Avian diptych: Richard Wilbur’s flights of imagination

In two relatively neglected poems from the collection Things of This World, “All These Birds” and “An Event,” Richard Wilbur models an epistemologically perceptive and dynamic hermeneutic. “All These Birds” hesitantly acknowledges the legitimate insights of a materialist naturalism but also registers concern about the potential for naturalistic explanation to deny the imagination any role in human understanding of the world. “An Event” balances “All These Birds” by indulging the play of human imagination as an asset to perception of the world while also acknowledging the temptation for imagination to domesticate nature.