The Juggler Richard Wilbur Summary

Moreover, the speaker’s admiration for the juggler is present when the speaker states, “It takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls...” (Line 6) Astonished, the speaker

In the first stage of the poem, Morgan uses various poetic techniques to set the scene in the early evening by a Scottish loch. “The evening is perfect, my sisters. The loch lies silent, the air is still. The suns last rays linger over the water.” Morgan’s use of effective word choice creates a sense of peaceful tranquillity which is further developed with the alliteration

The poem maintains a specific structure that organizes six lines into each stanza and places major verbs in the beginning of each line, which allows the speaker to describe a different part of the juggler’s performance for each stanza and place emphasis on the actions of the juggler to underscore the amazement the speaker feels. The first stanza describes how gravity usually works, but introduces the juggler’s power to defy this gravity, while the second stanza describes how the juggler moves the balls around in order to show this superhuman power. The poem reaches its climax in the fourth stanza, ending the performance of the juggler, and the last stanza describes how even though the act is over, the juggler has left a sense of awe and inspiration into the speaker. This specific organization helps the speaker transition his feeling of the performance from the beginning to the end, successfully showing the juggler has left him in wonder. Furthermore, in the second stanza, Richard Wilbur places the verbs, “Learning,” “Grazing,” “Cling,” and “Swinging” in the beginning of each line, putting the emphasis on those words and pausing for a moment before going into the important verbs (9,10,11,12). This syntax helps the poet describe what makes the speaker so amazed by the juggler, the specific and graceful movement of the juggler as he throws the balls up and down the air.

In the poem, the speaker uses figurative language to reveal and portray that the objects that the juggler juggles have a sense or life of their own and how their actions make the show even more impressive on the juggler’s end. Whether it’s the ball's’ “own resilience” as it bounces less and less or “wheel on his wheeling hands”, the figurative language describes an inanimate object that is subject to the laws of nature and forces such as gravity which is shown by the line “falling is what it loves.” However, under the hands of the juggler, it’s as if the juggler has changed the ball’s natural tendencies to his own, becoming the ball’s own force that it has to follow. The juggler appears to be as an omnipotent

The fact that enjambment is used throughout the poem such as in the lines, “like a colour slide or press an ear against its hive” portrays a lack of structure and therefore emphasizes the initial enjoyment one feels when reading a poem before the chore of analyzing it begins. This is also emphasized through the fact that the poem is a free verse poem.

Throughout the poem the author uses imagery to describe the juggler’s appearance and the tricks he is accomplishing in his show. For example, Wilbur states, “it takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls...to shake our gravity up.” (lines 6-7). The author’s description of the juggler as someone who can “shake our gravity up” (line 7) shows that the juggler is someone who has a tremendous impact on the audience and the speaker because the audience is full of serious people and the juggler evokes happiness and astonishment from the audience. Moreover, by saying this the audience is able to get an insight into the life of the speaker; we are able to see that not a lot of things happen in the speaker's life that make the speaker happy. Additionally, Wilbur shows the reader the the juggler is performing, the author says, “ Oh, on his toe the table is turning, the broom’s Balancing up on his nose, and the plate whirls. On the tip of the broom!” (lines 9-21). We can see the juggler as he is performing his great trick and how the crowd is happy and amazed at what he is accomplishing through his performance when the author says, “ Damn, what a show,we cry…” ( line 21). Having the crowd cheer at the juggler as he completes his trick of the balancing act showed that people are made happy with small things like the juggling trick the juggler was performing for the crowd.

The poem Life cycle talks about Australian children growing up in a family obsessed with AFL. Being brought up in a family of football supporters encourages and Enforces the passion for football. That from the moment the child is born and throughout their life, until death these people love football because of their upbringing. It talks about how these families influence their children so much that football almost becomes a religion, where the football grounds are equivalent to a church. Through-out the poem life-cycle, Bruce Dawe emphasises and exaggerates that we are who we are based on what we’ve be taught, and our way of life, personality, personal interests and hobbies.

