"I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain" by Emily Dickinson
This poem was my favorite. The most obvious translation, to me, is that the narrator is going crazy. The fact that she hears all of these things going on shows that she is not dead, but maybe just disassociated. Several lines stuck out as proving that she was going insane, such as "That Sense was breaking through", "My Mind was going numb", and "then a Plank in Reason, broke''. It almost seems like at the beginning of the poem her sense is breaking through, meaning her mind is trying to be rational. But then her mind goes away and her reasoning and logical thoughts begin to break. The funeral image is not one of death of the body, but death of the mind. She is no longer able to communicate with the "mourners", just like she would not be able to communicate if she were physically dead. The end of this poem, being so odd, struck me as the final piece of evidence. She finished knowing anything logical or reasonable, and then nothing happened. She was crazy, but crazy people do not realize they are crazy. So, her poem ended because she had nothing else to relate to.
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