Poetry Reviews

“Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson, from THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Gibbs Smith: Layton, Utah, 2019; originally published in 1891, believed to have been written in 1861. What is hope? Why do we feel hope? And why is hope so important to us? In a story from Greek mythology, hope was famously the only item to remain in Pandora’s box after it released the evils of the world, demonstrating just how valuable hope is to us: had hope escaped from our possession, humanity would have been unable to survive the evils of the world. Emily Dickinson believed in the power and value of hope just as strongly. Famously reclusive, this 19th-century American poet remained largely unpublished during her lifetime, by her own choice. After her death in 1886, however, her poems were discovered and published by her close friends and family. Since then, Dickinson has grown to become one of the most mysterious, emblematic, and loved poets of all time with her short but powerful poems. Much of her poetry is devoted to exploring the nature of life, death, and what she called the “Circumference,” the boundary where the reality that we know meets that of the sublime—God, for example, or for the less religiously inclined, Truth with a capital T. Dickinson was the first poet to really capture my attention when I was younger, and she is now one of my all-time favorite writers. In her beautiful poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” Dickinson explores the power of hope and what it means to us as humans. In the first stanza, she introduces hope as a bird that “perches in the soul” and forever keeps us company to bear us through difficult days. In the second stanza, Dickinson emphasizes how only the most terrible situations could cause hope to falter, though hope becomes an even greater comfort to us when life is at its most difficult (a “gale” is a strong wind, while “abash” is to make someone disconcerted). Finally, in the last stanza, Dickinson brings home her message of how hope is always with us without ever costing us anything, no matter how difficult or dangerous something may be. I love this poem first and foremost for its message, and then for its structure and wording, which is also beautiful. The poem isn’t very long, but its message is still clear and potent. The rhythm of the words flows smoothly, and the words themselves are simple. I love how Dickinson feels no need to overstretch herself with elaborate and showy writing, and instead chooses to relay her message as simply as possible, which brings me closer to the poem and only heightens the impact of her message. Dickinson is well known for the seemingly hidden meanings and complex symbolism in her work. Though this particular poem of hers is relatively simple, I, like Dickinson and her “hidden” meanings, have a hidden reason for sharing this particular poem with you today. “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” is, without doubt, an extraordinary, thought-provoking work that showcases poetry at its best. But that’s not the only reason I chose to review it. In a time when the world increasingly has to deal with problems both large and small, from climate change to warfare to poverty to politics, it’s more important than ever to remember the message of this poem: hope can carry us through the darkest of storms, and even when all else has abandoned us, hope never will. And I hope (yes, I hope) that you will remember it, for hope never stops—at all. Kate Choi, 14 Seoul, Korea

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST: THE COLLECTED POEMS, COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002. Henry Holt: New York, 2002; originally published in 1923. From choosing what clothes we wear to the career path we devote our lives to, life will always be full of choices. “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost, is a poem that describes a traveler who encounters a fork in a road in a forest. Presenting him with a choice between two paths, the poem digs deep into the nature of making choices. “The Road Not Taken” has a melancholy yet peaceful tone to it. Through the description of yellow leaves, I assume that the season is autumn, when vibrantly colored leaves would be falling around the speaker, blanketing the path. The poem has a peaceful sadness emanating throughout, as the speaker laments being unable to experience both roads. In his indecision, he tells himself that he will follow the other path another day, but then adds, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back.” In the end, he predicts telling the story of his choice with a sigh, wondering what would have happened if he had chosen differently. Robert Frost wrote this poem for his friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas as a joke, because, on their frequent walks together, Thomas was extremely indecisive about which route they should take. No matter what road they took in the end, Thomas would always regret that they had not taken another path, convinced that it would have led to better sights and better places. In my mind, this poem is not just about the traveler and his walk through the woods. In fact, picking a path through a forest is not such an important decision. But that decision is a metaphor for many of the life-changing choices people have to make in their “walk” through life. Whether you’re traveling through the woods or simply navigating through life, you have to set your eyes on a destination. I think the poem is telling us that we should think through all of our options, as it will impact the very direction of our journeys. There’s no point in concocting a million “what ifs.” Every choice you make should bring you closer to that destination. If you’ve made a wrong turn and there’s no going back, just learn from that mistake and stay focused on the destination. Regrets don’t change reality. What will change reality is your determination and how hard you work toward that ideal destination. Alicia Xin, 13 Scarsdale, NY

