16 pages • 32 minutes read
Wild Bees
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“Wild Bees” is written mostly in free verse, a poetic form unbound by meter. Each stanza of Baxter’s poem is six lines. The last word in the second line rhymes with the last word in the last line. The exception is the first stanza; here it is the last word in the third and final lines that rhyme. The poem uses repeated sounds to create a sense of rhythm. The lines range from ten syllables to fourteen syllables, and there is no discernible meter.
The free verse form gives the poem a conversational fluidity, and yet there are instances of antiquated language. The use of “O” (Line 19), “desperadoes” (Line 9), and “plunder” (Line 23) are words that are not in common use today. The blend of old and new language and of traditional and contemporary form give the poem a sense of ambiguity; the reader has the impression that it could have been written at any point in the twentieth century.
Metaphor and Simile
The poem features comparative language. The speaker refers to themselves as “a safe Ophelia” (Line 2), alluding to their displacement from the outside world. They see the bees “swift as tigers” (Line 4). This is a simile, where one thing—the bees in this case, is compared to something else—the tigers—with the words “like” or “as.”
As the poem moves into winter, the speaker and his friends are described as “gloved and masked to the eyes like plundering desperadoes” (Line 9). This is another simile; the friends are being compared—with the word like—to “plundering desperadoes.” This image evokes both foreboding and excitement; the friends see themselves as heroes in a story, and the honey has taken on mythic proportions as a treasure to be excavated. It represents a turning point in the poem away from the peaceful summer day, but has not yet taken on the gravity of the later stanzas.
In the third stanza, the bees are described as “sentries” (Line 13) and “suicidal / Live raiders” (Lines 17-18) protecting their honeycomb city. The poem begins to take on a more serious tone, which continues into the images of Carthage and Troy, the fallen cities of classical myth. In the fourth stanza, the speaker realizes they have left the game behind and moved into something much more potent.
Assonance and Consonance
Despite the mostly informal rhyme scheme, the poet uses several repeating sounds to create rhythm and unity. In the first stanza, Baxter creates a partial rhyme with “standing” and “drifting,” and uses assonance in words like “Ophelia,” (Line 2) “go” (Line 3), “boat” (Line 3), and “low” (Line 6). These O sounds match the feeling of the soft, slow summer day. Later in the poem, a range of D sounds come in succession: “gloved and masked to the eyes like plundering desperadoes” (Line 9). The reader also hears the repeated Rs in “plundering desperadoes” (Line 9), “ripe” (Line 8), “river” (Line 10), “chitter” (Line 11), and “drain” (Line 12).
The third stanza favors repeated S sounds through words like “sentries saw us” (Line 13), “sprang” (Line 14), “Stabbed” (Line 15), “stinging” (Line 15), “sulphur” (Line 16), “sputtered” (Line 17), and “suicidal” (Line 17). The reader can also see repeated Hs in “hive” (Line 13), “hollow” (Line 16), “hands” (Line 18), and “hair” (Line 18). The last two stanzas repeat variations of the word “fall” (Line 30). The first, “Fallen” (Line 25) is preceded by alliteration, “flames and falling” (Line 20), and then echoes in “Fallen then the city” (Line 25) and “the fallen heart that does not cease to fall” (Line 30). The L sound from these words also appears in “small” (Line 26), “cool” (Line 27), “loss” (Line 28) and “Distilled” (Line 29).
These repeated sounds, often in succession, give the poem a musical quality. There is an underlying feeling of a nursery rhyme given new depth and context, which supports the theme of growth and learning from past mistakes.
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