Kwame Dawes Poem I Felt A Funeral

Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.

Emily Dickinson's two poems, "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" and "I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died," revolve around one central theme, death. Though the two do centralize around the theme of death they both have slightly different messages or beliefs about what is to come after death. By discussing both of the poems and interpreting their meanings, the reader can gain a fuller understanding of the message Dickinson is trying to send to her audience and a greater feel for what may lie ahead in the afterlife. When Dickinson writes in her first line, "I heard a fly buzz when I died," it grasps the reader's attention by describing the

The subject of death, including her own was a very prevalent theme in Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters. Some may find her preoccupation with death morbid, but this was not unusual for her time period. The mindset during Ms. Dickinson’s time was that of being prepared to die, in the 19th century people died of illness and accidents at an alarming rate, not to mention the Civil War had a high number of casualties, she also lived 15 years of her youth next to a cemetery. Dickinson’s view on death was never one of something to be feared she almost romanized death, in her poem “Because I Could not Stop for Death”, she actually personifies death while narrating from beyond the grave. In the first stanza she states “I could not stop for

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson’s poetry is very different; however death seems to be a familiar topic amongst both poets. Opposites attract, and you could say the same for Whitman and Dickinson because though they have different writing styles both repeatedly write about death. Once more, although both Whitman and Dickinson have many different feelings about death, they also share many similar feelings about it as well. Although Walt Whitman's poetry is rather long and quite simple and Emily Dickinson's are often short and complex, the theme of death strongly ties their works together.

Walt Whitman is a man who against slavery during the Civil War, he said: everyone is equal, it does matter a person’s skin is black or white, they all have the same red-running blood at I Sing the Body Electric. Walt Whitman is comparing Death and Race, everyone is equal. The death happened all over the place. Emily Dickinson feels death always follow her around: “So huge, so hopeless to conceive-/ As these that twice befell.”(line 5-6 ). In this poem, Emily Dickinson feels death is painful and sadness, when she was young, her best friend has died then she started to get health problem. This one of the reason that makes she feels death always around her. When she gets older, she locked herself in the room. Emily Dickinson did not have a chance to see more things around the world, so she looks at death from a personal perspective. But when her thought and her work is not being understood, she wrote done I DIED for beauty this poem, in this poem she had a different understanding of death. In this poem Emily Dickinson showed the person who can be resting in peace, to be immorality after death, is the person who only lives for beauty and truth. “And, so as kinsmen met at night,-”( line 9). “ as kinsmen” Emily Dickinson is using the

Emily Dickinson, as a poetic writer, composed most of her works with the theme of death, the entirety of which can be categorised into three different periods of writings; the earliest mainly contained the themes of death and immortality, personifying death and elegiac poems and lacked the intensity and urgency of her later poems or their fascination with the physical aspects of death (VAN DAESDONK 2007). Because of Dickinson’s immense fascination with this subject it is interesting to compare her pieces against each other to see how her view of death changed over the years of her writing.

Firstly, The plot of Dickinson’s poem is persuades and takes the reader imagery through different settings and times. In her first poem, “Because I could Not Stop For Death” Emily talks about death and how she experienced it on her own. The second poem was also written about the author’s death and its title “I heard a fly buzz— when I died” leaves a gray area for discussion. The third poem “I felt Funeral In my Brain” Emily Dickinson describing what it would be like to experience her own funeral in consciousness, while her body was dead. Each stanzas of these poems takes reader to a new part of the poet’s journey with death. In the title of three poems, Dickinson states her subject capturing the reader on an adventure. The first poem uses the elements of nature represent a cycle of life.The weather is used to represent various life stages in “Because I could not stop for Death”. These poems describe the process of dying right up to and past the moment of death, in the first person. The speaker, walking along the road of life is picked up and given a carriage ride out of town to her destination, the graveyard and death. In the first poem the death takes the shape of a gentleman, a grim reaper, his paying a visit is normally never welcome by the normal human who finds him at the door. In the poem the woman welcomes him and is going on a date with death.

