Hope is the thing with feathers-

“Hope is the thing with feathers-”

Hope is a manifestation which resides in the deepest parts of an individual’s humanity. It is ever present, and it “never stops” pushing the individual through the toughest times, the toughest gales. Though times may bury hope, it always rises again, keeping “so many warm.” Like a real friend, our inner hope will always be on our side, never asking for anything in return. 

Emily Dickinson created a simple and short masterpiece when she penned “Hope is the thing with feathers-.” Dickinson uses the juxtaposition of negative and positive language to build a strong contrast that is revealed throughout the entire poem. This contrasts forces readers to analyze the meanings of the words at a deeper level. 

“Hope is the thing with feathers-” follows Dickinson’s style of stating a word then using poetry to define it. In this case, she uses a metaphor of a bird as a representation of hope and extends this through the poem until the end. Like a bird, it has a place where it perches. Hope resides inside the soul of an individual, always present, and always singing. At times extremity may seem as if it’s overpowering, like a chaotic scene that is too full of noise to hear the beauty of a bird’s song, but hope is always present, and the bird will always be singing; hope will always be pushing the individual through the tough times. 

Dickinson uses contrasting language to develop traits for the extremes she portrays in her poem: hope and despair. Hope is blatantly described, unlike despair. Words such “gale,” “sore,” “extremity,” and “abash” provide the reader with an inner sense of the despair Dickinson is using to contrast with hope. Those aforementioned negative words are placed next to positive words such as “sweetest” and “warm.” The placement of such contradictory terms next to each other makes the reader contemplate the definitions of the words at a deeper level. 

The poem is structured in such a way that reading it naturally leads to a concluding end. Dickinson uses iambic trimeter alternating with iambic tetrameter to bring the reader easily through the three stanzas. The lines also alternate between six and eight syllables after the first line. I feel that this repetition matches with Emily Dickinson’s style to use hymn meter as a model for her poems. It’s ballad meter matches with the style of  hymns, but at times she breaks from this structured meter to provide emphasis to certain words or lines. 

The bird is a universal symbol for freedom. Dickinson explores this aspect of the symbol in her portrayal of hope. Many people are held captive by their fears, oppression, chaos. However, hope “perches” in their soul and continually “sings the tune,” much like a bird, to inspire an individual to fight for life. To Dickinson, a bird cannot be burdened to the point of falling from the sky, no matter what storm faces it, and like a bird, hope can not be snuffed out of a person’s soul. All a person must do is listen for the bird’s song. 

Lastly, the bird never asks anything from the speaker of the poem. This furthers the hymnic inspiration of style of poem. Most hymns deal with God and his faithfulness. Dickinson links God’s faithfulness to the faithfulness of hope to help the human soul through the use of ballad meter. Also, since the concept of hope, as Dickinson portrays it, is omnipresent, it fits the character of God. No matter what an individual may go through, hope will never ask for something in return. It is not something that is awarded to people based on class, wealth, or social prominence. It is given to all people freely. 

Emily Dickinson uses a seemingly simple poem to develop a strong metaphor. She juxtaposes negative and positive terms to focus the individual’s mind hope and despair. Lastly, through her style and structure she links the faithfulness of hope to that of God. 

Finding God

This poem is about my experience with a Baptist church as a child and finding God through the natural world. My aunt took me to a Baptist church when I was younger, and I felt like I was a project. If this was how they treated people, how they lived their faith, I wanted no part. Instead, I found God in nature and creativity. I would often spend hours outside in the back garden playing make-believe with my chocolate labrador. There is where I would feel God the most as a child. The peace of the outside, the beauty of nature, and the loving relationship between the dog and me all told me that there was something greater in this world, something of love. In the end, I focused more on the God I could sense instead of the God of rules who used people to collect souls. This poem is a written representation of those memories and experiences.

Finding God
At the beginning I was excited
to spend time with my favorite aunt
to go to her church,
to do what she did.
I entered those dark wooden, Baptist doors
and made my way to Sunday school
to get to heaven,
to learn the rules.
Congeniality marked the congregation's faces
to lure me to salvation,
but the masks were thin,
their falseness showed through.
I knew that she was sincere in her care,
but to them I was a project.
Am I a number?
Am I a quota?
the sparkle in my youthful eyes faded, seeing their fronts.
I wanted no part if that was God.
To a place I loved,
I wanted to go.
Back at home in the garden with my dog,
Sticks as swords and he my great steed.
Here I found my God.
The true God of love.

