Wilbur, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, dies at 96
Richard Wilbur, an American poet and translator whose precise, rhythmic verse — employing classical forms in an era when experimental works and free-flowing confessionals reigned supreme — earned him two Pulitzer Prizes and a reputation as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, died October 14, at a nursing home in Belmont, Mass., the US. He was 96. Wilbur, a former Army infantryman who devoted himself to poetry after returning from World War II, was among the most prolific poets of his generation. A devotee of classical rhyme and meter, his work retained a sense of orderly elegance through the rise of confessional poets such as Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath, avant-garde writers like John Ashbery, who died last month at age 90, washingtonpost.com reported.and in contrast to the
often esoteric work of “If Ashbery invented a whole new kind of poetry,” said Robert Casper, head of the Library of Congress’ Poetry and Literature Center, noting, “Richard Wilbur reminded us of the enduring power of tradition: That poems about the natural world and about love, written in classical, traditional rhyme and meter, would continue to matter going forward into the future.”
Wilbur published his first book, ‘The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems’, in 1947, rendering his war experiences in a formal style that some critics derided as overly ornate and borderline baroque. Within a decade, however, he had refined his voice, stripping away some of its poetic excesses. He won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for ‘Things of This World’, which drew its title from one of Wilbur’s most widely anthologized poems.
The poem, ‘Love Calls Us to the Things of This World’, began with a heavenly vision inspired in part by the ‘Confessions’ of St. Augustine: The eyes open to a cry of pulleys, And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple As false dawn. Outside the open window The morning air is all awash with angels. It was one of many poems that demonstrated Wilbur’s deeprooted belief that the universe was, as he put it in a 1977 interview with the Paris Review, “full of glorious energy . . . and that the ultimate character of things is comely and good”.
In a sign of Wilbur’s stature in American poetry, he was appointed the second US poet laureate, following Robert Penn Warren, in 1987. (The Library of Congress had previously named consultants in poetry.) Two years later, he received his second Pulitzer Prize, for ‘New and Collected Poems’.
His work extended well beyond that of sonnets and sapphics, to include acclaimed translations of the French playwrights Molière and Racine and the poets Baudelaire and Brodsky. He contributed lyrics to Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 operetta ‘Candide’, and — inspired by the births of his four children — even dabbled in children’s books, writing whimsical verses (‘What is the opposite of soup?/it’s nuts’) and books of pun-filled wordplay, including ‘Opposites’ — a 1973 picture book that he illustrated himself.