17 pages • 34 minutes read
Richard WilburBoy at the Window
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost (1923)
The American poet Wilbur is most often compared with, Frost’s winter poem shows how close the two poets were in their respect for traditional prosody but how far apart they were in temperament. Wilbur rejected the dark and forbidding pessimism of Frost’s winter, here suggesting emptiness and death.
“A Fire-Truck” by Richard Wilbur (1947)
Although virtually any Wilbur poem from the 1940s and 1950s would reveal his love of the ordinary things of this world, here the poet revels in a noisy fire truck that passes by. Suddenly, gripped by surprise, the poet confesses all his broodings, his heartaches, all vanish. And he says happily to the disappearing truck, “I have you to thank.”
“Winter Landscape, with Rooks” by Sylvia Plath (1956)
Published two years after Wilbur’s “Boy at the Window,” this poem is by one of the era’s most respected confessional poets. Compared to Wilbur’s sweet and gentle tone, this winter poem savages hope and dwells on the bleakness of the season as an embodiment of some non-specified wounding of the poet’s heart.
Further Literary Resources
“Remembering Richard Wilbur” by A. E. Stallings (2017)
Written shortly after Wilbur’s death, the article takes stock of Wilbur’s importance as a composer of poetry in an era of American poets too happy with the carelessness of open verse. The article defends Wilbur’s place as a craftsman whose carefully wrought lines reflected a kind of “studied carelessness.”
“This World and More: The Poetry of Richard Wilbur” by Cleanth Brooks (1991)
Written by an iconic figure in American literary studies, this ambitious reading of Wilbur’s poetry focuses on Wilbur as a response to the dark and ironic vision of Robert Frost. The article focuses on Wilbur’s happy and constructive relationship with the world and suggests that his delight in the things of the world is not optimism but rather affirmation.
“‘The World’s Weight’: Artifice and Reality in Richard Wilbur’s Poetry” by Caitlin Doyle (2019)
Using Wilbur’s frequent use of windows in his poetry (including “Boy at the Window”), the article argues that Wilbur used the imaginary boundary of a window to test the dynamic between the imagination and the real-time world. The article suggests that Wilbur’s harrowing experiences in World War Two gifted him with his love of the world and yet cautioned him of its temporariness save in the imagination.
Listen to Poem
Not surprisingly, given its children’s book charm, “Boy at the Window” has been often interpreted, including one that offers photos of children set oddly to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and another read against the image of spring grass. Best in tune with Wilbur’s argument is M. K. Christiansen’s charming recitation, available on YouTube, set to pitch-perfect holiday-ish piano music. Christiansen, a children’s book author, reads the poem from her sofa with her tiny dog perched at her shoulder. She hits the right tone, genuine without patronizing, understanding without irony, like a parent reading to a child; she hits the word “weeps” with just the right compassion, and after the stanza break, her reading gets more strident to match the snowman’s harder wisdom. The video closes with a series of children’s sketches of winter.
