Poetry Analysis

"A Fire Truck" by Richard Wilbur

"A Fire Truck" is good poetry, intended for anyone who has experienced something that completely absorbs their attention. The author's purpose, to recreate those feelings with a speeding fire truck as the subject, is successfully achieved through transparent structure and effective use of rhetorical devices.

Transparent structure is evident in how the poem is clearly divided into four stanzas that progress in plainly chronological order: the first discusses the narrator's immediate perception of the truck, the second regards the connotations of the truck, the third involves the narrator's internal reflections on the truck in the moment, and the fourth describes the lasting impression of the experience after the truck has gone. The fact that the poem is simple and proceeds directly in short basic steps, in much the same way as the narrator's thoughts, creates an overall impression of the non-stop torrent of experience caused by the truck.

The first stanza is characterized by its descriptive language: "shocked street", "skittering to the curb", "redness, brass, ladders, and hats", "blurring to sheer verb". This use of imagery, alliteration, consonance and assonance creates a strong impression of the truck's physical presence, which is often what is first perceived when experiencing something new. Particularly the words "blurring to sheer verb" should be noted: the implication is that the truck's force of presence is so overwhelming that an observer can only describe it in terms of verbs, unable to use sophisticated parts of speech. The second stanza is one great personification, illustrating the truck as a symbol of simplicity and presence: "thought is degraded action", the message of the "headlong bell" (a personification), implies that the truck, could it express itself, would not bother with airy, abstracted analyses in the way most humans do at all times. In the third stanza the narrator's astonishment is clear. The periodic exclamatory sentence "beautiful, heavy, unweary, loud, obvious thing!" conveys the strength of the truck's impression in the narrator's mind; he must struggle to spout as much description as possible before finishing a thought. Suddenly, his mind is "purged of nuance", and the analogy "all I was brooding upon has taken wing", which compares tangled thoughts to baby birds with the nest symbolizing the narrator's mind, displays how the narrator has become like the truck in having lost the capacity to over-analyze. The third stanza perfectly concludes how the experience of the truck, as it "howl[s] beyond hearing" (a highly evocative alliteration), has made a valuable impression on the narrator: its "phoenix-red simplicity", that sensation of being purged by pure experience, is something to remember. The reader is left as calm, collected and empty as the narrator; the feeling is breathtaking. Clearly, "A Fire Truck" is an effective poem.