Although not published until the 1890s, Emily Dickinson likely wrote “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” around 1861, at the beginning of her most generative period. As suggested by the title, the poem’s central conceit revolves around a metaphorical funeral that takes place in the speaker’s mind. Over the course of five stanzas written in common meter, this highly structured poem follows the basic stages of a typical Christian funeral: the wake, the service, the procession, the tolling of the bell, and the burial. However, it isn’t clear whom—or what—this funeral is meant to grieve. Perhaps the speaker really has lost a loved one, and their internal process of grieving plays out like a traditional funeral. By contrast, it’s possible that the “funeral” isn’t about death at all, but about losing a cherished friendship, relinquishing a long-held belief, or shifting from sanity into despair. We can’t know for sure. What we can know, however, is that the speaker’s experience of grief conjures thoughts about the profound indifference of the universe. As the poem reaches its climax in the final stanzas, the funerary conceit takes on cosmic proportions, and the speaker descends into a disorienting fit of madness.

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