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Richard Wilbur Biography

Richard Purdy Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017) was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets of his generation, Wilbur’s work, composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentlemanly elegance. In 1987 he was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1957 and again in 1989.

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Richard Wilbur Quotes

Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the product's something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.

Mode, Oneself, Poetry, Self, Talking, Writing

What is our praise or pride but to imagine excellence and try to make it? What does it say over the door of heaven; but, homo (sapiens) fecit?

Doors, Heaven, Homo, Make, Pride, Sapiens

Columbus and his men, they say, Conveyed the virus hither Whereby my features rot away And vital powers wither; Yet had they not traversed the seas And come infected back, Why, think of all the luxuries That modern life would lack.

Away, Lack, Men, Modern, Sea, Thinking

Happy in all that ragged, loose collapse of water, the fountain, its effortless descent and flatteries of spray.

Effortless, Fountain, Rain, Rivers, Water

To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle, When in fact you haven't of late, can do no harm.

Claim, Grackle, Lying, Party, Truth

It is not tricks of sense But the time's fright within me which distracts Least fancies into violence

Fancies, Fancy, Fright, Sense, Tricks, Violence

Whatever pains disease may bring Are but the tangy seasoning To Loves delicious fare.

Delicious, Disease, Love, May, Pain, Tangy

Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry, Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.

Dances, Earth, Hands, Heaven, Nothing, Sight

Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind. Something will come to you.

Assuredly, Crafts, Mind, Step, Steps

Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia.

Catatonia, Composition, Distinguishable, Externally, Scarcely

What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you.

Break Up, Broken Heart, I Miss You, Lonely, Opposite

We know what boredom is: it is a dull Impatience or a fierce velleity, A champing wish, stalled by our lassitude, To make or do. In the strict sense, of course, We invent nothing, merely bearing witness To what each morning brings again to light

Boredom, Course, Light, Morning, Stalled, Witness

I would feel dead if I didn't have the ability periodically to put my world in order with a poem. I think to be inarticulate is a great suffering, and is especially so to anyone who has a certain knack for poetry.

Knack, Order, Periodically, Poetry, Suffering, Thinking

The eye is pleased when nature stoops to art.

Art, Eye, Nature, Pleased, Stoops

There is a poignancy in all things clear, In the stare of the deer, in the ring of a hammer in the morning. Seeing a bucket of perfectly lucid water We fall to imagining prodigious honesties.

Fall, Honesty, Morning, Stare, Things, Water

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says They are not only yours; the beautiful changes In such kind ways, Wishing ever to sunder Things and things' selves for a second finding, to lose For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

Beautiful, Hands, Says, Self, Things, Wonder

Odd that a thing is most itself when likened

Likened, Odd, Thing

A thrush, because I'd been wrong, Burst rightly into song In a world not vague, not lonely, Not governed by me only.

Burst, Lonely, Song, Thrush, Vague, World

The strength of the genie comes from being in a bottle.

Bottle, Bottles, Genie, Inspiration, Inspirational, Strength

Try to remember this: what you project Is what you will perceive; what you perceive With any passion, be it love or terror, May take on whims and powers of its own. Therefore a numb and grudging circumspection Will serve you best - unless you overdo it, Watching your step too narrowly, refusing To specify a world, shrinking your purview To a tight vision of your inching shoes, Which may, as soon as you come to think, be crossing An unseen gorge upon a rotten trestle.

Passion, Shoes, Shrinking, Thinking, Vision, Watching

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