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Mary Oliver was born in Cleveland Ohio on September 10th, 1935. At a young age, she would leave her home to go into the woods to build and write poems. This helped contribute to her later writings since most of her poems help to demonstrate a reflection of a deep communication with the natural world, she also stresses that her poetry is not "fancy" since in her writings she uses plain language to help get her ideas across. Many of her early writings started to receive attention in 1983, this was her fifth book, American Primitive, which also won the Pulitzer prize after it was reviewed. Mary Oliver passed on January 19th, 2019 of lung cancer.

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When the black snake

flashed onto the morning road,

and the truck could not swerve--

death, that is how it happens.

Now he lies looped and useless

as an old bicycle tire.

I stop the car

and carry him into the bushes.

He is as cool and gleaming

as a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet

as a dead brother.

I leave him under the leaves

and drive on, thinking

about death: its suddenness,

its terrible weight,

its certain coming. Yet under

reason burns a brighter fire, which the bones

have always preferred.

It is the story of endless good fortune.

It says to oblivion: not me!

It is the light at the center of every cell.

It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward

happily all spring through the green leaves before

he came to the road.

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Oliver conveys how the discovery of the dead snake reminds the speaker of the suddenness of death and how suddenly life can turn to death. It also shows the uncertainty of death.

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Poetic Devices and Structure for the poem ''The Black Snake"

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Poetic Devices and Structure for the poem ''The Black Snake"

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In the second and third stanzas there is a use of similes like, ''useless as an old bicycle tire," and "He is as cool and gleaming as a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet as a dead brother."

There is an allusion to "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass" ”- “which the bones have always preferred”- the bones feeling absolute nothingness prefer to not acknowledge the certainty of death.

There is the use of enjambment, the continuation of a phase without punctuation, throughout the whole poem.

In the third stanza, there is also visual imagery, "He is as cool and gleaming..".

The metaphor in the poem is ''useless as an old bicycle tire," and "lies in a loop." These metaphors of circles and loops compare how the cycle of life to the suddenness of death.

Written in free verse.

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In the first stanza, the poem has a sudden change while talking about death. Previous to this tone change, the poem has a playful and calm sounding tone. In the fourth stanza, the speaker starts talking more about death and uses words to describe it which makes the reader feel unsettled. Words that are an example are suddenness, terrible, certain, and weight. Overall, the poem has a thoughtful tone which makes the reader question the same things as the speaker.

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a black snake getting hit by a car then the driver is worried

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Dickinson and Oliver Impact "The Black Snake"

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Dickinson and Oliver Impact "The Black Snake"

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Mary Oliver's poetry is characterized by wonderment with the natural environment, vivid imagery, and unadorned language. She takes great inspiration for Dickinson's writing and writes with imagery like Dickinson.

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Emily Dickinson was born on December 10th, 1930, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was considered one of the leading poets of the 19th century. Her writings are known for their bold, original verses and haunting imagery. The speakers in her writings are sharp, well-spoken observers. She died on May 15th, 1886, from a brain hemorrhage.

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A narrow Fellow in the Grass

Occasionally rides;

You may have met him,—did you not?

His notice instant is.

The Grass divides as with a Comb,

A spotted Shaft is seen;

And then it closes at your Feet

And opens further on.

He likes a Boggy Acre,

A Floor too cool for Corn.

Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot,

I more than once, at Morn,

Have passed, I thought, a Whip Lash

Unbraiding in the Sun,—

When, stooping to secure it,

It wrinkled And was gone.

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.

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The Meaning Of A Narrow Fellow In The Grass

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The Meaning Of A Narrow Fellow In The Grass

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Dickinson shows that fear comes from uncertainty and nature is unpredictable. The speaker disproves that the snake is harmless and cannot bring herself to love the snake, even though the speaker loves all creatures.

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Poetic Devices and Structure in "A Narrow Fellow In the Grass"

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Poetic Devices and Structure in "A Narrow Fellow In the Grass"

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A narrow Fellow in the Grass, a snake, is personification because the author refers to "narrow fellow" as being the snake.

Dickinson uses a metaphor when she talks about how a Whiplash is like how the snake is unbraiding in the sun.

The author also uses assonance such as "floor, too, cool, for..”

This poem creates an allusion with the black snake when it says " Zero at the bone".

In the second stanza, there is a simile that says, "The Grass divides as with a Comb.."

Dickinson also uses the use of rhymes throughout the whole poem.

It's written as a quatrain which is a stanza of four lines.

