Richard Wilbur's poem "The Writer"

The poem is unrhymed and composed of eleven three-line stanzas. The divisions in the poem, for our purposes, might be drawn after the third stanza, after the fifth stanza, and after the tenth stanza, leaving the final stanza to stand alone. The first three stanzas more or less lightly treat the fact of the daughter's writing activity. The pauses and silences of his daughter, the typewriter and the entire house in stanza four force the poet to recognize his condescension toward his daughter and her writing, a smugness of which he had not truly been aware before those pauses and silences. Stanzas six through ten record the poet's reflection on the metaphorical relationship between a bird previously trapped in his daughter's writing room and his daughter in there at the moment trying to write. The relationship is specified in the last stanza: "It is always a matter, my darling,/ Of life and death, as I had forgotten."

The poem is about the poet's remembering the importance of writing, both for his daughter and for himself, that it is as serious as life and death, on a spiritual if not physical level. The work begins far more lightly, however, as he playfully, perhaps proudly, imagines his daughter writing

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Some common words found in the essay are:
Richard Wilbur's, daughter writing, life death, daughter's writing, lucky passage, Richard Writer, final stanza, writing daughter, pauses silences, previously trapped,
Approximate Word count = 857
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page)

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