I mistyped the title of this thread. If a mod wanders by, the word is metaphysical, and I would appreciate its being corrected. http://newcriterion.com:81/archive/23/apr05/wilbur.htm

[This message has been edited by Tim Murphy (edited August 04, 2007).]

Fascinating essay, Tim. Thanks for posting it.

I am still reading it, but I think the author might have taken a wrong turn with his interpreation of "Hylas". This is not, I think, a mythical reference in Wilbur's poem, but an allusion to Berkley's character Hylas in his Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists. Hylas (from the Greek Hyle - or "matter") represents the materialist position in the dialogues, and Philonous ("lover of Mind") represents the metaphysical. So "Hylas' tree" is simply the objective tree, according to materialism.



[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited August 04, 2007).]

Mark is right -- I remember reading this when it came out & being acutely embarrassed on Epstein's behalf.

Isn't it a reference to Frost????

I remember reading this when it came out, too. It's a good essay and I'm glad to read it again. Thanks for posting it. It does seem incredible that in the '70s Wilbur was thought of "as a clever wordsmith more concerned with style than substance." It just goes to show how fashion can put the blinkers on.

I think Mark is right, although there are nods to Frost's Hyla Brook all through it.

Catherine has a point about Frost, though there is perhaps as much in another poem, "The Bonfire," that Wilbur could be seen to have been responding to: a fear far more boldly encountered than that to be found in "Hyla Brook"; a willful drive to "scare ourselves" so that what may or will come later (war, or death) will not be so frightful ("To philosophize is to learn how to die"); and (from the perspective of the neighbors who walk past the blackened tract) the unseen hand of the bonfire-maker. If it's on target, none of this obviates Mark's point about the "objective tree," which fits in so well with Wilbur's thought...

In Baer's Fourteen on Form, responding to a question about "On Having Mis-identified a Wild Flower," Wilbur mentions having read a book by Jonathan Bishop, "in which he talked about the pleasure of being wrong" (and here lies a fortuitous "line break" at the margin) "about some natural thing, and then finding out what the right answer is." Being wrong, in public, about a poem, it seems to me, is never brushed with pleasure...

Doug