Practice exam 2

“Poets often withhold certitude, which can at the same time empower readers to think creatively.” Consider a poem you have studied in which ambiguity has enabled readers to reach their own conclusions about meaning and implications. Explain.

Poets don’t often explain every single line in the poems usually that it can give people more different impression to understand the poems. For example, in Emily Dickinson’s poem “ ‘hope’ is the thing with feathers- ”, she gave a very ambiguous explanation of the hope she understood. The poem has 3 stanzas and each one has 4 lines. I would like to split those 3 stanzas in to 2 sentences, from “Hope” to “That kept so many warm” and “I’ve heard it” to “It asked a crumb of me”. This is a beautiful described and has a lively tone that it compares hope to feathers. Also, the happy tone can be seen in this line: “and sweetest – in the Gale – is heard- ”. Emily showed that hope is sweet and she was eager for it from this line. However, there are two part of it that can be seen differently.

The first line that can be seen differently is “and never stops –at all”. This is the forth line in the first stanza. In my perspective, there can be two ways to understand this line; one is positive and one is despair. For the positive one, t showed that hope is fast coming and always being lively or happy with the never stopping songs. It showed that people are always having hope and always being positive through this line. However, it can also mean that people do want hope to come but it never stopped to being generous to give anybody hope. From the phrase, “at all”, I feel that the poem was desperate that she knew hope was so beautiful and she was truly eager with hope, but life never being generous to give her hope.

The second part that the poet withheld certitude was the last stanza. From the first perspective, she was saying that life never asked anything for return when it gave her hope. It showed from this line “yet – never – in extremity, it asked a crumb - of me.” These 2 lines meant hope didn’t ask anything in return even though the bird, that represent hope in this poem, already gave too much and being hungry to need something back. This is the positive side that it showed how kind hope was that the poet’s life was always full of hope. Nevertheless, I also read a despair perspective from the last stanza. From the first two lines in the last stanza, “I’ve heard it in the chilliest land – and on the strangest sea”, it showed that hope was far away from where people lived and the bird that represent hope didn’t live well. From these two lines, it showed that hope didn’t live well. Otherwise, there’s a second meaning in the last two lines, “yet – never – in extremity, it asked a crumb - of me.” Not asking a crumb of anybody in the lines also meant that hope has never given to anybody no mater how despair or how bad the condition that they were in. Overall, the poets always withhold certitudes that can give different people with different experience different impression of ones’ poems, so that I can understand a lot through those poems.