Entries from Key West Literary Seminar | Audio Archives tagged with 'Richard Wilbur'
Richard Wilbur | 2010
Richard Wilbur is among the singular poets of our time, the only living poet to have twice won the Pulitzer Prize, and a former Poet Laureate of the United States. As a young veteran of World War II, Wilbur became friends with Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens and began writing the refined and rigorously optimistic poetry that characterize his sixty-year oeuvre. In the 1960s, Wilbur and his wife Charlee began spending winters in Key West, where he became friends with a circle of poets including James Merrill, John Ciardi, and John Malcolm Brinnin. In January 2010 we welcomed Wilbur back to Key West with<em> Clearing the Sill of the World</em>, our 28th annual Seminar, held in his honor.
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 From the then-unpublished 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>, "Two Voices in a Meadow" and "Pangloss's Song: A Comic-Opera Lyric," 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>
Richard Wilbur: 1993 <br>A Reading in Tribute to Elizabeth Bishop
The 1993 Key West Literary Seminar was devoted entirely to Elizabeth Bishop. A series of readings-in-tribute offered her fellow poets the opportunity to discuss Bishop and her influence.<br> In this recording from the event, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Wilbur reads Bishop's "Little Exercise." Wilbur also reads his translation of "Song," by Vinícius de Moraes, the Brazilian poet and Bossa Nova pioneer who co-wrote many of João Gilberto's hits.
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