21 pages • 42-minute read
A Wicker Basket
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form & Meter
“A Wicker Basket” is composed of 28 lines organized into seven quatrains, with the final stanza including a break between its third and final line. Despite the first couplet showcasing nearly regular anapestic meter (two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one), the body of the poem departs from regular metrical patterns in favor of unstructured, conversational rhythms. With a few variations, the stanzas of the poem follow an AABB pattern of end rhymes.
The rhyme structure of the poem stands out loudly from both the free verse practices it employs in other areas of the text and the poetic standards of the time. Hard end rhymes, while not unheard of, were not the standard for mid-century American poetry. Rhyming couplets especially stand out with their singsong, nursery-rhyme-evocative bounciness. The overt rhymes lend the poem an air of comical self-awareness, communicating a tone of carefree enjoyment and individuality. It is not hard to understand that “certainly / [people around the speaker] are laughing at [him]” (Lines 25-26) as he communicates his antics with such overt and childlike rhymes.
Even the introductory anapests of the first stanza seem poised to become a limerick: “comes the TIME when it’s LATer / and ONto your TABle” [emphasis added] (Lines 1-2). This air of comedy and irreverence serve to bolster the isolated, individual enjoyment of the speaker in his jovial, intoxicated state. While the poem abandons its playful anapests in favor of unregulated meter, it does continue to make use of meter to create emphasis and musicality in its various lines and phrases. For example, “PICKing up CHANGE, HANDS like a WALrus” [emphasis added] (Line 5) flips the anapests to dactyls (one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables) but pauses in the middle of the line with what is known as a caesura before resetting the rhythm. This awkward and unusual meter works together with the ungainly imagery to describe the intoxicated speaker’s clumsy experience of handling change.
The Second-person Perspective & Perspective Shifts
“A Wicker Basket” opens in the second-person perspective, addressed to a “you.” When the headwaiter “puts the bill” down in the first stanza it is “onto your table”—not “my” table—that it is placed (Lines 3, 2). The use of the second person is somewhat unusual in poetry, which traditionally communicates in terms of either the first-person lyric “I” or the third-person narrative “he/she/they.” If a poem does utilize the second-person voice, the strategy can generally be categorized in one of two ways. First, poems may be addressed to some absent “you,” commonly a beloved. Second, the “you” in a poem can refer to what is sometimes called the lyric “you,” or a stand-in for the “I” of the speaker that seeks to include a general reader in his or her inner experiences. In this way, the “you” in a poem does not refer to some outside character or an explicit, direct address to the reader, but instead refers to the “I” of the poem and utilizes artistic license to make the reader feel more included in his or her experiences.
The second person in “A Wicker Basket” fits most neatly into this second category of the lyric “you.” Notably, the “you” appears only twice in the poem: first in its initial stanza, and next when the poet breaks down perspectival distinctions by saying: “So that’s you, man, / or me” (Lines 9-10). After the word “me” is introduced, every subsequent pronoun referring to the poem’s central character is exclusively in the first person.
By opening the poem in the second person, Creeley invites his readers to walk in his shoes, sit at his “table” (Line 2), and experience his intoxicated fumbling for “change” with his “hands like a walrus” (Line 5). The poem goes on to describe the uniquely personal, inner sanctuary of the speaker: his “wicker basket” (Line 28) of “making it” (Line 27). By the time Creeley alerts the reader to the identity of the speaker (which, it should be said, he allows to remain somewhat indeterminate: “you […] / or me” [Lines 9-10]), the reader has already identified themself with the poem’s central character. Creeley is able to capitalize on this slyly forced empathy and keep the reader close to his inner personal experiences for the remaining stanzas of the text.
Simile
“A Wicker Basket” proceeds primarily through narrative. Despite the overt end rhyme, the poem moves conversationally and clearly through its narrative sequences. The events and reflections of the poem are straightforward and eschew opaque or difficult imagery or metaphor. Despite this, the poem makes liberal use of simile. Unlike metaphor proper, which claims one unrelated thing is another, a simile softens this comparison by only claiming one thing is like another.
The second stanza’s description of (implicitly) stoned awkwardness leans heavily on simile and introduces the poetic device to the text. The speaker has “hands like a walrus” (Line 5) and “a face like a barndoor’s” (Line 6), both exemplary similes. Each communicates uncomfortable ungainliness, mirrored by the strangeness of the comparisons themselves.
After an intermediary stanza, Creeley once again employs simile in his memorable “street like a night / any night” (Lines 13-14). This example is notable for its seeming comparison of a thing to part of itself. After all, the street is certainly a street at night (there are “very huge stars, man, in the sky” and the whole scene takes place in the “time when it’s later” after a meal [Lines 21, 1]). Additionally, at this stage of the poem the street is the scene of the speaker’s “night” (Line 13). It is unusual, then, for a street at night—comprising the speaker’s night—to be compared to “a night, / any night” (Lines 13-14). The strangeness of this simile is of an opposite kind to the strangeness of the poem’s previous similes, which were surprising for their unusual comparisons (hands to a walrus, for instance). Here, the two parts of the simile are remarkably similar, with one containing the other. The addition of the “any night” (Line 14) emphasizes the muddied generality of this simile, expanding its indeterminate possibilities in a way that emphasizes the speaker’s feeling of infinite possibilities.
Unlock all 21 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs