Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Linda Pastan's poem "Extremities" navigates the liminal space between fear and grief, exploring the emotional toll of mortality and the pain of living with the awareness of inevitable endings. Pastan, known for her contemplative and introspective poetry, captures the tension between these two states—fear of death and grief for life—drawing a parallel between them that echoes the physical and psychological struggles we face throughout our lives.

The poem opens with the speaker reflecting on a fear that is both primal and profound: "Yesterday I feared the darkness / of the earth I must become, the heaviness of earth during that becoming." Here, the "darkness of the earth" symbolizes death, the final and inescapable fate that awaits all living beings. The "heaviness" of the earth suggests the weight of this inevitability, a burden that the speaker must carry as she contemplates her own mortality. The use of "becoming" emphasizes the transformative aspect of death, as the speaker anticipates the dissolution of her body into the earth, a return to the elements from which life is formed. This fear is rooted in the physical reality of death, the loss of self and the engulfing darkness that accompanies it.

In contrast to the fear of death, the speaker then shifts to a different kind of sorrow: "Today I grieve for the human curve of hills / and the unlearned endings of all the stories." The "human curve of hills" evokes the natural beauty of the earth, shaped and softened by time and by human connection to the land. This image, while comforting, is tinged with sadness, as it represents what will be lost—both the physical world and the stories that remain unfinished. The "unlearned endings" of stories suggest the unresolved narratives of life, the dreams and ambitions that will never come to fruition. This grief is not for the self, but for the world that will continue without the speaker, for the beauty and potential that will go unfulfilled.

The poem's central question, "Which is worse, that fear or this grieving?" underscores the dilemma faced by the speaker. The juxtaposition of fear and grief presents two sides of the same coin: the fear of death as a personal loss and the grief for the world's loss in the speaker's absence. Both emotions are deeply intertwined, and the speaker is caught between them, unable to find solace in either. This tension is further illustrated by the speaker's movement "between them as I moved between two hurts / when as a child / I dug my nails into the palm of my right hand, drawing blood, to fool the broken bone in the left." The physical act of self-inflicted pain to distract from a greater injury becomes a powerful metaphor for the speaker's current emotional state. The act of digging nails into the palm represents an attempt to control or mitigate the overwhelming fear and grief, but it is ultimately futile—one pain cannot truly erase the other.

"Extremities" is a meditation on the duality of human experience, the constant oscillation between fear and sorrow that defines our existence. Pastan's imagery and language evoke a profound sense of vulnerability, as the speaker grapples with the inevitability of death and the sadness of leaving life unfinished. The poem captures the existential dilemma of living with the knowledge of our own mortality, the difficulty of finding peace in a world where both the self and the stories we inhabit are transient. Through this exploration, Pastan invites readers to reflect on their own fears and griefs, and the ways in which we navigate the spaces between them, searching for meaning in the face of life's ultimate uncertainties.

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