Emily Dickinson: Early Modernist Formations and Imagined Landscapes

Joe: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by the team at PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. I'm Joe and I'm here with my co-host Maiya, and we have another really exciting episode to bring you today. Some of you may remember that in season one we recorded an episode on Emily Dickinson's, Because I could not stop for Death and because we enjoyed it so much, we're finally back in season four to discuss the rest of Emily Dickinson's career, of which there are a great many poems we're gonna be diving into.

we're gonna be talking about a range of themes including Emily Dickinson's Singularity as an artist, the power of the imagination, and whether or not her poetry contains proto modernist tendencies. But before we get into the poems themselves, Maiya, we don't wanna do a full overview of her career again because listeners can go back to that episode in season one if they'd like a more comprehensive biography.

But can you give us sort of some touch points for her life and her career?

Maiya: Absolutely, and thank you for that intro, Joe. So as you mentioned, we did our first Emily Dickinson episode [00:01:00] all the way back in season one, in episode 19. So if you want a full biography, please do go and check that episode out.

You know, all of that information still stands. So I will give a little brief overview for any listeners who are joining us for the first time today, or for people who just want a quick reminder of Emily Dickinson's early life and upbringing. So she was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is in the USA. She was raised in a very, very strict religious family, but they were a very close knit family. She was very close with her siblings and had close relationships, obviously with her parents.

She was educated at Amherst Academy. She briefly attended a seminary, but she left after a year and she was known to be incredibly intelligent, but also incredibly private. She wrote over 1,800 poems in her lifetime, but was only published posthumously.

Anything that she published during her lifetime was anonymous and only later attributed to her. So she's such an interesting figure and I'm, so excited to get into this episode again today because in our first episode, we only really had a chance to [00:02:00] touch base on that poem. Because I could not stop for Death. But here we have the chance to get into some of her other amazing poems and we have a huge wealth to choose from, don't we, Joe? So with that, let's get into that first poem that you wanna talk about. 'Hope is the Thing with Feathers'.

Joe: Thanks Maiya. I'd love to. So I'm gonna read the poem for the benefit of listeners. And it's worth pointing out that the vast majority of the poems we're gonna be talking about today are very, very short. And I'd love to get into a conversation about length later on because I think it's really, really interesting.

But here is ''Hope is the Thing with Feathers'.'

'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 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 for me. so much to talk about in this poem. So influential, so iconic, probably probably Emily Dickinson’s most [00:03:00] famous poem with the possible exception of the one we talked about in season one. But. The thing I'm really interested in, this will be no surprise to regular listeners, is that title ''Hope is the Thing with Feathers'' because it establishes so much of what, we can observe about Dickinson stylistically.

Her creativity with metaphors is one of the things that really sets her apart. She's one of the most original poets when it comes to finding creative, abstract ways to represent ideas, emotions, places, people, and by casting this ambiguous feeling of hope as something identifiable, as something, living as something that has the ability to fly.

Of course, the association of something having feathers, which we assume is a bird of some kind is so interesting for a number of reasons. But the other thing I think I'd just like to point out. To listeners. 'cause I think it's a detail that we sometimes miss is that a lot of these titles are actually given by other people.

These are not poems that she was titling as such herself as you would've heard from the poem when I read it. The title is actually just the first line. this is interesting in a sense, and I think possibly, from a slightly more nerdy perspective, from a [00:04:00] poetic standpoint, because it's a reminder of the privacy of the poems in the first place.

They weren't written for public consumption. And that means several things. It means that. ultimately, as we spoke about in our previous episode, Emily Dickinson, her work is not being critiqued by critics and general readers, and therefore, her style is something that is developing independently of the outside world, independently of critical perception.

And the other reason I think it's really interesting is because it means we read her poems with an extra degree of personal insight because they are only intended for her and perhaps some of her closest loved ones. Her sister was very, very influential in the eventual publication of her work.

But the absence of titles is not just something cosmetic. It actually reminds us that the poems themselves are developing differently. when we compare her work to, for example, some of the more publicly renowned American poets of her era , the likes of Walt Whitman, who is in kind of constant dialogue with the reading public.

Her poems don't have that. But Maiya, anything to add on my spiel about titles or something else you'd like to draw out from this poem?

Maiya: [00:05:00] For sure. I mean, I think one of the really interesting things about Emily Dickinson's poetry is that unlike many other poems where we can explore the speaker and say, oh yes, okay, perhaps they were talking about this person, or perhaps this is from the perspective of someone else. Part of the reason I think we say that Dickinson is so singular is that every single voice. Really can be seen as her own because of the privacy of the nature of these poems, because of how intimate they are to, you know, you can imagine that these are written in her personal diaries. These have been pulled from the page and some may have never been edited.

Some of these may just have been a thought that was written quickly and they've been pulled out later to be published. So personally, as a poet myself, and as someone who has gone through the revisions and edits of work, you kind of start to add a thicker skin to some of your poems.

You start to create. a wall around them in the way that you make these edits, you strengthen them, you fortify them here. I think there's such an intimacy and a [00:06:00] softness to the poems that she writes because you get the impression that self edits maybe weren't as apparent, and if they were there, it would've been much smaller.

