Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Linda Pastan's poem "The Deathwatch Beetle" intricately weaves together themes of mortality, grief, and the eerie persistence of life and death. The poem is structured in four distinct sections, each offering a unique perspective on the inevitability of death and the emotional turbulence that accompanies it. Through vivid imagery and metaphor, Pastan captures the haunting presence of death as it lingers and echoes in the lives of those left behind.

In the first section, the poem opens with the unsettling image of a cardinal hurling itself at a window, repeatedly trying to penetrate its own reflection: "A cardinal hurls itself / at my window all morning long, / trying so hard to penetrate / its own reflection." This behavior of the bird reflects a futile struggle, an attempt to break through the barrier of the glass, which could symbolize the boundary between life and death, or between reality and the reflection of self-awareness. The speaker is tempted to let the bird in, driven by empathy and perhaps a desire to ease the bird's distress. However, the memory of another bird, "crazed / by the walls of a room," and the chaos it caused, serves as a warning against allowing this madness to enter her space. This red bird, with its violent attempt to escape confinement, serves as a metaphor for the desperate struggle against death or the inescapable forces of fate.

The second section shifts to a deeply personal reflection on grief: "My whole childhood is coming apart, / the last stitches / about to be ripped out / with your death." Here, the speaker's impending loss of a loved one is likened to the unraveling of a fabric, with the "last stitches" symbolizing the final connections to a past that is about to be undone. The image of the speaker being left "ridiculous, / to write / condolence letters / to myself" conveys a profound sense of isolation and self-reflection. It suggests that the speaker's grief is so encompassing that she anticipates needing to console herself, as if the loss is so intimate and central to her identity that no external words of comfort could suffice.

The third section introduces the deathwatch beetle, an insect traditionally associated with omens of death due to the ticking sound it makes, which can be heard in old, quiet houses. The beetle's name "earned ... not from its ugliness / or our terror / of insects / but simply because of the sound / it makes, ticking." This ticking sound is reminiscent of a clock, a reminder of the passage of time and the inevitability of death. The beetle’s presence in the poem emphasizes the idea that death is always nearby, an ever-present force that quietly marks the moments of our lives.

The final section of the poem delves into the metaphysical: "When your spirit / perfects itself, / will it escape / out of a nostril, / or through the spiral / passage of an ear?" Here, the speaker contemplates the moment of death, pondering how the spirit might leave the body. The use of "perfects itself" suggests that death is a moment of completion, a final state of being that allows the spirit to transcend the physical form. The imagery of the spirit escaping through a nostril or ear evokes ancient beliefs about the soul leaving the body, while also emphasizing the fragility and permeability of the human form.

The poem closes with a return to the image of the cardinal: "Or is it even now battering / against your thin skull, wild / to get through, blood brother / to this crimson bird?" The spirit’s desperation to escape is likened to the cardinal’s frantic attempts to break through the glass. The "blood brother" connection between the spirit and the bird ties the earlier metaphor of the cardinal back to the theme of death, suggesting that the struggle to escape confinement—whether of the body, the mind, or life itself—is a universal, primal force.

"The Deathwatch Beetle" is a haunting exploration of the ways in which death manifests in life—through the relentless ticking of time, the unraveling of personal history, and the frantic, sometimes violent, struggle against the inevitable. Pastan's use of imagery and metaphor creates a powerful meditation on mortality, capturing both the terror and the strange beauty of life's final moments. The poem's structure, moving from the external world of the cardinal and the beetle to the deeply personal reflection on grief and the metaphysical questions of death, mirrors the complex and multifaceted nature of human responses to the presence of death in our lives.

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