Poetry Analysis 2

2. Poets often include in their poems places that evoke strong emotion. In the work of ONE poet you have studied, show how settings in poems have been connected to the presentation of feelings.
      Emily Dickinson is an American poet who lives as a recluse, a kind of completely isolation from the outside world, throughout her life. When I read her poem, “A narrow Fellow in the Grass”, I wonder is the word “Grass” here really the “grass” in nature? The unexpected setting of the poem she comes up right at the beginning attracted my attention. 

      To start the poem, the speaker tells an interesting encounter with “a narrow Fellow” in the  grass, which immediately gives me a kind of feeling of the author’s longing for being closed to the nature. Instead of calling this fellow “it”, the speaker regards this fellow as “him” at first, which somehow more vividly gives the readers a first impression. 

      Then, in the following stanzas, the speaker offers more descriptions about the “him” in the grass by using metaphor and simile. “The Grass divides as with a Comb.” Same with what Emily does in the first stanza, she specifically capitalizes the word “Grass”, which heightens the setting of the poem. In addition, she also capitalizes the word “Comb”. I guess the comb here must be used to describe the “Fellow”, which refers to the metaphor. Same in the next line, the capitalized word “Shaft” also means to the “Fellow”. Instead of directly telling the readers what is the “Fellow”, the speaker chooses to keep being mysterious. But in the following line, she gives us a hint, “it closes at your Feet,” it must be a kind of animal that is able to move rather than a thing. When I read here, I know that must be a snake. And then, surprisingly, “a Boy” and “Barefoot I” appear. It is hard to judge whether these two characters are real or not because of the author’s special reclusive way of living. In my opinion, these are more likely what Emily imagines in her mind, which more effectively expresses her feelings of yearning for nature. She hopes that she can go outside, stepping on the grass with barefoot. 

      Approaching the end of the poem, the speaker makes a turning point. Instead of keeping talking about the snake, she says, “Several of Nature’s People I know, and they know me I feel for them a transport of Cordiality.” As what I have mentioned about her longing for nature, she expresses her love to the nature as well as some living things. But unexpectedly, in the last stanza, the positive and warm tone of the poem makes a great change. I could feel from the words “never”, “alone”, “tighter Breathing”, “Zero” and the “Bone”, which create a noticeable chill and fear. 

      Somewhat surprisingly, the speaker expresses her fear of the snake in the grass at the end of the poem at the same time with presenting her love toward somethings in the nature. In my opinion, the setting of the poem, the grass, is a symbol of the outside world here, and the snake must be someone or something of which the speaker is afraid. Although sometimes, Emily also long for freedom and those beautiful things in the nature, that “snake” makes her choose to stay away.