10.09.08: Reading GuideAimee Nezhukumatathil discusses how Linda Pastan explores the theme of impending death in her poem "The Deathwatch Beetle." The Deathwatch Beetle BY Linda Pastan 1. A cardinal hurls itself at my window all morning long, trying so hard to penetrate its own reflection I almost let it in myself, though once I saw another red bird, crazed by the walls of a room, spatter its feathers all over the house. 2. My whole childhood is coming apart, the last stitches about to be ripped out with your death, and I will be leftridiculous, to write condolence letters to myself. 3. The deathwatch beetle earned its name not from its ugliness or our terror of insects but simply because of the sound it makes, ticking. 4. When your spirit perfects itself, will it escape out of a nostril, or through the spiral passage of an ear? Or is it even now battering against your thin skull, wild to get through, blood brother to this crimson bird? Linda Pastan, “The Deathwatch Beetle” from The Imperfect Paradise (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988). Copyright © 1988 by Linda Pastan. Reprinted with the permission of the Jean V. Naggar Agency, Inc. on behalf of the author. |
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54th Annual Poetry Day: Louise Glück
