00:06:11.759 hope? Well, it implies that hope isn't logical. 00:06:12.240 --> 00:06:14.259 It's not a speech. You don't talk yourself into 00:06:14.259 --> 00:06:17.319 hope with a pro and con list. Exactly. It's non 00:06:17.319 --> 00:06:21.180 -linguistic. It's a vibration. If you have to 00:06:21.180 --> 00:06:23.319 use words to convince yourself to be hopeful, 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:25.680 you probably aren't actually hopeful. You're 00:06:25.680 --> 00:06:27.800 just optimistic. Oh, that's an interesting distinction. 00:06:28.139 --> 00:06:30.660 Optimism is a cognitive process. You look at 00:06:30.660 --> 00:06:33.379 the data and say things will probably work out. 00:06:33.500 --> 00:06:36.379 But hope is deeper. It's that biological drive 00:06:36.379 --> 00:06:39.220 that keeps you going even when your brain, the 00:06:39.220 --> 00:06:41.819 part that uses words, is telling you. to give 00:06:41.819 --> 00:06:43.980 up. That actually makes total sense of the never 00:06:43.980 --> 00:06:46.300 stops line. Because if it were a logical argument, 00:06:46.420 --> 00:06:48.399 it would stop when the argument failed. If the 00:06:48.399 --> 00:06:51.439 facts change, the logic stops. But a song can 00:06:51.439 --> 00:06:54.199 just loop. It's a continuous loop. It's a constant 00:06:54.199 --> 00:06:56.500 background frequency. And that brings us to the 00:06:56.500 --> 00:06:58.579 second stanza where she tests this frequency. 00:06:58.860 --> 00:07:01.000 She essentially puts the bird in a wind tunnel. 00:07:01.199 --> 00:07:04.379 This is the gale. And sweetest in the gale is 00:07:04.379 --> 00:07:06.899 heard. I've always read this as just, you know, 00:07:06.899 --> 00:07:09.779 hope is good when things are bad. Which is a 00:07:09.779 --> 00:07:11.699 bit of a platitude, right? Like, look for the 00:07:11.699 --> 00:07:13.399 silver lining. It definitely sounds like one 00:07:13.399 --> 00:07:15.379 if you read it quickly. But look at the mechanics 00:07:15.379 --> 00:07:17.399 of the sentence. The song is sweetest in the 00:07:17.399 --> 00:07:21.160 gale. Why? Contrast. Contrast, yes. But also 00:07:21.160 --> 00:07:24.399 necessity. Think about it. You don't notice the 00:07:24.399 --> 00:07:26.720 hum of your refrigerator until the house is completely 00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:29.180 silent. You don't notice the thing with feathers 00:07:29.180 --> 00:07:32.079 when you're happy and safe. Right. The gale. 00:07:32.509 --> 00:07:34.910 The storm, the crisis strips away everything 00:07:34.910 --> 00:07:38.149 else. All the other comforts are gone. The logic 00:07:38.149 --> 00:07:40.949 is gone. The plan is gone. And what's left? Just 00:07:40.949 --> 00:07:43.750 that little hum. She uses the word sore to describe 00:07:43.750 --> 00:07:45.589 the storm too, which I found really interesting 00:07:45.589 --> 00:07:49.649 in the source. And sore must be the storm that 00:07:49.649 --> 00:07:51.949 could abash the little bird. Abash is such a 00:07:51.949 --> 00:07:54.029 great vocabulary word. It means to embarrass 00:07:54.029 --> 00:07:57.470 or to confuse or to silence. So the storm has 00:07:57.470 --> 00:08:01.029 to be incredibly painful, sore, to finally shut 00:08:01.029 --> 00:08:03.730 the bird up. Right. It implies that the bird 00:08:03.730 --> 00:08:06.250 is actually really tough. We usually think of 00:08:06.250 --> 00:08:08.829 feathers as fragile. We think of birds as hollow 00:08:08.829 --> 00:08:11.089 boned, delicate things that you have to protect. 