“Eyes Fastened with Pins” by Charles Simic
While attending the University of North Carolina Greensboro, I took Advanced Poetry and one of the things I had to do was annotate some poetry. Here is one of those poems. Enjoy.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42952/eyes-fastened-with-pins
This poem appears to be a free verse poem with no particular order, structure or rhyme scheme. However, this poem does something extraordinary, and that is it personifies death. Not only does it personify death and his occupation, but the poem gives death a wife and children and a house and almost makes death human.
In the first line we read, “How much death works,” signifying to us that not only is death a person but death has a job. And in the next two lines, we get, “No one knows what a long/Day he puts in . . .” the reader not being able to comprehend a day in the life of death but also feeling sympathy for death a little, something most people do not feel for death. By personifying death, the speaker has brought death closer to the level of the everyday person but at the same time reminds the reader that there is no way for him/her to really compare themselves or place themselves in death’s shoes. Still, the speaker does try to bring the reader and death closer together.
Continuing from the third line into the fourth and fifth we see, “The little/Wife always alone/Ironing death’s laundry.” For starters, it is shocking that death would even have laundry but the reader can guess that even a cloak on a mythical being gets dirty. Then there is the fact that death has a wife and she is “always alone,” making the reader sympathize with the one married to death but also letting the reader know he has problems just like everybody else.
Then the poem goes on to say, “The beautiful daughters/Setting death’s supper table,” telling the reading that death has children and eats dinner with his family like any normal person or at least tries to but sometimes can’t because of his job. And further we read that death has neighbors, completely living their lives, without a care in the world but here is death, “Meanwhile, in a strange/ Part of town looking for/Someone with a bad cough,” reminding the reader that death’s job is not like anyone else’s job. And next we read, “But the address is wrong/ Even death can’t figure it out,” reiterating to the reader that death has off days too that make his job less than stellar sometimes. Then the poem goes on to describe how it’s raining, it’s windy and it will be a long night, making the reader feel for death that he has such a grueling job.
And the final lines of the poem really make the reader feel for death because he has no newspaper to cover his head, no dime to call home for “the one pinning away,” waiting for him in his bed. The reader can understand what it’s like to be out on the job while your loved one is at home waiting for you and there is nothing you can but continue to keep them waiting.
This poem has a very humanistic feel to it. When you first glance at the first line, you think it will just be a poem about death working and since human beings cannot fathom death, it would be a subject to far to comprehend. However the speaker connects death to the reader by using human terms and ideas that the reader can relate to. And there is nothing more human than a man working with a wife at home waiting. So this also makes the reader sympathize with death, which as I stated, is something human beings don’t do.
