The Writer by Richard Wilbur Essay

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The Writer by Richard Wilbur

On order to effectively analyze “The Writer,” one might look to the Advanced Placement format, for instance, to best understand the meaning of Wilbur’s poem.
Some questions we might ask as a basis for analysis are as follows:

1. Who is the speaker in the poem?

In “The Writer,” the speaker is likely Wilbur speaking about his daughter.

2. Who is the audience of the poem?

The poem seems to be directed toward parents who might relate to Wilbur as they watch their children grow up. Likewise, the poem might also be directed at young people, who will inevitably undergo a journey similar to that of Wilbur’s daughter in the poem – fraught with many ups and downs, and hopefully the triumph that the …show more content…
In "The Gift," Lee discusses two incidents involving the removal of a splinter (astilla) from another's hand. When he describes removing a splinter from his wife's finger, he alludes to a skilled tenderness on his part: "Look how I shave her thumbnail down / so carefully she feels no pain".

When his father had removed a splinter from a younger Lee's palm, Lee responded with humble appreciation—he gave his father a kiss. Lee digresses—offering some more boastful, even humorous possible responses to having apprehended the removed splinter ("Ore Going Deep for My Heart," "Death visited here!"), and reminding the reader that it is, in fact, he who grew into the adult who removed his wife's splinter. He, by modestly giving his father a kiss, suggests that a gift has merit solely on account of its being a gift—even if that gift is a removed splinter. What ultimately matters is not that Lee had been feeling pain, but that, at the moment he kissed his father, he presently beheld a gift from him.

Lee does not act particularly humble when removing his wife's splinter, however, even though his father was a physician—because, regardless of what this occasion had meant for him in the past, he was presently with his wife, able to give her the gift of relief. Lee has grown and matured; he is able to proudly identify with his giving father, rather than prolong his past identity as a receiving, humble
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