Julia Kasdorf

Julia Spicher Kasdorf grasps mennonite culture and oral tradition with her poetry, perfectly putting those uniquely mennonite nuances into words. This facet of relatability is makes reading her poetry enjoyable. However, one thing better than reading a poets poem is listening to the poet speak her poems. Julia spoke her poems in the manner which she originally wrote them. Doing this, she brought an emotional quality that revived the oral tradition of poetry. We, as listeners, could feel the pain of the family and friends who lost a boy, the subject of one of her poems. Anyone could tell that she was forming harmony with our souls just by listening to the low hums of agreement, as if her words struck a chord.  

Shame is Knowing

I wrote this poem in response to today's convocation (9/12/11). The humanitarian campaign "Invisible Children" gave a presentation on the atrocities being committed in Africa by Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army. Genocide, mutilation, abduction and rape are committed daily by this group. Unfortunately, what Joseph Kony and the LRA are doing goes largely unnoticed. 


During presentation I was filled with deep sadness for these people who were being abused, and tears filled my eyes for most of the hour. I wrote this poem to show that once we know what atrocities are going on in the world, whether we are directly contributing to them or not, we are responsible, and for this we should feel shame. 


Shame is knowing
through action
or not-
the bodies we're reaping


For more information about the "Invisible Children", please visit their site here.


This poem was written in the style of Emily Dickinson.

My Favorite Poem

Meir Ben Isaac Nehora, a Jewish priest living in Worms, Germany penned Akdamut in 1096 AD . This is just one portion of the acrostic, which in its entirety contains more than 90 couplets (Silverman):

Were the sky of parchment made,

A quill each reed, each twig and blade,

Could we with ink the oceans fill,

Were every man a scribe of skill,

The marvelous story,

Of God’s great glory

Would still remain untold;

For He, most high

The earth and sky

Created alone of old

Many years later, an altered version of these words were found penciled on a wall in an insane asylum(“The Love of God”). It is assumed that the man in the cell inscribed the wall with these words during moments of sanity. This is his revised form: 

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above

Would drain the ocean dry;

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Tho stretched from sky to sky.

Then in 1917, Fredrick M. Lehman, having heard of the history of this poem and having felt inspired during a period of strenuous physical labor, coined two other verses and a refrain to accompany the poem in a hymn titled “The Love of God” (Osbeck):

The love of God is greater far

Than tongue or pen can ever tell;

It goes beyond the highest star,

And reaches to the lowest hell;

The guilty pair, bowed down with care,

God gave His Son to win;

His erring child He reconciled,

And pardoned from his sin.

Refrain

O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure

The saints’ and angels’ song.

When years of time shall pass away,

And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,

When men, who here refuse to pray,

On rocks and hills and mountains call,

God’s love so sure, shall still endure,

All measureless and strong;

Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—

The saints’ and angels’ song.


Refrain

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above,

Would drain the ocean dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky.

What makes this poem special is how its timeless message of God’s love manifested itself to three unique individuals, and how these individuals used these words. In Akdamut, Meir used the words to exalt one of God’s miracles (which miracle he is specifically describing is unclear and under debate). The unknown asylum patient clung to the verse as a mantra of God’s love and as a source of comfort during his most difficult times. Lastly, Lehman used these words as the foundation for a hymn that has touched the lives of many throughout the years since its conception. Many times we find ourselves singing hymns or reciting verses without appreciating the history of the material. The true beauty of the art can only be fully understood by learning the story behind its creation, as is exampled by this poem’s journey.

Works Cited

Maynard, Brother. "Mightier than the Sword."

Subversive Influence. 14 Sept. 2005. Web. 31 Aug 2011. 

http://subversiveinfluence.com/2005/09/mightier-than-the-sword/

Osbeck, Kenneth. "The Love of God."

