A Little Poetry for You: Wilbur

Note: Poetry Friday Round-up is over at Big A little a

I can't find any record that I posted this for Poetry Friday before now. But I know this is a recent find, so I wonder if I found it from someone else's Poetry Friday post.

Anyhow, I like this one for several reasons -- it's a solid poem with good use of language and imagery; it's got a good story to tell that would appeal to younger poets; and it's got audio so you can listen to the poet read it and hear his commentary about it beforehand. I do truly think hearing the audio makes the poem so much more of a poem, so as always, I encourage you to click and listen.

The Writer
Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house
Where the light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

Go here for the audio commentary and reading from the poet, and for the text of the rest of the poem.