A narrow Fellow in the Grass Analysis

Ballad Meter (mostly), with Regular RhymeClose to Common“A narrow Fellow in the Grass” is loosely based on what is called “common meter.” Common meter is the same sort of pattern you’d fi...

Like the snake, the speaker in this poem is a key element. Of course, that's not saying much, since really those two are the only identifiable figures in the whole thing. Still, the speaker goes a...

The setting is the typical, gorgeous field taken straight out of an allergy medicine commercial. There’s tall grass and the occasional tree to provide shade from the happy sun. Imagine that it’...

Sound-wise, the biggest thing going on in this poem is the end rhyme of the second and fourth lines in each stanza. Oh sure, you'll find some use of alliteration here ("Boy, and Barefoot," "stoopin...

Emily Dickinson only titled one out of 1,789 poems she wrote, and this isn’t the one. Sometimes Dickinson poems are given numbers. Ralph Franklin, the Dickinson scholar of all Dickinson scholars,...

A Capital, Dashing Hymn that Will Take You Years to Understand"A narrow Fellow in the Grass” is so Emily Dickinson, it makes Emily Dickinson look like Sylvia Plath. Um, well, so maybe that doesn'...

(6) Tree Line The word order (a.k.a. syntax) of the poem is very confusing at times, but this is how Dickinson can squeeze multiple meanings out of words and phrases. Most of the lines break down i...

Although Dickinson’s family was devout Calvinist Christian, she never could accept the teaching of “original sin” (when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge). (Source.) It could be tha...

NC-17Truly, the sex rating depends on how you want to interpret that pesky snake. If you see it just a straight-up stand-in for a male body part, then we can see how things can quickly get risqué....

Religious ReferencesThe serpent in the Garden of Eden (whole poem)Literary and Philosophical References“In Winter in my Room"—a poem Dickinson wrote that involves a worm/snake, Cordiality, and...