Mis-Identifying Wildflowers

The Junior Project has been altered slightly, and so before being grilled with questions, we have to give a ten to fifteen minute presentation at the beginning of our basic concentration. Along with the annotated bibliography, we are asked to write about our focus. The following is the rough draft of mine, and I am posting it in hopes of finding holes in my thought through outside sources. So, please help me by commenting or observing or what have you, keeping in mind that this is supposed to be fairly basic, but if I miss a big part of the picture in what I’m writing, it would be nice to have someone point it out to me.
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Critics often use “a difficult balance” to quote Richard Wilbur when talking about his work. While it is true that Wilbur’s poetry is crafted and deliberate,this statement does not aptly dig into the depth of his aesthetic. Wilbur’s poem “A Voice from Under the Table” states, “I take this world for better or for worse,” and this line seems to me a deeper way of looking at Wilbur’s imaginative process and poetic disposition. It is a marriage vow to the world— his interaction with the world is a similar celebratory and creative act— thorough an imaginative love, there is an incarnate transcendence.

Before moving on, there is a contrast to Wilbur that I would like to briefly discuss before going further, the “public quarrel with the aesthetics of Edgar Allen Poe,” that Wilbur points out in his essay, “On My Own Work” as a general tension throughout his poetry. Wilbur understands Poe’s work as extremely allegoric and world renouncing in order to get to a higher realm of simple dream and imagination. For example, Wilbur points to Poe speaking of a “sea” in a poem, taking the sea and rejecting it by stating “a sea with no shore” for a “sea with no shore” is one that we cannot actually experience and only exists in the imagination. The end of poetry for Poe is not to express experience, but to reach a level higher than one that can be attained in this world.

For Wilbur, however, the imagination is not an end, but a means. His imaginative process is one that works in the world, focus’ on the “things’ selves” as “The Beautiful Changes” states, and that through metaphor and simile— which is the highest poetic act— discloses a new and imaginative understanding of objects, experience, and the world. For example, in the poem “An Event” there is an argument with the lyric and it’s capacity for truly conveying an experience.

As if a cast of grain leapt back to the hand,
A landscapeful of small black birds, intent
On the far south, convene at some command
At once in the middle of the air, at once are gone
With headlong and unanimous consent
From the pale trees and fields they settled on.

What is an individual thing? They roll
Like a drunken fingerprint across the sky!
Or so I give their image to my soul
Until, as if refusing to be caught
In any singular vision of my eye,
Or the nets and cages of my thought,

They tower up, shatter, and madden space
With their divergences, are each alone
Swallowed from sight, and leave me in this place
Shaping these images to make them stay:
Meanwhile, in some formation of their own,
They fly me still, and steal my thoughts away.

Delighted with myself and with the birds,
I set them down and give them leave to be.
It is by words and the defeat of words,
Down sudden vistas of the vain attempt,
That for a flying moment one may see
By what cross-purposes the world is dreamt.

There is a tension in this poem between the actual event and the lyric used to convey it. The first metaphor, “As if a cast of grain leapt back to the hand,” defines the rest of the poem, because when a cast of grain is thrown in the air and caught again, a few grains fall away. A lyric, like the hand, can only contain so much of the actual event in it’s form. The lines, “Shaping these images to make them stay,” and “Or so I give their image to my soul” displays the difficulty in the poetic process. The “cross-purposes” in which “the world is dreamt,” is the interaction with the world with the imagination and the act of “making” metaphor.

In understanding Wilbur’s idea of metaphor, the poem “Lying” delves deep into the implications of a lie as a type of metaphor. “Isn’t it odd that a thing is most itself when likened,” also stated in the poem displays this idea that a deeper understanding about a thing or object comes through by metaphor. Wilbur’s understanding of this is most evident through his writing on riddles. He is makes a case for the riddle as getting us out of habitual classification because we have an imaginative tendency toward making similar comparisons that fails to convey a deeper understanding. The riddle, for Wilbur, is a peculiar way of looking at something that presents an object in a completely new light, therefore disclosing a truth to what is already there.

The importance of metaphor and language is best conveyed in Wilbur’s use of the Garden of Eden. In “Lying” he references the garden as, “…where we first mislaid/Simplicity of wish and will, forgetting/Out of what cognate splendor all things came/To take their scattering names.” This desire to name is one that is innate in man and Wilbur’s use of words and the etymology of words points to an initial inclination in man. For Wilbur, language and nature renew themselves similarly—both have always been, but constantly renew themselves.

Wilbur’s poetry, at heart, is an act of creative love working in the world that discloses the truth about a thing, but Wilbur does not merely bring out truths, but praises what is uncovered. He is a poet of praise and in praising he celebrates the objects and experiences that convey higher truths. It is love that calls us to the things of this world. In negating Poe’s aesthetic, he imaginatively emerges himself in the world, looking at something and understanding it. For Wilbur, celebration and praise follows his loving understanding of the world through the imagination.

Why pay so much attention to Wilbur’s use of metaphor and imagination? These things do not seem like new ideas—Aristotle spoke of the importance of metaphor and Plato communicated through Allegory—so why bother seeing these things as distinctly Wilbur? With the rise of different literary movements, where the use and understanding of these things is thrown away for the sake of some kind of purity, Wilbur is distinct in his poetry. By his use of tradition and understanding of tradition, he is also enriching and enlivening truths that have been innately a part of man.