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Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Hope is a strange invention” is an eight-line poem composed of two stanzas of four lines each. Each line is relatively the same length, and each line alternates between one of iambic trimeter and one written in iambic trimeter with an extra unstressed syllable on the end. An iamb is a unit of poetry, a poetic “foot,” consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. For example, the first two lines read, “Hope is a strange invention— / A Patent of the Heart—” (Lines 1-2). This alternation between true iambic trimeter and iambic trimeter with the extra syllable allows readers to settle into a regular rhythm while reading, one that is familiar with a “sing-song” rhythm, almost like a nursery rhyme. This regular meter emphasizes hope’s constant “unremitting action” (Line 3) and “unique momentum” (Line 7). In this sense, the poem’s form matches its content.
About half of the lines end with a dash; this allows readers to pause and take a breath when they reach the end of the line. These dashes occur in three out of the four lines in the first stanza and in the last line of the poem.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson