Dickinson 986

Emily Dickinson 's 986 (A narrow Fellow in the Grass ) in the Context of Her Life

Emily Dickenson is a well-known American female poet of mid-XIX century whose poems remained virtually unknown during her life (only several of them were published anonymously . Dickenson 's posthumous fame appeared to be incommensurable with her quite life in the house of her parents almost without any remarkable events . However , being publicized Dickenson 's shamefaced spiritual life shocked the contemporaries with its depth and fertility . Among those shocking verses is a poem usually referred as

986 , or , by its first words , A narrow Fellow in the Grass

What is the rhyme actually about ? It is a kind of fantasy about Nature 's People , similar to hobbits or elves . Perhaps lacking human contact (almost all of Emily 's relations were inside the family or via correspondence , Dickenson imagined companions for her loneliness . This is similar to childish fantasies , and whole Emily 's life looks like a childish attempt to hide from severe reality in a fairytale . However this infantilism allowed Dickenson to express the children 's world by means of adult poetry

From the literary point of view the verse can hardly be called perfect Sometimes she fails to observe the metre , some rhymes are knotty Technically the verse bears the same stigma of infantilism and might look like a composition of a ten years old girl . What makes the poem peculiarly charming are metaphors and author 's ability to use necessary words and expressions . This creates a strange and fascinating combination of children 's verse with adult idioms...