[Chris Childers]

Hi guys, I'm just fishing to see what besides the poems I should read if I'm really going to attempt some sort of article. I know about the Between the Lines interview with Peter Dale & the Catbird's Song, & thanks to Dave I'm aware of Jarrell's early review--can this be easily found? What I suppose I really want are reviews dismissing his work, because it's too optimistic or positive or pleasant or uplifting or what have you, all the things the masochistic modernists despise. In general, just important articles about him, in case it would be easier to write with a target. I could probably do some poking around on my own, but all advice would be appreciated. Thanks,

Chris

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Chris

Though this does not directly answer your question, it is perhaps worth saying that Richard Wilbur in Conversation with Peter Dale, published by Philip Hoy’s “other” press, Between the Lines, in 2000, includes what at the time was probably the most complete bibliography of articles and books on Wilbur.

But you probably knew that!

Good luck with your project!

Kind regards

Clive

[Julie Steiner]

As a former academic librarian, I urge you to at least browse some of the biographical resources in the following guide:
http://www.lib.unc.edu/reference/hum/poetryreviews.html

At the bare minimum, I'd recommend checking the following two resources, even if it's only so that you can say that you have!

1. Surely there's a Contemporary Poets essay for Wilbur. Since CP is a chronological resource, the texts of the original article and subsequent updates will be sprinkled through several different volumes. To locate all the updates, be SURE to check the appropriate index volumes. (There are separate index volumes for each chunk of years, so check the start and end dates of each index volume, and ASSUME that at least one of the volumes you need has been misshelved!)

2. It might also be interesting to see what the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has to say about him. This resource doesn't usually discuss individual poets except with regard to their contribution to movements, but surely Wilbur qualifies in that regard.

Happy hunting!

Julie Stoner



[This message has been edited by Julie Stoner (edited February 23, 2005).]

[J.A. Crider]

Chris,

There is another later assessment of Wilbur by Jarrell in his "Fifty Years of American Poetry" (1963), which can be found in Brad Leithauser's recently edited volume of Jarrell's prose <u>No Other Book; Selected Essays</u> (1999). Like the 1950 excerpt reproduced in Dave Mason's essay, it tepidly praises:

"Petronius spoke of the 'studied felicity' of Horace’s poetry, and I can never read one of Richard Wilbur's books without thinking of this phrase. His impersonal, exactly accomplished, faintly sententious skill produces poems that, ordinarily, compose themselves into a little too regular a beauty--there is no eminent beauty without a certain strangeness in the proportion; and yet 'A Baroque Wall Fountain in the Villa Sciarra' is one of the most marvelously beautiful, one of thee most nerarly perfect poesm any American has written...." p. 252-252.

There is another jab, much more nasty, leveled at "a larger group of poets who, so to speak, come out of Richard Wilbur's overcoat. The work of these academic, tea-party, creative-writing class poets rather tamely satisfies the standards of technique implicit in what they consider the 'best modern practice'..."

And all this comes from an essay in which Jarrell takes swipes at Pound, Moore, Williams, Stevens, Crane, etc., so it gets a little confusing.

I kind of wonder if working Wilbur against the derision of “masochistic modernists” gets one very far in the long run. It seems like you're hitting pay-dirt already in the piece you posted on Tim's thread, and without the usual static and noise. You're offering substantive, original reasons why Wilbur is a great poet and why we should read him. I would be very interested to see what, if anything, someone like Richard Howard writes about Wilbur. Howard strikes me as a poet-critic who can step deftly across modernism and formalism and combine the two, which is what I think Wilbur actually does .


Good Luck,

John


edited: Chris, you're hitting "pay-dirt", not "bedrock." Sorry.



[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited February 23, 2005).]

[Don Kimball]

Hi Chris,

There are a couple books on Wilbur that you might find useful:

1) RICHARD WILBUR'S CREATION (1983)
Edited and with an Introduction by Wendy Salinger.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
It's a book of early essays written by some well-known
poets and critics (including one by Jarrell).


2) WILBUR'S POETRY: MUSIC IN A SCATTERING TIME (1991)
by Bruce Michelson
The University of Massachusetts Press.

Both of these books I found on Amazon, but you may find them in your university library.

All the best, Don

[Chris Childers]

Everyone, thanks so much. I'm pretty sure the bibliography Clive mentions is going to be enough, but I appreciate all the recommendations.

John,

I'm sure you're right that I don't need to take jabs at people, & really, I wouldn't feel at all comfortable doing so; nor am I at all eager to tackle Jarrell. (I am however interested in reading his opinions.) What I want is to consider the various objections raised to Wilbur & whether or not my observations have any bearing upon them. I only see this taking up a paragraph at most, maybe only a sentence. Positive criticism is of course interesting in its own right, especially for what it may contain about Wilbur outside of the poetry, but also for various observations which may enrich my appreciation for particular poems, if not contribute to my little thing.

Thanks again, people. Much appreciated.

Chris

[Tim Murphy]

I'll tell folks what Richard Howard said to us, his students at Yale. "When will we see a rival to Frost or Stevens? That cannot be foreseen. But Wilbur isn't it. That nonsense from the poem about the fountain that "patters its own applause!" Richard Howard was only 38 when he said these ill-judged lines, and I suspect his opinion would be very different today.

[Margaret Moore]

Many thanks for starting this thread, Chris, and thanks too for all who replied. Am printing out for reference as have foolishly offered a short intro course on eight modern American poets (including RW).

Best,

Margaret.

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Tim,

There's an unfortunate tendency of people to want to do hagiographies of the dead while dissing the living, if just because it's more dramatic to put your wrist to your forehead and cry "Alas! We shall never again see his match!" rather than go "You know, such-and-such is really good, and he's still producing."

There's also, as Stephen King has mentioned, the trouble of people doing their doctoral disertations on authors who are still living and can call them up and tell them they're full of it. It's hard to do a speculative analysis with any credibility when Richard Wilbur can just tell us what his inspiration was for a particular poem.