EXPLORING I heard a Fly buzz – when I died


‘I heard a Fly buzz – when I died’ is concerned with the crossover between life and death. Dickinson believed that the senses go one by one, and that hearing is the last sense to go. She was fascinated by that momentary blurring of the line between life and death, which she thought occurred just as the body is not completely alive, but not completely dead either. The transition from life to death has fascinated many over the ages. The frustrating fact is that you can never know what happens when you die while you are still alive. The knowledge that Dickinson eagerly sought comes at a very high price.


The first line of the poem establishes the morbid tone: ‘I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –’. The setting of this poem in a typical deathbed scene. Someone, possibly Dickinson herself, lies in their bed awaiting their imminent death. Dickinson describes the particular stillness that is found at this difficult time very accurately, using the simile of the calm at the eye of a storm: ‘The Stillness in the Room/ Was like the Stillness in the Air –/ Between the Heaves of Storm –’. Dickinson helped nurse her father in his final illness. She also nursed her mother who was chronically ill for many years after suffering a stroke. Dickinson knew the atmosphere of a sickroom well and her description shows this knowledge. The ‘Storm’ preceding death is the worry, illness, stress and frightened anticipation that both the dying person and their loved ones feel, while the second ‘Storm’ is the sorrow, loss and grief experienced after death.


Although medically and scientifically we know that death is a process, and that there is a pattern to the failure of organs and the moment of death, there is a lot of empirical (anecdotal) evidence that people can, in a way, decide themselves when they want to let go. Sometimes it is only when the dying person sees a loved one for the last time or when they are told by loved ones that they can let go, that they actually do so. There seems to be a sense of that readiness to go here. The speaker’s loved ones have cried until they have no more tears to cry: ‘The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –’. They are taking a deep breath and readying themselves for the moment of death: ‘And Breaths were gathering firm/ For that last Onset –’. Dickinson personifies death as a king, because death has the ultimate control: ‘when the King/ Be witnessed – in the Room –’. ‘King’ may also refer to God, and his arrival to bring this soul to heaven.


Despite the disturbing first line, the poem is quite peaceful, even comforting. There is a sense of closure from the speaker’s perspective. She has made her will and assigned her belongings: ‘I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away/ What portion of me be/ Assignable’. She is dying not on a battlefield or in the aftermath of an accident, but in her own bed. She is not alone, and she is loved. Her family and friends have cried their tears and are now trying to be brave for her in her time of need. She has tied up all the loose ends of her life. However, it is at this precise and perfect moment that: ‘There interposed a Fly –’. To interpose is to


92 VERSE 2022


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