Emily Dickinson - I heard a Fly buzz when I died - American poets

6 months ago
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"I heard a Fly buzz when I died" is a poem by the American Poet Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886).
It is one of her most famous and ambiguous poems, talking about the moment of death from the perspective of a person who is already dead. This death seems to follow standard protocol: the speaker is on their deathbed and surrounded by mourners, and their will is squared away. However, the irritating figure of the fly arrives and undermines the seriousness and gravity of the occasion. Though spoken from the great beyond, the poem offers no easy answers about death, instead casting doubt on religious and social comforts.
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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

The eyes around had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering firm
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in the room.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable,– and then it was
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed and then
I could not see to see.
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Read by Lee Ann Howlett
https://librivox.org/short-poetry-collection-035/
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Photos and vids
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27At_the_Deathbed%27_by_Edvard_Munch,_1895,_Bergen_Kunstmuseum.JPG
Edvard Munch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emily_Dickinson_daguerreotype_(cropped).jpg
Original image: unknownderivative work: deerstop., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://pixabay.com/videos/aurora-borealis-northern-lights-90877/
https://pixabay.com/photos/fly-bluebottle-garden-insect-bug-2750566/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Octave_Tassaert_-_Woman_on_her_deathbed.jpg
Octave Tassaert, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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