Discuss the sounds in the poem "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—" by Emily Dickinson.

In Emily Dickinson's "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—,"
our attention is drawn to sound first by the use of onomatopoeia and the word
"buzz."

This word draws our attention perhaps more so than
the fly, even though it ("Fly") is capitalized which might initially catch our attention
as the reader.

Other words that draw our attention to sound
are "stillness," though this word, when combined in the simile "like the Stillness in
the Air — Between Heaves of Storm—" gives us the sense that the stillness is charged,
not dead.

We also hear sound with the word "breaths," which
are also not still, but "charged" with the fear and preparation of impending death ("For
that last Onset — when the King / Be witnessed...").

At the
end of the poem, the "uncertain stumbling Buzz" may refer to the narrator's uncertain
perception of what she hears as her senses fail, or may symbolically represent her
uncertainty as she approaches the new, undiscovered country (as described in
Hamlet): death.

References to sound
abound through the poem, though even the stillness referenced does not necessarily mean
quiet or emptiness.