Hi.  My name is Ilya Kaminsky and I'm going to read Emily Dickinson poem that begins with "Hope is the Thing With Feathers".  When people ask me what (?~0:14) Emily Dickinson poems about, I want to run away and hide, simply because for me, these poems are not about (?~0:21).  They are metaphysical (?~0:24) that you hold close and don't really want to elaborate on.  They help you to go on when you have nothing else left to go on with, the kind of poems you remember even when you don't want to remember them.  

"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--
An 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, 1861