The Poems of Richard Wilbur :: Biography Biographies Essays

The Poems of Richard Wilbur   Richard Wilburs New and Collected Poems is honest of poems that cover a huge multitude of subjects. The four poems this assignment covers live that variety, with the topics including love, juggling, grace and music. Wilburs poems take experiences and ideas (even a juggler) and through his mastery of the English lyric force the reader to take a nonher look at what his pre theoryions are. His poems throw overboard for numerous diverse 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 premiere stanza, the feeling that something otherworldly is going to be in the picture. The morning wrinkle 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 liter ary device that Wilbur seems to draw upon heavily in this poem is the use of oxymorons, contradictory terms unitedly. The angels are rising together in calm swells. When I think of swells, calm is not of necessity the word that comes to mind. He also states that the angels are flying in place...moving/ And staying exchangeable 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 somewhat 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 melodic theme of as balancing each other out. This poem overall was real well put tog ether, with sentences that caught your attention, and my favorite sentence was The soul shrinks/ From all that it is more or less to remember.   Juggler was probably the most elegant of the poems that were assigned. The other two discussed the concepts of love and grace, besides Juggler made juggling a very beautiful act. I must(prenominal) state that the fact that Im able to juggle probably had some make on my understanding of this poem.