Emily Dickinson [I heard a fly buzz when I died] Dickinson Style Sheet Poe, Dickinson, Whitman styles compared

Emily Dickinson (1830-86) (daguerrotype taken app. 1846)

Questions: 1. Dickinson's poetry may seem to operate in some timeless realm, but how may it reflect its time-period of late Romanticism, bordering on early Realism?

2. What characteristics of Dickinson's style? Or, how can you tell this is a poem by Emily Dickinson?

3. Compare this poem's form as "free verse" or "formal verse" with poems by Poe and Whitman (and other poems by Dickinson). (Comparative Study of Poe, Whitman, Dickinson)

I heard a fly buzz—when I died—
The stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the air—
Between the Heaves of Storm—                    4

The eyes around—had wrung them dry—
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset—when the King
Be witnessed—in the Room—                       8

I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable—and then it was
There interposed a Fly—                              12

With Blue—uncertain—stumbling Buzz—
Between the light—and me—
And then the windows failed—and then
I could not see to see—                                16