Poems Of Richard Wilbur: Four Volumes of Poetic Excellence

by Richard Wilbur

This collection includes Advice to a Prophet and Other Poems, Things of This World, Ceremony and Other Poems, and The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems.  "One of the best poets of his generation, Richard Wilbur has imagined excellence, and has created it." —Richard Eberhart, New York Times Book Review

Genres: Poetry, Classics

241 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Early years :

Wilbur was born in New York City and grew up in North Caldwell, New Jersey.He graduated from Montclair High School in 1938, having worked on the school newspaper as a student there. He graduated from Amherst College in 1942 and then served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1945 during World War II. After the Army and graduate school at Harvard University, Wilbur taught at Wesleyan University for two decades and at Smith College for another decade. At Wesleyan, he was instrumental in founding the award-winning poetry series of the University Press.He received two Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and, as of 2011, teaches at Amherst College.He is also on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.He married Charlotte Hayes Ward in 1942 after his graduation from Amherst; she was a student at nearby Smith College.

Career :

When only 8 years old, Wilbur published his first poem in John Martin's Magazine. His first book, The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems, appeared in 1947. Since then he has published several volumes of poetry, including New and Collected Poems (Faber, 1989). Wilbur is also a translator, specializing in the 17th century French comedies of Molière and the dramas of Jean Racine. His translation of Tartuffe has become the standard English version of the play, and has been presented on television twice (a 1978 production is available on DVD.)

Continuing the tradition of Robert Frost and W. H. Auden, Wilbur's poetry finds illumination in everyday experiences. Less well-known is Wilbur's foray into lyric writing. He provided lyrics to several songs in Leonard Bernstein's 1956 musical, Candide, including the famous "Glitter and Be Gay" and "Make Our Garden Grow." He has also produced several unpublished works such as "The Wing" and "To Beatrice".

His honors include the 1983 Drama Desk Special Award for his translation of The Misanthrope, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award, both in 1957, the Edna St Vincent Millay award, the Bollingen Prize, and the Chevalier, Ordre National des Palmes Académiques. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959.In 1987 Wilbur became the second poet, after Robert Penn Warren, to be named U.S. Poet Laureate after the position's title was changed from Poetry Consultant. In 1989 he won a second Pulitzer, this one for his New and Collected Poems. On October 14, 1994, he received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton. In 2006, Wilbur won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. In 2010 he won the National Translation Award for the translation of The Theatre of Illusion by Pierre Corneille.

Reviews

[John]

I have been reading Richard Wilbur for about 30 years now. I generally do not like to read poetry from any e-reader. I prefer the printed page upon which to absorb the poem.

Having said that, I wanted to revisit Wilbur and thought one of his books on my Nook would be a good idea. This book is a good collection of several of his books.

His poems are very readable. The language is beautiful -- a very tempered use of rhyme, meter, varying forms. In my opinion, the finest living poet we have, by far.

The best way to read Wilbur is to "hop" around -- try some of the shorter poems and work your way to some of the longer poems. A favorite of mine, which I probably first read in 1983 is called Death of a Toad. A sad poem, but exquisitely beautiful, quiet, thoughtful. I have been rereading it for 30 years now. There must be a reason why.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a copy of the book I read when I received my Master's Degree in English literature. Now I am rereading and cleaning out my bookcase. Back then I would have given it five stars and raved about the poetry. Now it reads to me like I should be sipping tea with a bunch of privileged people in some fancy-ass college where their parents got them in by making large donations. It is skilled work, but the world is burning and this book no longer really interests me.

My favorite title is "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World." Let us all hear the call and help out.

Here he is reading from his translation of Candide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avq_H...

And one of my favorite lines from "A Fire-Truck" is "Blurring to shear verb."

He is also an expert at Anglo-Saxon verse with "Junk."

[Gia MarajaLove · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Poor Adam, deviled by
your energy,
What power egged you on to
feed your brains?
Envy the gorgeous gallops of
the sea,
Whose horses never know
their lunar reins.”

-‘A Problem from Milton,’ Richard Wilbur

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I read through this entire collection, Richard Wilbur's collection of poetry is simply going to have to go back up on the shelf for another read someday. Of the nearly 200 poems collected here, I found only four that affected me in any meaningful way. I am prepared to accept total blame for that--I have been trying (more unsuccessfully than not) to read more poetry, to force it to give up its secrets. That may very well be my problem right there, I don't know, but Wilbur's poetry was very, very boring to me.

And I hate that. I want to read poetry and get the same high from it that others seem to. But, if that's going to happen, it's not going to happen with this former Poet Laureate, at least not at this stage of my life. Perhaps, having read it once, I might be able to pick it up again and it have a bigger impact--but Wilbur seems very ethereal with these poems, insubstantial, as if he wants to surround his subject rather than inhabit it. To give it an 'air' hug.

