Emily Dickinson's Poem 'I Heard A Fly Buzz'

By analyzing Emily Dickinson's poem, “I heard a Fly buzz- when i died-” you can see the poem focuses on the precious last seconds before death. This poem has four stanzas; each of these consists of these techniques: unusual style of writing, the poet creates images, and definite speaker. The speaker of the poem explains that even though irrelevant, the mind can focus on the strangest things. Dickinson has a more unusual style of writing; throughout many of her works you will notice the unusual capitalization, or even punctuation. The dashes at the end of the lines are used to indicate a pause or add suspense; also the capital letters can be used for more than one reason. The poet place capitalizes in the midst of her sentences to either show personification or give possessive qualities to the word. Capitalization is also used to put emphasis upon that particular part of the sentence; such as the word “Stillness” (Dickinson 396) in the first stanza. The poem is also written with meter, tetrameter and trimeter that give it a more musical …show more content…
Images like these are painted to pull on your emotions and give the reader a feeling of sorrow and longing for life. Dickinson also uses figurative language in her poems to give the reader another sense, comparison, such as when she compared the similarities of the room and air in the first stanza; “The Stillness in the room Was like the Stillness in the Air” (396). This particular poem written by Dickinson also uses symbols, such as her use of the word “windows” (396) in the last stanza. She uses the word “windows” as a symbol for the eyes, showing that her sight had failed her due to her death. The use of imaginary and figurative language help a reader's sense the comparison without having to simply state the occurrences, and also give the poem more meaning behind its few