Emily Dickinson's Poetry Essay

Improved Essays
Dickinson has a very ambivalent attitude towards nature, and she expresses her differing feelings in three of her poems. She believes that when there is loss in one area of life, there is gain in another. Tragedy and hardships will always be present, but hope is around the corner. In “A bird came down the Walk,” a bird was seen as both a predator and prey. “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” also discusses an animal, this time a snake, but as a creature that strikes fear amongst humans. It is never characterized as prey. “Apparently with no surprise” talks about the cruelty in life, and how the world keeps turning as though nothing happened. “A bird came down the Walk” first describes the predatory nature of the bird and then the frightful …show more content…
- Like one in danger, Cautious." (9-13)
The bird then, after being offered a crumb by Dickinson, flies away. She describes its beautiful flight in the last stanza of poetry. Dickinson’s style of writing beautifully captures the life of an ordinary animal. It shows that everything in nature can be both prey and predatory. That is how the world works; an endless cycle of tragedy, normality, and victory. It’s the circle of life. In her second poem, “A narrow Fellow in the Grass,” Emily Dickinson takes a snake, a feared reptile, and explores the feeling of fear that a young boy experiences upon encountering it. She illustrates the uneasiness of that first indication that a snake is near. "The Grass divides as with a Comb - A spotted Shaft is seen," (5-6) This creature is not written in a pleasant light. The barefooted boy passed by the snake, thinking it was the lash of a whip; but he grabbed for it, and it slithered away. Her objective, it seems, was to cause the reader to feel the same fear and uneasiness that the boy felt himself. "But never met this
…show more content…
“Apparently with no surprise” is the final poem that expresses Dickinson’s attitudes toward nature. She tells a story of an unnoticeable death using frost and flowers. Beginning with a happy flower, Dickinson sets up happier tone for this example of nature. Soon though, her ambivalence makes itself known as the mood shifts to a darker one. "The Frost beheads it at it’s play - In accidental power -" (3-4)
The death of this lovely plant, although predicted by the approaching winter, was still sudden to the reader. Life continues; the death of one flower is too insignificant to be thought about. That’s what makes Dickinson special. Ordinarily, people tend to ignore what happens in nature around them. She notices the little things and turns them into meaningful works of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    His sudden death came to a surprise to everyone. because we thought that he was improving. This shows what Dickinson wrote at the beginning of her poem reflecting that death can come for anyone at any…

    • 757 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Figurative language is used throughout writing to help illustrate the author’s writing. One common form of figurative language is irony. When using irony in a poem, the reader may stop to reflect on the writing. This gives the reader a moment to determine if what they are reading has more than one meaning. Emily Dickinson uses irony throughout her poems in order to help get her point across.…

    • 721 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    1 7. Select at least three poems by Dickinson of related significance and make an argument for your selection based upon a close reading of each poem. Ignorance is a prevalent theme in the assorted poems of Emily Dickinson. I have selected the poems 305, 449 and 1129 as they depict various manifestations of ignorance and also display a keen sense of irony, which perfectly accentuates the vicious condemnation of all that is (and isn’t). Poem 305 has an intriguing concept of time.…

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Emily Dickinson Syntax

    • 1205 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “Death is the Thing With Feathers,” “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” and “If I Can Stop” all demonstrate the things Dickinson enjoyed writing about. “Death is the Thing With Feathers” shows her nature side of writing. This poem contains a bird that represents hope which cannot be destroyed. Dickinson used the syntax “abcb,” capitalizes certain words so the readers will pay close attention, and uses hyphens to give the poem the effect of a soft, slow, feather floating through the air. Dickinson includes imagery through her poem such as “perches in the soul,” “ the chilliest land,” and “sings the tune” (biography online).…

    • 1205 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Water is taught by thirst. In the poem, Dickinson writes about appreciating things only after you experience the opposite. You can´t appreciate water until you have been thirsty. You don't recognize peace unless you have experienced or seen the pains of war.…

    • 254 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dickinson uses unusual grammar and punctuation throughout her poem, capitalizing odd words in “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” as a way to emphasize those specific words. She also writes a slant rhyme in every stanza, but ends in the last stanza with a true rhyme of the words “alone” and “Bone.” Throughout the poem, Emily Dickinson expresses admiration for a snake, but also hints at its sly and deceitful…

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Evils are not caused by God; rather, that they are a part of the nature, things happen in cycles, what is happening now has happened before and will happen again. In her poem “Apparently with no surprise” Emily Dickinson writes about the attitude of nature and demonstrates the nature’s cycle of life and death. The poem begins as the frost chops off the head of a happy and blossoming flower. She is not surprised with this happening because it is reenacted in the winter every year. The sun observes the whole thing, but is indifferent and proceeds to “measure off another day” (l. 7).…

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Throughout the course of the play, a young boy-the narrator of Dickinson’s poem- meticulously describes the sighting of a slithering snake as an encounter with a “narrow fellow in the grass”. The readers are at first, tricked by Dickinson’s use of personification into believing that there is an actual man who is hiding in the grass. For instance, Dickinson’s use of the terms “him”, ‘Nature’s People”, and “fellow” creates an image of an actual man.…

    • 662 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this poem Dickinson is talking about how something is physically or emotionally stopping her from doing the things that she would like. For example in stanza three she says “ A Moment - We uncertain step For newness of the night “. By saying this Dickinson is trying…

    • 356 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Emily Dickinson, enigmatic as always, is in fine form in this poem as she floats through beautifully veiled metaphors and tantalizing descriptions to depict her fascination and enthusiasm with the natural world. She uses the metaphor of insobriety to paint a vivid picture of the sometimes overwhelming aspects of nature. "I taste a liquor never brewed- From Tankards scooped in Pearl- Not all the vats upon the Rhine Yield such an Alcohol!" These are four interconnected and fairly simplistic lines to interpret.…

    • 483 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Poet Elizabeth Alexander reminds us, “what poetry does is distill language with a kind of precision that reminds us of what it means to take care with the word, that the word has tremendous power, that each word matters”. In “A Narrow Fellow”, Emily Dickinson uses precise words and groups of words to convey certain images to the reader. She uses three poetic techniques to express her theme that although nature can be fascinating, it can also be frightening. These three techniques are diction, imagery and personification.…

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “‘Hope’ is the Thing with Feathers ” Analysis Formalist Theory Example In the poem “‘Hope is the Thing with Feathers” Emily Dickinson doesn’t use many different literary devices but uses one in particular a lot. The author uses metaphors most throughout the poem.…

    • 459 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    As a whole, Emily Dickinson constantly used countless figurative devices, personification, irony, and paradox as examples, to promote the themes within her poetry. In My life closed twice before its close, paradox-a statement that seems like a contradiction but actually is not-is used in her seventh and eighth line contrasting heaven and hell. The structure of Dickinson, her use of diction, imagery, and figurative language maker her writing some of the best American literature to date. Through Dickinson’s peculiar style, she develops an unusual interpretation of death and by doing so, composes poetry filled with literary elements.…

    • 97 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    (Lines 5-8) The descriptive imagery in this passage allows the reader to becomes an observer to the scene; looking down onto an open field, seeing the grass part as a snake slithers by. Dickinson’s imagery is received with…

    • 954 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    She begins by stating that “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers-”(). The first thing that stood out to me while reading this was the quotations around “hope”. I believe that Dickinson did this to apply emphasis to the word and also to make it seem as though the word is being defined by the metaphor. Her intention was for the reading to later associate this word with the “thing with feathers”, which is the bird. After this, Dickinson moves on to describe how the bird perches in the soul and sings the tune without any words.…

    • 1133 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays