Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) “I heard a Fly buzz”

GENRE:
• This poem is a dramatic lyric or monologue
• The first-person speaker is a character or persona: not the author (but the
author’s views or beliefs are still suggested or implied).
• There is an element of interaction with other characters, who do not
speak but whose presence is nonetheless implied or represented (the “Eyes
around – had wrung them dry” refer to the other people in the room,
keeping watch, as if this were a performance almost).
• There is also a narrative element – the poem tells the story of a person
(probably a woman, although this is not specified) on her deathbed. There
are people in the room with her, and as she signs her last will and testament
and awaits “the King” she becomes distracted by the noise and appearance
of a fly, so that she fails to understand that instead of waiting to die, death
has already occurred.
• Some of the typical features of narrative in the poem include repetition such
as “and then”… “And then”… “and then” – these simple sequencing
phrases give the sense of an event unfolding in time while also providing
structure and continuity.

METER:
• The odd lines in the poem have eight syllables.
• The even lines have six syllables.
• Each line has a pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables (usually in that
order), and there are four of these stressed syllables in the odd lines, three in
the even:
o Was LIKE the STILLness IN the AIR –
o BeTWEEN the HEAVES of STORM
• In Anglophone poetry, units of unstressed and stressed syllables are called
iambic, and if there are four of these stressed syllables the meter is called
iambic tetrameter; if there are three, the meter is called iambic trimeter.
• The overall pattern in the poem is of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter
(four beats, unstressed and stressed) in the first and third lines and iambic
trimeter (three beats, unstressed and stressed).

RHYME:
• To identify a rhyme scheme, open a Word document or a notebook, and
assign the first letter of the alphabet to represent the sound of the word at the
end of the first line of the poem. Proceed to the second line, and if the sound
of the word at the end of the line is the same as the first, write another A: if

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 it is different, write B. Now go to the end of the third line, and if the sound
there is similar to one at the end of the first or second line, write A or B as
appropriate; if it sounds different, then write C.
• In this poem, the end words in the first four lines are “died/ Room/ Air/
Storm”, which would be ABCB. If you are uncertain about the rhyme
scheme (because Room and Storm are slightly similar, but by no means
identical), check the other groups of lines to see if there is a similar pattern –
especially in the last group of four lines, you will notice that the second and
fourth lines rhyme perfectly (“me/see”). Sometimes poets use rhyme that is
approximate rather than exact (more on this below).
• So the rhyme scheme is ABCB – the even lines rhyme. This very simple
but effective combination of alternating rhymes and alternating meter is
very typical of both ballads and hymns.
• Hymns are usually songs of praise to God – so in this case, the choice of a
kind of poem that has some of the formal features of a hymn is appropriate
to the situation of a dying person who appears to anticipate salvation.
• In addition to the end rhyme there are examples of internal rhyme in the
poem.
• For instance, there is onomatopoeia, where the sound echoes the sense in
some way (“lydord” på norsk; in Anglophone culture, “buzz” is thought to
mimic the noise a flying insect makes)
• There is also alliteration, the repetition of initial consonant sounds
(heard…Heaves, Stillness…Stillness…Storm, witnessed…willed) and
assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds (uncertain…stumbling…buzz,
between…see).
• Most of the rhymes are not full or perfect – they are called half or slant or
partial rhymes (room/storm, firm/room, be/fly).
• The use of half or slant rhymes might be said to introduce an off note:
hymns rhyme perfectly to suggest order, design, harmony. In this poem, the
half rhymes strike a note of imperfection – the possibility that something is
not quite right (or at least, not what the speaker thinks is right), and suggest
hesitation, doubt, and uncertainty.

CHARACTERISTICS of the author:

• This poem is typical of Dickinson’s writing more generally because it uses a
striking or unusual first line, which grabs the attention (other poems begin
“Because I could not stop for death,” “My life had stood a loaded gun”, and
“I like a look of agony”).
• Note the use of the dash, which is more informal and flexible and loose
than conventional punctuation.
• The capitalization of certain words can be understood in different ways –
as a form of emphasis, for instance, or as a way of suspending conventional

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 meanings, or increasing the potential range of meanings invoked by a
certain word or phrase (think of “Windows”, for instance – in English, the
eyes are sometimes seen as “windows to the soul”, and it’s clearly not the
windows that are failing at the end of the poem, but the speaker’s eyesight:
typically, she tends to externalise what is happening to her, rather than
realising that it is internal).
• There are instances of extreme compression – where the poet leaves out
words that are not completely necessary for the meter, and this is known as
a kind of unmarked ellipsis (“The Eyes of those present in the room had
wrung themselves dry of tears after much crying, as towels are wrung dry
after washing”).

IMAGERY:
• Note the developing imagery of noise/sound (connected with meaning,
communication, and its opposite) as well as sight/blindness (connected with
understanding, and its opposite), and also the imagery taken from nature
(the storm, and the appearance of the fly).
• There is a tension in the poem between natural events and elements (storms,
flies, death) and human rituals and codes for these events (Scripture, legal
documents, even theatre – because the death is a kind of improvised theatre
with the woman as the lead actor and her family as the audience).

STRUCTURE:
• The poem begins at the end, after the events narrated in the poem are over
(in narratives, a story is what happens, and plot is how the events of the
story are presented, in what order they are arranged by the writer to achieve
certain effects).
• There is a very simple progression with “and then” repeated three times,
which is reminiscent of the incremental repetition associated with the
ballad.
• The sequences of short stanzas enact the speed of dying, switching very
quickly from scene to scene, and from anticipation to aftermath.

THEME:
• The poem dramatizes the death of someone who is confident of an afterlife,
but the poem might be said to unsettle, complicate or even question that
certainty – though the acknowledgement that nature continues even in the
midst of death is essentially a positive one.