It’s funny how vividly we remember the details of brief encounters with the people we really admire. In the summer of 1992 I managed to spot Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur seated at one of the long tables in the refectory at Sewanee. The seat next to them was briefly vacant. I ran as fast as I dared with a loaded tray of food and asked Mr. Wilbur if the chair was open to the bold, or was it reserved for the meritorious? He replied that the seat was free, and so, along with some other nearby participants in the writers’ conference, where he was visiting to give a reading, I got to talk with the Wilburs for a few minutes. I was aware that we had several mutual friends and acquaintances, including a couple of my old teachers, John Nims and Richard Eberhart, so it was easy to find topics of conversation, and although I could present myself as nothing more than a classics prof. who still harbored hopes of writing poetry, I was able to boast of having appeared once alongside Mr. Wilbur in print, since my first poem in The New Yorker had appeared alongside his splendid “Icarium Mare” in 1979. I found the Wilburs most genial and thoughtful of those around them, as I think is consistent with all reports!
Richard Wilbur was one of the few reasons to be hopeful about American poetry in the late 1970’s, when I was starting to get serious about writing, but almost everyone seemed to have forsaken meter and rhyme. I suppose, for many of us, he was an icon, of sorts, a status that may not have been entirely fair to the object of our admiration! It’s great to realize that, though time has chastised so many of my youthful enthusiasms, it has so thoroughly vindicated this one. It seems characteristically generous of Mr. Wilbur to participate in the Sphere as Tim’s distinguished guest and to comment on the fine roster of poems that Tim has lined up. Many thanks to him and a hearty welcome!
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