00:08:11.310 --> 00:08:13.949 But Dickinson is totally reversing that. The 00:08:13.949 --> 00:08:17.269 storm is huge and violent, but the bird is resilient. 00:08:17.589 --> 00:08:20.389 Exactly. It takes a cataclysmic event to kill 00:08:20.389 --> 00:08:22.649 hope. It turns the cute little bird into this 00:08:22.649 --> 00:08:25.949 absolute tank of a creature. It's small, but 00:08:25.949 --> 00:08:28.089 it's nearly invincible. And then in the third 00:08:28.089 --> 00:08:31.490 stanza, she expands the map. She says, I've heard 00:08:31.490 --> 00:08:34.330 it in the chillest land and on the strangest 00:08:34.330 --> 00:08:37.870 sea. Chillest land and strangest sea. She's talking 00:08:37.870 --> 00:08:39.830 about internal geography here, right? She's not 00:08:39.830 --> 00:08:41.889 talking about Antarctica. Almost certainly. These 00:08:41.889 --> 00:08:44.190 are the edges of the human psyche. Depression, 00:08:44.529 --> 00:08:48.210 grief, severe alienation. The strangest sea is 00:08:48.210 --> 00:08:50.570 that feeling when you just don't recognize yourself 00:08:50.570 --> 00:08:53.190 or the world around you. And the bird is there 00:08:53.190 --> 00:08:55.590 too. It's an explorer. And this leads to what 00:08:55.590 --> 00:08:57.190 I think is the most important part of the poem. 00:08:57.769 --> 00:09:01.190 The economic argument. The transaction. Or rather, 00:09:01.330 --> 00:09:05.029 the lack of one. Yet never in extremity, it asked 00:09:05.029 --> 00:09:08.669 a crumb of me. This is the absolute kicker. Extremity. 00:09:09.009 --> 00:09:11.750 That's the crisis point. That's when you are 00:09:11.750 --> 00:09:13.990 at your absolute limit. In most relationships, 00:09:14.230 --> 00:09:16.769 in most transactions, when you are in a crisis, 00:09:16.870 --> 00:09:18.830 you have to pay up. You have to expend energy 00:09:18.830 --> 00:09:21.549 to fix things. You have to barter. But the bird 00:09:21.549 --> 00:09:24.909 asks for nothing. Not a single crumb. It is a 00:09:24.909 --> 00:09:27.610 non -transactional virtue. And this is a really 00:09:27.610 --> 00:09:30.669 profound insight from the source material. Notice 00:09:30.669 --> 00:09:33.269 the distinction between me and it. The speaker 00:09:33.269 --> 00:09:35.350 isn't the bird. Correct. The speaker is the host. 00:09:35.710 --> 00:09:39.269 The bird is a separate entity. It's a wild creature 00:09:39.269 --> 00:09:42.269 that has taken up residence in the soul. It doesn't 00:09:42.269 --> 00:09:44.509 work for you. It doesn't obey you. It just lives 00:09:44.509 --> 00:09:47.090 there. And it sings regardless of whether you 00:09:47.090 --> 00:09:49.610 feed it or not. That actually feels terrifyingly 00:09:49.610 --> 00:09:52.639 independent. It's not I am hopeful. It's hope 00:09:52.639 --> 00:09:55.279 is happening to me. Precisely. It entirely shifts 00:09:55.279 --> 00:09:57.820 the agency. If hope is something you do, then 00:09:57.820 --> 00:09:59.740 it's your fault if you lose it, you failed. But 00:09:59.740 --> 00:10:01.639 if hope is a wild bird that perches in you, well, 00:10:01.679 --> 00:10:04.000 that's a gift. A gift you can't control, but 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:06.840 also a gift you don't have to earn. OK, I am 00:10:06.840 --> 00:10:08.720 definitely starting to see why this is deeper 