Journal #28

Emily Dickinson wrote "I heard a fly buzz when I died", which is about a fly that interrupts the speaker as they are passing away.  In the first stanza, it says "I heard a fly buzz when I died; The stillness round my form was like the stillness in the air between the heaves of storm."  I think that in this stanza Emily Dickinson is saying how everything finally became peaceful right before her death, after being sick and heaving for long periods of time.  I think this poem sounds pretty interesting just by the first stanza because the first line is so weird it made me interested in seeing how the rest of the poem will go.  I thought the second stanza was a lot harder to analyze, so this might be wrong.  The first line of the second stanza says "The eyes beside had wrung them dry," which makes me think of people crying because this poem is about someone dying so it would  make sense that people would be crying.  The second line of the second stanza reads "And breaths were gathering sure" which I do not really understand what this means at all.  Maybe it means people were gathering or visiting this person because they are dying.  The third and fourth lines of the second stanza go "For that last onset, when the king be witnessed in his power."  I think that these last two lines mean that death is finally because when you die you are supposed to see God, who is the king, and all his power.  I think this stanza brings all the other stanzas together and helps them make more sense.  In the third stanza, Emily Dickinson talks about how she gave away all her possessions and was finally ready to die when a fly came and kind of ruined the moment.  In the first, second, third, and fourth lines of the third stanza, she wrote "I willed my keepsakes, signed away what portion of me I could make assignable,- and then there interposed a fly,"  She is saying that this character gave away everything she could and was ready for death when  a pesky fly came along and kind of ruined the peaceful moment.  The last stanza of this poem  is about how the fly interrupted death.

Bibliography

Dickinson, Emily. "128. “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died.” Part Four: Time and Eternity. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems." 128. “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died.” Part Four: Time and Eternity. Dickinson, Emily. 1924. Complete Poems. Web. 27 Mar. 2012.