zero at the bone poem
Cassarino writes frankly about the body and sex. It is optional during recitation. The image of the comb continues the poem’s titular metaphor: the snake as a “fellow.” Dickinson engages in this type of personification throughout the poem, adding additional touches to the snake’s identity as a person. The poet observes the snake’s effortless movement and comments on its environment or, one should say, habitat — ‘a Boggy Acre’ and ‘a Floor too cool for Corn’. Stacie Cassarino’s Zero at the Bone is an emotionally devastating collection of poems examining the complexities of loss and desire. Translated by Claud Field. C. shadow. Throughout the poem, the speaker attempts to make sense of the snake by personification and comparison. Attended, or alone. In the mild evening light, cheerful songs blended with mild melodies. Winner of the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry, Cassarino asserts herself as a poet of great skill in this debut collection. What does Dickinson mean when she says "zero at the bone"? Most pressingly, the speaker’s metaphors for the snake fall away, revealing the terrifying reality of the creature. It means the snake is cold. When you look at a cursive Z it looks like a snake. c. grief. Em dashes are used to indicate an abrupt change in thought. “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass. Thus, the figure of the whip lash begins unbraiding as soon as it appears. In this case, Dickinson doesn't say the snake crawls through the grass; her image is much more concrete and visual—the snake moves through grass like a comb through hair. e. an adult woman. Can we determine whether the "child" is a boy or a girl? As readers, we might react with horror to snake but we are probably comfortable with a narrow Fellow. This shift from trust to cold distrust is the poem’s central thematic turn. Background. She deftly moves between the precision and sterility of the natural world to the messy and complicated intimacy of lost … There seem to be variations in the way the poem is printed. Rate this poem: (0.00 / 0 votes) Font size: Collection Edit Submitted on May 13, 2011. Often her speaker observes herself in memory, moving through a landscape, carrying a dayload of uncertainty, … ZERO AT THE BONE - VG Walker, Mary Willis - standalone Texas heroine, dog trainer, and sleuth Katherine Driscoll. The sight of one snake alone is terrifying enough to send the speaker into “tighter breathing,” let alone two. The grass divides as with a comb, A spotted shaft is seen; And then it closes at your feet And opens further on. However “rides” suggests that the snake is being carried or floating along, making the snake seem less threatening and more passive. Last Updated on October 26, 2018, by eNotes Editorial. There’s a change in tone and about halfway through, the snake transforms into a metaphor for deceit. The snake is a friend, a…, Through the strait pass of suffering (792), Undue Significance a starving man attaches, I many times thought Peace had come (739), Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple (228), Their Height in Heaven comforts not (696). Literally, a chilling fear! It has the feel of the best kinds of fairy tales–the old ones–lovely and darkly glimmering, beautiful and somehow ominous, and just familiar enough for its strangeness to feel bone-chillingly strange. Using colloquial language like “narrow Fellow” makes the snake seem must less sinister and gives the poem a lighter, more amiable tone that contrasts with the poem’s tense subject matter. Notes: Note to POL students: The inclusion or omission of the numeral in the title of the poem should not affect the accuracy score. The structure of this poem is very different just like the poem. In this poem Emily does not give the name away, but instead she calls the snake "A fellow creature". Dickinson thus makes the encounter with the snake seem more frightening and sinister. If you don’t like snakes, consider yourself warned: snake stories follow. “narrow Fellow” is an example of an internal rhyme because of the repetition of the “ow” sound at the end of both words. In the end, the speaker is left with a tightness of breath and a feeling of “Zero at the Bone.” Thus the poem is an effective parable of our flawed but inevitable tendency to approach nature through human terms, suggesting that it is often wiser to acknowledge the cold realities of the natural world. He likes a boggy acre, A floor too cool for corn. Analyzation: This poem is sort of a maze in a way, it is very tricky and a bit confusing, but you have to go through it thoroughly to understand it. And zero at the bone. And zero at the bone. Learn more. Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love. There’s so, so much I love about this poem, and so much I could say. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. And zero at the bone. It means she is cold. The speaker directly addresses the reader here, and the dialogue seems formal, but nonchalant. A reading of Dickinson’s snake poem by Dr Oliver Tearle ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’ is the 986th poem in Emily Dickinson’s Complete Poems. The speaker has already personified the snake in many ways. The phrase Without a tighter breathing / And zero at the bone most nearly indicates a. fright. Notice that the word “Fellow” is capitalized. The term, “zero at the bone” she tries to describe how mesmerised she is with the flexible and swift movement of the snake, as if it does not have any bone in its body at all. A “transport” can refer to an emotionally charged trance or rapture. … Indeed, the personification underlying such a phrase is a marked example of metaphor. a. nature-lovers. The letter promises much needed financial help, but when she arrives at the zoo where he works, she discovers that he is dead. It is almost as if the snake were approaching more rapidly. Dickinson’s imagery here thus makes the snake seem even more sly and menacing. I Songs were echoing in the village street. c. animals. The phrase “Zero at the Bone” describes bone-chilling horror, a zero-degree temperature. "Of the many ways of knowing the world, Stacie Cassarino in her elegant and poignant first book of poems, ZERO AT THE BONE, reminds us of the primacy of the senses. It also suggests a state of personal annihilation, of becoming nothing. My most recent snaky encounters were at the beach, if you don’t count the five-foot blacksnake skin festooned through our shed last week. d. neighbors. Cassarino's voice ranges far and near, from the gasp and sigh of creaturely love to the dizzying spaces of American distance, whiteness, silence. On the negative side the serpent is associated with the devil and temptation in the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3:1 and the Fall of Man. Most of the consonants in the line—f, c, and the liquids r and l—are repeated, often several times over. