Awhile back I had a string of questions to Big Bang Poetry. And I can’t find them now. But here’s a new interesting one that just came in.
Hi, as a class, we just finished reading In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle [by Madeleine Blais, 1995]. My teacher said that the title was based on an Emily Dickenson poem. I have looked high and low, and I haven’t found it. Since you’re an expert, I was wondering if you knew where it came from. Let me know.
This was an interesting question. Emily Dickinson thought a lot about hope but not so much about muscles. I did a google search for “Emily Dickinson” and “muscles” as a cursory check. Nothin.
She has a famous “hope” poem though which I figured was the most likely culprit but with a twist for the basketball team and the Amherst connection in the Blais book. Then I found an article where the author confirmed as much herself: https://www.thepostscript.org/p/madeleine-blais-heart-is-an-instrument
“The title In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle was also inspired by a writer, Emily Dickinson, the poet who lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, the setting of the high school basketball team whose championship season I covered. Her famous poem claims “hope is the thing with feathers,” though Woody Allen has a joke about that thing with feathers is his nephew in Zurich who thinks he is a bird. I, obviously, had my own definition.”
According to Google’s Ngram viewer, Blais’ book is probably the first use of the phrase in 1995.
There is also an oft-revested quote by Krista Tippett: “Hope is a muscle, a practice, a choice that actually propels new realities into being. And it’s a muscle we can strengthen.” But from all I can see online, this seems to be a more recent quote.
There’s also a Bjork song using “hope is a muscle” from her 2022 Fossora album that is a very good read (https://genius.com/Bjork-atopos-lyrics) but a pretty typical Bjork experience to watch.
