On hope: Emily Dickinson’s idea
From “The Poems of Emily Dickinson” (Franklin, 1999):
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops – at all -
Is my verse alive? Emily Dickinson asked
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.
by Emily Dickinson
For fans old or new of Emily Dickinson, a new biography is just out. Titled “White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson,” it’s by Brenda Wineapple and it’s getting high praise from critics.
You can find one recent review here from The New York Sun (“The Activist and the Recluse” by Eric Ormsby, Aug 6, 2008).
And if you want to read an excerpt from Wineapple’s book itself, there’s one here on the publisher’s website (Random House/Knopf).
