Summary
The speaker says that she heard a fly buzz as she lay
on her deathbed. The room was as still as the air between “the Heaves”
of a storm. The eyes around her had cried themselves out, and the
breaths were firming themselves for “that last Onset,” the moment
when, metaphorically, “the King / Be witnessed—in the Room—.” The
speaker made a will and “Signed away / What portion of me be / Assignable—”
and at that moment, she heard the fly. It interposed itself “With
blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz—” between the speaker and the light;
“the Windows failed”; and then she died (“I could not see to see—”).
Form
“I heard a Fly buzz” employs all of Dickinson’s formal
patterns: trimeter and tetrameter iambic lines (four stresses in
the first and third lines of each stanza, three in the second and
fourth, a pattern Dickinson follows at her most formal); rhythmic
insertion of the long dash to interrupt the meter; and an ABCB rhyme
scheme. Interestingly, all the rhymes before the final stanza are
half-rhymes (Room/Storm, firm/Room, be/Fly), while only the rhyme
in the final stanza is a full rhyme (me/see). Dickinson uses this
technique to build tension; a sense of true completion comes only
with the speaker’s death.
Commentary
One of Dickinson’s most famous poems, “I heard a Fly buzz”
strikingly describes the mental distraction posed by irrelevant
details at even the most crucial moments—even at the moment of death.
The poem then becomes even weirder and more macabre by transforming
the tiny, normally disregarded fly into the figure of death itself,
as the fly’s wing cuts the speaker off from the light until she
cannot “see to see.” But the fly does not grow in power or stature;
its final severing act is performed “With Blue—uncertain stumbling
Buzz—.” This poem is also remarkable for its detailed evocation
of a deathbed scene—the dying person’s loved ones steeling themselves
for the end, the dying woman signing away in her will “What portion
of me be / Assignable” (a turn of phrase that seems more Shakespearean
than it does Dickinsonian).