00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:11.360 than a tote bag slogan. The tote bag implies 00:10:11.360 --> 00:10:14.940 just be hopeful. The poem actually says there 00:10:14.940 --> 00:10:17.320 is a wild thing living in you that will survive 00:10:17.320 --> 00:10:20.169 the storm. Exactly. But I want to pivot to how 00:10:20.169 --> 00:10:22.549 this thing sounds because we mentioned the gift 00:10:22.549 --> 00:10:25.289 shop version is smoothed out. But even the original 00:10:25.289 --> 00:10:28.690 has a very catchy, very simple rhythm. It really 00:10:28.690 --> 00:10:30.870 bounces. Oh, it's incredibly catchy. It's a total 00:10:30.870 --> 00:10:33.250 earworm. The source calls it ballad meter or 00:10:33.250 --> 00:10:36.100 hymn meter. Right. If you've ever been to a Protestant 00:10:36.100 --> 00:10:38.519 church or really any church in the 19th century, 00:10:38.679 --> 00:10:41.820 this rhythm is in your DNA. It's alternating 00:10:41.820 --> 00:10:45.139 lines of four beats and three beats. Iambic to 00:10:45.139 --> 00:10:50.259 trameter followed by iambic trameter. It's Amazing 00:10:50.259 --> 00:10:52.899 Grace. It is exactly Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace, 00:10:53.039 --> 00:10:55.559 how sweet the sound. Hope is the thing with feathers 00:10:55.559 --> 00:10:57.779 that perches in the soul. And I have to bring 00:10:57.779 --> 00:10:59.120 this up because the notes mentioned it and I 00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:00.399 actually tried it before we started recording. 00:11:00.779 --> 00:11:02.879 It's also the theme song to Gilligan's Island. 00:11:03.240 --> 00:11:05.019 It is the exact same mathematical structure. 00:11:05.200 --> 00:11:07.440 You can sing this poem perfectly to the tune 00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:09.860 of Gilligan's Island. The minnow would be lost. 00:11:10.100 --> 00:11:12.519 The minnow would be lost. So why did she do that? 00:11:12.580 --> 00:11:14.860 Was she just copying what she heard in church 00:11:14.860 --> 00:11:17.740 from people like Isaac Watts or Phoebe Hinsdale 00:11:17.740 --> 00:11:20.720 Brown? Or is there something more subversive 00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:23.039 happening here? Because Dickinson wasn't exactly 00:11:23.039 --> 00:11:25.710 a traditional churchgoer. This is where the scholarship 00:11:25.710 --> 00:11:28.610 gets really juicy. There's a scholar named Victoria 00:11:28.610 --> 00:11:31.549 N. Morgan who argues that this isn't just homage 00:11:31.549 --> 00:11:35.470 or copying, it's parody, or at least a reassessment. 00:11:35.669 --> 00:11:38.299 How so? What is she reassessing? Think about 00:11:38.299 --> 00:11:40.799 what hymns are actually for. They are for communal 00:11:40.799 --> 00:11:43.580 worship. They are for dogma. They are for organized 00:11:43.580 --> 00:11:46.399 religion. God is great. Follow the rules. Here 00:11:46.399 --> 00:11:49.080 is the doctrine. Dickinson takes that structure, 00:11:49.200 --> 00:11:52.320 that very rigid, churchy container, and she fills 00:11:52.320 --> 00:11:54.120 it with something wild. She fills it with the 00:11:54.120 --> 00:11:56.570 bird. Right. She's using the church's rhythm 00:11:56.570 --> 00:11:59.509 to describe a spirituality that has absolutely 00:11:59.509 --> 00:12:02.009 nothing to do with the church. The bird doesn't 00:12:02.009 --> 00:12:04.009 ask for tithes. It doesn't ask