Analysis Of Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World By Richard Wilbur

In the poem Love Calls Us to the Things of This World Richard Wilbur defamiliarizes laundry by turning the clothes into angels. This idea of laundry being angels is first introduced by the lines “Outside the open window the morning air is all awash with angels. Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses, some are in smocks: but truly there they are.” Additionally, this idea is later backed up by the line “Now they are rising together in calm swells of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear with the deep joy of their impersonal breathing.” This line really sells the idea that these angels are in fact laundry by creating the image of the angels rising together like clothes on a clothing pin outside the window. Furthermore, This line states that the angels fill whatever they wear which is exactly what clothes do. I personally just found it unfamiliar how the movement of laundry in the wind is like the rising and falling of angels in the sky. I also found that these lines include a word that I rarely hear after the word laundry; this word is joy. Why would there be joy in laundry? Almost every person hates to do or look at laundry. Later, the poem continues to further
This is done by showing events through the eyes of the recently awoken soul. By making our eyes the spirit’s eyes, the poet is able to immerse the reader into the spirt world where the reader is not allowed to bring preexisting thoughts on things such as laundry. Furthermore, this poem begins with “The eyes open to the cry of pulleys” which makes the reader want to see what the eyes are seeing. Throughout the poem, the poet is continually playing with the reader’s sight in this spirit world with images such as “the sun acknowledges with a warm look.” These unfamiliar images created in this spirit world create an incubation chamber where complicated thoughts on qualities can be represented through things such as