"I heard a fly buzz when I died" is one of Emily Dickinson's finest opening lines. It effectively juxtaposes the trivial and the momentous; the movement from one to the other is so swift and so understated and the meaning so significant that the effect is like a blow to an emotional solar plexus (solar plexus: pit of the stomach). Some readers find it misleading because the first clause ("I heard a fly buzz") does not prepare for the second clause ("when I died"). Is the dying woman or are the witnesses misled about death? does the line parallel their experience and so the meaning of the poem?