compares the potentials of his discoveries in the
floor with those of a great archeologist:[....]
In ‘‘A Grasshopper’’ Wilbur adds to the
poetic bestiary that he had collected in his vol-
umeA Bestiary(1955). He admires the grass-
hopper for having achieved a delicate balance
between stasis in its pause on a chicory leaf and
action in its springs from the leaf. Hall in his
Contemporary American Poetry(1962) calls the
poem ‘‘a minor masterpiece,’’ but some reviewers
believed that Wilbur seemed too content with
‘‘minor masterpieces,’’ both in form and in sub-
ject matter. He showed an unwillingness to
undertake major experiments in form or to
introduce new and socially relevant subject mat-
ter at a time when that was becoming expected.
To some reviewers and critics, he seemed a poet
reluctant to take risks of any sort. In fairness,
one must say that Wilbur does experiment with
‘‘new’’ lines in his poetry, such as his use of the
Anglo-Saxon alliterative line in ‘‘Junk.’’ But in
comparison with what such poets as Lowell and
John Berryman were then doing, the experimen-
tation is comparatively minor.
Wilbur seemed almost to be writing his
poems in a cultural and political vacuum. By
the time of the publication ofAdvice to a Prophet
the tremendous impact that Lowell had made in
Life Studiesby apparently confessing disorder in
his own family life had been felt. Two years after
Life Studies Wilbur opened his volume with
what he intended to be a dramatic poem, ‘‘Two
Voices in a Meadow,’’ a dialogue between two
objects from the world of the mundane, a milk-
weed and a stone. The drama in this poem and in
the title poem, ‘‘Advice to a Prophet,’’ seemed
humanly insignificant compared to Lowell’s
more personal approach. Wilbur seemed to fail
in his attempts to indicate more dramatically
and more positively how order might be restored
and what his personal ‘‘stays against confusion’’
are, much as Robinson Jeffers’s attempt at a
tragic poetry had failed before, because he
seems too exclusively concerned with symbolic
things rather than with people. Wilbur’s message
appears to be that when man becomes more
familiar with the world’s own change, he can
deal with his own problems as something related
to the reality of things. Wilbur calls those who do
not respond to the things of this world, those
who prefer their dreams and who move to illu-
sions, ‘‘the Undead’’—vampires.
In ‘‘Shame’’ Wilbur defines the kind of
human behavior that disturbs him—irresolute-
ness, a failure to deal with reality. He attempts to
provide positive examples of heroic behavior,
but he fails to create convincing examples as
Robert Lowell does with his symbol of the
mother skunk, ‘‘refusing to scare,’’ in ‘‘Skunk
Hour.’’ In Wilbur’s dialogue poem ‘‘The Aspen
and the Stream,’’ the aspen is the positive heroic
example because it seems to escape its existence
by delving into flux, experience—symbolized by
the dream—even if the result is only ‘‘a few more
aspen-leaves.’’
It was eight years before Wilbur’s fifth vol-
ume of poetry,Walking to Sleep, appeared in- In the interim he published a children’s
book,Loudmouse(1963); his collected poems,
The Poems of Richard Wilbur(1963); and his
translation of Moliere’s` Tartuffe(1963), which
earned him an award as corecipient of the Bol-
lingen Poetry Translation Prize. The Lincoln
Center Repertory Theatre brought his transla-
tion ofTartuffeto the stage in New York City in
1964.Walking to Sleepis a slim collection, with
fewer original poems (only twenty-two) and
more translations (eleven) than in previous col-
lections. What overall unity there is in the four
sections of the volume is suggested by the title:
these are poems on the subject of how to
‘‘walk’’—symbolically, how to live before sleep
and death.
As in ‘‘Junk,’’ Wilbur experiments with the
Anglo-Saxon alliterative line divided by a cae-
sura. In ‘‘The Lilacs’’ the flowers are used as a
symbol of the cycle of death and rebirth, the
‘‘pure power’’ of nature perhaps compensating
for the ‘‘depth’’ of death....
A kind of balance between life and death
may be seen if one can appreciate ‘‘the pure
power’’ of life. ‘‘In the Field,’’ the title poem of
the first section, also suggests that the power in
life may be sufficient to compensate for the ulti-
mate disorder, death....
Wilbur also believes that in man’s desires
lies the answer to his questions. ‘‘Running’’ is,
like ‘‘In the Field,’’ a longer poem than Wilbur
usually writes. It is divided into three parts and
describes the act of running at three different
times in the poet’s life. The poem is intended
not only as an affirmative statement about
human aspiration but also as an assertion of
the ultimate meaning of human activities. Wil-
bur’s running becomes a symbol of aspiration at
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World