by Kerry Michael Wood

Created on: October 15, 2007

A Study of Imagery in "A Late Aubade" by Richard Wilbur

Imagery is the representation through language of sense experience. Poetry appeals directly to our senses through its music and rhythms and indirectly through representation to the imagination of sense experience. Usually imagery suggests a mental picture and indeed visual imagery is the most common kind. But imagery can also be auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile and kinesthetic. Since imagery is such an effective way of evoking experience, it may also convey emotion and suggest ideas. Let us see how imagery operates in Richard Wilbur's poem.

A Late Aubade

You could be sitting now in a carrel*
Turning some liver-spotted page,
Or rising in an elevator-cage
Toward Ladies Apparel.

You could be planting a raucous bed
Of salvia, in rubber gloves,
Or lunching through a screed of someone's loves
With pitying head,

Or making some unhappy setter
Heel, or listening to a bleak
Lecture on Schoenberg's serial technique.
Isn't this better?

Think of all the time you are not
Wasting, and would not care to waste,
Such things, thank God, not being to your taste.
Think what a lot

Of time, by woman's reckoning,
You've saved, and so may spend on this,
You who had rather lie in bed and kiss
Than anything.

It's almost noon, you say? If so,
Time flies, and I need not rehearse
The rosebuds theme of centuries of verse.
If you must go,

Wait for a while, then slip downstairs
And bring us up some chilled white wine,
And some blue cheese, and crackers, and some fine
Ruddy-skinned pears.

Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)

* A carrel is a semi-private reading area in a library.

If the final noun in the title is confusing, aubade comes from a word meaning dawn and denotes a sunrise love song. There is some whimsy in the poet's selection of the word and its modifier. Poets no longer write aubades so this one is late historically. Also, we know that "It's almost noon" so usual aubade time is long in the past. The woman addressed by the speaker has apparently made some gesture about getting out of bed. The speaker begs her to stay in his embrace and then, if she must go, to slip down to the fridge for some tasty snacks.

The poem celebrates sensual indulgence. The woman would

. . . rather lie in bed and kiss
Than anything,

The man is equally delighted by sensual converse, especially when topped off by a gourmet meal. Tactile images abound in words and phrases such as "lie in bed and kiss," "chilled wine," and the senses of taste and sight overlap in blue cheese, crackers, and fine

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