Analysis of 'a Bird Came Down the Walk' by Emily Dickinson Essay

In this poem “I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain”, Emily Dickinson seems to be suffering a traumatic experience or situation at that time, difficult to control inside her brain. She attempts to explain this painful emotion through this poem using a variety of literary techniques that include metaphor, symbolism, personification and others. It is clear that Dickinson is not using her sense of reasoning in this poem, she seems gone from the world around her, as if her mind state is deteriorating and she is going from sanity to insanity. From my point of view of the poem, Emily seems to be trying to convey readers her own tragic experience from the perspective of a dead person that is still able to use some of her senses and is conscious the whole time narrating the poem inside a coffin. However, it 's still not clear whether the speaker is living or dead, but she is definitely afraid and disturbed of what will happen when she finally loses her sanity.

The poem The Great Scarf of Birds by John Updike is something of a chronological piece that walks the reader through a day beginning with a normal day of golf that leads to a witness of nature’s beauty and a heart-wrenching, bleak statement of self discovery. The organization of the poem is purely time-based, using cues such as the tinting of the sky to exhibit a passage of time. The diction of the poem is mostly delicate language rife with imagery to try and show the reader the extent of the feelings of wonder that the narrator is holding for nature at this time. Uses of phrases such as “swaying vases of sky,” show the author’s rich language used to describe their surroundings. There is also a line that displays the intensity the author has for the image of the swelling flock above him, “It dartingly darkened in spots darkened in spots paled,pulsed, compressed,distended yet held an identity firm.” This line is set up to be read fast, the closeness of the words leading with hard syllables leads you feel the shock that the narrator is at the sight of the massive, awe inducing flock.

The Bustle in a House is a poem by Emily Dickinson about the painful loss one feels after the death of a loved one. Dickinson was quite familiar with the kind of pain expressed in her poem. Her father, mother, nephew, and three close friends, all died within an eight-year period. It is no small wonder that a common theme in Dickinson s poetry is death. She uses many literary devices, including structure, imagery, figurative language, sound devices, and capitalization; to convey the hurt one experiences when a loved one passes on.

In his poem “The Great Scarf of Birds”, John Updike uses a flock of birds to show that man can be uplifted by observing nature. Updike’s conclusion is lead up to with the beauty of autumn and what a binding spell it has on the two men playing golf. In Updike’s conclusion and throughout the poem, he uses metaphors, similes, and diction to show how nature mesmerizes humans.

The poem “Before I got my eye put out” portrays the idea that most living things are unable to recognize the beauty of sight until they lose it. The speaker reflects the true beauty of the world when she says “The Motions of the Dipping Birds-/ The Morning’s Amber Road-/ For mine-/ to look at when I liked-/ The News would strike me dead-” (14-17). This demonstrates the image of nature that the speaker “looks at” but actually “sees” the beauty of sight. Dickinson conveys the idea that one’s vision from

“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean” (Socrates). What does it mean to be this type of poet? How can someone accomplish such success in poetry, the answer is just two words Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson spent a large portion of her life in isolation, not because she was forced to or because she was ill, Dickinson simply wanted to be alone and because of her isolation she became one of the greatest female poets of all time. Emily Dickinson set the bar high for other female poets and created some of the most renowned poems in the world. The two poems “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” and “Tell all the Truth but Tell it Slant” are drastically different poems that tell two different stories, but there are some aspects that cause them to be similar: Imagery, tone, and the statement that the two poems make.

After watching them fly for half an hour, she starts to form a connection for the birds. The passage says, “I stood with great difficulty, bashed by the unexpectedness of this beauty, and my spread lungs roared. My eyes pricked from the effort of trying to trace a feathered dot’s passage through a weft of limbs” (Dillard 2). Dillard is surprised at what the birds are doing. At first the birds were moving slowly, and then all of a sudden, the birds started to move faster and faster into the woods. She stood there watching all the birds, even the stragglers, vanish into the trees. Dillard broke down after this. The birds caused her to change her views, and she feels as if she has to take care of them. They are a part of her

Both authors John James Audubon and Annie Dillard are profoundly affected by the birds they describe in the respective passages. Although they are going through similar phenomena, the authors conveying of the effect it had on them is very different. Audubon takes a more scientific approach and looks to inform the reader with an objective view about his encounter with the birds. Dillard does precisely the opposite and rather than inform she looks to entertain the reader with an artistic and subjective view towards her encounter with the birds.

Emily Dickinson is perhaps one of the most intriguing American poets studied. The remote look in her eyes mirror her life, which she mostly spent secluded in her home in Amherst, Massachusetts. While leading an outwardly reclusive life, she unleashes the faculties of her mind in her powerful poetry. She addresses compelling themes such as death, depression, human despair, individual capability, and the art of poetry. Her feelings on these subjects emerge in her poems, but her exact thoughts are difficult to uncover since her poetry is so highly enigmatic. Likewise, the subject matter of Christianity in her poetry remains one of the most inconsistent of Dickinson’s recurring themes. Emily Dickinson posses an uncanny ability to wrestle down the perfect diction, thus creating worlds of hope, despair, faith, and endless questioning.Through her use of imagery, Dickinson displays her linguistic prowess and the intricacies of language.

     Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous authors in American History, and a good amount of that can be attributed to her uniqueness in writing. In Emily Dickinson's poem 'Because I could not stop for Death,' she characterizes her overarching theme of Death differently than it is usually described through the poetic devices of irony, imagery, symbolism, and word choice.

Analysis of I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson

In reading this poem one cannot help but absorb the imagery portrayed by the use of descriptive language. Dickinson does an amazing job of using the senses to feel the sensation as if you were there standing beside the boy on that particular day. Through imagery the poem’s mood, understanding and emotions are created. The dominant sensuous appeal of the poem is definitively fear. Whether Emily Dickinson had a fear of snakes, which she portrayed through the boy, the reader will never know but this poem does generate a sense of uneasiness for the reader. Dickinson uses many physical senses to create the ambiance of the poem and through this the poem becomes meaningful to the reader.

Two of Dickinson’s universal techniques are metaphor and the fresh application of language; both techniques result in powerful images, and can be seen in two of her poems that focus on nature themes, “ A Bird came down the Walk” and “narrow Fellow.” She closes the poem, “ A Bird” with a stanza equating flight through the air with movement through water,

The birds flew, flapping "their useless wings" as they hit the ground, dead. Wild beasts are becoming timid, from fright, and poisonous snakes were becoming "stingless". These animals are becoming food for the men, who are now, desperately, becoming savage scavengers. However, the animal food supply doesn't last long, and the men start turning on themselves. Humans were now capable of cannibalism, as survival becomes the only consistent goal: "men dies"…"their bones were tombless as their flesh". This is exaggerated even more as once faithful dogs have turned on their masters, devouring their flesh and sparing nothing. All except one dog, who "kept the birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay" from his master's corpse, not letting any scavengers touch them, until the dog succumbs to starvation and dies. This symbolises the demise of any last moral emotion that the world had left.

Robert Frost’s nature poetry occupies a significant place in the poetic arts; however, it is likely Frost’s use of nature is the most misunderstood aspect of his poetry. While nature is always present in Frost’s writing, it is primarily used in a “pastoral sense” (Lynen 1). This makes sense as Frost did consider himself to be a shepherd.