A Day With Richard Wilbur

A beautiful summer day spent with Richard Wilbur, as he reads from his new collection ANTEROOMS (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November 12, 2010). Listen to "Galveston, 1961" and "Young Orchard," and hear Wilbur talk about everything from gardening to teaching to perfecting his poems, and much more.

Richard Wilbur, one of America's most beloved poets, has served as poet laureate of the United States. He has received the National Book Award, two Pulitzer Prizes, the National Arts Club medal of honor for literature, and a number of translation prizes, including two Bollingen Prizes and two awards from PEN.

In Anterooms, his first collection in nearly ten years, this literary legend, called "a hero to a new generation of critics" by the New York Times Book Review, proves to be at the height of his poetic powers. Whether he's musing on a "yellow-striped green/Caterpillar" or playfully considering that "Inside homeowner is the word meow," Wilbur's new collection is sure to delight everyone from longtime devotees to casual poetry readers.
This collections plays with the mythic Hermes, the Japanese form of haiku, and the vagaries of love. It also features masterly translations from Mallarmé's "The Tomb of Edgar Allan Poe," a previously unpublished Verlaine poem, two poems by Joseph Brodsky, and thirty-seven of Symphosius's clever Latin riddles (surprisingly difficult!).

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• poetry
• translations
• Richard Wilbur
• gardening
• books
• Pulitzer

[JosephDuvernay]

Elsewhere and of other chrome, another poet-teacher was held "like and kind."

Well, here as there, Richard Wilbur, I, in inclusion assign (for me) also, like and kind and had wanted for some time to say it.

Of course this goes for all whose work I love, past and present.

[stevevandien]

Wilbur is probably the best living American poet. He writes beautifuly classical verse, using rhyme schemes and the sounds and rhythms of words and consonants superbly. And he has always read it beautifully, especially given his deep, rich voice. If there are younger American poets at all like Wilbur today, I don't know them --