Unlike an earlier poem, ‘Because I could not stop for death’, the poem “I felt a funeral, in my Brain’, though portraying an account of ritual of funeral, is remarkable for the sense of pain and despair in meeting with death. An extremity of pain and sense of trance from conscious regime of life to an unconscious numbness of death makes the poem a serious awareness and acceptance of death as an ultimate destination.
The poem opens with the poetess’ realization of death and the mourners’ preparation for funeral with the feeling of dissociation from life as well. The dramatic presentation of the ritual of burial, makes the poetess feel numb and sinking herself into the depth of unconsciousness.
In fact the poem is a dramatic description of a ceremony of burial, which the victim of death herself realizes and expresses her own responses. When the dead is placed in a coffin box the space shrinked from infinity to close limit. All the rush and sound shifted to deep valley of silence when the coffin box drowned deep into the depth of the grave, it is a trance journey from the life to unconscious valley of death; it is a journey from known to unknown. Rather than the divinity of death, the poetess emphasizes the dreadful isolation of death.
