[Alan Sullivan]

Here's another Wilbur poem I would like to commend for the consideration of passers-by. Choosing Wilbur poems is difficult...there are so many fine ones. This is lighter than most of the works in the New and Collected. Some might call it light verse and leave it at that. But there is too much perplexity in "The Catch" for me to let it off the hook so easily. It reminds me of the cartoons of James Thurber...light and playful, yet there is also something dark in it, something of the misunderstanding that vexes relations between the sexes.

I wish it were easier to post indented nonce stanzas...these run tetrameter / tetrameter / pentameter / trimeter, and they are supposed to be indented accordingly. Too much trouble to recreate on our site, when the hour is late and energy scant.

The Catch

From the dress-box's plashing tis-
Sue paper she pulls out her prize,
Dangling it to one side before my eyes
Like a weird sort of fish

That she has somehow hooked and gaffed
And on the dock-end holds in air---
Limp, corrugated, lank, a catch too rare
Not to be photographed.

I, in my chair, make shift to say
Some bright, discerning thing, and fail,
Proving once more the blindness of the male.
Annoyed, she stalks away

And then is back in half a minute,
Consulting now, not me at all
But the long mirror, mirror on the wall.
The dress, now that she's in it,

Has changed appreciably, and gains
By lacy shoes, a light perfume
Whose subtle field electrifies the room,
And two slim golden chains.

With a fierce frown and hard-pursed lips
She twists a little on her stem
To test the even swirling of the hem,
Smooths down the waist and hips,

Plucks at the shoulder-straps a bit,
Then turns around and looks behind,
Her face transfigured now by peace of mind.
There is no question---it

Is wholly charming, it is she,
As I belatedly remark
And may be hung now in the fragrant dark
Of her soft armory.

---Richard Wilbur


[This message has been edited by Alan Sullivan (edited 10-09-2000).]

[Richard Wakefield]

Alan, you've chosen one of my many beloved Wilbur poems. As you note, there's more to say about this poem than really can be said, but one thing I like is that the rhymes, because they seem so opportunistic (that is, they are on unlikely words, in one case even on a first syllable of a word), end up adding to the poem's theme of chances missed and captured, of things unnoticed and then discerned. You're right that like a Thurbur cartoon this is a domestic scene but also much more. The "mirror, mirror on the wall" is light, but it can't be helped from dragging in other assocations, as does the word "armory." Also like Thurbur's best, this poem seems to reveal itself to our first glance, but continues to open up with every reading.
Richard

[Josh Hill]

Alan,

Don't know that I have much to say about this, but I certainly enjoyed it. The Thurber comparison is an apt one and, as you said, there's something dark to it, but something also, I think, of the befuddled wonder and joy we feel from our end of the sexual bond.

I find it reminiscent of Wordsworth's "She Was a Phantom of Delight," or the first part of it, anyway.

Josh