It wouldn't have been these vast revisions by other people. So her voice hasn't had the chance to be changed. And I think that's a really lovely thing to approach Dickinson's poetry with. And especially as, for any listeners who are listening to her for the first time today, or will go and pick up her collection and read for the first time, you really have to approach her work with an understanding that what you are reading is her very intimate thoughts and feelings and desires. And one of the things I'm sure we're gonna go on to talk about Joe, is these imagined worlds that she creates because she was someone who was very reclusive. She stayed in her home a lot of the time. And yet when we talk about certain motifs and themes in her poetry, it's about distant lands and volcanoes is one of the things that we'll touch on that she tended to write about quite a lot, but it obviously never witnessed herself. And I like that in the close of this poem, we have the idea of the chillest land and the strangest [00:07:00] sea because these imagined worlds seem so far from where she would've been writing in her bedroom at the dining table. And yet there's a real trust that the reader or listener puts in her to transport them there. And even though I know, and you know, because we've researched her and we know that she was writing from her desk. I don’t feel any distrust when I read this poem, the experience that she's had, and I think that's such a unique thing because when you enter a poem, you do have to put a certain level of trust in the speaker or the poet to convey an emotional feeling to you, but you do often question it.

And here, I don't question it at all. I'd love to know how you feel about that and if, it's the same for you.

Joe: No, I think definitely I, I spoke in a previous episode , this series, I think, about how poetry is able to be factually dishonest while being emotionally honest. And I think this is a great example of that. We know that Emily Dickinson did not travel to the chillest lands. We know that Emily Dickinson did not see the ocean in her lifetime .

I mean, it's a wild thing to imagine, but she was very reclusive and she never saw the ocean, obviously. the dates she [00:08:00] lived that Maiya mentioned earlier on 1830 to 1886, photography of course existed, but there wasn't mass proliferation of photographs in the way that we now understand it.

So, so much of her poetry , so many of the worlds and scenes that she conjures are the result of her imagination or things that she's read or things that she's heard, and it's that ability to conjure them with such emotional honesty. I think that makes the experience of reading these poems so wonderful, because you're right, I do believe.

The portrayal of these distant lands and the portrayal of this ocean, even though I know for a fact she's never seen it. And I'm also not bothered by the fact that she claims ownership of that. She claims that she has heard it in the chillest land and on the strangest sea, it's not only that those places exist, it's that she has some kind of knowledge of them.

And I was really put in mind, I dunno if this is a strange comparison, but it really called to mind for me. The poem by John Donne, which, kind of better known as the poem that inspired than the title of Hemingway's novel for whom the bell tolls. Because there is that sense that because humans have experienced these things and because Emily [00:09:00] Dickinson is involved with the experience of mankind, she can somehow sort of claim ownership of those experiences, even if she wasn't the one actually to have them.

You know, it's the end of that John Donne poem is, any Man's death diminishes me because I'm involved in mankind. It's that sense that yes, we live lives as individuals, but we are part of a coherent whole, and if something happens to somebody far away, it's also happening to me in a sense because we are participants in the human story, and it's so beautifully rendered in both the Donne poem and in this here, but of course that's not the only way of looking at it, is it, Maiya?

Maiya: , Well, no, it's definitely not the only way of looking at it. I think it's really interesting that you bring up human experience because I find that. Maybe the trust in this poem isn't coming from the idea that she knows what the sea looks like, or you know, that she will be able to describe a distant land.

But what we have here is maybe more of an emotional tempest. The storms that she talks about, the passion, the chill, I don't think that comes from her experience or understanding [00:10:00] of what a physical landscape looks like. But I think what we're exploring here is definitely an emotional landscape. She's someone who evidently across these poems, feels very deeply and you can feel very deeply from your desk, from your bedroom. You know, you can have this sense with Dickinson that she's traversing her own emotional bounds, and I find that is something that really latches onto you as a reader here because you have this balance, you know, between. Hope and despair. You have a balance between sweetness and the storm extremity, chillest land and strangest sea, and yet the emotional core of this poem, the center is hope.

It's the speaker's sense of hope. So really our focus isn't on the boundaries of this space, but the boundaries of this space. Instead, contend with the reader to make them focus on what is the core of this poem. And that's a really unique way to approach a poem. I think usually we take one idea and we expand it out, but instead here we have a very broad idea that has a, [00:11:00] a beating heart almost. I wonder whether that beating heart of a poem like this is intentional, but it maybe leads onto a question, which is many of the poems we'll talk about today, because they weren't intended to be published because they were very personal poems. Dickinson on the whole, has a lot more personal pronoun usage than I think a lot of other poets do. A lot of her poems start with, I, they use me, they refer to herself. So in this poem, our last two lines indicate that hope has never asked a crumb of me.

So it's a self-referral at the end, but. What purpose do you think the intimacy with herself here serves in the grander scheme of her poems?

Joe: Well, it's a really interesting question, I think. is a kind of relentless self-interrogation happening over the course of Dickinson's poems. And you know, we can't ever know truly how much she identified with the speaker in this poem or that poem because, you know, some feelings she might have felt very strongly other feelings.

She might have been simply experimenting [00:12:00] poetically. We can't ultimately know, and we should never make the mistake of conflating entirely a poet with the voice in their work. But I think the absence of published poetry, the fact these were largely for her own consumption and the repeated, as Maiya mentioned, use of personal pronouns means that, you know, we can certainly glean some things, about her personal life.

And I think it's that sense of self interrogation I think is really, really interesting. We spoke in the previous episode about Emily Dickinson, about how, when a poet is writing for long, long periods without publishing. The likelihood that they sit with a kind of single idea, a single theme is much higher than a poet who is kind of looking for the next thing in their career, looking to progress their career.

And for Emily, Emily Dickinson, I think it is that exploration of the individual and how they interact with society, both within the confines of the home that she knew very, very well, but also in broader society that was more imagined from her point of view. And I think that that singular voice that runs through so many of these, it's deeply introspective.

It's very self-critical at times. And even in this poem, [00:13:00] I'm really fascinated by this hope is presented as something external . It is a that chooses to perch in your soul, which is a beautiful metaphor, but also kind of a way of not giving yourself credit for having hope through difficult times because you are, outsourcing the compliment to some other thing.

