"Mind" by Richard Wilbur

            “Mind” by Richard Wilbur is a poem by Richard Wilbur. It contains an extended simile between the mind and a bat in a cave. This is the type of simile in which both the literal and figurative terms are named. This is a cleverly employed simile first of all because the figurative side of the simile is so rare. When bats “weave and flitter, dip and soar in perfect courses through the blackest air” (7-8), Wilbur suggests the ability of the mind to know the valid courses of reasoning and to follow paths of logic in the shapeless and tactless void that is consciousness. The diction and especially the word “soar” affects the feeling that the mind moves freely and is not necessarily governed by reason. At the same time, the mind cannot wander anywhere it pleases because it is hemmed in by “[walls] of stone.” These walls of stone could be considered the logical boundaries, points from which no further reasoning can be made, the limits of sanity, or the scope of thinking possible with a particular mind’s IQ. Curiously, Wilbur comments in his poem about the nature of the similar contained therein. After concluding that his selection is “precisely” (10) accurate, he concedes that the cave is not immutable. Cannot a mind expand its horizons? Wilbur not surprisingly includes the idea of mental expansion, but, astoundingly, he attributes it to a “graceful error” (12) in the “happiest intellection” (11).  Since intellection is the process of understanding when separated from imagination, he believes that growth of the mind comes when the brain happily understands something by making an error in reasoning. Although I do not conclusively rebut his claim, I also think that mental growth comes just as well through the imagination. Wilbur personifies the mind throughout this poem. One may argue that a mind refers to a person by synecdoche and thus invalidates personification, but nonetheless, the effect of viewing the mind as an autonomous personality gives a powerful impression.