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whoa good to be back, been a while since I've gotten to stretch the old legs [Emily Dickinson zombie appears]

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believe it or not I'm not all that upset to be down here.. I'm a lot more famous

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now than I ever was when I was alive not that I cared that much ever....

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a little about me I was born on December 10th 1830 in Amherst Massachusetts

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inside the Dickenson family home which we call the homestead the homestead is [The homestead building]

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also where I kicked the bucket but let's not get ahead of ourselves

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my Grandpa Samuel Dickinson founded Amherst College where my Dad Edward

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would become a treasurer Pop's was also the state representative

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and Senator a member of the governor's cabinet and a US congressman what a

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slacker am i right? after graduating from high school I went [Emily graduating from high school]

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to Mount Holyoke Female Seminary I got thrown a lot of shame for not

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identifying as Christian while I went there they should see me now I'm lovin

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life after death..In the end I only lasted a year before returning back to [Emily driving a car]

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the homestead where I would remain for the rest of my life there are football

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games that lasted longer than my college career... For the most part my life in

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Amherst wasn't particularly eventful there are entire stretches of my life

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that historians can't account for - Spoiler: I was playing a lot of a bejeweled because

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I was the only unmarried daughter in the family I had to care for not just my [Emily cooking dinner]

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parent but also for my brother until he married in 1856 how totally unsexist of

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them... my days were spent doing household chores maintaining the garden and [Emily doing the gardening]

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writing poems secretly in my spare time in 1858 I began copying my

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previously written poems down into books.. I also published a few poems around this

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time in the Springfield Republican newspaper the editors chopped them up so

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much that they weren't even recognizable the jerks...By 1867 I had almost entirely

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withdrawn from the world, I began speaking to visitors only through the [Emily opens door for pizza delivery man]

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door and politely refused to meet company at the homestead

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I also took exclusively wearing hand-sewn white dresses why? girl when

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you look this good there is no need to explain yourself...Either way

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this was when my creative life truly blossomed I don't know exactly how many [Flower blossoming]

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poems I wrote during that time but before my life was over i'd spit out

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around 1800 of the little guys all of which I dutifully copied into notebooks

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I had some bad years too in 1874 my Dad died of a stroke while in Boston and in [Emily at her Dad's grave]

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1882 my mom joined him and then in 1886 I too fell badly ill and died in the

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homestead the place where I was born after my death my sister Lavinia

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discovered the books I had been secretly filling with poems and in 1890...4 years

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after my death my poetry was finally published for the whole world to see [World reading Emily's poems]

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took long enough jeez one of my most famous known poems is I heard a fly buzz

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like most of my work the poem actually doesn't have a title and is instead

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referred to by its opening line here capitalization and all that although the

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poem is short a mere four stanzas it's so complex that you need a microscope to [Woman looking through a microscope]

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see all the fine details yeah I'm that good just saying let's start with stanza

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numero uno the poem starts with a boring conversation it's like okay so you heard

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a fly buzz big whup then I drop the kicker when I reveal that the speaker is

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dead just three words I completely flip the script on the reader suddenly we're [Emily's arm falls off]

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in the middle of a ghost story and the speaker is the ghost of course it makes

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sense too flies are often associated with death and decay considering death

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and decays is their idea of a hearty meal after that revelation we suddenly shift

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away from the fly as the speaker describes this

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of her death this establishes a creepy tone for the poem which is basically the

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way a work of literature makes you feel the poems pacing plays a part in that

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too it moves slowly, creeping up on you before shocking you with an unexpected [Ghost appears]

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turn of phrase or strange image for instance this stanza features a notable

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simile on comparison that uses like or as then when I compared the silence of the

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room to the lull of a storm this tricky turn of phrase gives you a sense that though [Man alone in the woods]

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things are calm right now they're about to get buck wild and onto stanza two...

