Poem Classification
Classification of In the Garden and The Snake
According to Webster’s Dictionary classify means to put into groups systematically because of common characteristics or properties. In my preparation for this paper I looked for poems that had similarities. The two poems I chose to classify are In the Garden and The Snake, both written by Emily Dickinson.
In the Garden describes observing a bird, offering a bird food, the bird flying away, and the art of a bird flying. The Snake describes a snake moving through the grass, a snake as being hidden or unseen, and the fear of seeing a snake.
Emily Dickinson is known for writing lyric poetry. Lyric poetry is described in our literature text as “a short poem expressing the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker. A lyric is often written in the first person” (Kennedy, 2007, p. 427), as in the poems I chose. These poems can both be classified as lyric poetry because the writer is sharing her thoughts and feelings of watching a bird and a snake.
In the Garden has many words that refer to nature: garden, bird, angle-worm, grass, beetle, ocean, butterflies. The only words referring to nature in The Snake are grass and acre. Even though The Snake does not have as many references to nature as In the Garden the title creates a picture of nature in the mind of the reader.
Another similarity that I found in these poems is the way Emily Dickinson used her words to apply human traits or actions to nature. Examples from In the Garden:
1. A bird came down the walk:
This verse makes the bird appear civilized or socialized
2. And ate the fellow (worm), raw.
This verse refers to a worm as a fellow and suggests that a bird would normally cook the worm prior to eating it as a human would.
3. And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
This verse resembles the human action of drinking from a straw.
4. And then hopped...
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