lightness and cleanliness of the first part, tends
to stress the actual. The already mentioned
‘‘punctual rape,’’ the ‘‘hunks and colors,’’ ‘‘the
waking body,’’ the ‘‘bitter love’’ with which the
soul descends, the ‘‘ruddy gallows’’ are exam-
ples of word choices which emphasize the actual
world. In the poem’s final stanza, however, the
diction underscores the paradoxical nature of
‘‘this world.’’ As the man ‘‘yawns and rises,’’ the
angels are to be brought down from ‘‘their
ruddy gallows.’’ In other words, the angels
tinged by the sun are ‘‘hung’’ in the sense of
being executed; the clothes line is now a gallows
and they have died as angels, have become
clothes, and have entered the world of contra-
diction and paradox, where clean linen covers
the ‘‘backs of thieves’’ and lovers put on their
finery only to remove it in consummation of
their love. In contrast to the traditional symbol-
ism of light and dark, which has been implicit in
the first part of the poem, it is the nuns who
have the ‘‘dark habits’’ while the thieves wear
white linen. In one sense, the ‘‘dark habits’’ are
the clothes worn by the nuns, while in another
sense, the phrase indicates that nuns too partic-
ipate in the world’s conflict of good and evil. In
a final paradox, the nuns, though heavy, still
float and retain a balance between things of this
world, the work they do in the here and now,
and the spiritual world to which they have given
allegiance.Theyparticularlyneedtokeepa
difficult balance between the things of this
world and those of the world of the Spirit.
The carefully expressed paradoxes of the last
stanza of the poem are the key to the poem’s
theme. Wilbur presents an affecting version of
the ideal world through his images of angelic
laundry, but this world is evanescent, seen only
for a moment under the light of false dawn.
Though man desires and needs the world of
spirit, he must yet descend to the body and
accept it in ‘‘bitter love’’ (another apt paradox-
ical phrase) because this is the world in which
man has to live. In contrast to St. John’s plea, to
avoid the world and the things of it, Wilbur
would have us accept them, though we should
also retain the capacity to perceive the world of
the spirit in the everyday.
Source:Frank Littler, ‘‘Wilbur’s ‘Love Calls Us to Things
of This World,’’’ inExplicator, Vol. 40, No. 3, Spring
1982, pp. 53–55.
Sources
‘‘1 John 2:15,’’ inThe Holy Bible: King James Version,
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia, http://
etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Kjv1Joh.
sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/
modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=2&division=div1
(accessed August 31, 2007).
Hill, Donald L.,Richard Wilbur, Twayne’s United States
Author Series, No. 117, Twayne Publishers, 1967, p. 122–23.
Michelson, Bruce,Wilbur’s Poetry: Music in a Scattering
Time, University of Michigan Press, 1991, p. 51.
Perloff, Marjorie,Poetry On & Off the Page, Northwest-
ern University Press, 1998, p. 85.
Rasula, Jed,American Poetry Wax Museum: Reality
Effects, 1940–1990, National Council of Teachers of
English, 1996, p. 509.
Wilbur, Richard, ‘‘Love Calls Us to the Things of This
World,’’ inNew and Collected Poems, Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1988, pp. 233–34.Further Reading
Brahm, Jeanne, ‘‘A Difficult Balance,’’ inThe Light
within the Light, Godine, 2007, pp. 21–40.
This chapter of Brahm’s short study of major
American poets combines a personal look at
Wilbur’s life with an overview of the critical
responses to his work over the years, making
it a good starting place for students who are
familiarizing themselves with the poet and his
work.
Cummins, Paul F.,Richard Wilbur: A Critical Essay,
William B. Eerdmans, 1971.
Written from a Christian perspective, this
short, forty-four-page pamphlet uses the ‘‘dif-
ficult balance’’ mentioned in the last line of this
poem as a touchstone for examining all of Wil-
bur’s poetry.
Epstein, Daniel Mark, ‘‘The Metaphysics of Richard
Wilbur,’’ in theNew Criterion, April 2005, pp. 4–11.
Epstein’s essay, written on the occasion of the
publication of Wilbur’sCollected Poems, 1943–
2004 , traces the poet’s world view over the
course of his long career.
Kirsch, Adam, ‘‘Get Happy,’’ in theNew Yorker, Novem-
ber 22, 2004, pp. 94–97.
Kirsch’s overview of Wilbur’s career is
resplendent with references to other poets,
from Randall Jarrell to Sylvia Plath to James
Merrill, giving the reader a context in which to
place Wilbur’s poetic range.Love Calls Us to the Things of This World