Death is a mysterious, yet frequently occurring topic in Emily Dickson’s poetry. Due to her introverted and isolated personality, Dickinson tended to write poems that included themes of death and immortality. In Death is a Dialogue Between, Dickinson illustrates the dispute between Death and a Spirit. In contrast to other American poets, Dickinson’s unique style of punctuation, formatting, as well as themes of mortality and death distinguished her from her contemporaries.

Most people in the world are afraid of death or do not like the topic of death at all. There were a lot of poems written about death. Some being scared of death and some accepting the fact of death. Well in the poems “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson and “Death be not proud” by John Donne these poets have a different outlook on death than most people. Dickinson and Donne think that death should not be feared. In both of the poems, death is personified as a person but the poets use different tones to make the poems have different meanings.

First, Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death” is obvious in its theme of death in comparison to the others listed in the previous paragraph. The narrator of this poem uses a figure of speech to describe Death as a kind person taking the time to pick her up since she was too busy for him (Dickinson 566). Death is described as warm and kind throughout most of this poem, with only two stanzas depicting a sinister feeling when she actually realizes that she is dead. The speaker tells about a carriage ride with Death, a metaphor for the act of dying. This poem, in fact, is built on metaphors, alliterations, anaphora, paradox and it’s written in lyric form; it’s got a beat to it when read. The poem contains six stanzas with four lines in each making it a quatrain. “Because I could not stop for Death” also uses symbols in its text to establish the speaker’s lifetime. The speaker tells of the carriage ride past the school where children

“The Bustle in a House” by Emily Dickinson (653) is a poem that uses the death of a loved one and turns it into how the domestic duties must go on and utilizes that as a source to cope with the grief caused by the depressing situation. Similarly, “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden (762-763) is also a poem about death in which is told in a man’s perspective who is mourning the loss of a lover who has died. Although “The Bustle in a House” and “Funeral Blues” share death as the comparable theme, both poets go about it in separate ways. Both poems utilize the same sound devices to create imagery, however “Funeral Blues” usage of structure, syntax, and symbolism is demonstrated more effectively in order to convey the way the speaker processes death.

I agree with you, Emily Dickinson portrays death in her poems as something not scary like the usual "grim reaper" view of death. Instead, death is shown as a very nice companion, they do not go anywhere horrible or scary or supernatural. Instead, they just pass by regular sights like a schoolyard. So Death is personified in a pretty benign way in this

Emily Dickinson was born in a time when not many women involved themselves in poetry or any form of intellectual capability. Despite this, she was such a wonderful poet that her poetry rivaled Whitman’s. Of course, she was never able to rival him because she chose not to publish her poetry in her lifetime. Once the world saw her poetry, however, it was shocked by the literary genius who had lived in seclusion for a good majority of her life. Her style is very distinguishable through it is excessive but purposeful punctuation and 8-6-8-6 rhyme that matches church songs and patriotic songs like “Amazing Grace” and “Glory to God on High.” The church influenced more than her style, however, as much of her subject matter pertains to her unorthodox beliefs. Other subjects include hope and sometimes humor, but her ideas on death are both very interesting and complicated. Dickinson does not make light of death, but she uses her poems as her diary to record her thoughts on death. She moves rapidly from thinking death is passive to thinking it is an amazing honor, but she also thinks of it in a terrified sense. Emily Dickinson’s views on death are uncertain, she varies between finding death casual, positive and romantic, and negative in a series of several poems

Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both

Emily Dickinson was thought to have an obsession with death due to her many poems and letters that contain the subject. In the later stages of her life, many of her friends and family members died. There is a window in the house where she lived that looked over the cemetery where she was a witness to many funerals that occurred. To see such a repeated reminder of loved ones lost and the presence of death in her backyard, her thoughts frequently turned to death. Poems like 280, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” (87) shows a clear insight into how she was affected by death. In that poem, Emily Dickinson wrote about a funeral service that she must have witnessed. “And Mourners to and fro/ Keep treading – treading – till it seemed/ That Sense was breaking through”(87). Funerals can be very hard to digest for the people attending. From the few funerals I have attended, people are