Wilbur's The Writer

A Writers Response to “The Writer”

Richard Wilbur describes for us the unique joys he experiences as he watches and experiences his young daughter write. The writer is a poem near to my heart, because it describes some of what I feel as I daily strive to put to words the feelings that swirl around in my clouded brain; teeming with the life of a story that desires to be written. The daughter is described as much the same way. She is busy, typing furiously, full of a fervor that cannot be delayed in her desire to allow her work to come forward. She wishes only for the opportunity to let her feelings fly upon the page. Wilbur tells us this by hinting at the cargo she’s holding, and wishing her well.

Writing has been a human tradition for as long as paper has been available for two reasons: memory and venting. When something is written down, it stays around, is easy to reference, and can be called upon to prove a point when a plagiarism dispute is in order. But more important is the ability of the pen and page to take feelings, raw emotion, and transfer them into a form of art just as expressive as any canvas, melody, or dance. Writing, words, are the window into an author’s soul. Wilbur expresses this metaphor in his poem through the story of the bird trapped in the room. The bird desperately desires freedom, has a need it wants so to be fulfilled, but the window is closed. Wilbur opens this window for the bird, just as he opened it for his daughter, and in so doing he allows the bird a few more tries (not all of which are successful) until it finds the window and soars, its spirit caught high on the breeze of newfound freedom.

This parallel is easily drawn to Wilbur’s daughter, who he “wishes a lucky passage”. Teaching, inspiring, or even allowing someone to write where there is a real desire is as liberating as a pair of wings. Wilbur gives her the type writer, and away she goes, soaring on her own journey to find truth within herself.

I used to feel the same way; I thought I was writing to find truth, but I wasn’t, not really. I was writing to satisfy a desire for fame, to become published perhaps, and to tell a story that I really wanted to read and that I couldn’t find. Now my motivations are different, after reading and being exposed to truly great literature one begins to feel like there are real meanings, real stories left in the world. I want to write one, and I have a plan. That’s what this poem gives to me, a desire to write really, and to find it in myself.