Richard Wilbur
Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilburis an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth1 March 1921
CountryUnited States of America
understood
What's lightly hid is deepest understood,
inspirational inspiration bottles
The strength of the genie comes from being in a bottle.
truth lying party
To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle, When in fact you haven't of late, can do no harm.
odd
Odd that a thing is most itself when likened
composition
Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia.
lonely song world
A thrush, because I'd been wrong, Burst rightly into song In a world not vague, not lonely, Not governed by me only.
sleep blow journey
What you hope for Is that at some point of the pointless journey, Indoors or out, and when you least expect it, Right in the middle of your stride, like that, So neatly that you never feel a thing, The kind assassin Sleep will draw a bead And blow your brains out.
passion thinking shoes
Try to remember this: what you project Is what you will perceive; what you perceive With any passion, be it love or terror, May take on whims and powers of its own. Therefore a numb and grudging circumspection Will serve you best - unless you overdo it, Watching your step too narrowly, refusing To specify a world, shrinking your purview To a tight vision of your inching shoes, Which may, as soon as you come to think, be crossing An unseen gorge upon a rotten trestle.
writing tuesday waiting
Writing is?waiting for the word that may not be there until next Tuesday.
violence fancy tricks
It is not tricks of sense But the time's fright within me which distracts Least fancies into violence
men thinking sea
Columbus and his men, they say, Conveyed the virus hither Whereby my features rot away And vital powers wither; Yet had they not traversed the seas And come infected back, Why, think of all the luxuries That modern life would lack.
summer rain heart
Caught Summer is always an imagined time. Time gave it, yes, but time out of any mind. There must be prime In the heart to beget that season, to reach past rain and find Riding the palest days Its perfect blaze.
hands sight heaven
Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry, Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.
soul casting like-you
Teach me, like you, to drink creation whole/ And casting out myself, become a soul.