for prayers. It 00:12:04.009 --> 00:12:06.509 doesn't ask for a crumb. It just is. So she's 00:12:06.509 --> 00:12:09.590 subverting the form to reclaim the concept of 00:12:09.590 --> 00:12:12.870 hope from 19th century Christian dogma and make 00:12:12.870 --> 00:12:15.169 it incredibly personal. That's a Trojan horse 00:12:15.169 --> 00:12:18.039 strategy. It sounds like a hymn, so you let it 00:12:18.039 --> 00:12:19.980 in. Yeah. But once it's inside your head, you 00:12:19.980 --> 00:12:22.240 realize it's rewriting the theology. Exactly. 00:12:22.340 --> 00:12:25.019 It uses the familiar to deliver the radical. 00:12:25.379 --> 00:12:28.360 And she disrupts that hymn feeling visually, 00:12:28.600 --> 00:12:30.899 too. We have to talk about the dashes. The dashes. 00:12:30.899 --> 00:12:32.899 If you look at the Wikipedia page for the poem, 00:12:33.019 --> 00:12:34.820 specifically the transcription section, it's 00:12:34.820 --> 00:12:36.980 just full of them. Lines don't end with periods. 00:12:37.120 --> 00:12:39.940 They end with these long horizontal lines. Nine 00:12:39.940 --> 00:12:42.360 lines end with dashes. For a long time, early 00:12:42.360 --> 00:12:44.980 critics just thought she was messy or that she 00:12:44.980 --> 00:12:46.899 literally didn't know how to use a comma. They 00:12:46.899 --> 00:12:49.059 thought it was just scratch notes. But modern 00:12:49.059 --> 00:12:50.899 scholars have a very different take on that. 00:12:51.120 --> 00:12:53.659 Yes. Scholar Ina Youm has this beautiful description. 00:12:53.879 --> 00:12:56.840 She says the dashes create visible breath. Visible 00:12:56.840 --> 00:12:58.940 breath. What does that mean for the listener? 00:12:59.240 --> 00:13:02.259 Try reading the poem aloud with the dashes. You 00:13:02.259 --> 00:13:04.580 can't read it smoothly. You can't just chant 00:13:04.580 --> 00:13:07.080 it like a zombie in a pew. Hope is the thing 00:13:07.080 --> 00:13:09.600 with feathers. That perches in the soul. You 00:13:09.600 --> 00:13:11.740 have to stop. You have to hesitate. You have 00:13:11.740 --> 00:13:15.100 to gasp almost. It creates a caesura, a pause. 00:13:15.200 --> 00:13:17.620 It breaks the rhythm. It makes the poem sound 00:13:17.620 --> 00:13:20.480 urgent, almost breathless. Like the bird is hopping. 00:13:21.310 --> 00:13:24.730 Fluttering around. Or like the speaker is physically 00:13:24.730 --> 00:13:27.669 overwhelmed by the feeling. It takes that smooth 00:13:27.669 --> 00:13:30.129 Gilligan's Island rhythm and makes it jagged. 00:13:30.250 --> 00:13:33.370 It makes it staccato. It forces you to pay attention 00:13:33.370 --> 00:13:36.590 to each individual phrase. It basically stops 00:13:36.590 --> 00:13:38.669 it from becoming a lullaby. She does that with 00:13:38.669 --> 00:13:40.730 capitalization too, right? Hope is capitalized. 00:13:40.730 --> 00:13:43.570 Bird is capitalized. Extremity is capitalized. 00:13:43.570 --> 00:13:46.330 Right. In German, you capitalize all nouns, but 00:13:46.330 --> 00:13:48.210 in English, you usually only capitalize proper 00:13:48.210 --> 00:13:51.769 nouns like names or places. By capitalizing extremity, 00:13:51.789 --> 00:13:54.549 she's turning a situation into a place. You aren't 00:13:54.549 --> 00:13:57.649 just in a bad mood. You are in the land of extremity. 