Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Marie Howe’s "Watching Television" is a contemplative meditation on attachment, creation, and loss, framed through a series of images that shift from the instinctual to the cosmic, and finally to the deeply personal. The poem begins with a description of a mother spider dragging a "huge white egg" behind her—an image that is unsettling yet fascinating. The egg is "bigger than her own head," emphasizing its weight and significance, and it holds "hundreds of baby spiders feeding off the nest." This detail introduces an unsettling paradox: the egg, a symbol of creation and potential life, is also a site of consumption, the young already sustaining themselves from within their enclosure. The process of their birth and development is rapid—"and in what seemed like the next minute, spinning their own webs quickly and crazily, bumping into each other’s and breaking them, then mending and moving over, and soon they got it right." The chaos of new life gives way to an ordered structure, the webs forming their distinct patterns, each spider occupying "his or her own circle and running around it." The poem suggests an innate knowledge within these creatures, a destiny that unfolds with minimal resistance.

As the spiders settle, "each in the center of a glistening thing: a red dot in ether," the focus shifts dramatically. The poem moves from the intricacies of biological instinct to a larger, celestial image—"Last night the moon was as big as a house at the end of the street, a white frame house, and rising." The moon, like the spider’s egg, is luminous and full of possibility, casting light on unseen spaces. The speaker, contemplating the moon, envisions a room it is illuminating, "a room I might live in and can’t imagine yet." This introduces the theme of anticipation and longing, the idea of an unknown future space—perhaps a metaphor for a new phase in life, a place of belonging that has yet to materialize.

The transition from these cosmic and distant images to the personal is stark. The speaker’s gaze, which has been outward—on spiders, on the moon, on the ocean—now turns inward, to her own emotional turmoil. She acknowledges an argument with the man she loves, an unresolved tension: "We argued about one thing, but really it was another." This admission reflects the complexity of relationships, how surface conflicts often mask deeper, unspoken issues. The emotional weight of the disagreement is felt in the speaker’s physical stillness—"I keep finding myself standing by the front windows looking out at the street and the walk that leads to the front door of this building, white, unbroken by footprints." The untouched snow mirrors the silence between them, the absence of resolution. The image of the unbroken surface suggests both a fresh beginning and an impassable distance.

The final line—"Anything I’ve ever tried to keep by force I’ve lost."—is a quiet revelation, a painful acknowledgment of the futility of control. It connects back to the earlier images: the spiders instinctively building their webs, the moon rising independent of human will, the ocean’s surface undisturbed. The natural world does not resist its movements, yet human relationships are fraught with struggle, with attempts to hold on, to prevent change. This realization, placed at the poem’s end, leaves the reader with a sense of resignation and acceptance, a recognition that some things must be allowed to pass, that not everything can be held.

"Watching Television" is a poem about cycles—of life, love, and loss—told through an intricate layering of images. The shift from the natural world to the deeply personal mirrors the way the mind wanders when grappling with emotional pain, moving from the external to the internal, searching for meaning in distant objects. Howe’s ability to weave together the vast and the intimate, the instinctual and the emotional, gives the poem its quiet, aching power.

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