However, the poem has fluidity despite its apparent scarcity of rhyme. After examining the alteration of syllables in each line, a pattern is revealed in this poem concerning darkness. The first nine lines alternate between 8 and 6 syllables. These lines are concerned, as any narrative is, with exposition. These lines set up darkness as an internal conflict to come. The conflict intensifies in lines 10 and 11 as we are bombarded by an explosion of 8 syllables in each line. These lines present the conflict within one's own mind at its most desperate. After this climax, the syllables in the last nine lines resolve the conflict presented. In these lines, Dickinson presents us with an archetypal figure that is faced with a conflict: the “bravest” hero. These lines present the resolution in lines that alternate between 6 and 7 syllables. Just as the syllables decrease, the falling action presents us with a final insight. This insight discusses how darkness is an insurmountable entity that, like the hero, we must face to continue “straight” through “Life” (line 20).

The first stanza contains examples of figurative language and imagery which reveal the speaker’s respect for the juggler. Wilbur uses figurative language and compares a ball to the earth, saying “Falling is what it loves, and the earth falls/ so in our hearts from brilliance,/ Settles and is forgot.” (Line 3-5). The author also uses colorful, bright imagery to describe the juggler, saying “It takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls/ To shake our gravity up.” (Lines 6-7). The combination of this figurative language, along with the colorful, bright, and positive imagery used to describe the juggler, reveal the speaker’s admiration of the juggler. According to the speaker, the earth becomes forgotten and falls, like a ball, from our hearts and attention. The juggler is able to ‘shake our gravity up’ and reinvoke excitement in wonder in the audience’s hearts and minds through juggling. The bright, colorful imagery paints the juggler in a positive light, revealing the speaker’s respect and admiration for them.

Poetry has a role in society, not only to serve as part of the aesthetics or of the arts. It also gives us a view of what the society is in the context of when it was written and what the author is trying to express through words. The words as a tool in poetry may seem ordinary when used in ordinary circumstance. Yet, these words can hold more emotion and thought, however brief it was presented.

“It takes a sky blue juggler… to shake our gravity up. The color of the juggler—sky blue is an emphasis on that the five red balls he juggled will be going high in the sky, “swinging a small heaven about his ears.” The word ‘heaven’ is supposed to compare juggling—what the juggler has to do—with the bliss he feels when he performs. He “reels that Heaven in, landing it ball by ball,” the poem

Richard Wilbur in “The Writer” uses figurative language, imagery, and tone to develop his theme of aging and the journeys of life. In the poem, Wilbur explains that he is the father of a daughter who is growing up. He tells his daughter that she will face many challenges, but she will get through them. Wilbur uses similes, metaphors, and flashbacks to convey his theme to the reader. “Like a chain hauled over a gunwale” (6) is a simile for the sound that his daughter’s fingers make on the typewriter keys as she writes her story.

“I want to believe in faith and risk and a world where you can stand beneath the grey October sky and flash your own colours through the air like a magician” (218 -221, p. 6). These beautiful lines constitute the final conclusion of the short story, “The Juggler”, written by Ursula Hegi and published in 2001. The story deals with themes such as beauty, letting go and being stuck in the past.

Like the placement of ‘Light’, the position of ‘Persisted’ at the start of the 5th stanza also helps to emphasise the theme of struggling and endurance. The tenacity of the couple’s relationship is implied through the use of iambic tetrameter. The phrase: ‘Each summer thronged the grass. A Bright’ enhances this notion of seamlessness which is also created by the natural imagery. Finally, the ‘abbcac’ rhyme scheme, e.g. ‘… baroque … until … still … and … shock … hand’ is unusual

Wilber’s use of poetic elements convey how the speaker describes the juggler and what the description reveals about the speaker. Wilbur personifies the ball in many different ways by giving emotion to it. The speaker explains the ball as a “ light-hearted thing” and “ Falling is what is loves”. The ball can not actually feel these emotions but it gives us a closer connection to the ball because we can feel emotions. The poem also is personifying the ball by saying the word “resilience” showing that the ball is overcoming something difficult things in life.