The other day I got one of the nicest compliments I've ever received. A woman I know, who is a high school English teacher, attended a professional meeting in Key West where Richard Wilbur was the keynote speaker. After Wilbur's reading, as I understand the story, she hurried to the front of a long line to get her book signed by the poet. She apologized for the rush but explained that she was in a hurry to make a plane connection back to Beaumont. "Beaumont?" said Mr. Wilbur. "You must know Sam Gwynn. I like his poetry."
My correspondence with Wilbur dates from my undergraduate days. I had seen his translations of three Villon ballades in Poetry, and I hastily churned out what I thought was a ballade and sent it to him. How I got his address remains a mystery, but soon I received one of those meticulously typed postcards in response. He was kind, and has unfailingly been so since. He did not bother to point out that what I thought was a ballade employed about a dozen rhymes instead of the requisite three.
My first meeting with him dates from roughly the same period, the spring of 1969, I believe. I drove from Davidson up to Roanoke to hear him read at Hollins College on the occasion of some sort of undergraduate literary festival. By the time I met him, I knew his poems fairly well (I can't remember if we were using The Poems of Richard Wilbur in a class or whether I'd bought it on my own). As I recall, Walking to Sleep had just appeared, and I spoke with him briefly at the signing. That he remembered my name and the poem I'd sent still strikes me as miraculous, but one learns to accept the miraculous where Mr. Wilbur is concerned.
If my three wishes are ever granted, one of them would be just to have dinner and drinks with Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur, as Tim Murphy and Alan Sullivan have done on several occasions. We had a date for such an event a few years back, but the Wilburs were delayed in getting to Key West and my wife and I had to leave before they came to town. Time and distance being what they are, I guess that four or five very quick visits after readings over the years will have to suffice.
My short list of favorite Wilbur poems is no short list at all, and I would indeed wear out my welcome here if I were to attempt to list them all. If I may confine myself to a single poem, I direct the reader to "Year's End." There are several worlds packed into that short lyric--it is as near a perfect poem as I have ever read, with the exception, of course, of a couple dozen more by the same poet.
I salute Tim and Alan for making his comments available to Eratosphere, and I look forward to reading them in coming days.
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