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 contain an end rhyme. However, Dickinson diverts away from this form and uses slant rhymes like "died" and "air" (L.1, 3), as well as int…