Tag Archives: variation

Simple Instruments by Fred Wilbur

Drawing of shapes within a circle
 

I have always thought that John Donne’s metaphor of the drawing compass in “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” one of the most ingenious in English poetry. Not simply about two lovers parting, it describes a coming together through love. Another metaphor I greatly admire (along with everyone else) is the choice depicted in “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. These two ideas in juxtaposition seem to conjure the structure of ‘theme and variation’ so elemental to art: the certainty of the circle with the uncertainty of lines pointing in different directions. Not exactly opposites, perhaps, but … Continue reading Simple Instruments by Fred Wilbur