Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Emily Dickinson, who lived from 1830 to 1886.

I've read a poem or two of hers here on this show, but this is one that I think is probably a little bit lesser known,

but is one of her most fascinating poems. And it is called a narrow fellow in the grass.

The comments that I'm going to share with you about this poem are from William Harmon's anthology,

the classic hundred poems, all-time favorites, which I have referenced a time or two.

But he has some really, really interesting comments about this poem. And I'm going to go ahead

and just share his thoughts with you because I think they get at the heart of this poem in a better

way than I could possibly express. So here it is. Here is a narrow fellow in the grass by

Emily Dickinson. A narrow fellow in the grass by Emily Dickinson.

A narrow fellow in the grass occasionally rides.

You may have met him.

Did you not? His notice sudden 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 noon have passed, I thought, a whiplash, unbraiding in the sun when stooping to

secure it, it wrinkinkled 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.

This is a poem, if you Google it, you can kind of get the secrets handed to you.

But I like what William Harmon says here, without giving away this sort of central metaphor

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