And I think that's a really, really fascinating way, of viewing Dickinson because the way she views herself is often deeply critical . And maybe that's inevitable when you, think about yourself and look at yourself under the poetic lens for so long. You know, you are going to find flaws in your character and you are going to draw them out.

and we'll talk about that in some of the later poems. I hope that answers your question, Maiya. But before we move on to one of our next poems, I'd love to talk a little bit more about this central metaphor. 'cause there's so much going on in. Again, regular listeners will know that we've done deep dives on many, many species of We've done albatrosses and we've done all kinds of things. We don't have a species specified in this poem, so sorry. Or you're welcome, depending on what you thought of those previous deep dives, I suppose. But the symbol of the bird is fascinating in poetry generally, and it, this goes right back to kind of the Bible.

And we [00:14:00] think about the that brought back the branch to Noah's Ark, that became a symbol of hope for, the future because it's, signified that the water level was dropping and that soon, Noah and his family and the animals would be able to leave the ark. So the idea of the is symbolizing hope, and freedom is nothing new.

What I think is really interesting here, however, that she's kind of subverting what it is about the That we should be hopeful about or that represents hope because we normally think of the ability to fly as the thing that is generating hope. You can soar high into the sky and escape whatever circumstances are bringing you down or vice versa.

Whereas here, crucially, we get this mention of the perching in the soul. And it's that sense that hope is an active choice about where to reside. It's the absence of flight. It's a decision to settle that Dickinson identifies as the hopeful act, the decision not to run away, the decision not to flee, but actually to endure, to sit there even though the circumstances might be dangerous or upsetting or difficult.

And I find that subversion [00:15:00] of a symbol of hope while maintaining it as a symbol of hope to be just absolute poetic genius. And I don't use the term lightly, but Maiya, is there anything else about that central metaphor of the bird, of flight , of the feathers that, you'd like to draw out?

Maiya: Yeah, I'd really love to redirect listeners to that kind of second stanza in this poem, which is and sweetest in the gale is heard and sore must be the storm that could abash the little bird that kept so many warm because again, this alludes to this idea of staying of steadfastness instead of the bird being something fleeting It's actually in the process of suffering itself, and that's something that we don't often talk about when we talk about hope. Hope is seen as this beacon. It's something that brings light and positivity and joy. But instead, Dickinson is really addressing the fact that hope has to be balanced with suffering. Hope can only come when you are feeling like you are lacking it. Are not actively seeking hope when you are in happy circumstances. So not only do we have a [00:16:00] sense of scale here, which is something I know I talk about quite a lot on this podcast because I love contrast, but we have a very little bird. Something that in theory should be easy to strike down. Something that should be easy to, lose the voice of, and instead, it remains a really central point in this poem, which is such a beautiful thing. But also we have the idea that even though it is suffering, even though it is struggling, it doesn't ask for anything in return. So this. Relationship in many ways isn't reciprocal. It's something that is asked for by the speaker that stays regardless of being fed or not. And I think it really speaks to this idea that the way that we view Dickinson you know, socially now, is that she was this recluse who suffered greatly, felt these things, but she has a really deft way of handling emotion. These poems are not just simply poems that talk about how much she's struggling. This is a reflection on the fact that she [00:17:00] understands. Both the highs and the lows of these feelings. And I, I find it so skillful the way that she uses this tiny creature, something that we don't have any information about. You know, as we say, it's, we can't identify the species of birds, so we can't really do a deep dive in that sense because we don't have any information on it. And yet the image is crystal clear. I think that's so beautiful and I, really enjoy the way that actually Dickinson handles anonymity quite well. It leads us quite well onto another poem I wanted to talk about today, which is, I'm Nobody! Who are you? Now I'm nobody. Who are you is actually quite a humorous poem, but I will read it for listeners benefit today. And then Joe, I would love to get your thoughts. So this is, I'm Nobody! Who are you? Nobody. Who are you? Are you Nobody too. Then there's a pair of us. Don't tell. They banish us. You know How dreary to be somebody!? How public like a frog to tell your name, the live long June to an admiring bog. [00:18:00] Now, Joe, where would you like to start? Because this is a poem, so dense in imagery, but also just funny. 

Joe: well, I think that's where I'd like to begin. I'd like to begin with the humor because it's not something I think that we, we associate with 'em, Emily Dickinson. We do tend to think of sincerity and of kind of high-minded themes of, death, but also of hope and love. This notion of her as a funny poet, I think is something that's really worth pointing out.

That's why I'm so glad we're talking about this poem, How dreary to be somebody! and somebody is capitalized in case, listeners aren't aware. mean, I love this poem. I'm such a, a fan of it. And the more you look at it, the more there is to spot, because ostensibly it's a straightforward, slightly humorous kind of takedown of the arrogance of people to presume other people know who they are.

And there was a real pride taken in privacy. It's effectively a rejection of the public persona, in favor of the private life. And obviously there's so much of Dickinson's own life experience contained within that rejection. But the more you kind of scratch at the surface of it, the more I think it's interesting. I mean, reading this today [00:19:00] in 2026 with everything that we know about fame and celebrity and the pressures of a public life. I'm amazed at how fresh the poem seems and feels, because this poem is written in the middle of the 19th century, before the advent of a modern press, before the rise of, modern celebrity in the way that we now conceive it before mass photography, and certainly before anything that we've experienced in the last few decades in terms of social media and the ability for ordinary people to project a kind of more public persona.