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There is a slight tone change in stanza one to stanza two caused by the poem's syntax; however, the tone change is not as predominant as the tone change found in the last two stanzas. In this section, the speaker tries to explore the essence of fear and anxiety by relating the snake in the grass to a creature of confidential and evil spirits.

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Romanticism in "A Narrow Fellow In The Grass"

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Romanticism in "A Narrow Fellow In The Grass"

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Romanticism, the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe, is heavily shown in Dickinson's literary work. Her poems heavily show imagination, escapism, individuality, and finding spirituality in nature.

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David Herbert Lawrence was born on September 11th, 1885 in Eastwood, United Kingdom. Lawrence was a very prolific writer and in many of his writings, he used his past experiences in life of the natural world. He lived in a coal-mining country and his mother was an immigrant originally from England. He was one of the most influential writers of his day. He died of tuberculosis, an infection that attacks the lungs, on March 2nd, 1930.

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A snake came to my water-trough

On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,

To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree

I came down the steps with my pitcher

And must wait, must stand and wait; for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom

And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough

And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,

And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,

He sipped with his straight mouth,

Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,

Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,

And I, like a second-comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,

And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,

And flicked his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,

And stooped and drank a little more,

Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth

On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me

He must be killed,

For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man

You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,

How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough

And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?

Was it perversity that I longed to talk to him?

Was it humility, to feel honoured?

I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:

If you were not afraid you would kill him.

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,

But even so, honoured still more

That he should seek my hospitality

From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough

And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,

And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,

Seeming to lick his lips,

And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,

And slowing turned his head,

And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,

Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round

And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,

And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered further,

A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,

Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,

Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,

I picked up a clumsy log

And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter,

I think it did not hit him,

But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,

Writhed like lightning, and was gone

Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front

At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.

I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!

I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross,

And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,

Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,

Now due to be crowned again.

And so, missed my chance with one of the lords

Of life.

And I have something to expiate:

A pettiness.

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An unprepared speaker comes into contact with a snake at the drinking trough. He has an inner conflict of whether to kill the snake or not and as the snake slithers away he feels sad to watch it go. Lawrence conveys mixed emotions as the speaker feels proud that the snake came to him but feels pressure to scare it away or kill it. When he does this he is filled with burden and regret.

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Poetic Devices and Structure for "Snake" 

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Poetic Devices and Structure for "Snake" 

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This poem is written in free verse, a poem that doesn't rhyme or have a regular meter.

The poem includes a lot of anaphora. In the fifth stanza, it repeats "drinking, as cattle do" to emphasize the similarities to the snake. Also, in the 7th stanza the speaker has an internal conflict on how he wants to deal with the snake. He uses anaphora to demonstrate the dissension between his internal thoughts. He also shows that he was afraid to kill the snake because of his amazement towards the snake, on how out of all the places the snake chose him out of everyone.

There is alliteration, "being earth-brown, earth golden from the burning bowels of the earth..." This helps the flow of the poem.

There is use of a simile in stanza nine. It says, "And he flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black''.

Near the end of the poem the speaker's pace slows as they're observing the actions of the snake. Polysyndeton helps manifest the obsession he's starting to get over the snake, and how there's so much dismay around the aura of the snake.

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In the first few stanzas, the author's tone is amusement and curiosity. This is shown by the speaker's profoundness that the snake came to him. In the fourth stanza, the speaker is incredulous, unwilling or unable to believe something. He is amazed by the snake's presence and the tone of the story then begins to slow as he obsesses over the snakes actions. The tone then changes during the speakers moments of conflict to the realization that he can end the snakes life. After the speaker adheres to the social norms and throws something at the snake, the tone changes to regret and burden after the speaker realizes they have missed their opportunity.

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There are many possible allusions that show the modernism of "Snake." One thing Lawrence seems to be doing is mocking social norms through the metaphor of the snake. The snake is drinking at the water trough. The speaker is "waiting his turn". In stanza 5 he says that the snake came from “the burning bowls of the earth,” this is an allusion that shows that the speaker waits his turn out of lack of choice. The speaker then struggles with the conflict of being a coward and whether or not he should kill the snake. This could symbolize wanting to rise up against social norms but feels too conflicted. This symbolism makes perfect sense due his living period and dealing with the social norms in France after the French Revolutionary War. Another possible allusion is to the biblical story, Adam and Eve. In D.H. Lawrence’s poem, “Snake,” he describes the snake as a tempter to deny the things he has been taught and what is "morally right." In "Adam and Eve," the snake is also a form of temptation. Lawrence’s description of the snake shows that it takes strength to resist what we think we know about evil.

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This song shows the burden and regret like the poem "Snake" talks about.