The Death of a Poet

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Recommended: Emily Dickinson and death poems

Emily Dickinson was a very thoughtful and distinct poet who wrote many great works of poetry. Most of her poems make use of unique combinations of capitalization and punctuation to introduce metaphors. These metaphors also have literal meaning. In order to use these metaphors, Dickinson normally puts her poems in the first person perspective, giving the impression that the poem is being given to you by the speaker rather than from herself. “I heard a Fly buzz---when I died---“ is a great example of this first-person perspective use of metaphor to describe the final thoughts of a person at the end of their life. As the poem opens, the speaker is introduced, a person who is thinking through their final thoughts as death approaches. In line 1, the speaker hears the buzzing of a fly, or rather, the words of some unwanted guest in the room. This person who should not be there is the only one making any sound in an otherwise quiet room. Lines 2 and 3 illustrate this with the rest of the family waiting quietly, and then the rest of the world simply being apathetic towards the plight of the...

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