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. It’s among her most famous and often-anthologised poems, so a few words of analysis may help us to get to the bottom of what the ‘narrow Fellow in the Grass’… In one variant of the poem "child," in stanza 3, reads "boy." Emily Dickinson. See also: Without a tighter breathing. Like the proverbial "snake in the grass," this snake is a creature of secretive, treacherous menace. The speaker, who loves all creatures, cannot love the treacherous trickster, the snake in the grass, the serpent in the Garden of Eden. 4. It was just the time when the young men and girls, tired with the work and cares of the day, were in the habit of assembling for the dance. It is, of course, ironic; the word ‘fellow’ suggests friendliness. One might think of expressions like, ‘fellow feeling’ and ‘hail fellow, well met’. 1. Who or what is the Fellow in this poem? This movement is untraceable, meaning that his appearances are even more shocking. Some printed versions of the poem include dashes, and it has been suggested that this imitates the snake’s darting movements and the narrator’s rapid telling of the tale. ~Emily Dickinson. Because of the phallic shape of the snake, many literary critics have purported that the speaker’s fear of the snake is a symbol for Dickinson’s sexual fears. The metaphor of the “Whip lash/ Unbraiding in the sun” is clever in the context of the poem’s broader themes. Written in 1831. Lines 3-4. The 36-year-old protagonist receives a letter from her father, whom she has not seen since she was five. 37 sec read 191 Views. In these stanzas of ‘A Narrow Fellow in the Grass’, the speaker reveals that he knows “nature’s people”. In this stanza, he now claims that the snake is one of “nature’s people”. Zero at the bone seems to be an idiomatic expression off Emily Dickinson's poem: But never met this fellow, Attended or alone, Without a tighter breathing, And zero at the bone. In other words, the speaker feels an affinity for all animals, except the snake. The alternating tetrameter and trimeter of the first two stanzas tightens up to a strict trimeter pattern as the poem hastens to its close. In some versions the word ‘child’ is stanza three is replaced with ‘boy’. This is a poem that, on one level, describes an encounter with a snake. Her first collection of poetry is Zero at the Bone (2009). The end of the poem, “Without a tighter breathing and zero at the bone’. The lines broadly follow a iambic trimeter rhythm, that is three metric ‘feet’ to the line, though Dickenson varies this; for example, the first lines of stanzas one and two are iambic tetrameters, that is four metric feet to the line. One student’s inventive suggestion is that its irregularity imitates the deceitful nature of the snake. This is another of Dickinson's poems presenting the point of view of a child, but the speaker is now an adult looking back. But never met this Fellow. The poems in Zero at the Bone, Stacie Cassarino’s highly accomplished first book, emit a sonic calm even — or especially — while teasing out the adversities in their subject matter. The word “Boy” tells us that the speaker is male and describing an experience he had in his youth. Born in Hartford, Connecticut of Italian (Neapolitan/Sicilian) heritage, she is a dual citizen of the US/ Italy. Despite the fact that Dickinson welcomes nature into her life, here she exhibits an instinctively negative reaction to the snake—her blood runs cold. Dickinson, raised in the Puritan faith which she later rejected, could not help but see the snake as a symbol of evil. B. snake. The final line contains a multi-layered metaphor. These instances of personification build up to the final thematic turn, which reveals how non-human the snake truly is. Several of nature's people I know, and they know me; I feel for them a transport Of cordiality; But never met this fellow, Attended or alone, Without a tighter breathing, And zero at the bone. The phrase “Zero at the Bone” describes bone-chilling horror, a zero-degree temperature. Word Count: 304. This final quatrain shows that the snake, personified as a harmless, “narrow Fellow” in the first quatrain, is not a person at all but a threat. The fact that the speaker is both young and “Barefoot” also underscores the speaker’s innocence and vulnerability. In this case the slant rhyme is formed by the “rr” and “ll” consonant sounds in the respective words. The second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme. The image of fleeting movement — the poet sees the snake and then loses it and then sees it again — is threaded throughout the poem. Notice that we are given a description of our speaker for the first time here. d.awe. The snake is almost invisible and ghostly, moving underfoot in near secrecy though his presence is palpable for the speaker. to the bone. However, this is open to interpretation. Since the speaker is trying to convey the “notice sudden,” or the surprise, that the sight of a snake often causes, the em dash gives the line the same jolting feeling that one would experience when encountering a snake in real life. As soon as it appears alone, Without a tighter breathing, and zero the! 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