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Richard Wilbur: 2003

Richard Wilbur is a former United States Poet Laureate and the only writer since Robert Frost to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice. In this recording from the 2003 Key West Literary Seminar, Wilbur reads and comments upon numerous poems, translations, lyrics, and light verse spanning the length and breadth of his career. From the then-unpublished <em>Collected Poems, 1943-2004</em>, Wilbur gives voice to "The Reader" and "Man Running;" from <em>Mayflies</em>, he reads "A Barred Owl," which asks the question, adds Wilbur, "whether poetry is supposed to make nice with the world, or whether it's to arm us with the words with which we can confront reality." Also from <em>Mayflies </em>are "For Charlee"; his translation of the Bulgarian poet Valeri Petrov's "A Cry from Childhood," and the three-part poem "This Pleasing Anxious Being." From 1989's <em>New and Collected Poems</em>, Wilbur reads "The Ride," "Lying," "On Having Mis-identified a Wild Flower," the Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes's "Song," and "Hamlen Brook"; from 1976's <em>The Mind-Reader</em>, he presents "The Writer" and "A Wedding Toast." Continuing back into time, Wilbur reads "Museum Piece," from <em>Ceremony</em>; "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World," from <em>Things of This World</em>; and, from <em>Advice to a Prophet</em>, &quot;Two Voices in a Meadow&quot; and &quot;Pangloss's Song: A Comic-Opera Lyric,&quot; written for the 1956 musical version of <em>Candide</em> that Wilbur collaborated on with Lillian Hellman and Leonard Bernstein. The reading concludes with several humorous poems, including "A Late Aubade," the two-part "Flippancies" (including "The Star System" and "What's Good for the Soul Is Good for Sales"), "To His Skeleton," "The Prisoner of Zenda," and several verses from his book for children, <em>The Disappearing Alphabet.</em>

Posted by Arlo Haskell on May 15, 2009 9:22 PM