Love Calls Us to the Things of This World (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Richard Wilbur
- First Published: 1953
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Love or romance, Dreams, Nuns, Angels, Sleep, Soul, Laundry
“Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” is one of a precious few poems in the English language that operates as a perfectly delightful rendering of an experience that rides joyfully just outside the rational world. It can be seen as a companion piece to some of the poems of Wallace Stevens, the great modern American poet, such as “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” or “That November off Tehuantepec.”
The stanza is of five lines of alternating trochaic and iambic patterns, with the second and fourth lines tending toward rhyme. The poem opens with a reference to a “cry of...
[The entire page is 580 words long]

