Question on the Poet (Emily)

          Colour and sound provide some of the most vivid effects in poetry. How have at least two
poets that you have studied used such visual and auditory aspects as these to enrich their poems?

 

In one of Emily's most famous poems, "Hope" is the thing with feathers, there are lots use of sound. Firstly, when people read the tittle, most of them will refer "the thing with feathers" to birds automatically. However, the image of hope being a bird would still be too abstract for people to visualize what the author wants to express in their head. That's when the use of words comes to play. In the poem, it says "it sings the tune without the words, and never stops-at all." This can help the readers a lot to relate to one of those "singing" birds that they might've came across on a summer day, even its high and lovely voice as well. 

Not only did Emily directly wrote about the sound of the bird, but she also wrote about the surroundings of the bird so that the whole image of where the bird is and what its doing becomes so clear too. For example, in the second stanza, Emily wrote "the sweetest- in Gale- is heard- The sore must be the storm-" The word storm in this sentence had the sound of thunder with it. That's the first sound appears in people's mind when they read the word storm. When I was reading those lines, I have an image of little bird flying and singing even as the thunder struck and shake the mountains. It was so fearless that anyone who sees the bird would not pity how hard could such a little bird survie the terrifying thunder, but rather honor its bravery and be inspired to face the challenge no matter how hard it is. This made it more convincing that "hope" is the thing with feathers.