Emily Dickinson Many poets often have themes or topics for which most of their poetry falls under. One of the topics that frequent the writhing of Emily Dickinson is death. This is the case with “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain,” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died.” In “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” the we receive the image of death by the description in the first stanza, “the …showed first 75 words of 568 total…

…showed last 75 words of 568 total…and then eventually after death finishes knowing. This is much like the end of the speaker in the poem “I heard a fly buzz when I died.” The speakers in both of these poems have and end to light or knowledge, however in the first the culprit is a fly. Death has always been a question of men. However through poems such as these we gain an understanding of how others view this perplexing phenomenon.