JoBiv vs. Dickinson, the Pandemic edition

Isn't this the space where I tell you I'm lucky, just in case you want to judge my anxiety or compare it to your own? Emily Dickinson has an answer to that - I measure every grief I meet - by the way, but I do want to tell you I know I'm lucky.

I'm still getting paid in this pandemic. Most of the preschools run by my company have furloughed all of their staff, including administration. My center expects some proof of life while they pay us, thus we're doing online trainings, Zoom sessions with families, homework of a sort... and up until this week it was hard to keep up with their demands. They required 20 hours of work per week, but somehow that felt impossible. How does one read articles and write responses when your phone keeps lighting up with all the people who are desperate to connect, when your thoughts wander to that catastrophic news article, when you just want to go to the dang store but you're too anxious to leave your block?

This week, the leadership teams from our schools asked for a different kind of work. We still had articles to read and Zoom calls, but Fridays were set aside for "reflection" and "self-care." If those quotation marks feel loaded, they absolutely are. I can't help raising my bullshit shield when a buzzword flies by my ear.

One of our choices for reflection was this prompt:

Self-Reflective Activity: “Developing hope in times of change…” Please answer the following questions:

• What does this quote by Emily Dickinson mean to you? “Hope is the thing with feathers.”
• Where do you believe your sources of hope come from?
• Where do you look for hope in your life? What are three things you hope for?
• How have your hopes changed as you have grown up?
• How has hope affected decisions you have made? How will you use the message of hope in the future?

When I tell you this prompt hit me right square in the Enraged English Major... well, let's just say I was shocked to find boiling anger so close at hand.

First of all, what a trite reduction of Dickinson's already short, very digestible poem. WHY? Why reduce it to this line, which I'm sure appears on many a tattoo and journal cover and inspirational poster separated from its not-even-that-complex context?

I'll tell you my assumption: because they Googled "reflections about hope" or "journal prompts hope" and got this in a little package. Tada! (And they're also worn out and stressed and hanging on from a swiftly unraveling thread.)

Second, we're in that Too Little Too Late period of this quarantine. This prompt, this concentration on self-care and reflection, comes at the same moment that we're hearing about new protocols for reopening.

We're being handled, and I feel the sticky touch of every awkward manipulation.

And I wonder how Emily Dickinson would have coped in the midst of a pandemic. Honestly, I think we know. She would have: 1. isolated, per uzh 2. written a buttload of elegant angst-ridden letters and poetry, per uzh.

Nonetheless, I answered the well-aimed provocation. And you may read it. In the end, did it get me writing? Yes. Did it give me an avenue of expression during a time when I feel powerless and stifled? Kinda. I'm sharing with a sense of cringey self-awareness that I chose to respond with a slap, and somehow still didn't communicate the layers of barriers between myself and any kind of hope.


“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 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.

-Emily Dickinson

I never had a favorite Emily Dickinson poem, of all the pages and pages of poetry I analyzed, critiqued, emulated, shared throughout my undergrad and graduate education. She came off cold and distant, always using familiar words in oblique formations, hedging all of her most passionate declarations with quick self-censure and theological metaphor. It’s not that I didn’t like Dickinson, I just felt she was trapped in herself, winding around in a web of strict morality and this urge to wedge her fierce needs into acceptable forms. Reading her work resonated with me in uncomfortable ways, I know that for sure.

And this poem brings all of that right to the fore. Dickinson speaks of “Hope” - already carefully framed in delicate quotation marks - being something so light that it perches. She contrasts this lightness, the sweetness of its song, with its constancy and persistence, even “in the Gale” - a storm of emotion, doubt, crisis events, who knows? And lastly, she tells us that despite its steadfast presence, it never asks for anything in return. For something that seems so fragile and sweet, how can it also be so permeating, immovable and humble? She also seems to say, this “Hope” is inside her, actually within her soul, and therefore she can always hear its voice, even over the cacophony of her own internal storms.

Dickinson often contemplated divinity and aspects of Christianity in her work (even her odd poetic form is closest to hymn structures) and perhaps that’s where she loses me. But maybe I also simply disagree. I believe “Hope” is a light thing as well, something that wants to rise and pull us with it, and its voice is sweet and strong, but I do believe it needs feeding. In my experience, the cost of maintaining this sweet little bird works against its function, because it often requires the same resources I need to battle the actual crisis. In order to invest in hope, to turn and focus the ray of my thoughts on hope, I somehow have to turn my efforts away from what needs to be done in the moment. I can’t be bothered with setting up some carrot-on-a-stick contraption to motivate myself through harder moments.

Or is “Hope” is too vague and abstract for me, with its “tune without the words,” and instead I rely on what I know for certain: I have survived worse, over and over. I have defied death and disease and grief, and limped onward through life, knowing that every hard thing eventually becomes soft if I work at it. Everything that is heavy eventually wears down to something lighter. Is that hope? Is it pragmatism? Even knowing this for certain - that no circumstance or feeling is permanent - that knowledge has nothing to do with feathers or sweet bird song. It has everything to do with pushing through the storm.

I think this is the point where my personal philosophy brought me to Children’s Literature. Despite assumptions that children’s books are “cute” and “sweet” and safe and optimistic, many of the most successful books - the books children ask for - are full of courageous journeys rife with danger and challenges. They give children access and validation for feelings they know: defiance, frustration, fear, and the inner drive to resolution. I think of books like Where the Wild Things Are, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and of course We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. All of these stories are carefully crafted to show children who take risks, push through, problem-solve, even enjoy aspects of the journey, and find their way back home.

How strange is it that this crisis, this journey, took place in our homes? The challenge is more that home itself has changed, that the “beyond” is beyond us, and that we yearn for the most mundane of our weekly rituals. In that sense, this hope - the hope that we will return to some kind of normal - should be within our reach, yet it still seems depressingly distant. My hope, which is more of a knowledge, is that I will show a child how to put on her own jacket again, that I will hear a boy singing his favorite song to himself on his nap mat again, that over months and years I will hear countless young voices declaring “I did it!” with that resounding song of self-accomplishment. I know these things will happen, but it will require a deeper commitment to showing up each day, to being present with each tantruming child, to balancing my own needs with those of growing, hurting humans. My hope certainly needs feeding, and reminding, and perhaps a mantra beyond any “thing with feathers.”

So, I offer you this, from Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt:

“We can’t go over it.
We can’t go under it.
Oh no! We’ve got to go through it!”