The Unexpected Meditation on Death:Emily Dickinson "I heard a Fly Buzz"

Emily Dickinson's poem, "I heard a Fly buzz", is a seemingly simple poem on the surface. The poem is written in ballad form, and contains four quatrains. Each stanza alternates between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, and provides the basic rhythm of the poem. This regular iambic rhythm of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed, give the poem a singsong, or chanted feel. In a traditional ballad stanza the second and fourth lines usually …

…with the possibility of losing all consciousness are epitomized in the image of a fly. The fly is in the way of our common conception of God and an afterlife. The buzzing is an annoyance and a disruption in the event of a peaceful death. The poem depicts the realization that human beings have no concept of what death will truly bring. Instead, it ends with a deflated perspective of God and of an afterlife.