I heard a Fly buzz — when I died

“I heard a Fly Buzz — When I died” is a narrative poem broken into four quatrains (a stanza made of four lines) that takes the reader through the speaker’s progressing death and increasing disconnect from knowledge and self-autonomy.

The poem begins using a simple past tense, declarative sentence in the indicative grammatical mood—”I heard a Fly Buzz — When I died” (Line 1). The use of a declarative sentence form and the indicative mood sets the speaker hearing a fly at the time of her death as hard fact. The simple past tense of “heard” gives the statement both a definitive timeframe (“when I died”) and a sense of closure of the actions (Line 1). The subject detects the direct object as the direct object acts. This grammatical construction makes the reader trust the speaker to possess objectivity and clarity about her death. Dickinson supports the image of a level-headed speaker with the poem’s form. The four lines and four stanzas create the illusion of balance, steadiness, and preparedness.

Dickinson continues using the indicative mood through the following 15 lines as she presents the speaker’s observations about the speaker’s dying room and mourners. The speaker applies the indicative mood towards future events as well. When the speaker dies, the speaker believes the King—God—will be “witnessed in the Room” (Lines 7-8). She wrote her Will so that people will inherit “what portion of me be / Assignable” (Lines 10-11). Since the indicative mood deals with facts and opinions, these statements are rooted in reality, either as fact, interpretation of, or response to a fact. Again, Dickinson reassures the reader that the speaker is a trustworthy narrator. Even the diction implies a sound and steady mind. The words “willed,” “assigned,” and “portion” have an association with the legal system, mathematics, and taxonomy (Lines 9-11). Together in close sequence, these words give the impression that the speaker can tell the reader exactly how much she could give of herself, what she can and cannot give, who received what, how much they received, and why she assigned those keepsakes. The speaker feels stoic and brave since she seems fine, viewing herself in the past tense and more concerned with business matters than existential ones.

However, Dickinson quietly introduces a sense of unease in the reader, foreshadowing the speaker’s eventual doubts. Dickinson’s use of em-dashes destabilizes the flow of usually straightforward sentences: “When the King be witnessed in the room” becomes “when the King / Be Witnessed—in the Room” (Lines 7-8). It causes the reader to stop and wonder why Dickinson located the em-dash there. Is there something special about the room? Other than a person dying, there is not anything special about the room. Rather, the em-dash questions the reader’s trust in the speaker. Besides replicating the speaker’s fading breath and need to take a breath to collect herself emotionally, the em-dashes make the speaker appear to pause to make sure they have the correct observations.

Dickinson further troubles the speaker’s assuredness by shifting the em-dashes’ function between continuation and endpoint of an idea since she eschews periods and commas. The poem’s first line even features the first em-dash as a visual break between “I heard a Fly buzz” and “when I died.” Only for the second em-dash after “I died” to act as a period, ending the introduction to start providing information about the setting (Lines 1-2). When the reader reaches the third and fourth em-dashes, they perform as commas between “The Stillness in the air,” “Between the Heaves of Storm,” and “The eyes around—had wrung dry” (Lines 3-5). All three sentiments interlink and form a cause-and-effect pattern. The people stopped crying, turning the room quiet, but the tears will start up again. “The Stillness in the Room” is not directly reliant on “When I died” for a cohesive meaning, which confirms the em-dash as a period there (Lines 1-2). Dickinson throws the reader off because the reader cannot be sure of the line’s relationship to what comes and after. Will the em-dash represent an event sequence [“The Eyes around—had wrung them dry— / And the Breaths were gathering firm”], a flattening of time through parataxis [“I willed my Keepsakes—Signed Away”], the feigned calmness cracking [“Be witnessed—in the Room”], or a stopping point [“—in the Room— “] (Lines 5, 8-9)? The fluidity of function asks the reader to carefully consider their thoughts about what the speaker describes in the poem and more closely read it.

In the last two lines of the third stanza, Dickinson fully brings the speaker’s panic and uncertainty to the forefront. The fly interrupts the speaker’s placid breakdown of events. The syntax inverts—the verb “interposed” comes before its actor “the Fly” (Line 12). The identity of who intruded her reverie matters less than that it was interrupted. The intrusion disorders the speaker’s thoughts, giving the impression that she rages that her connection, clarity, and calmness were suddenly ripped from her when she notices the fly becoming less and less visible (Lines 11-12).

The speaker tries to focus on precise details of the fly, its body becoming the color blue, which further deconstructs into a buzzing sound (Lines 12-13). Because she only registers the fly’s buzz, the speaker feels the noise has blocked out her senses by coming between her and “the light” (Lines 13-14).

Finally, Dickinson eliminates any way for the speaker or reader to know what will happen to the speaker by contrasting the first line’s simple past tense, indicative mood with the last line’s subjunctive grammatical mood and more ambiguous tense. “I could not see to see” plays upon the indefinite (Line 16). “Could” is a modal verb used to express possibility, as in “this could happen to me.” Nevertheless, it can also be the past tense of “can” as in “I could not believe that happened.” It lies between the hypothetical, the future, and the past. The verb might signal that the reader has caught up to the speaker’s present moment, and the speaker still lacks a sturdy comprehension of her position. Since the subjunctive grammatical mood denotes wishes and conditions contrary to the fact, the “could not” might be the speaker shocked and disturbed at their new state of being or hopeful at the possibility that this sightlessness is only temporary. Regardless of its intent, “could” as a subjunctive verb creates openness and fluidity that intensifies the openness the speaker faces at the end when she is dying and cannot look for anything recognizable.

As previously established, Dickinson uses her em-dashes flexibly, so the em-dash after “see” could be a period to represent the speaker’s final moments of thought or a comma to imply a story the reader does not get to know (Line 16). The em-dash could also visualize the speaker in limbo, waiting for an answer in that unseeing, senseless place. The “then” in the previous line sequentially links the last line as a part of the speaker’s death (Lines 15-16). The speaker’s loss of sight and understanding becomes an actual event. The “then” links the subjunctive “could not” to the rest of the poem, which Dickinson wrote in the indicative mood (Lines 15-16). The indicative is a realis grammatical aspect, which captures what is, while the subjunctive is irrealis, which describes what should, would, or may be. This difference highlights the speaker’s feeling that they cannot distinguish the nature of their reality. The reader feels the speaker’s tension between what they know or learned and the mystery they encounter.

Because the speaker took such care to inform the reader about the details of their passing, the lack of follow-up on “I could not see to see” shows that the speaker admits they no longer have the answers or the ability to ascertain the facts (Line 16). Dickinson leaves the speaker and reader in the same place, at the mercy of the promise of potential explanation and continuation, but she provides only an open space.