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How to use a fly.(A Column)(Emily Dickinson)(Critical Essay)(Column)

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From: The American Poetry Review
Date: 20040301
Author:Ryan, Michael

EMILY DICKINSON WROTE "I HEARD A FLY buzz--when I died" during The Civil War--in 1863, according to her latest editor. Some critics have been critical of her detachment from the general suffering and death during the war, but for Dickinson suffering (and especially death) is never general: it's always the suffering and death of a particular, irreplaceable person. Its cause is incidental to its singular effect, both on that person and on the people who love her or him. In December 1862, she wrote in a letter:

    Sorrow seems more general than it did, and not the estate of a few  ...

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