Hope Is The Thing

Part of a new collection of literary voices from Gibbs Smith, written by, and for, extraordinary women—to encourage, challenge, and inspire. One of American’s most distinctive poets, Emily Dickinson scorned the conventions of her day in her approach to writing, religion, and society. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers is a collection from her vast archive of poetry to inspire the writers, creatives, and leaders of today. Continue your journey in the Women’s Voices series with Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte and The Feminist Papers by Mary Wollstonecraft.

A prizewinning poet and nature writer weaves together natural history, biology, sociology, and personal narrative to tell the story of the lives, habitats, and deaths of six extinct bird species.

Here he is, husband and father, scruffy romantic, a shambolic scholar--a man adrift in the wake of his wife's sudden, accidental death. And there are his two sons who like him struggle in their London apartment to face the unbearable sadness that has engulfed them. The father imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness, while the boys wander, savage and unsupervised. In this moment of violent despair they are visited by Crow--antagonist, trickster, goad, protector, therapist, and babysitter. This self-described "sentimental bird," at once wild and tender, who "finds humans dull except in grief," threatens to stay with the wounded family until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and the pain of loss lessens with the balm of memories, Crow's efforts are rewarded and the little unit of three begins to recover: Dad resumes his book about the poet Ted Hughes; the boys get on with it, grow up. Part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's extraordinary debut combines compassion and bravura style to dazzling effect. Full of angular wit and profound truths, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is a startlingly original and haunting debut by a significant new talent.

In March 2020, as a pandemic began to ravage our world, writer and professor B. J. Hollars started a collaborative writing project to bridge the emotional challenges created by our physical distancing. Drawing upon Emily Dickinson’s famous poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” Hollars called on Wisconsinites to reflect on their own glimpses of hope in the era of COVID-19. The call resulted in an avalanche of submissions, each reflecting on hope’s ability to persist and flourish, even in the darkest times. As the one hundred essays and poems gathered here demonstrate, hope comes in many forms: a dad dance, a birth plan, an unblemished banana, a visit from a neighborhood dog, the revival of an old tradition, empathy. The contributors are racially, geographically, and culturally diverse, representing a rough cross section of Wisconsin voices, from truck driver to poet laureate, from middle school student to octogenarian, from small business owner to seasoned writer. The result is a book-length exploration of the depth and range of hope experienced in times of crisis, as well as an important record of what Wisconsinites were facing and feeling through these historic times.

A prizewinning poet and nature writer weaves together natural history, biology, sociology, and personal narrative to tell the story of the lives, habitats, and deaths of six extinct bird species.

An illustrated introduction to the poetry of Emily Dickinson.