Why is the poem “I heard a Fly Buzz” one of your favorites, Mr. Tillyer?
Because I find it surprising that a little woman from Amherst in the late nineteenth century could be so bold about her atheism.
We created this post in class, remember? Now that I have seen it, I feel slightly irresponsible. The assertion that Emily Dickinson is an atheist is pretty thin and adduced by scholars from her poems primarily; although, her letters can be cited for more positive proof in places. To me, the fly interupts the work of the dying narrator in the poem, which is almost funny. How often we take the matters of living–and dying–with enormous gravity, and yet see not the simplest and, by their simple nature, most miraculous occurrences of synchronicity that compose the art of the universe.
