An Analysis of Wilbur's Flies Richard Wilbur's recent poem "Mayflies" reminds us that the American romantic tradition that Robert Frost brought into the 20th century has arrived safely in the XXI. Like many of Frost's short lyric poems, "Mayflies" describes a person's encounter with an ordinary but easily overlooked piece of nature: in this case, a cloud of mayflies spotted in a "dark forest" (l.1) that it rises above "invisible pools". '(l.2),' made surprisingly attractive and significant by the speaker's special in-depth examination. The main attraction of Wilbur's ephemerals would seem to be the meaning he finds in them. This seems to be a relentlessly positive poem, even as it glimpses the dark themes of human isolation and mortality, perhaps especially as it glimpses these subjects. In this way the poem can address the most persistent criticism of Wilbur's work, that it is too optimistic, too certain. Poet-critic Randall Jarrell, though an early admirer of Wilbur, once wrote that he "obsessively sees, and shows, the bright side of every dark thing," something Frost was never accused of (Jarrell 332). Yet when we examine the poem closely, and particularly the series of comparisons by which Wilbur elevates his ephemerals to the realm of beauty and truth, the poem admits of something less ?luminous? or happy with what he finally calls his "joyful". . . task of perception and poetic representation (l.23). In this poem about seeing from the shadows, the speaker's revelations are invariably ironic. What could be a more unpromising object of poetic eloquence than mayflies, those long-legged, fragile, short-lived insects often found floating in the hulls of rowboats? Yet for Wilbur... middle of paper... vocal statement about ?staffing? possibilities of poetry than optimistic readers might have expected. ?Ephemeral? forces us to complicate Randall Jarrell's precise formulation. Here Wilbur not only saw and showed ?the bright side of? a "dark thing". In a poem where the speaker stands in the darkness watching what ?anima[s] an irregular patch of splendor? (l.4), we finally find ourselves in a sort of greyness. We look from the darkness to the light and have the lovely faith that we belong there, in the immortal dance, but we are not there now. We are in the mechanical workshop of poetry. His own decision will not let us out completely. Works Cited Jarrell, Randall. ?Fifty Years of American Poetry.? The third book of criticism. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969. Wilbur, Richard. ?Ephemeral.? Ephemeral: new poems and translations. NY: Harcourt Brace, 2000.