00:13:57.730 --> 00:14:00.750 And hope isn't just a noun. It's a name. It's 00:14:00.750 --> 00:14:03.289 an entity. It's a full character. There's one 00:14:03.289 --> 00:14:04.950 more technical detail that I thought was super 00:14:04.950 --> 00:14:07.610 nerdy, but really changes how you hear the first 00:14:07.610 --> 00:14:11.000 line. The reversed foot. Ah, yes. Helen Vendler's 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:14.039 observation. This is brilliant. So normal iambic 00:14:14.039 --> 00:14:19.860 meter is da -d -u -m. Soft. Loud. The thing is 00:14:19.860 --> 00:14:22.980 da -d -u -m. But the poem starts with the word 00:14:22.980 --> 00:14:25.820 hope. And you don't say hope. You say hope. Right. 00:14:25.879 --> 00:14:29.490 You hit it hard. That's a trochee. D -U -M. She 00:14:29.490 --> 00:14:31.990 reverses the rhythm on the very first word. She 00:14:31.990 --> 00:14:33.929 doesn't ease you into the poem. She bangs the 00:14:33.929 --> 00:14:36.470 gong immediately. Hope is the thing. It's like 00:14:36.470 --> 00:14:38.970 a really startling entrance. It is. It arrests 00:14:38.970 --> 00:14:41.110 your attention. It's another reason why this 00:14:41.110 --> 00:14:43.330 isn't just a sweet little nursery rhyme. It's 00:14:43.330 --> 00:14:45.509 mechanically designed to grab you by the collar. 00:14:45.590 --> 00:14:47.710 It pushes you off balance right from the first 00:14:47.710 --> 00:14:50.169 syllable. So we have this complex, subversive, 00:14:50.169 --> 00:14:53.190 mechanically intricate poem. And yet the critics, 00:14:53.350 --> 00:14:55.909 the source mentioned, that despite all this, 00:14:55.950 --> 00:14:58.889 some people still call it... Simple. It's the 00:14:58.889 --> 00:15:01.409 curse of accessibility. Because the metaphor 00:15:01.409 --> 00:15:04.350 works so well, hope equals bird, it's easy to 00:15:04.350 --> 00:15:07.610 get it and move on. Some critics called it childlike 00:15:07.610 --> 00:15:10.110 in its simplicity. They think the quatrains are 00:15:10.110 --> 00:15:12.490 too tidy. They think because it's not overtly 00:15:12.490 --> 00:15:15.570 confusing, it's not deep. But Helen Bendler disagrees 00:15:15.570 --> 00:15:18.509 with that. Strongly. Bendler argues that the 00:15:18.509 --> 00:15:22.149 simplicity is a trap, or rather, a delivery mechanism. 00:15:22.429 --> 00:15:25.899 She calls them teasing riddles. If the poem were 00:15:25.899 --> 00:15:29.039 incredibly obscure and used massive Latin words, 00:15:29.279 --> 00:15:32.220 you'd analyze it with your brain. But because 00:15:32.220 --> 00:15:34.620 it uses simple words and a nursery rhyme rhythm, 00:15:34.779 --> 00:15:37.480 it slips right past your defenses. It hits you 00:15:37.480 --> 00:15:39.480 emotionally before you can even analyze it intellectually. 00:15:39.840 --> 00:15:42.779 Exactly. It completely bypasses the gatekeeper. 00:15:42.879 --> 00:15:44.700 And the proof is in the pudding. Look at the 00:15:44.700 --> 00:15:46.879 legacy section of the source material. This poem 00:15:46.879 --> 00:15:49.820 is everywhere. It's been set to music by choirs. 00:15:49.980 --> 00:15:52.360 Susan LaBar, Christopher Tinn, it's a massive 00:15:52.360 --> 00:15:54.639 staple in choral music. And not just choirs. 00:15:54.740 --> 00:15:56.779 The notes mentioned an alt country band too. 00:15:57.320 --> 00:16:00.169 Trailer Bride. They named their final album, 00:16:00.309 --> 00:16:03.590 Hope is a Thing, with feathers. It totally crosses 00:16:03.590 --> 00:16:06.990 genres. You've got highbrow, classical composers, 00:16:07.230 --> 00:16:09.549 and alternative country bands both looking at 00:16:09.549 --> 00:16:12.889 this text and saying, yes, that's it. That is 00:16:12.889 --> 00:16:15.750 the exact feeling. It speaks to the universality 00:16:15.750 --> 00:16:18.029 of the storm. and the universality of the resilience. 