Again, we have to remember that social media really allows for private people to become like celebrities. Effectively. Everyone posting on social media is their own kind of micro influencer. She is writing in a world where none of that exists and yet her kind of diagnosis of the symptoms of wanting to project a life bigger than the one you really lead is right there.

And I just think it's absolutely masterful.

Maiya: Consumption is something I really want to explore. So in my head, when I think of a frog, the first image that pops into my mind is the idea of a frog reaching its tongue out and swallowing a [00:20:00] fly. So immediately, again, scale, like I say, I always talk about it, you have this larger, more powerful figure consuming something small. The live long June is actually really fascinating to me because we talk about seasonality quite a lot. In our podcast, we talk about how poets explore things like winter, summer, spring. One of the things that we can rely on most clearly is that seasons roll on. The reason that we have balance in the world is because we have a summer, which allows things to grow.

It nourishes them, it feeds them, and yet also we have this cycle of life and death. So not only do. The rolling of the seasons represent in many ways the life cycles of animals, humans, plants. But what Dickinson is asking here is what happens if those seasons stop? June is the height of summer. So what Dickinson might be asking here is actually, is it possible to remain when you are subjected to the intense heat of June and it [00:21:00] never stops? It never goes away. The admiring bog here is seen to be the crowd that is willing to consume you. You know, if you're walking through a bog and you get your foot stuck, you are getting stuck in that bog. It's this idea of stasis versus. Freedom and I love how this poem tackles such a grand idea in such simple, honestly hilarious terms.

Because the idea of consumption in this poem, as you say, there's not this mass idea of fame, but it's so applicable now because you have these huge entities that just absorb people's individuality. You know, there's a lot of conversation now about, especially with influencers, social media, the rise of kind of similarity is that everyone's starting to look the same or talk the same, but actually here we have an interrogation of individuality and how important it is to not get lost in that bog, even though it might give you something, it might respond to you, it might feel amazing. Is it worth the trade off? And I think that's the question that this poem is asking, and the [00:22:00] fact that we have nobody versus somebody, because of course when we talk about nobody, usually it's seen as something negative. If you are nobody, you have nothing to your name, you have no possessions, you have no physical name, you have nothing to prove that you have been on this planet. And yet to be nobody here is to escape from the confines of everyday society. And it's such a blessing in this poem that I find the way it's handled through humor, such an interesting choice.

Joe: I think that's great, Mike. And I'd like to just touch on a couple of threads that I think you brought up there. I mean, I haven't prepared a deep dive on frogs and now I, I wish that I had, but I do as always, have deep dives on something unexpected.

And here I think I'd like to talk about the bog a little bit more because the bog is such a strange, poetic symbol in this poem, kind of on face value. Maiya kind of alluded to this, the tension between the word admiring And the word bog is really, really curious here, because Dickinson is again, poking fun at people who are flattered by the compliments that come from the admiring bog.

Because would you want anything from the bog? The bog, in case [00:23:00] anyone wasn't aware, is a kind of a wetland made up of very slowly decaying vegetation, and it stinks and it swallows people up and it's this really, really unpleasant place. if that person or that thing is giving you a compliment, why do you want it?

I mean, it's a kind of rejection of adoration because if the adoration is coming from a strange or unpleasant source and what value is the adoration at all. But I think Maiya mentioned that sense of the bog kind of swallowing something. And again, this is a, modern interpretation that wouldn't have existed in Dickinson's time, but it's so applicable.

To the modern world and the modern perception of fame. Because the other thing that we associate with bogs is this ability to preserve things because of the nature, and I'm no expert on this, but 'cause of the nature of the bog itself, organic matter is often preserved for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

So they found bodies. I believe there's a story in Ireland as recently as 2011 where there was a body found. And when the body was found as, so the story goes, people rang the police rather than the government because they thought it was a recent body and therefore a murder victim and the body turned [00:24:00] out to be thousands of years old.

So this ability for the bog to not only consume things but then regurgitate them often in ways that we don't expect or perhaps don't want, is that not so reminiscent of modern celebrity culture. Old tweets being resurfaced to ruin careers, early interviews from actors or film styles and musicians from the nineties being applied to something they're saying in 2025 or 2026.

And that sense that. Modern celebrity is a kind of bog that on the one hand just consumes and consumes and consumes, but never deletes, never forgets. Old headlines are constantly being rehashed in the present. And that relationship between the past, the present and fame as this thing that kind of spans the two is so, so brilliantly expressed here that if this was a modern poem, I would be saying it's the ultimate portrayal of modern celebrity.

And its faults and its inconsistencies, but it's written hundreds of years ago. And it's that ability that Dickinson has to prefigure the future that I think is absolutely incredible. The other thing I'd like to talk about, and It would be remiss of me in a [00:25:00] poem that begins with that phrase, I'm nobody, not to kind of draw out a classical comparison here, because many of, you'll know that those are the words spoken by Odysseus, in the Odyssey as he attempts to outsmart the Cyclops Polyphemus.

And for anyone who's looking to know more about that, Maiya and I are actually planning an Odyssey episode to coincide with the release of the Christopher Nolan film in July, which we're very, very excited to record, and we hope you guys will enjoy when we get there. But in case anyone's not aware of the story, I'll very briefly summarize it.

So. Having been trapped by the Cyclops Polyphemus, uh, Odysseus gives the name nobody, so that when him and his men eventually blind, the Cyclops and the Cyclops calls out, in pain. And for help, the other Cyclops is on the island, come to the, cave door, and all they can hear is Polyphemus saying, nobody has blinded me.

Therefore, the other Cyclopes assume that there is nothing, to be done, and they leave. And it's this brilliant character study into Odysseus. And I'm sure we will come to this in July when we do that episode because on the one hand, it's a stroke of genius. It's a mark of brilliance. But the problem is he then can't resist bragging when he has accomplished [00:26:00] it.