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST: THE COLLECTED POEMS, COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002. Henry Holt: New York, 2002; originally published in 1923. In the spring of 2017, I traveled with my father as he was doing research on the former death camps in eastern Poland. Driving back to Lublin, we made a stop in the Renaissance city of Zamość. In the central square, we came upon an old man in a feather hat and high boots standing next to a gray horse and carriage. The coachman offered to take us around. “I’m the last coachman of Zamość,” he declared. Curious, I asked: “What do you mean?” The old coachman replied in Polish, which I could understand, more or less, because I speak Russian: “I’m an old stupid man still to be driving this horse and buggy.” His words carried me back across the ocean to my native New England. The ride in the old-fashioned carriage at dusk brought to mind the second stanza of one of my favorite poems by the great American poet Robert Frost: My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. The 48-year-old Frost wrote this melodic poem in Shaftsbury, Vermont, in 1922 and included it in his collection New Hampshire. The poem captures a person’s travels through the night—and through the unknown. The speaker stops to rest in the alluring quietness of the night. This scene in the poem shows the speaker’s peculiar behavior in front of the “little horse.” The speaker seeks a break from his commitments and obligations (“promises”) in life. The poem continues: Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. The question that has been soaring in my head is: Whose woods are these? Who is the greater “he” in the poem? Is it a person—a farmer or a simple peasant boy? “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep,” states the speaker in the final stanza. I wonder again, to whom are these promises given? They could be promised to a specific person or a soul, to God or a higher power, or even to art itself. To accomplish his meaningful tasks, Frost organized the poem in deceptively simple stanzas with rhymes that travel through the poem like a trotting horse through the woods. The rhyming conjures up the poem’s central theme. In the first three stanzas, the rhyme of the third line becomes the main rhyme of the first, second, and fourth lines in the following stanza: here in the first becomes queer, near, and year in the second. In the final, fourth stanza the whole poem comes together by employing the same rhyme throughout: deep/keep/sleep/sleep. Why is this poem called one of the best in the 20th century? I think the poem is like an earring that was lost and later found. It shows human nature simplified into little pieces waiting to be discovered. Frost’s poem invites but does not force the reader to keep his or her own promises to people, and to the world. Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, 11 Brookline, MA

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost, from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST: THE COLLECTED POEMS, COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002. Henry Holt: New York, 2002; originally published in 1923. I first came across Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” two-and-a half years ago, nestled in a copy of S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders. To this day, I have every word of the poem memorized. It is a quick poem that says so much in so little. It combines powerful figurative language and a deeper meaning, crafts beautiful imagery, and creates a fluid sound pattern. First, anyone who likes the outdoors and outdoor writing will enjoy “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Every line of the poem relates to some sort of item in nature: Frost touches on the Garden of Eden, the sky, and the earth. With the second line (“Her hardest hue to hold”), Frost also personifies nature as someone struggling to hold onto her prettiest hues in her early hours. Though there are a number of possible readings for this line, it is easily comparable to children in their innocent years: an individual is guiltless and pure early on, which is the “gold” of life, yet innocence is something that stays “only so an hour.” After all, as Frost points out, everything ends. Eventually, a golden flower must join the other flowers on the ground, when “dawn goes down to day.” While it is sad that every good thing can’t last forever, Frost uses dawn and day instead of day and night to show that there are hopes for the future. He still manages to make the poem optimistic. Through minimal words, Frost still forms a beautiful scene. His imagery, though confined to just eight lines and forty words, allows any reader to see spring. I imagined a sunshine-yellow daffodil (“Nature’s first green is gold”) bloom, then wilt. I imagined a violet twilight turn into blackness, ending the dawn. Each word in the poem has a purpose and together forms a visual that any reader can see. What I love the most about this poem is its number of powerful words. Additionally, the couplet rhyming scheme and similar syllable count in each line give the poem a watery flow. The words and sounds form a cohesive work, instead of a choppy, peppery, scattered slew of letters. When I first read the poem, I never imagined it would have such an effect on me. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is a golden piece that any reader would enjoy as it appeals to a wide audience through a gorgeous combination of descriptive words, a layer that is deeper than just a picture, and its concise but nice phonetic pattern. And for all these reasons, I think this poem can stay. Maya Wolfford, 13 Cincinnati, OH