00:16:18.350 --> 00:16:21.070 I think that's why it endures so well. We all 00:16:21.070 --> 00:16:22.830 know what it feels like to be in the chillest 00:16:22.830 --> 00:16:25.110 land. We all know what it feels like when the 00:16:25.110 --> 00:16:28.129 logic runs out. And we all recognize that strange, 00:16:28.309 --> 00:16:31.360 illogical thing that keeps singing anyway. So 00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:33.340 we've gone from a hand -sewn booklet hidden in 00:16:33.340 --> 00:16:37.440 a drawer in 1861 to a global anthem. We've unpacked 00:16:37.440 --> 00:16:40.240 the bird, the gale, the hymn meter, and the visible 00:16:40.240 --> 00:16:42.480 breath of the dashes. We have. And I think we've 00:16:42.480 --> 00:16:44.279 successfully argued that while it might look 00:16:44.279 --> 00:16:46.899 nice on a tote bag, it is doing a lot more heavy 00:16:46.899 --> 00:16:49.139 lifting than a simple slogan. It's a machine 00:16:49.139 --> 00:16:51.559 for resilience. A machine for resilience. I really 00:16:51.559 --> 00:16:53.679 like that description. Before we wrap up, though, 00:16:53.740 --> 00:16:56.279 I want to leave you, the listener, with a final 00:16:56.279 --> 00:16:59.440 thought to mull over. Something that wasn't explicitly 00:16:59.440 --> 00:17:02.179 spelled out in the poem, but is heavily implied 00:17:02.179 --> 00:17:04.480 by everything we've discussed today. Go for it. 00:17:04.579 --> 00:17:07.339 The source noted that Dickinson often used birds 00:17:07.339 --> 00:17:10.420 to describe acts of worship. And we've established 00:17:10.420 --> 00:17:12.579 that this bird is completely separate from the 00:17:12.579 --> 00:17:16.059 speaker. It asks for no crumb. It operates entirely 00:17:16.059 --> 00:17:18.319 independently. Right. It's not a pet. It's a 00:17:18.319 --> 00:17:20.440 wild animal. So here's the question for you to 00:17:20.440 --> 00:17:23.279 think about. If hope is this wild, independent 00:17:23.279 --> 00:17:25.920 creature that lives in us, but doesn't answer 00:17:25.920 --> 00:17:28.430 to us, Does that mean we've been thinking about 00:17:28.430 --> 00:17:31.130 hope wrong this whole time? We usually talk about 00:17:31.130 --> 00:17:33.789 practicing hope or trying to be hopeful. Like 00:17:33.789 --> 00:17:36.990 it's a muscle we have to flex or a daily chore 00:17:36.990 --> 00:17:40.049 we have to do. Exactly. But Dickinson seems to 00:17:40.049 --> 00:17:42.069 be suggesting that hope isn't something we do. 00:17:42.269 --> 00:17:45.269 It's something we host. It's a habitat we provide. 00:17:45.630 --> 00:17:47.990 Wow, that changes everything. It means that when 00:17:47.990 --> 00:17:49.710 you're in the deepest depression and you can't 00:17:49.710 --> 00:17:52.130 quote unquote do anything, the bird might still 00:17:52.130 --> 00:17:54.130 be there. You don't have to power it. You just 00:17:54.130 --> 00:17:57.039 have to let it perch. Just let it perch. Something 00:17:57.039 --> 00:17:58.640 to think about the next time you find yourself 00:17:58.640 --> 00:18:01.000 in a gale. Thanks for taking this deep dive with 00:18:01.000 --> 00:18:01.720 us. See you next time.