Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today is Wednesday, April 29th, 2020.

The poem that I'm going to read today is by Emily Dickinson, who is one of the, of course, most popular, most famous American poets.

And the poem is called Hope is the Thing thing with feathers. This is how it goes.

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 her, and sore must be the storm that could have bashed the little bird that 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.

Living in the age of a pandemic, I think, means that the concept of hope, the idea of hope

is in the brain. We're hoping for good news in the news. We're hoping for

good reports of people who have recovered and death tolls to be down and things like that.

So this is a poem that's been kind of on my mind, especially that fascinating final couplet,

yet never in extremity that asked a crumb of me.

So I found this fascinating because she has this extended metaphor where, you know, the idea of hope being this bird,

this thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings a tune without the words and never stops.

And it's this bird that keeps people, you know, the idea of the hope keeping people warm,

that's inside of them and it's warming them even when things seem the most dark,

when things seem the most tragic, when the storm is raging.

She says she's heard it in the chillest land and on the strangest sea. She's heard,

she's heard tell of this hope. She's heard tell of, you know, in the strangest seas, the chillest land. She's heard, she's heard tell of the necessity to be kept warm by hope. Yet never an extremity

and asked a crumb of me.

And it's been on my mind because I think for many of us, we are facing anxieties and fears

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