I first encountered Mr. Wilbur's work in an anthology edited by John Ciardi in 1950, titled "Mid-Century American Poets." I was in Hunter College at the time, studying poetics, reading, and already certain, by then, that poetry would occupy me for the rest of my life. That book riveted my attention: some fourteen poets are in it (my ravaged copy is still in my possession), including Shapiro, Nims, Lowell, Jarrell, Bishop and Schwartz. But the voice that called me at once and for good was that of Richard Wilbur, represented by ten early poems that all told me what I wanted to try for. Don't we all!
The essay that introduces the poems is "The Genie in the Bottle," as exciting a discovery as the poems themselves. Years later, after having read many more Wilbur poems, I came accross his "Responses: Prose Pieces 1953-1976." That, too, became holy writ, and still is.
I've had the good fortune to meet Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur on several occasions, and have found them as open and simple as we never expect the great to be. The living voice of the poet is the same as the voice of the poems, filled with the same grace, equanimity and generosity.
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