And when him and his men escape, he calls back to Polyphemus and gives him his real name, which therefore allows Polyphemus to ask his divine Father Poseidon to curse Odysseus and his men. Now you're probably thinking, why is this deep dive into the Odyssey necessary for this poem? Well, what Emily Dickinson is doing, I think by alluding to that story, is celebrating .

The decision itself, celebrating the anonymity and the freedom that it affords you. If you are nobody, you have the ability to act without consequences. You have the ability to act without judgment, without expectation, and that can be a really freeing, liberating environment. The mistake Odysseus makes is to surrender the anonymity that he has given himself, and it's not a mistake that Dickinson makes.

Dickinson's focus on actually embracing the anonymity and embracing the freedom that it affords you, I think is ultimately the message of this poem.

Maiya: I wonder if we can take a, a quick aside for a moment, Joe, and actually discuss the anonymity of the poems as well, because one of the things you mentioned is that many of these poems don't have titles. They weren't [00:27:00] self-titled by Dickinson. They were titled at a later date by using the first line. So I wonder if there is, you know, something to be said, of course, for the privacy of these poems, but what impact does adding a title to these poems actually do?

Because of course we have examples like Sappho, you know, where we have these fragments and instead of titling the poems by their first line, they're simply called, you know, fragment 16, fragment 57. And that, I think has a very different impact on the poem than by repeating the title, because of course we have a repetition here.

Usually you read the title first and then you go into the poem. So maybe there's an additional emphasis placed on these poems in the sense that we have this repeated or doubled line, in any other poetic analysis. You know, if I give you a poem and you see a repeated line, a doubled line, it's something that your eye is immediately drawn to. It's something that emphasis is then being placed on. But this emphasis was not placed by Emily Dickinson. It was done posthumously. you know, very roundabout way of getting to it. But my question really is when we [00:28:00] talk about anonymity, it doesn't just reflect on her personal feelings towards society.

I think it also maybe reflects on her feelings towards her poetry. We don't know that she ever wanted to be published. you know from my own personal experience when I've written poems that I would like to put out there, I do title them. I title them because I know where they're going. So is the fact that we have taken, you know, this mass grave of her poetry pages and pages and pages of her writing and added something to it, do you think it takes away from the poem, do you think it adds to these poems?

I mean, I'm just curious to your opinion on it.

Joe: Well, it's a really, it's a really, really interesting question and of course. Which poems do we place together? In what order are they published? I mean, all of these things, you know, listeners might not realize, shape the perception of the work itself.

Normally when a poetry collection is published, the author has some input into which poems are included, what order they're included in, and the narrative of a whole collection can be shaped. It's like listening to a really great album. It's important to listen to it in the right order because ultimately there is a story being told [00:29:00] Yes, in 50 poems and yes, in 12 tracks on an album.

But there's also, an overarching story being told when you view them all in conjunction with one another. And Emily Dickinson didn't have that, authority. She didn't have that ability to shape them because we mentioned they were published after her death. I think in the case of Dickinson specifically, the decision to kind of arbitrarily give.

The poems, the title of the first line works surprisingly well because so often her opening line becomes a thesis statement for the poem. one of the things I really love about her poems is their directness, the way in which they begin with a kind of assertion of something. Hope is a thing with feathers, et cetera.

And that assertiveness I think is really, really insane. And it, it lends itself quite nicely to becoming the title. And it touches on one of the things I mentioned at the top of the episode, which is that Emily Dickinson is prefiguring so much of what is to come. And, you know, anyone who hasn't read these poems that we've read, I really suggest you go and, and look at them because the way they're punctuated is really interesting.

And hopefully we're getting that across with our readings. But. There is a sense of kind of fragmentation A funny, you mentioned Sappho, which obviously the fragmentation was not deliberate. It's because so [00:30:00] few of her poems survive. But Dickinson uses punctuation to kind of deliberately break up the rhythm of her poems.

They are very condensed, they are very, short, they are very introspective. they're concerned with internal perception of the world, not just the world itself. I mean, I could be describing a great many modernist writers when I use those kind of phrases in, you know, introspection, internal worlds, disruption of forms.

You know, you talked earlier on about the use of the personal pronouns. I mean that really prefigures the confessional movement that we've spoken about in a previous episode of the 1960s. And, you know, how much do you think we can view Dickinson as a kind of proto, modernist, proto 20th century poet writing decades before that kind of era came to be?

I love giving you difficult questions and there's another one.

Maiya: Well, I love to answer a difficult question. . I actually think, shockingly, this is a simpler answer For years and years, poetic movements, you know, we've just done a miniseries on, the Imagist poets sat in rooms and collaborated and spoke about [00:31:00] ideas and discussed intention. And I like the idea that the reason that we can so easily attribute Dickinson's work to some sort of early modernist tendencies is because she spent a lot of time with herself. She didn't spend a lot of time with other poets. She didn't receive a lot of that feedback. And obviously one of the key tenets of, modernism is that introspection. And it's hard to be introspective when you're constantly receiving critique from other people. The confessional poets spent a lot of time thinking about how they felt about the world, how they felt about themselves. Plath is actually a really great example of this conversation we're having at the moment because she was a confessional poet who obviously spent a lot of time mediating on herself. Her feelings towards her own sense of self-worth, but edits to her collections after she had passed away really impacted the way that that collection was received.