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Here we begin with some new information about the room where the

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speaker died I learned indirectly that there are other people here the speaker

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refers to their eyes and breath, this technique is called synecdoche when you

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refer to something by a part of it although these folks aren't crying right

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now they seem like they've been bawling recently in other words they're in an [Group of people crying]

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emotional lull, just waiting for the speaker to die.. Curious stuff right? in this

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stanza I also refer to death as the last onset but what actually happens in that

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moment you might expect a big creepy dude in a black robe but I'm way too

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clever for that kind of thing instead this is the moment when the King arrives

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in the room of course most readers would see this as a reference to Jesus I use a

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capital i' after all but I'm not religious remember so what could I be [Emily walking with a friend]

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talking about maybe I'm saying that death itself is

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the king or maybe I'm talking about Elvis don't expect me to spill the beans [Emily dressed as Elvis]

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Two stanzas down two more to go instead of talking about the king who's just been

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introduced the speaker talks about giving away her possessions in a way

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this is how the speaker can live on after her death which is actually quite

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comforting given how dark the rest of the poem is but then out of nowhere we're

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left with a strange cliffhanger and then it was and then it was and then it was

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what well the next line tells us it's that darn fly again that fly interrupts [Fly lands on mans face]

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this calm deathbed scene or as I so eloquently say it it interposed

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on it....This word choice tells us that the fly is an intruder it's not welcome

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here and now folks we're at the fourth and final stanza of the poem, feels good

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yeah it begins in a similar way as the first one by focusing on the sound of

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the fly which is described as a blue uncertain stumbling buzz describing a

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sound as blue is an example of synesthesia when you blend description [Synesthesia definition appears]

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of two different sensory organs notice how the poem itself stumbles

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uncertainly here I match my writing style to the thing being described those

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are some late skills if I do say so myself furthermore my writing style

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forces the reader to put all of their attention on the fly and that's not all [Fly buzzing around a room]

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it also completes the line that ended the previous stanza and reveals that the

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fly is coming between the speaker and some source of light.. There

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are two ways to read this.. First we can read it literally the lady is dying and

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a fly flies in front of her lamp the end but you can also look at the word light

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in a metaphorical manner, after all light plays an important role in Christian

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theology and I was just talking about that King fellow hmm could this gonna be [Light shining through church window]

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about spirituality after all no matter how you interpret that line however the

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fly has really messed things up we were moving towards a nice bright ending when

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that stupid little insect showed up and ruined the whole thing

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the speaker then tells us that the windows failed I don't even know what [Windows failure message pops up]

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that means and I wrote it my best guess is that the word Windows refers to

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people's eyes not literally you know like eyes are the windows into the soul

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when we interpret the line this way we can see that it describes someone closing

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their eyes of course I still have to put my own twist on this moment by dropping [Woman closes her eyes]

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the phrase could not see to see and no I didn't stutter this doubles the feeling

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of isolation of change of the failure of the senses, this last image is meant to

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be hard to pin down however the speakers experience can't [Person tries to pin down a question mark]

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quite be put into words that's what's so spooky about the poem

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first there's family and then there's why then there's just nothingness, not

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very comforting I don't go out of my way to make you guys feel better either what

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can I say I really like freaking people out keep in mind that the poem is a mere [Emily's eye drops out]

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111 words long which means that I just said more words analyzing it than I did

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writing it that's a testament to my skills as a poet

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I packed tons of meaning into a single word through this we can see the

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importance of close reading which you guessed it is about paying uber

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close attention to the text itself with close reading we pay more attention to [Emily discussing close reading]

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the form of writing the way it's written then its content, the stuff is about close

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reading was pioneered by scholars who called themselves the new critic..A

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fancy-pants literary movement that blew up in twentieth-century America as their

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association with close reading implies the new critics were all about taking a [Scientists looking through microscope]

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microscope to text while also arguing that the biographical information of

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authors are irrelevant to their work now we're not exactly following the laws

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of new criticism here after all I just gave you a bunch of biographical

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information about myself regardless the technique of close reading is

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indispensable when it comes to complex works of poetry like those written by

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yours truly Wow sometimes I forget how awesome I am

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just to get a reminder I also hope you learned a thing or two from your [Emily discussing the learning points]

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favorite undead poet like for example that I defied just about every

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expectation of women in my era and I lived a completely unique life, I was the

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Kanye of my day my poem I heard a fly buzz is a good entry point into my work

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it displays all the trippy weirdness that I'm famous for, the poem should also

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show you how to engage in close reading especially when dealing with texts as

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complicated as mine and before you go let me drop a little secret

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just between me and you I was talking about Elvis well come on now...[Emily appears as Elvis]

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work with me here

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