I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

The poem is a lyric: It’s short and the product of personal feelings—in this case, the speaker contemplates the end of one’s consciousness. As the poem focuses on death and funerals, it also borrows from the genres of dirge and elegy—though it is not about a literal funeral. As the poem is tricky to decipher, the riddle genre applies as well; the poem’s lesson (if there is a specific lesson) depends on how the reader solves the puzzle.

The speaker is elusive. The poem doesn’t supply a name, a gender, or much information about who is speaking and why they feel there’s a funeral in their brain. Nevertheless, the dramatic and exaggerated diction (or, choice of words) gives the reader a clue that the speaker is confronting something serious—perhaps grave. Due to Emily Dickinson’s intense, personal relationship with her poetry, many people equate her with the speaker; however, critical consensus is to separate her poetic personas from the real-life Dickinson. Even if Dickinson were the speaker, neutral pronouns still make sense: As the American cultural critic Camilla Paglia notes in Sexual Personae, Dickinson frequently embraced boyish identities in her letters (Paglia, Camille.

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