So she was married to Ted Hughes for years and years, but they separated prior to her death, and yet because of the [00:32:00] circumstances of how she passed away, he was still left with a lot of power in revising her collection. Now, if you read side by side, Plath's intention, her original intention for her collection, Ariel, against the edits that Ted Hughes made in terms of the order of the poems, the way that some of them finished, they read very, very differently. Now Ted Hughes's edit, not to make this episode about Plath and Ted Hughes, because this is a, very complicated topic, and I know one that we've already touched on, lightly, I believe in our, first season. But his edits shape the narrative around her death because of the way that her poems were portrayed to almost suggest that the circumstances of her death were inevitable. Whereas actually, if you read her initial intentions for the collection, there are moments of hope and poems that have been taken out and replace as I mentioned, provide a different feeling, a different mood to the collection. So editing is really, really important and in a very long-winded way to [00:33:00] get back around to the question you asked Joe. I think part of the reason we are. Both such huge fans of Dickinson is because the modernist tendencies we see, the focus on the eye, the introspective nature of them, the honesty and the leaning into the confessional nature of her poems feel so refreshing as set against much of the other poetry that is being produced at this time. It feels unedited and I think that's a really key message for a lot of her work is that she's singular, you know, it's a word that we've said time and time again in this episode. There is no one that can take away from her voice, and I think you could show me a Dickinson poem without telling me it was Dickinson and I'd be able to pinpoint it because of the formal choices she makes, because of the language she uses, because of the capitalization she uses.

She has this inimitable. Voice, and I think it's so suited to what she talks about and how she talks about it.

Joe: I couldn't agree more, and I think it's a reminder [00:34:00] always. I mean, we've just done this miniseries, as you've said on the Imagists, and it's a real reminder, I think, for us when we're thinking about the evolution of poetry or the evolution of styles, to take a step back and to remember that ultimately art and poetry develops very, very slowly and then all at once.

And what I mean by that is, you know, Dickinson is writing decades before what we think of as the birth of kind of literary modernism she's writing in the 19th century. The other kind of great American poet of this era is of course, Walt Whitman, who's widely regarded as the father of Free verse that then goes on to become the verse form of choice for the modernist poets.

So again, these machinations of poetic change are very slow moving. They're happening in many ways, decades before, what we think of as the culmination of modernism. You know, 1922 being a key example, the publication of the Wasteland. We did an episode on that. And of course, the Imagists that we mentioned, it's very simplistic to say, okay, well this is the year that somebody declared a movement.

Therefore that is the moment that we should focus on. But actually a [00:35:00] lot of the kind of early changes stylistically that go on to inform that movement are happening decades, if not even a century before. I mean, we see this a lot in France with the French symbolists and how they went on to influence some of the Imagists.

These things don't appear out of nowhere. And I think, you know, it's a fascinating thing, and I tussled with this back and forth about do we place too much emphasis on individuals? Are we very sucked in by the image of a group of poets in a room together?

Are we too attached to that kind of romantic idea that that's where, the evolution of forms and, poetry really happens? And it calls to mind. Another episode we did on Kamala Das’s poem, and we spoke about her as a great confessional poet and she was in a completely different country writing a completely different, poetic tradition to the confessional poets of the 1960s.

We very much associate with America and New York. And it's that reminder, I think for us as readers of poetry and for critics of poetry, to always enter poetry analysis with a sense of humility. That ultimately there are individuals that drive change forward, but there are also [00:36:00] larger structural changes that are happening over the course of decades and multiple poets careers that go on to shape a seeming moment of inspiration and change.

So we're gonna move on now to talk about our final poem of the episode. And I know there are hundreds that are out there and we could have done all of them, but you know, we hope you use this episode as a, a jumping off point to go and explore more Dickinson poems.

And who knows, maybe we'll even return to them in a third iteration of a Dickinson poem on Beyond the Verse. But for now, I want to read the poem . I have never seen volcanoes.

I have never seen volcanoes, but when travelers tell of how those old phlegmatic mountains usually so still bear within appalling ordnance, fire and smoke and gun, taking villages for breakfast and appalling men, if the stillness is volcanic in the human face, when upon a pain Titanic features keep their place. If at length the smoldering anguish will not overcome [00:37:00] and the palpitating vineyard in the dust be thrown. If some antiquary on resumption mourn will not cry with joy Pompeii to the hills return.

So Maiya, I'm really, really interested in your views on this poem, but I don't wanna be too prescriptive. Is there somewhere you'd like to start us off in the conversation? Where would you like to look?

Maiya: Well, to be very brief, as many of our regular listeners will know, I love to talk about openings of poems and titles here. I think we have a really fascinating conundrum because we are told from the outset that the speaker has never seen volcanoes, and yet the way that we are relayed information about the volcano is so in depth and detailed. I mean, I love this comparison to heavy artillery, the ordnance, the smoke and gun, the almost manmade accusation of this. Whereas of course we know the volcanoes and their explosions are a natural phenomenon. But here the, suggestion of the manmade, I think does a lot of heavy lifting in this poem because of [00:38:00] course as listeners will be able to tell, we are not necessarily talking about an instance of a volcano erupting.

Even though we do refer to Pompeii, which I think is a really interesting touch point. I would like to explore in a minute. But instead we are talking about the control of emotion. Now, we've said so many times throughout this episode that the emotional landscapes that Dickinson contends with are so incredibly complex, and I find that this third stanza, if the stillness is volcanic in the human face, when upon a pain Titanic features keep their place is.

So, I think I used this word a few episodes back, but it's delicious. There is something so crisp about this stanza and the way that Dickinson handles the image of these really deep, strong emotions, being hidden by something that is much more solid is fascinating because so often when we talk about volcanoes in literature, we talk about their raw power.