A Hymn and its History. Web. 31 Aug 2011. 

http://www.hymnalaccompanist.com/Story/The%20Love%20of%20God.html

Silverman, Morris. "Akdamut - Translated from the Aramaic and Source of the hymn: "O Love of God"." Light to Israel and All Peoples  Web. 31 Aug 2011. 

http://www.edhaor.org/Akdamut.html

"The Love of God." Cyber Hymnal. Web. 31 Aug 2011.

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/l/o/loveofgo.htm

Here is a link to a recording of the hymn and the verses.

What is Poetry?

Attempting to define poetry is similar to catching a flowing stream of water in a jar. One can hold the water, but it becomes just water. The water loses all of its motion, that which makes it a stream. When one focuses only on rules and definitions on poetry, this expressive art loses its freedom to be. However, by examining how poetry is used, one can formulate an idea of what poetry is. For me, poetry is a tool. It is used by the writer as a medium for contemplation with an inner struggle, as a mural to evoke a response from the audience, and as a resource created by someone for use by another person. 

One of my classmates shared a poem that was written as an open letter to the author’s parents. That is a perfect example of how an author used poetry as a tool to deal with an inner issue. Poetry brings these emotion or intellectual struggles to the surface where they can be dealt with. In Akdamut, Meir Nehora uses hyperbole in his poem to express how vast and secure God’s love is(Silverman). For many who have inner struggles of some fashion the cut and dried format of an essay does not provide a means of finding solace, but the free structure of a poem frees those individuals from the confines of textual oppression. However, the particular style of a structured poem can provide some writers with a framework to which they can mold their ideas. 

Poetry also functions much like a painting does: to evoke some response from the audience. As is exampled by many poems featured in “Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century of Poetry of Witness," poetry is used as a form of witness to the injustices committed against humanity. There Was Earth Inside Them, and they Dug by Paul Celan uses repetition of the the word ‘dug’ and ‘dig’ to awaken a sense of mechanization of the body and mind overpowering humanity in people who were forced into labor during World War II(Celan 382). On the other end of the emotional spectrum, The Love of God deals with a positive emotional response; it pours contentment and peace into the soul of the reader. 

Depending on the subject, style, and context of a poem, a poem can be actively used. Poems exist beyond the intellectual and emotional realms. They can elicit a response in the consciousness of an individual that manifests itself in a physical change. A man during the late 1800s was incarcerated in and insane asylum. During a time when mental illness was misunderstood, the treatment of the patients was less than humane. After the aforementioned individual died, his room was inspected, which revealed the poem The Love of God  inscribed on a wall(Maynard). It is assumed that the man, during spouts of sanity, clung to this verse as a cornerstone of God’s love to help him deal with his present condition. It provided him with comfort in his greatest time of need.Then, in 1917, Fredrick M. Lehman, a Nazarene pastor, penned two accompanying verses and created the well known hymn “The Love of God”. This hymn continues to bless many with its message of the vastness and limitlessness of God’s love. 

Poetry exists as more than words on a page, but to define it is to place rules on it, which limits the freedom of the poet and poem to express their messages. This freedom from textual imprisonment allows the author to delve into his or her inner issues and come to some type of physical conclusion that exists in the form of words on a page. Also, the freedom of a poem allows it to grasp at the soul of an individual and to elicit some form of response. Lastly, poetry does more than intellectual and emotional feats; it can be used, which makes it a most valuable form of art.

Works Cited

Celan, Paul. "Poems of Paul Celan."

Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness. Carolyn Forche. New York/ London, 1993. Print.

Maynard, Brother. "Mightier than the Sword."

Subversive Influence. 14 Sept. 2005. Web. 31 Aug 2011. 

<http://subversiveinfluence.com/2005/09/mightier-than-the-sword/>.

Osbeck, Kenneth. "The Love of God."

A Hymn and its History. Web. 31 Aug 2011. 

<http://www.hymnalaccompanist.com/Story/The%20Love%20of   %20God.html>.

Silverman, Morris. "Akdamut - Translated from the Aramaic and Source of the hymn: "O Love of God"." Light to Israel and All Peoples  Web. 31 Aug 2011. 

<http://www.edhaor.org/Akdamut.html>.

"The Love of God." Cyber Hymnal. Web. 31 Aug 2011.

<http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/l/o/loveofgo.htm>.

The Poem "The Love of God" and the hymn playing in the background can be found here:
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/l/o/loveofgo.htm