Emily Dickinson

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Emily Dickinson

• Nature Poetry

• http//www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson

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General statements. For Emily Dickinson

• Nature explores the relationship between natural
  and human world (like Romantic poets
  Transcendentalists)
• Nature is a source of joy and beauty, which
  (unlike RTs) can without warning and without
  obvious cause become threatening and dangerous.
• Nature is at times concerned with
• (1) death, annihilation,
• (2) a regenerative, restoring force
• (3) indifferent to humanity

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328 A bird came down the walk (1862)

• Glossary
• Walk path
• Angleworm earthworm, usually used as bait to
  catch fish
• Dew small droplet of water
• And rowedthe ocean and carried himself home more
  smoothly than if he were a boat in the sea
• Too silver for a seam because of the mirror-like
  effect of silver, it is impossible to create
  a seam in it
• Banks of noon the sides of a river at midday
• Plashless splashess (when butterflies jump into
  water they do not splash)
• Analysis sheets

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328 A bird came down the walk (1862)

• The poem contrasts the awkward, comical, anxious
  bird on the ground with the graceful, beautiful
  bird in flight.
• Bird represents/symbolises for the quick/lively
  ungraspable wild essence that distances nature
  from human beings who desire to tame it
• Note the lack of interaction possible natural and
  human worlds
• Showcase of EDs poetic powers of observation and
  description
• These images may be associated with the physical
  and spiritual aspects of human existence
• Two breath-taking descriptions of flying (rowing
  and swimming) evokes the delicacy and fluidity of
  movement
• Precise, clear, concrete details
• Iambic trimeter, varied with one tetrameter with
  occasional four-syllable linesgt stanza one to
  emphasise bird hopping
• Loose ABCB rhyme scheme typical of EDs poetry
• Dash for slight pausing? Bird movements? Shock
  at way dinner is consumed?
• Conversational tone amphora
• Change in enjambment language alliteration and
  assonance, imagery

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986 A narrow fellow in the Grass (1865)

• the threatening nature of nature
• A description of a snake and the fascination and
  fear it can induce
• Description of snake and recollection of boyhood
  snake encounter, only creature which entices fear
• 1st stanza sibilance to echo creatures hiss
• From aural suggestions to visual images spotted
  shaft, whip lash
• Rather playful tone changes with final line. A
  sudden constriction in breathing and a hollow,
  numbing coldness emphasised by the chilling
  assonance of final phrase.
• Shift from slant rhyme to exact rhyme
• What of the biblical and historical
• associations of the snake and temptation?
• As Lucy B, suggests the snake is
• representative of the temptation of
• interacting with the natural world in much the
• same way it tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden
  and set in motion the fall of man. (?) and the
  danger of this encounter.