The Juggler Richard Wilbur Analysis

Have you ever seen a juggler? Jugglers can be found at carnivals and circuses and it is their job to entertain and impress people with their balancing skills. Many people enjoy watching going to these events and witnessing the phenomenal gift, including the juggler. In Richard Wilbur’s poem “Juggler” literary devices such as figurative language, vivid imagery and diction are used to depict the speaker’s amazement and admiration towards the juggler and the juggler and his remarkable expertise as someone who brings joy to people.

Certain things some people do can seem beyond human powers, even defying gravity. In “The Juggler,” the poet Richard Wilbur describes the awe and wonder felt by the speaker watching the juggler; the speaker is amazed by the gracefulness of the balls flying in the air and even portrays the juggler as reeling in heaven itself. Through the use of imagery portraying the juggler’s magical performance, specific structure and syntax of the poem, and diction that elicits the godly powers of the juggler, the speaker describes the juggler as a superhuman who defies gravity while expressing the speaker’s own inability to overcome the challenges in his daily life and thus his negative view of the world.

As evident by the title of this poem, imagery is a strong technique used in this poem as the author describes with great detail his journey through a sawmill town. This technique is used most in the following phrases: “...down a tilting road, into a distant valley.” And “The sawmill towns, bare hamlets built of boards with perhaps a store”. This has the effect of creating an image in the reader’s mind and making the poem even more real.

The poem “ Juggler” describes how the tricks the juggler acts out for the crowd amaze and intrigue them. In the poem “Juggler” by Richard Wilbur, the author uses imagery, figurative language and tone to describe the juggler as someone who brings happiness and fun to others.

In the 1949 poem The Juggler by Richard Wilbur, the speaker describes the juggler who brings a feeling of pleasure and enchantment to humans that have succumbed to the predictability of life. Through the use of poetic elements such as diction, tone, and figurative language, the speakers own feeling towards the subject is revealed. Essentially, he believes that his life has become rather boring and lost all of its fascination and someone as eccentric as a juggler is worthy of admiration due to how awe inspiring the jugglers performance is.

The poem “The juggler” describes how the tricks the juggler acts out for the crowd amaze and intrigue them. In the poem “The Juggler” by Richard Wilbur, the author uses imagery, figurative language and tone to describe the juggler as someone who brings happiness and fun to others.

In the poem, there are less periods and more commas where there is a lot of action. This helps to convey the hurried motion and feeling of not being able to make it in time. The diction in this poem helps to convey the urgency that the speaker feels. There are a lot of verbs that imply frantic movement, such as: rushed, jumped, lumbered, abandoned, lifting, turned, slipped.

The poem “Juggler” by Richard Wilbur uses poetic devices such as alliteration, imagery, descriptive language, and figurative language. Through these devices, the speaker’s great respect and admiration for the juggler described is revealed.

The poem “Juggler” describes how the tricks the juggler acts out for the crowd amaze and intrigue them. In the poem “Juggler” by Richard Wilbur, the author uses imagery, figurative language and tone to describe the juggler as someone who brings happiness and fun to others.

In the poem, “Juggler,” Richard Wilbur incorporates the use of poetic devices such as imagery and diction to allow the poem’s speaker to describe the actions of a juggler that enlightens the moods of the audience watching him, which the speaker is a part of. Through this analysis of the juggler it is revealed that the speaker lives a mundane life.

The poem “Juggler” by Richard Wilbur uses poetic elements such as imagery, figurative language, and connotative diction when describing the juggler, which reveals a great respect of jugglers from the speaker.

. . should burn and rave at the close of day”(2). This means that old men should fight when they are dying and their age should not prevent them from resisting death. Another example of personification in the poem is “Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay”(8). This line personifies the men’s frail deeds by saying that they could have danced. This means that the potential actions of the men could have flourished and contributed greatly to their lives. The metaphor “. . . words had forked no lightning. . .”(5) is about how the men had done nothing significant with their lives. They had not achieved anything great or caused a major change. The simile “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay” is about how even grave and serious men will fight against death for as long as they can. Another notable example of figurative language within the poem is “. . . blinding sight”(13). This oxymoron details how the men can see very well and it is very obvious to them that they will die soon, but they know that they can control how they will leave this world. There is an abundance of imagery within this poem, a few examples of which are “. . . danced in a green bay”(8), and “. . . caught and sang the sun in flight”(10) . These examples of imagery are both appealing to the sense of sight by using descriptive words such as “Green” and “danced” in the first example and words such as “caught” and “flight” among others. The second example also appeals to the sense of sound by

Poet Mary Oliver fits Palmer’s Mobius strip metaphor from the stand point that in her poem “Maybe”, Christ is performing a miracle by calming the waters (Oliver, 2013). This miracle serves to show

Both poems are written in iambic pentameter. In We Grow Accustomed to the Dark, the use of dashes produces a sense of stumbling through the dark. Furthermore, the use of dashes and random capitalization serve to further portray a life lived in perpetual fear. The poem is not smooth, but it is rather broken and choppy. This structure choice reflects the nature of self-discovery, showing that such a is not effortless. It is only at the end of the poem with the shift in the fourth stanza that a flow emerges, as the journey is continuing beyond the obstacles of darkness. The sole period at the close of the poem marks the end of this stage of life's journey. The sparing use of rhyme scheme limited to stanzas 4 and 5 lightens the mood and with the

“Storm Warnings,” true to its literal subject matter, possesses flowy sweeping syntax created by the strategic use of commas and phrasing to draw parallels between the physical oncoming winds and the gales of life. The author crafts a long run-on sentence that spans the first stanza and carries on into the latter portion of the second to mirror the continuous flowing of windy weather and the forward motion of life. Once the speaker notices the brewing storm, they “walk from window to closed window, watching boughs strain against the sky.” In this portion of the affromented run-on sentence, alliteration, rhythm, and the repetition of words all contribute to the impression of movement. The various “w” sounds at the beginnings of words and the repetition of the word “window” create a sensation of continuously flowing forward, especially when read aloud; the comma adds a small swirling pause to the rhythm, which is then soon after resumed with the word “watching.” Just as the poem rhythmically moves forward with its long phrases connected with frequent commas, so must life carry on with each additional experience, whether it be misfortunes or joys. The elongated syntax allows all these elements to work together within sentences to highlight the similarities between physical storms and emotional struggle and to stress the inevitability of predicaments in life.