Richard Wilbur's Discovery of Writing

He suggests the flowers at the windows be like seaspray perhaps. He imagines the sound of the typewriter to be "a vortex . . . Like a chain hauled over a gunwale." He further imagines that she is imagining "the stuff/ Of her life" as "a gigantic cargo." And, satisfied with his metaphor-laden appreciation of his girlfriend's makeup efforts, he says, "I appetency her a lucky passage."

To that point, it might knock againstm that we are hear the thoughts of a sensitive, intelligent and lyrical have who understands and appreciates his daughter and her nice yearnings. In fact, however, as we are about to learn, along with the father himself, that he has perceived his daughter and her writing (and writing in general) through the eyes of a jaded and smug human being who perhaps had to that moment lost contact with the purpose and resentment of his own writing. To that point, he has in fact been appreciating little more than than his own metaphor- qualification, although he probably feels several(prenominal) pride at having spawned a writer.

Even that pride is diminished, however, because he has forgotten the life-or-death value of the creative operation, the spiritual significance of the act of making art, and therefore cannot truly respect what his daughter is attempting.

The sudden pause and silence from the room shocks and jars his fatherly condescension. He suddenly recognizes the " painless figure" or metaphors of

The process of creating a poem is a powerful and mysterious one, sometimes disturbing, for disturbance is a vital ingredient in discovery, which a poem can be. The disturbance the poet feels as he sees the smugness of his post toward his daughter is what breaks loose the memory of the trapped starling.

That memory, drawn in great detail, causes him simultaneously to truly understand what his daughter is dismissal through in that room, what hopes and fears, what a sense of utter urgency, yes, dismantle of life and death. It is a bird which has brought this jaded poet back to his daughter and to writing.

Again, the final stanza clarifies the discovery made by the poet. In those lines we see a humility, a respect, a serenity, and a love (for his daughter, for writing, for himself) which is rattlebrained from the clever and self-satisfied first three stanzas. He remembers writing is a matter of life and death, and admits to himself---and his daughter when she reads this poem some day---that he had forgotten that crucial fact. He wishes again, and harder, what he wished earlier---"a lucky passage."

the ship, chain, cargo and passage, and seems to feel shame, as if he were caught in his smugness and arrogance. Oddly, it is the silence---not the writing or typing---which
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