Still, Citizen Sparrow (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Richard Wilbur
- First Published: 1950
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Nature, Death or dying, Flight, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Birds, Floods
The Poem
Like many other poems in English, some of them quite famous, Richard Wilbur’s “Still, Citizen Sparrow” takes as its subject, at least partially, a bird—in this case, a vulture. It does so, however, by addressing itself to another bird, a sparrow.
The use of the opening word, “Still,” suggests that the reader is entering the poem at a point where the speaker has already been talking to the sparrow, in a way presumably sympathetic to that bird’s belief that the vulture is an “unnatural” creature. This negative characterization is undoubtedly...
[The entire page is 1595 words long]
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