Analysis Of Juggler By Richard Wilbur

In his poem, “Juggler,” Richard Wilbur describes a juggling performance in which his speaker is attending. The speaker, like the rest of the audience, is captivated by the performer’s raw talent. In order to provide his readers their own seat at the performance and to convey an accurate description of the juggler, Wilbur relies on an array of poetic devices which, in turn, help reveal the speaker’s internal conflict. Wilbur uses imagery, personification, tone, and diction to disclose to readers the power the juggler has to maintain dominance, control, and balance in his life, all qualities the speaker aspires to obtain as he comes to realize how much he and the audience around him take the world for granted. Wilbur beings his poem with the …show more content…
Wilbur personifies the ball saying it “will bounce” which highlights the ups and downs experienced throughout the course of life (1). By saying “it takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls / To shake our gravity up,” Wilbur infers that the juggler puts himself in control of his life’s ups and down, choosing when to throw the ball up and letting it come down from there, but always making sure he maintains dominance as it “[grazes] his finger ends” (10). This imagery of the ball’s cycle, controlled by the juggler at all times, alludes to the argument that the speaker may need to look at life through the performer’s eyes in order for him to “resent [his] own resilience” (2). Wilbur continues this imagery into the third stanza, still highlighting the juggler’s control and dominance over his act, and life, as he creates “the spin of worlds, with a gesture sure and noble / He reels that heaven in” (16). The image of “heaven” stems from the speaker’s own personal …show more content…
The tone of this poem can be categorized as childlike, almost immature, as a way to highlight how the speaker looks up to and idolizes the juggler. The short, simple clauses and use of easily understood words show the power dynamic the speaker has established between himself and the juggler. The juggler, although on earth, is described as “sky-blue” emphasizing how his control, dominance, and balance in and over life has made him able to defy gravity with the objects he is juggling, reflecting how he handles obstacles in his own life. The tone also reveals how enraptured the audience is as “the boys stamp, and the girls / Shriek, and the drum booms” as the audience “batter[s] [their] hands,” underlining how the speaker desires the qualities the juggler possess (23, 24, 29). He wishes to master dominance, control, and balance himself in order to win “for once over the world’s weight,” inferring that the speaker’s personal life is falling and his heart has settled and forgot the brilliance that life has to offer when the “ball is