We talk about the destruction and. Yet in this poem, there's more of a focus on what is hidden. There's a focus on the fact that this [00:39:00] power is something that is innate to the volcano, and yet the external presentation of it is something different. Phlegmatic actually means kind of solid and calm. So to use these adjectives to describe something that is so incredibly destructive is fascinating to me.

You know, we have old phlegmatic still. These are not words that I would typically associate with someone talking about a volcano. And I find that there are subtle clues like this, that she is focusing on something. She's focusing more on what is not than what is. But the one word that I really want to use here is appalling. Appalling is used twice in this poem, appalling ordnance and appalling men. Now, appalling ordnance kind of stands on its own now ordnance here refers to military supplies. Usually we're construing this as weapons, so this is a very clear stance on military action, I would say. But what I really love is appalling men, because appalling is both a verb and an [00:40:00] adjective here, the volcano that is portrayed in this poem. Is taking villages for breakfast and appalling men.

Now, this could be seen as the action of taking villages for breakfast has appalled these men. It has made them horrified at the fact that this has happened. But it can also be read as it has taken villages for breakfast and appalling men. It has taken those men as well, these men who are sinning, for example. So I, find that this is a really subtle question that is posed to the reader because it asks them, which they first refer to, and I love that there is the chance to take this poem following that fact. Two very different ways. But Joe, I mean, that's a real coverall for this poem.

Is there anything you really want to zone in on here?

Joe: Yes, and I don't know if listeners are gonna be grateful for this deep dive, but I am interested in the word phlegmatic because I think it's an example of Dickinson playing with levels of depth. And again, [00:41:00] there's that ability to read the poem at face value and not think about it again.

There's the other alternative which I've taken because again, it's an unusual word. It was even an unusual word when Dickinson used it. I mean, it's not a common word. And you know, if anyone has to Google the definition, no problem at all. And Maiya thankfully gave you the definition earlier on, but it's the kind of word that you can't assume every reader would know.

Now, again, in Dickinson's case, maybe the poem wasn't intended for publication, in which case she wouldn't have had to worry about what readers imagined because she knew the definition. But even so, whenever a poet makes a choice to use, a word where other words were readily available, I think that word is worthy of some interrogation.

So Maiya mentioned its meaning earlier on, but there is another kind of etymological root, which is again, pardon me if, this is a little bit gross, but it shares an etymological root with the word phlegm. Obviously mucus something that sort of sits on the chest when somebody has a cold or a fever. And again, why is that important?

Because I think there is the sense, especially when coupled with that word old to describe this mountain, there is the sense of sickness and frailty and the [00:42:00] idea that this lava that is being spewed out, and again, apologies for the image that I’m conjuring here, is some kind of expulsion of mucus from the earth itself.

The earth is sick and the earth kind of projects that sickness onto the surrounding people. And why am I conjuring that image for listeners who I'm sure are not appreciating it because it captures something about Dickinson's ability to construct realities that she had never seen. The poem begins with an admission of ignorance.

I have never seen volcanoes and yet a matter of lines later because of the associations of that word, phlegmatic. You know, I found myself sort of making a face. image of kind of lava being spewed forth as though it were mucus and the ability of somebody who, on the one hand is expressing their ignorance of what these things look like and seem like, to being able to conjure an image so visceral that I have a kind of reaction on my face, and I'm sure some listeners are having a similar reaction, sort of it sends a shudder.

It's gross is a mark of absolute genius. And again, her reclusion [00:43:00] from the world, her unwillingness or inability to travel widely, to experience different places in no way inhibits her ability to bring those places into her imagination. And whether or not we should do it in that way, I think is interest because, and maybe we'll finish the episode on this.

Is that it's tempting to look at Dickinson's poetry the way that I've just said it. The idea that she kind of brings these far away places towards her through her poetry. I think actually what's going on is that she's building the world out from her own imagination, and there is a kind of vast expansiveness to her poetic curiosity that I think is one of the reasons that she has become such a cultural touchstone, and the fact that her popularity remains just as strong in 2026 as it has almost every year since the world learned of how much Virginia there was writing in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Maiya: I couldn't agree more and and you're right. It definitely refers back to what you were saying about 'Hope is the Thing with Feathers', which is that you have these huge worlds that she constructs, and yet really the focus remains at the core of the person [00:44:00] she's building out from that center.

So do think she has this kind of uncanny ability to refocus the reader, to refocus the listener. just at the point where you think you're about to escape, you are somehow pulled back. And there's a few words that I do want to pinpoint that I think are just worthy of attention because it is worth noting Titanic.

For example, in this poem, of course, we now know the Titanic to be something we refer to as a disaster. The Titanic was of course, in the 19 hundreds. This poem was written in the 18 hundreds when Titanic referred to the titans of Greek mythology. Something great, something with immense power. And I love the subtle allusions here to. Greek mythology to Roman mythology. We have, a Pompeii mention here, which of course was the eruption of Vesuvius and, and the destruction of the city of Pompeii. And I find it really fascinating how ancient worlds don't feel very far from her personal world and I'm sure in, no small part, that was down to her vast education.

[00:45:00] You know, we understand that she spent a lot of time reading, so I'm sure classical myths were a huge part of that. And we have two different mythological threads here. We have the Greek and the Romans. So Titanic. Though of course, most people, when I say Titanic, will think of Titanic, the ship that crashed. And now I think in, in modern language, when we say Titanic, we refer to something that is a disaster. That was of course, in the 19 hundreds.

This poem was written in the 18 hundreds where Titanic meant something with immense power. The etymology of that word is of course the titans in Greek mythology. Who were the mothers and fathers of the Greek gods.

