Karl Shapiro is an American poet best known for his 1945 Pulitzer-Prize-winning collection V-Letter and Other Poems. Shapiro wrote the collection, his third, while stationed in the Pacific Theater during World War II (1939-1945). Much of Shapiro’s early poetry, including 1942’s “The Fly,” finds inspiration in the Modernist poetry of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound; like these earlier Modernists, Shapiro’s first collections play with language at various registers and depict unconventional subjects. Despite this playfulness, Shapiro’s early works have strict poetic forms.

Shapiro’s “The Fly” is among his better-known works from the 1942 collection Person, Place, and Thing. Flies, and insects more generally, are common subjects in the Western poetic tradition and often symbolize death or the fragility of human life. While these flies are often objects of sympathy and fellow feeling, Shapiro’s take on the insect presents an eternal struggle between humanity and pests that escalates to war. On its surface, Shapiro's poem appears unsympathetic, but its careful imagery and diction suggest otherwise.

Poet Biography

Karl Shapiro was born November 10, 1913, in Baltimore, Maryland. Shapiro’s family moved to Chicago, Illinois, early in his life, and Shapiro spent much of his childhood there. The family later returned to Baltimore, where Shapiro attended Baltimore City College. In 1932, Shapiro attended a single year at the University of Virginia. This experience later inspired Shapiro’s poem “University,” which criticizes the school’s curriculum for over-representing white Europeans. Shapiro would go on to study at the Peabody Institute and John Hopkins University.

In 1935, a family friend of the Shapiros’ published Karl’s first volume of poetry. Shapiro’s second collection, 1942’s Person, Place, and Thing, where “The Fly” appeared, received favorable reviews. Shapiro continued to write poetry while serving the Pacific Theater of World War II (1939-1945). Shapiro wrote his 1944 collection, V-Letter and Other Poems, while stationed in New Guinea. Shapiro sent the works to his wife, Evalyn Katz, who acted as his literary agent in New York. This 1944 collection won Shapiro the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and acted as a stepping-stone to his 1946 appointment as United States Poet Laureate. Between 1947 and 1985, Shapiro worked as a professor at various universities, despite never earning a degree himself.

Shapiro’s earlier poetry relies on strict poetic forms, while his later work prioritizes emotional truths over restrictive forms and repudiates many of his early influences, such as the Modernist poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Shapiro voted against Pound in the deliberations for the 1949 Bollingen Prize, citing Pound’s antisemitism. Shapiro’s experimental 1964 collection, The Bourgeois Poet, was well-received and set the tone for Shapiro’s later career. In the 1980s, Shapiro began work on a three-volume autobiography. The first volume, The Younger Son, was published in 1988 and tells the story of his early life from a third-person perspective. The second volume, Reports of My Death, was released in 1990 to mixed reviews.

Shapiro died in New York City on May 14, 2000. The third volume of his autobiography was never published. A posthumous collection, Coda: Last Poems, was published in 2008 and consists of poems found in Shapiro’s desk after his death.

Poem Text

Shapiro, Karl. “The Fly.” 1942 Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“The Fly” begins with the speaker describing the work’s titular insect as a “hideous little bat, the size of snot” (Line 1). The speaker progresses from the general shape and size of the creature to its “polyhedral eye” (Line 2) and its affinity for carcasses. The fly is also attracted to the “smoking mountains of [the speaker’s] food” (Line 6). In the last line of the first stanza, the speaker notes the fly’s ability to perform sexual acts while flying.

The speaker observes more of the fly’s interactions with the world in the second stanza. He notes how the fly’s sticky feet allow it to climb walls, and the fly’s tendency to “dot all whiteness with diminutive stool” (Line 13). The speaker then imagines the fly nesting its young in “the tight belly of the dead” (Line 14).

In the third stanza, the fly approaches a horse and is blown away by “the hurricane of his heavy tail” (Line 18). That motion is then mirrored by the speaker’s hand, which angrily swats at the fly. The speaker opens the fourth stanza stating that his “peace is [the fly’s] disaster” (Line 25); that is, the speaker will not have peace until the fly is dead. The speaker describes how children “cup their pretty hands” (Line 26) and attempt to catch the fly as a spider would. Wives also attempt to catch the fly, using “sticky paper and quicksands” (Line 28).

The speaker then takes the fly’s death upon himself. He, “a man, must swat [the fly] with my hate” (Line 33). The speaker describes various assaults and tortures exacted upon the fly, including exposing the creature’s “guts pasty and white” (Line 36). In the final stanza, the speaker walks over the dead flies strewn across the floor. He sweeps the bodies, but one, still alive, “gyrates like a top” (Line 45). The poem ends with the image of this half-dead fly being eaten by three live flies.