Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Richard Wilbur’s “A Black November Turkey” is a vivid and layered depiction of a barnyard scene that merges the mundane with the ominous, presenting the turkey as a figure of both earthly reality and symbolic portent. With his characteristic precision and musicality, Wilbur creates a poem that is as much about death, ritual, and natural cycles as it is about the specific moment it captures. The poem’s rich imagery, nuanced tone, and meticulous structure invite readers to consider the interplay between the ordinary and the sublime, life and death.

The poem opens with the arrival of “nine white chickens,” whose mundane actions—“jabbing among the chips, the chaff, the stones / And the cornhusk-shreds”—are rendered with a painterly exactness. Wilbur’s description captures their physicality and movement, emphasizing their grounded, almost mechanical behavior. The phrase “haunchy walk” suggests their ungainly gait, while the details of their pecking reflect a world of ceaseless and repetitive survival. As they move, “bit by bit” into the light, their presence is transformed: “Spectral in shadow until they bobbingly one / By one ignite.” The interplay of shadow and light here suggests the transient beauty of their otherwise banal existence, a theme that sets the stage for the poem’s exploration of mortality and transformation.

In sharp contrast to the chickens’ pale, almost ghostly presence, the turkey-cock emerges as a dominant, enigmatic figure. Wilbur describes him as “neither pale nor bright,” situating him in a liminal space that resists simple categorization. The phrase “darkly auspicious as / The ace of spades” imbues the turkey with an almost mythic quality, invoking the imagery of cards and chance, where the ace of spades often symbolizes death or fate. This description elevates the turkey from a mere barnyard animal to a harbinger or emblem of mortality.

The poem’s tone grows darker as Wilbur focuses on the turkey’s movement and demeanor. He is “puffed with the pomp of death,” a figure rehearsing his own demise with an “over and over strangled rale.” This repetition, both in the turkey’s actions and in the poem’s description, mirrors the cyclical nature of life and death. The turkey, as Wilbur presents him, becomes a living memento mori, embodying the inevitability of death even as he continues to move and preen. The image of the turkey as “his own cortege” underscores the solitary nature of his fate, foreshadowing his role in the ritual of Thanksgiving, when turkeys are often slaughtered.

The physical description of the turkey intensifies this ominous symbolism. His “vast black body” floats “above the crossing knees,” an image that likens him to a cloud or a ship—both vast, impermanent, and at the mercy of larger forces. This simile reinforces the idea of the turkey as both a literal presence and a symbol of something larger: the vulnerability of all life in the face of time and fate. Wilbur’s language captures not only the turkey’s grandeur but also its fragility, as its feathers “shudder” and clash “in fine soft clashes,” a sound reminiscent of wind on “paper-ashes.” This subtle sonic detail evokes a sense of ephemerality, tying the turkey’s existence to the fleeting nature of life itself.

The description of the turkey’s head as a “pale-blue boney head” mounted on a “shepherd’s crook” adds another layer of complexity. The simile likening it to “a saint’s death-mask” suggests a spiritual dimension, as if the turkey embodies both the sacrificial victim and a timeless witness to the rituals of life and death. This duality is reinforced by the turkey’s “vague, superb / And timeless look,” which gazes out upon the mundane scene of the chickens and cocks. The juxtaposition of the turkey’s grandeur with the “clocking hens” and their repetitive, instinctual lives heightens the contrast between the banal and the sublime, the temporal and the eternal.

In the final stanza, Wilbur draws attention to the cyclicality of time and the rituals that mark it. The cocks, “one by one,” greet each dawn “with vulgar joy,” celebrating the sun’s rise with an almost mindless exuberance. Their repetitive actions stand in stark contrast to the turkey’s solemnity and introspection. The phrase “dawn after mortal dawn” subtly reminds the reader of the inevitability of death, even as life persists. The chickens and cocks may embody the continuity of life, but the turkey represents the inevitable rupture of that continuity through death and sacrifice.

Structurally, Wilbur’s use of quatrains with alternating rhyme (ABCB) gives the poem a formal elegance that mirrors its thematic exploration of ritual and order. The regularity of the structure contrasts with the unsettling imagery and themes, creating a tension between form and content that underscores the poem’s meditative quality. The musicality of Wilbur’s language, with its careful use of assonance, consonance, and internal rhyme, enhances the sensory richness of the poem and reinforces its hymn-like quality.

“A Black November Turkey” is a masterful exploration of the tension between life and death, the ordinary and the profound. Through his precise imagery, rhythmic elegance, and subtle symbolism, Wilbur elevates a seemingly mundane scene to a meditation on mortality, ritual, and the cycles of nature. The turkey, with its dark grandeur and ritualistic presence, becomes a powerful symbol of the inescapable reality of death, set against the backdrop of life’s persistence and renewal. In this way, the poem resonates far beyond its immediate subject, offering a timeless reflection on the human condition.

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