So not only Godlike, but even stronger than that. So you have the Greek intervention here where you have that allusion to something incredibly powerful that is being constrained. I mean, Joe, I'm sure this is something that if we had more time, we would love to talk about. One of the most famous, titan myths, I would like to say in Greek mythology is that of use.

And Kronos, I'm sure we talked about this in another episode, but I [00:46:00] actually, I can't remember which one off the top of my head. But Zeus and Kronos were, Kronos was the father of Zeus, and he was so worried about losing his power that he started to consume his children.

He started to eat them. He was tricked by his wife, and he swallowed a rock instead of Zeus. Zeus defeated him and cast him down into Tartus and contained him there. So he was a titan held by something stronger. So we have this. Immediate play on the Greek myth here and how it brings out those threads.

But we also have a reference to Pompeii, which is of course the eruption of Vesuvius that completely decimated the city of Pompeii. And for anyone who you know has learned at school about Pompeii, it stands as a relic because we have the ash that has covered the bodies of people and almost fossilized them.

We have shadows burn into stone. So Pompeii in both a literary and, and a very real legacy stands as something that both represents [00:47:00] destruction and perseverance. And I find that the relationship between these two myths specifically in this poem is one that is, fraught with tension really, because to hold a titan is no small feat, but the perseverance of these myths seems to have a little more freedom.

So again, we have this, relationship between being free and being caged. And it's a, it's a conversation that seems to come up a lot in Dickinson's poetry. And, I'd love to have more time to discuss this in another episode, but Joe, I can see you are, going to say something. So, so jump in where you need to.

Joe: Well, I think there is another story about one of the Titans, who was called Typhoon, who actually is punished by being trapped under a volcano. And it's normally, Referred to as the Volcano, Mount Aetna. But there are some sources that say actually that it's more likely to be Vesuvius, which of course is the volcano, which erupted to, obliterate the city of Pompeii. and why does this matter? I think we, could come back to this question of, why this matters.

Dickinson's Curiosity is not only geographic, it's also historical. It's also [00:48:00] theological. What she's doing is she's interweaving real historical events. You know, the fall of the city of Pompeii, classical mythology in the form of the Greek canon Christian ideology in the form of that , the symbolic, representation of hope from the story of Noah's Ark.

But she's kind of reframing them in a world entirely her own. She's drawing on these different traditions, but she's not wed to any one of them. She's able to kind of reconjure them and reconfigure them in a way that feels strikingly original. And it's, it's worth pointing out that of all the poems we’ve discussed and we've discussed, a great many Dickinson is not only one the best known, but one of the ones that I think has left such a strong mark on.

Our use of language, even beyond poetry. A lot of phrases that we think of as being, quintessential phrases, ways of expressing emotions actually derive from Dickinson's poetry. She kind of is not quite on Shakespeare's level of that, you know, but there is a sense of which she's, very, very quotable and the way she saw the world has become so deeply entwined with our [00:49:00] own use of the English language that it's almost hard to separate them out at times.

And you know, we see that in all kinds of ways. the recent publication of the wonderful book by Max Porter, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, which only really functions as a title. If we take for granted the genius of the line, 'Hope is the Thing with Feathers'. So I think to end this episode, just with an appreciation of the brilliance of Emily Dickinson, the complexity of the canons on which she's drawing, and yet the simple elegance with which she's able to kind.

Coalesce them and make them something new. Now, I'd love to talk about more Emily Dickinson poems. As I've said, there's many, many more on PoemAnalysis.com for you to explore.

And speaking of exciting things to explore, Maiya, I believe you have something to share.

Maiya: I do. I have a very fun announcement for our listeners and PoemAnalysis.com visitors. I hope you are ready to explore the world of poetry like never before. Grab your notepads, pens, and your thinking caps because we're about to adventure into unknown [00:50:00] waters because I get the wonderful job today of announcing the PoemAnalysis Treasure Hunt, which is offering a grand prize of up to $1,500. Now you're going to have to put your analytical skills to the test. There are three poems all written by yours, truly each hiding multiple clues that lead to a single word. So every poem has an answer. Guess that word correctly, and you'll instantly win $150 with three poems to solve.

That's $450 to be won, but it wouldn't be a true treasure hunt without an x to mark the spot, which is why each correct answer forms parts of a what3words address the first person to guess all three words correctly and identify the what3words location will win up to $1,500. This interactive experience will begin on Thursday, the 26th of March, 2026. There will be multiple prizes up for grabs, so make sure you head over to [00:51:00] treasure.poemanalysis.com and compete for a chance to win the grand prize. Now it costs $1 per guess, with a jackpot starting at $500 and scaling with every single guess made. Stay tuned to Beyond the Verse where we will be occasionally hinting at some clues that might assist you in your final guesses. The Poetry+ Newsletter and the Poem Analysis Community where extra clues will also appear throughout the Treasure Hunt. I, for one, am very excited to see people guess at the poems that I've written. Although please don't take any criticisms, I will not be listening to them. But I am super excited for this one. So, Joe, maybe it's a case that I'll have to test you and see if you can guess the words on future episodes.

Joe: Well, I can't wait. That'd be what? What an honor it would be.

Maiya: So for now, keep your eyes peeled because the challenge will be coming out at some point very soon today. But all of that aside, Joe, what are we talking about next episode?

Joe: Well, treasure Huntery. We have a very, very exciting episode to do next week. I, for one, can't wait to do it. We're going to be exploring Irish poetry. regular listeners will know that before we did another [00:52:00] episode on the Nation of Japan and the way in which national poetry evolves and what poetry means in a national context. Next week we're gonna be discussing Irish poetry.

I cannot wait to get into that with you, Maiya, but until then, it's goodbye for me.

Maiya: And goodbye from me and the team at PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. Until next time.