Richard Wilbur

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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.

He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1957 and 1989.

Early years

Wilbur was born in New York City on March 1, 1921, and grew up in North Caldwell, New Jersey. In 1938 he graduated from Montclair High School, where he worked on the school newspaper. He graduated from Amherst College in 1942 and served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1945 during World War II. He attended graduate school at Harvard University. Wilbur taught at Wellesley College, then 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 taught at Amherst College as late as 2009. He was also on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.

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Literary career

Wilbur's first poem was published in John Martin's Magazine when he was only 8 years old. In 1947, his first book, The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems, appeared. He published several collections of poetry afterward, including New and Collected Poems (Faber, 1989). Wilbur was also a translator, specializing in the 17th century French comedies of Molière and Jean Racine's dramas. Tartuffe's translation has made it into the play's standard English version, and it has been shown on television twice (a 1978 version is also available on DVD). Opposites, More Opposites, and The Disappearing Alphabet were among Wilbur's children's books. He began as the general editor of The Laurel Poetry Series in 1959 (Dell Publishing).

Wilbur's poetry, which continues Robert Frost and W. H. Auden's, finds meaning in everyday life. Wilbur's foray into lyric writing is less well known. He narrated several songs in Leonard Bernstein's 1956 musical Candide, including "Glitter and Be Gay" and "Make Our Garden Grow." In addition, he created "The Wing" and "To Beatrice."

His awards included the 1983 Drama Desk Special Award and the PEN Translation Prize for his translation of The Misanthrope, the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, and Things of This World (1956), as well as the Chevalier, Ordre des Palmes Académiques. In 1959, he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wilbur was the second poet to be named in the United States in 1987 after Robert Penn Warren. Since the position's title was changed to Poetry Consultant, Poet Laureate was promoted to Poet Laureate. In 1988, he received the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, and in 1989 he received his second Pulitzer Prize for his New and Collected Poems. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton on October 14, 1994. In 1994, he was awarded the PEN/Ralph Manheim Award for Translation. Wilbur was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2003. He received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2006. He received the National Translation Award for the translation of Pierre Corneille's The Theatre of Illusion in 2010. On Wilbur, Yale University awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters.

Wilbur died on October 14, 2017, at a nursing home in Belmont, Massachusetts, from natural causes aged 96.

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