Richard Wilbur, twice-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, passed away on October 14, 2017. He was ninety-six.

Wilbur was the author of ten volumes of poetry and was awarded the Pulitzer for his 1956 collection Things of the World (which also won the National Book Award) and his 1988 New & Collected Poems. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1987–88. Wilbur also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and two Bollingen Prizes, among many other honors.

Wilbur was a highly regarded translator of poetry and drama—his versions of Molière, “Tartuffe,” “The School for Wives,” and others, appeared on Broadway and have become the standard versions in English. From the Associated Press: “‘Moliere has had no better American friend than the poet Richard Wilbur,’ The New York Times’ Frank Rich wrote in 1982. ‘Mr. Wilbur’s lighter-than-air verse upholds the idiom and letter of Moliere, yet it also satisfies the demands of the stage.’”

He also wrote and illustrated several books of poetry for children.

Poet Paul Muldoon said of Wilbur, he was “the single greatest technician in American poetry of the last 70 years. … It was a technique perfectly at the service of tenderness and terror.”

Wilbur’s poem, “For C.,” written for his wife Charlotte, which appears in his collection Mayflies, begins by describing the “grand scale” that brief lovers may experience, but ends by celebrating their “long love”:

We are denied, my love, their fine tristesse
And bittersweet regrets, and cannot share
The frequent vistas of their large despair,
Where love and all are swept to nothingness;
Still, there’s a certain scope in that long love
Which constant spirits are the keepers of,

And which, though taken to be tame and staid,
Is a wild sostenuto of the heart,
A passion joined to courtesy and art
Which has the quality of something made,
Like a good fiddle, like the rose’s scent,
Like a rose window or the firmament.

***

I never had the good fortune to meet Richard Wilbur in person, though I did speak to him on the phone once, as a means to beginning an interview carried out through the mail for The Missouri Review (for those with access to Project Muse, you can read it there). I led a panel on his work at the 2013 AWP Conference in Boston, joined by the wonderful poets Joshua Mehigan, Natalie Shapero, and Catherine Tufariello.

Wilbur’s work meant, and still means, the world to me. He was an exemplar in poetry and life. He had the best ear of any poet since the mid-20^th century, and was a master of rhythm and the line. I was lucky enough to be introduced to his poetry as a young writer—I hope that students now continue to read and study the beautiful works of art that are his poems.

—Jason Gray, Associate Editor

Photo Credit: Stathis Orphanos