
A friend who was going through this website trying to find a particular poem she remembered as being “about hope” did a search and was surprised to see how many poems have “hope” in their title. Even more poems use the word.
Maybe she doesn’t think of me as very hopeful. I don’t usually describe myself as an optimist or hopeful, but I’m not a pessimist and I do often feel hopeful about things.
The poem “Hope is the thing with feathers” is a poem by Emily Dickinson that inspired several of my poems. I’m not sure that Emily is all that hopeful in that poem and not all my “hope poems” are what you might describe as hopeful.
Several of the hope-titled poems have already been done as podcasts – Hope Is the Thing With Buds, Hope Is Also the Bud in Snow and The Thing with Feathers Flies Away
I will add podcasts this week for some others, such as Hope is a contract…, Hope in the Harvesting, and The Geography of Hope. It will be a week of hope because hope can appear in unexpected places like looking at the stars or in the back pages of a journal on a sad day.
Emily was good on hope. She was good on extreme states of mind of every kind, one of my personal favorite being this one, about the inner state of someone for whom hope is no longer an option.
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory
As he defeated—dying—
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for the poem. It seems you have “paused” on your blog http://www.throughlines.blogspot.com
Are you publishing words or images elsewhere?
LikeLike
Doing a lot of writing, poetry mostly. Have had a post for Throughlines taking shape on my desk for months and keep finding new ways to avoid finishing it. *Sigh*
LikeLike