I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

The 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson is the author of “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” a poem that is considered part of the transcendentalist movement. She wrote the poem around 1861, and, like nearly all of her poems, she didn’t publish it when she was alive. Dickinson led a solitary life in Amherst, Massachusetts, interacting with few people besides select family members and friends. Her isolation has led to speculation about her character and identity: Some suggest she was a victim of sexism, while others argue she was a singular individual who preferred books and imagination to the outside world. The poem showcases Dickinson’s imagination, exploring the process of death and/or deep suffering. The poem argues that to gain knowledge about death or emotional pain, a person has to face it head-on. “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” is one of Dickinson’s many canonized poems about suffering and death, and it features the jarring dashes, unique capitalization, dramatic and puzzling diction, and crisscrossing interpretations that make up her idiosyncratic style.

Poet Biography

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830. Her family was prestigious, and her father was a prominent politician and lawyer. Dickinson attended Amherst Academy and the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, educational institutions for the children of wealthy families. As a young person, Dickinson was social: She liked parties, sleigh rides, and had romantic interests. However, after returning from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Dickinson became less enthusiastic about meeting most people.

Dickinson’s financial independence meant that she did not have to earn a living or marry. She spent most of her time reading and writing, composing around 1,800 poems on envelopes and bits of paper. The poems are difficult to read and possess neither titles nor dates. After Dickinson died in 1886, her younger sister Lavinia found a locked box of Dickinson’s work. Dickinson’s close friend and sister-in-law Susan, the wife of Dickinson’s older brother Austin, declined to help publish the poems.

Eventually, Mabel Loomis Todd—a writer who had an affair with Austin—stepped in, transcribing and editing over 600 poems. Todd tried to make Dickinson’s poems less peculiar: She replaced Dickinson’s dashes with commas and standardized her capitalization. A faithful publication of Dickson’s work didn’t arrive until 1955, when Thomas Johnson edited a compendium of Dickinson’s work. Johnson numbered Dickinson’s poems based on the order in which he believed she wrote them, assigning the poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” number 280. Decades later, Ralph W. Franklin published what some believe to be the most accurate version of Dickinson’s oeuvre; Franklin numbered “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” as poem 340.

Poem Text

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading—treading—till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through—

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum—

Kept beating—beating—till I thought

My mind was going numb—

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space—began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here—

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down—

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing—then—

Dickinson, Emily. “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.” 1861. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The speaker imagines a funeral in their brain. Mourners walk harshly back and forth, as if they’re trying to stomp some sense into the speaker’s mind. The mourners sit, and the service starts. The speaker compares the service to “a Drum” (Line 6), which continually beats, making the speaker’s mind lose feeling or become unresponsive.

As the funeral proceeds, the speaker hears the participants “lift a Box” (Line 9) or coffin, carrying it in their heavy boots that “creak” (Line 10) across the speaker’s soul. Aside from the grating, squeaking sound of the mourners, the speaker hears the funeral space ring out like a church bell. The sound is so pervasive that the speaker imagines all of heaven as a bell, while existence becomes only an ear to receive its clanging. Then, the noise makes the speaker commune with “Silence,” together with whom the speaker becomes a member of “some strange Race” (Line 15) of destroyed but alert creatures.

Suddenly, there is a shift in the speaker’s consciousness: “a Plank in Reason” (Line 17) breaks, and the speaker falls, hitting different levels inside the mind, each of which contains a separate world. After this dramatic drop, the speaker grasps something new, but readers do not get to learn what this is. The poem ends with a mysterious “then” (Line 20) and breaks off mid-sentence after a dash.