We were asked to read the poem "A Barred Owl" by Richard Wilbur. We have to discuss this poem in class. What are some points about this poem that...

One of the first things that a reader would look to analyze in any given poem is the structure of the poem.  Thankfully, "A Barred Owl" is straightforward in its structure.  Wilbur sticks with his form and doesn't change it.  

The poem is comprised of two six-line stanzas.  Each stanza is made up of rhyming couplets, which makes the rhyme scheme of each stanza AABBCC.  As I have gotten better with poetry over the...

One of the first things that a reader would look to analyze in any given poem is the structure of the poem.  Thankfully, "A Barred Owl" is straightforward in its structure.  Wilbur sticks with his form and doesn't change it.  

The poem is comprised of two six-line stanzas.  Each stanza is made up of rhyming couplets, which makes the rhyme scheme of each stanza AABBCC.  As I have gotten better with poetry over the years, I still favor the sounds of an AABBCC rhyme scheme, because it often gives a poem a "sing song" or "light feel."  The last structural element to analyze is the rhythm and meter.  Each stanza is written with an iambic foot.  That means the poem's syllable emphasis goes like this: unstressed/stressed, unstressed/stressed. There are five of those feet per line.  That makes the poem written in iambic pentameter.  It's a very common meter, which is probably why I like it so much.  It's familiar and closely resembles the rhythm and meter of normal spoken English.  

Thematically, the poem focuses on the duality of nature and language.  The speaker narrates to his child that the noise was a harmless owl.  But the second stanza focuses on the real threat that predatory birds are to living creatures.  Regarding language, the speaker thinks about how language is like that bird.  Language can calm and it can also terrorize.  

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,

Can also thus domesticate a fear...

That duality is the "shift" that your question asks about.  The first stanza of the poem sounds very light, airy, and friendly.  It's a wonderful sing-song stanza about the noise an owl makes.  But then a person reads the second stanza and is horrified that the speaker can use that same wonderful poetic form to narrate about such horrors as an owl carrying off freshly killed prey.  

Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw

Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.