“This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams, from THE COLLECTED POEMS: VOLUME I, 1909-1939, ©1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. New Directions: New York, 1991; originally published in 1934. “This is Just to Say” is a wonderful and detailed imagist poem by William Carlos Williams. After it was published in 1934, it became one of Williams’s most popular poems. With only 28 words and no continuous rhyme scheme, no meter, and no punctuation, “This Is Just to Say” captures an innocent apology for eating “the plums that were in the icebox,” and yet it could mean much more. While many believe that the poem was a note written by Williams to his wife after indeed eating the plums that were in the icebox, others believe that the poem could represent a premature death of a loved one. The plums, while once here and being saved for breakfast, have now been eaten and no longer, well, exist. They are gone. This poem has been interpreted by many, and not one interpretation has been agreed upon. That is part of the beauty of this poem: it is an experience for each reader alone. One reader may see the poem as nothing more than an apology, and another could find another meaning within. The two might never agree, but for each, the meaning of the poem is theirs. That is the way in which we can all connect with this, or any, poem; it can be ours. The speaker of the poem (either Williams or simply a fictional narrator), who is also responsible for eating the plums, explains the simple reasons for their temptation and ultimate consumption of the plums despite the fact they were (probably) being saved for breakfast. This tells us how much the writer wanted the plums, and how could we blame him? Many people would probably have done the same had they been faced with choosing between eating cold plums now versus allowing them to be saved for later. Nevertheless, the narrator asks for forgiveness. We can wonder what kind of guilt the plums have finally brought the narrator and hope that it was not too much. This poem allows us to connect with the narrator in hopes that he has not come to regret happily eating the sweet plums. This poem, while lacking length, holds much more. It holds a strong connection with the imagination. With only the words “they were delicious / so sweet / and so cold,” we are able to picture and feel the plums Williams so simply and yet vividly describes. We can picture the plums, the icebox, the note. This short poem has a neverending ability to inspire the pictures that we can create in our minds. Williams’s considerate apology is everyone’s place for imagination. Not only does this poem inspire imagination, but it inspires our senses. “Delicious,” “sweet,” and “cold” are all we need to feel the plums. The word “delicious” fills the mouth, much like plums and the word “plum” itself. Speaking the word “delicious” takes everything of the speaking mouth which is overwhelmed by the dynamic spectrum of movement the word requires. Eating plums requires much maneuvering of the mouth as well. Slowing the quick push intended to work through the skin is the first task, and carefully working around the pit is next. Speaking the word “delicious” takes a similar effort. We move through the “d” to immediately slow to prepare for the climactic “-licious” that we move through with great care. Now, I am not saying that Williams deliberately picked the word “delicious” because speaking it is similar to eating a plum (instead of picking the word because it is one of the more impactful ways of saying that something tastes good), but I can suggest that it certainly inspires the senses and helps the feeling of eating plums reach the reader. “This is Just to Say” is a great poem—especially as far as poems with fewer than 30 words go! Twyla Coburn, 13 Portland, OR

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens, from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS: THE CORRECTED EDITION, edited by John N Serio and Chris Beyers, New York: Vintage, 2015. Vintage: New York, 2015; originally published in 1954. Wallace Stevens was an American modernist poet who was born in Pennsylvania in 1879. He worked as an executive for an insurance company in Connecticut, but when he had free time, his imagination took over, and he wrote beautiful poems. In 1954, he wrote “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” a gorgeous poem that describes a blackbird on windy days and in cold seasons. Each of the 13 short stanzas shows one perspective of the blackbird without giving the reader any background story. Instead, the poet intertwines imagery, musical terms, and euphoric sounds to engage and encourage the reader to dive deeper when interpreting the poem. What I like the most about the poem is the imagery, which replaces a strict storyline. Imagery, in any form of literature, is very powerful because it allows the reader to place herself within the scene that’s being described. With imagery, descriptions are much more intriguing and vivid to the reader. For example, the lines “At the sight of blackbirds / Flying in a green light” gave me the warm and magical feeling of traveling through sunlight filtered between green leaves. There are also less straightforward images in the poem that left me entranced and contemplating the meaning of each line. For instance, when I read, “When the blackbird flew out of sight, / It marked the edge / Of one of many circles,” I didn’t know how to interpret it at first. But then I thought of the last two lines of the previous stanza, “. . . the blackbird is involved / In what I know.” This made me think of the bird flying into the narrator’s mind and leaving a mark on him, one of the many things he will carry with him in his life. Along with the imagery, the fifth stanza really stuck out to me because I am a violinist. It reads, “I do not know which to prefer, / The beauty of inflections / Or the beauty of innuendoes, / The blackbird whistling / Or just after.” In music, an inflection is a change in pitch, which can be achieved by doing vibrato—that is, creating an echoing sound that makes the note a hundred times livelier. On the other hand, an innuendo is the aftermath of an increase or decrease in volume. It’s like the whisper that comes through half-open windows, the sound of wind through curtains. As a musician, I loved how the blackbird is portrayed as a very delicate instrument, and it helped me appreciate the bird’s song in a way I hadn’t before. But it’s not just musical terms that give this poem its melodic feeling. The poet also uses phrases that sound like what they describe, which gives the poem a fun edge. For example, the first stanza reads, “Among twenty snowy mountains, / The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird.” When you read this out loud, the phrase, “twenty snowy mountains,” actually sounds like the mountain peaks because the words’ stresses move up and down at a quick pace. Say it out loud, you’ll see! Also, in the line, “The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds,” the words “whirled” and “winds” capture the sound of circular gusts of wind. As a whole, this poem is packed with graceful imagery and interesting sounds, which left me in a trance after reading it. The writing conveys many feelings and effects: stillness, playfulness, mystery, and nostalgia. Because the poem’s meaning isn’t straightforward, it pushes readers to ask themselves questions about what the blackbird symbolizes and encourages readers to discover its many meanings. So I want to ask you: what do you think? How do you interpret this poem? What do you think the blackbird means in each stanza? Sabrina Guo, 13 Oyster Bay, NY

“One Art” from POEMS by Elizabeth Bishop. Previously published in THE COMPLETE POEMS 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 2011; originally published in 1976. We’ve all lost something at some point in our lives, from keys to wallets to homework assignments. Sometimes we lose bigger things: memories, people. Some of us have lost loved ones: grandparents and siblings, parents and friends. Some of us lose ourselves. Loss—all of these kinds of loss— are central to Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art.” In it, Bishop describes how she loses one thing after another, beginning with trivial objects like keys and building up to larger losses: houses, rivers, a continent. A loved one. Those losses, she tells us, were “no disaster,” but as the poem goes on, we come to wonder if she really means it as she repeats that “the art of losing isn’t hard to master.” Elizabeth Bishop was a leading American poet in the 20th century. Though she wrote many extraordinary poems during her life, “One Art” is easily Bishop’s most well-known work, and in my opinion, it is her greatest. What starts off as an observation of loss and a plaintive refusal to recognize that loss is disaster ends with an anguished, heartbreaking denial that even the loss of “you” could have been a disaster. Throughout her life, Bishop herself endured countless losses, beginning in infancy when she lost her father (she wasn’t even a year old). In her grief, her mother fell into depression and had to be hospitalized when Bishop was five. Bishop then grew up afflicted with asthma and spent her childhood alternating between the care of various relatives. As an adult, Bishop lost one lover to death, and at the time of writing “One Art,” she had just separated from another longtime lover, a younger woman named Alice. In response, Bishop rapidly wrote out 17 drafts of a single poem in less than a month, a first for her, since she usually spent months perfecting and revising her work. The result was “One Art,” a tremendously beautiful and heartbreaking read. “One Art” begins with its most famous line: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” Bishop starts off slowly, reassuring us that misplaced keys and wasted time are only small losses and encouraging us to practice losing: “Lose something every day,” she writes. She tells us what else she has lost, things that gradually start to seem less and less trivial: the loss of her mother’s watch, her house, her memories. Still, these losses are not disasters. Here the reader begins to realize that Bishop might not take these losses so lightly after all, though she so bravely pretends otherwise, as she describes the losses of “lovely” cities, continents, and realms, which (she claims) are still not disasters. But then she reaches the final stanza, arguably the most important one in the poem. Here is where the twist is. The dash before this stanza makes it seem to be almost a postscript, an addition that couldn’t be held back. “—Even losing you,” Bishop writes here, revealing that the poem is being written for a certain person: “It’s evident that the art of losing’s not too hard to master / though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.” This very last line exposes to us the true nature of Bishop’s immense struggle to cope with her loss, despite her repeated assurances otherwise. “(Write it!),” she commands herself; those two words are the only ones in the entire poem where her true pain is revealed to the reader, leaving us feeling just as torn as she is. The best thing about “One Art”— the thing that, in my eyes, makes it so powerful—is how human it is. As Bishop herself once put it, “One Art” is “pure emotion.” It approaches loss in a way completely novel, yet so familiar to any of us who have lost something we treasured. Though the speaker continues to deny that loss is any disaster, it is evident that the opposite is true, and that is what makes this poem so compelling. It is deep and powerful, simple but complex. To me, “One Art” is exactly what poetry is at its best, laying bare not only the human mind, but the human heart, however agonizing it may be. Kate Choi, 14 Seoul, Korea