An Analysis of Wilburs Mayflies Essays -- Wilbur Mayflies Essays Poet

An Analysis of Wilburs Mayflies Richard Wilburs fresh verse form Mayflies reminds us that the American Romantic tradition that Robert Frost nearly famously brought into the 20th century has made it safely into the 21st. Like many an(prenominal) of Frosts short lyric meters, Mayflies describes one persons encounter with an ordinary alone slow overlooked piece of naturein this case, a cloud of mayflies spotted in a sombre forest(l.1) rising over unseen pools(l.2),made surprisingly attractive and meaningful by the speakers particular(prenominal) scrutiny of it. The ultimate attraction of Wilburs mayflies would appear to be the meaning he finds in them. This seems to be an unremittingly positive poetry, even as it glimpses the dark subjects of humans isolation and mortality, perhaps especially as it glimpses these subjects. In this way the poem may recall that most persistent criticism of Wilburs work, that it is likewise upbeat, too safe. The poet-critic Randall Jarrell, t hough an early admirer of Wilbur, once wrote that he obsessively sees, and shows, the bright bottom of the inning of every dark thing?something Frost was never accused of (Jarrell 332). Yet, when we examine the poem closely, and in particular the series of comparisons by which Wilbur elevates his mayflies into the realm of beauty and truth, the poem concedes something less ?bright? or felicitous about what it finally calls its joyful . . . task of poetical perception and representation (l.23). In this poem about seeing from the shadows, the speaker?s revelations are invariably ironic. What could be a more unfortunate object of poetic eloquence than mayflies, those leggy, flimsy, short-lived bugs that one often finds drift in the hulls of rowboats? Yet for Wilbur... ...vocal statement about the ?organic? possibilities of poetry than optimistic readers might have expected. ?Mayflies? forces us to complicate Randall Jarrell?s neat formulation. hither Wilbur has not just seen an d shown ?the bright underside of? a ?dark thing.? In a poem where the speaker stands in darkness looking at what ?animates a ragged patch of glow? (l.4), we are left finally in a kind of grayness. We look from darkness into light and agree an enchanting faith that we belong over there, in the immortal dance, but we aren?t there now. We are in the machine-shop of poetry. Its own fiat go away not let us out completely. Works Cited Jarrell, Randall. ?Fifty old age of American Poetry.? The Third Book of Criticism. NY Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969. Wilbur, Richard. ?Mayflies.? Mayflies New Poems and Translations. NY Harcourt Brace, 2000.