The Poems of Richard Wilbur :: Biography Biographies Essays

The Poems of Richard Wilbur Richard Wilbur's New and Collected Poems is full of poems that cover a huge multitude of subjects. The four poems this assignment covers represent that variety, with the topics including love, juggling, grace and music. Wilbur's poems take experiences and ideas (even a juggler) and through his mastery of the English language force the reader to take another look at what his preconceptions are. His poems allow for many different interpretations, and this paper will take a different angle to some of his works. "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World" sets up, in the first stanza, the feeling that something otherworldly is going to be in the picture. "The morning air is all awash with angels" brings in the image (or concept) of heaven, which Wilbur refers to again later in the poem. In the 2nd stanza, again the concept of not-of-this-world is brought into play with the mention of the halcyon, which is a mythical bird. One literary device that Wilbur seems to draw upon heavily in this poem is the use of oxymorons, contradictory terms together. The angels are rising together in "calm swells." When I think of swells, calm is not necessarily the word that comes to mind. He also states that the angels are "flying in place...moving/ And staying like white water." Flying implies movement, so "flying in place" is not a phrase that is commonly heard. Later in the poem he uses the term bitter love, and while I understand that this concept does in fact exist, it is still two words which are somewha t contradictory. In the last stanza he mentions the "heaviest nuns" trying hard to keep their "difficult balance." This reminded me of that concept of funambilism that we discussed in class. This work seems to utilize the idea of balance (indirectly) in many aspects. The use of the contradictory terms that I discussed earlier could be thought of as balancing each other out. This poem overall was very well put together, with sentences that caught your attention, and my favorite sentence was "The soul shrinks/ From all that it is about to remember." "Juggler" was probably the most elegant of the poems that were assigned. The other two discussed the concepts of love and grace, but "Juggler" made juggling a very beautiful act. I must state that the fact that I'm able to juggle probably had some influence on my understanding of this poem.