Wilbur also likes to insert classical references into his poems--some of these references I grasped, and some I didn't, so I accept also that more study would likely have revealed a different side to some of these verses. But I don't think there was so much that got past me that that is the complete answer. Wilbur is also a strict formalist, so while that may increase others enjoyment of his work, I don't really have an opinion one way or another on blank versus metered verse, so I may be missing out on another aspect to like.

In the end, I may just have to chalk it up to my lack of a poetry quotient. I don't know if it's possible to develop one or not, but I know I'm reading a book of Robert Lowell's poems as well, and I'm ambivalent about that one too.

[Skip Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread this in one evening, after learning of Wilbur's death.

[J. Alfred · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've seen Wilbur in a number of anthologies, which makes him, together with Auden and possibly Maya Angelou, about the only post-1960s poets on whom we have any consensus that this person is good and deserves to be read by future generations. I tend to think he deserves the honor. I can imagine a grizzled older Modernist saying of him, as elder-statesman Shaq is said to have opined on the young Paul Pierce, "he's the [compound adjective deleted] Truth."
Check out his "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World," "The Beautiful Changes," and "A Hole in the Floor" for starters. He's like Frost: nothing seems thrown away. They all reward the reading and hint at a sort of sublimity.

[Fredore Praltsa]

I've really liked a few of Wilbur's poems for a while (e.g., The Beautiful Changes: "your hands hold roses always in a way that says / they are not only yours ..."), but I struggled to get through this collection. The poems are almost all masterpieces, sure. I'm wondering, though, if what distinguishes a masterpiece—demonstrated technical prowess—interferes with what I think goes on in the art I like—surprise, insistence, intimacy, mystery, delight. Surprise isn't here. By the time I got to the tenth poem in this collection, I KNEW what would come next: more poems with symmetrical meter and impressive music, each with some central Thing To Say about the world/life. And that's what happened. None of the spontaneous jumps of Dickinson or honeyed flows of Hughes. Neither are these poems particularly intimate or insistent. Intimacy flees, imo, when Wilbur uses words such as "espy"—clearly, he is not talking to me (let alone anyone in our century). And insistence meets death in his rather meandering lines (if you really had to tell something to me, right now, would you tell it to me in five stanzas, most of them with four or more stressed syllables?). There's a great deal of delight and mystery in his poems though, and I enjoyed that (especially because the poems find their delight/mystery primarily in the external world). And judging someone next to E Dickinson is probably sacrilegious, given that She is God.

[Randy Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literate, worldly, simple and quiet are the first words that come to me about Mr. Wilbur's poems. I read a criticism of his poetry recently and the worst thing the reviewer had to say was that he didn't take risks with his poetry. The other knock was that there are occasions when his choice of words or phrases weren't completely fresh.

I wouldn't disagree with either of those statements but I don't think that is fair to what Richard Wilbur is as a poet. He is authentically himself and no more. His poems don't meander or stretch or soar. They examine carefully the world around the poet and make sure to feature words, language, sounds that fit him and the act of finding the unsaid, unseen, un-noticed and make sure all of that gets said, seen and noticed in his concise and balanced poems.

'Potato' is my favorite of his poems and I particularly like the last stanza, 'You may have noticed the bush that it pushes to the air. Comical-delicate sometimes with second rate flowers, awkward and milky and beautiful only to hunger.'

[Christopher]

As a casual, unlearned reader of poetry I can say that I dearly loved many of these, but was probably more often frustrated by his abstruseness. Of course, Wilbur remains a great poet and cannot be held responsible for my nature as a poetic Philistine.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Like there’s more love to it,” is all I’m saying. And we can’t become anything but the pitiless censors of ourselves. Think about how America mistreats us sometimes, thinking we’ll make it out alive. I think we can’t strive to more greatness than this.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems of Richard Wilbur by Richard Wilbur – I have been drinking these in with small sips, and they are indulgent and rich. Be prepared to do an excessive amount of googling! Happy Reading!

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me over two years to get through this book of poetry. I bought it because I’d heard a poem or two by Richard Wilbur that I really loved. As it turns out, though, most of his poetry is esoteric and inaccessible. I did a lot of looking up of words and names from history or mythology in an attempt to better understand these poems. There were poems in this book that I loved, but few and far between. And there were lines and phrases that I loved, but also few and far between. Most of the time when I finished reading a poem, I wondered what old Richard was trying to say.

[Денис Бурчаков · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, Mr. Wilbur is nice and pretty contemporary. But unfortunately his writings are so behind russian poetic tradition, that I can only pity anglophones, for whom poets like Wilbur are pinnacles of modern poetry.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even any superlatives I could offer would seem so silly, given Wilbur's stature. I'll leave it at this: one of the titans.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't pretend to understand or get everything Wilbur is doing here, but there are numerous gems that I'm hoping I'll return to over the years.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

By far, the best poet still writing today.

[Emily]

I regret to say that I could not make heads or tails of these poems.