Psychoanalysis and Poetry: A Dialogue about Emily Dickinson's "'Hope' is the thing with feathers"

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• Psychoanalysis and Poetry:A Dialogue about Emily Dickinson's "'Hope' is the thing with feathers"
• Dawn Skorczewski (bio) and Andrea Celenza (bio)

"Hope" is the thing with feathers – (314)

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -That perches in the soul -And sings the tune without the words -And never stops – at all -

And sweetest – in the Gale - is heard -And sore must be the storm -That could abash the little BirdThat kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land -And on the strangest Sea -Yet - never - in Extremity,It asked a crumb - of me.

Celenza:

Is this my favorite poem? What a thing for me to say … like Freud's papers—there are so many! And yet, I can say at this moment (and many moments in the past), this is my favorite poem. Reading it today, though, I take special notice of the sensory images that Dickinson evokes—like contemporary writing in psychoanalysis, there is a poignant noting of the body, the way emotions emerge, make themselves felt, in the tingling of fingertips and queasiness in our stomachs … "the thing with feathers" obliquely rendering the trite 'butterflies' we all know and dread. [End Page 275]

Skorczewski:

When you chose this poem, I immediately started to think about the fact that the words "hope" and "thing" and "feathers" all appear in the first line, which is a sentence, a declaration. She mixes a feeling, an unnamed object and the part of a bird that helps to keep them warm. How can hope be a thing? How can a thing have feathers? Then she places it in the soul, singing a tune without its words, endlessly. So by the end of stanza one we have a position. We are listening to a soul's song. Suddenly I had a memory of my analyst saying to me, on a day when I felt so depressed, "I am holding on to the hope." It was very important to me that she felt there could be another life for me.

Celenza:

Isn't what your analyst said at the heart of it all? To hold the hope when our patients cannot access it. We see beyond the immediate and can envision a future, a psychic future, that our patients cannot (or dare not) imagine. As if we know what that might be—but we don't know the specifics, yet we dare to trust that something will emerge—without words, without asking, we trust that some shape will form and arise from within the soul. I love the way you said, "We have a position. We are listening to a soul's song."

The poets have said it all! We are mere tradespersons trying to put their insights into practice. Poetry does the thing it writes about, providing an experience of discovery for what might emerge while describing that very thing it has birthed. The nonlinear performative nature of words, the drama of a narration. I too love (now that you say it!) the way Dickenson put hope, thing and feathers all in the very first line—she conjures a bird but doesn't explicitly name it. It's as if the bird is perched beside us, (perhaps the analyst behind the couch?) patiently waiting right next to us, there for us to discover, if we only dare to look. Washing up upon the shore, like Lindbergh's gift from the sea. Such is the experience of hope—if we dare to look, feel, discover it.

Skorczewski:

I resonate with your boundless enthusiasm here, and also your emphasis on a "we" that includes a bird perched next to us. The bard, the bird The speaker, sitting on our [End Page 276] shoulder pushing us toward hope?When she says it perches "in the soul" then I feel she's suggesting that the inside of a person can be where the hope resides. I wish I didn't have to displace the idea that that is also where the fear and shame reside. And then it starts to sing. A lyric? The poem becomes the soul itself, and we are convening with hers?

That is where my mind goes. But...