Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Anne Sexton’s "Bestiary U.S.A.: Bat" is a striking exploration of identity, transformation, and the eerie, almost grotesque connection between the self and the other. The poem takes the image of a bat, often associated with fear, darkness, and the supernatural, and uses it as a metaphor for the speaker’s sense of self, blending elements of human and animal, life and death, reality and dream.

The poem begins with a visceral comparison: "His awful skin stretched / out by some tradesman / is like my skin, here between my fingers." The speaker draws a direct parallel between the bat’s skin and her own, suggesting a shared fragility or vulnerability. The bat’s skin, stretched out by a "tradesman," evokes an image of something morbidly preserved or dissected, highlighting the bat as an object of fear or revulsion. Yet, the speaker immediately connects this image to her own body, implying a deep, perhaps unsettling identification with the bat.

Sexton then imagines her own body in the same terms, describing her skin as "a kind of webbing, a kind of frog." This comparison blurs the line between human and amphibian, suggesting a form of liminality—an existence between different states of being. The idea that "surely when first born my face was this tiny" further reinforces this theme of transformation, as if the speaker is recalling a time when she was closer to an animal state, more primal and less distinctly human.

The poem continues with the speaker imagining herself as a creature capable of flight, "a veil of skin / from my arms to my waist." This image evokes the image of a bat or a newborn creature, fragile and barely formed, with just enough of a membrane to allow flight. The speaker’s flights occur at night, emphasizing the bat’s nocturnal nature and the sense of secrecy or invisibility. Flying "not to be seen" hints at a fear of exposure or vulnerability—if she were seen, she would be "taken down," suggesting danger or punishment.

As the poem progresses, the imagery becomes more vivid and surreal. The speaker describes herself as a "pink corpse with wings," an image that blends life and death in a grotesque yet tender way. The idea of being "out, out, from her mother's belly" further suggests a birth-like emergence, but one that is abnormal or unnatural, as the speaker is "all furry / and hoarse skimming over the houses, the armies." The reference to "houses" and "armies" juxtaposes the domestic with the militaristic, indicating that the speaker’s flight is both a personal escape and a movement through a larger, more threatening world.

The final lines of the poem bring the speaker back to earth, where she is "something to be caught / somewhere in the cemetery hanging upside down / like a misshapen udder." This image is haunting and strange, combining the unsettling visual of a bat hanging in a cemetery with the idea of an "udder," a symbol of nourishment and life. The bat, often seen as a symbol of death or the supernatural, is here reimagined as both a creature of the night and a perverse source of sustenance, underscoring the poem’s themes of duality and transformation.

Sexton’s "Bat" is a meditation on the complex and often disturbing connections between the self and the natural world, between the living and the dead, and between the human and the animal. The bat becomes a powerful symbol for the speaker’s exploration of her own identity, one that is marked by a sense of otherness, vulnerability, and the eerie beauty of the unknown. Through vivid and unsettling imagery, Sexton invites the reader to confront the parts of themselves that are hidden, strange, and perhaps a little bit monstrous, reminding us that these aspects of our identity are as natural and integral as the more familiar parts.

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