Whereas Lowell, Anne Sexton, W. D. Snod-
grass, Plath, and even James Dickey have told
much about their families, until The Mind-
ReaderWilbur did not mention his family. Two
poems about his children mark a change. His son
Christopher’s wedding is described indirectly in
‘‘A Wedding Toast.’’ But ‘‘The Writer’’ is one of
Wilbur’s most personal poems and perhaps one
of his best. As a father and as a writer he empa-
thizes with his daughter’s attempts to write a
story. He describes her creative struggles [...]
and he is reminded of another struggle that he
saw before at the same window: [....]
Wilbur’s slightly more personal approach is
apparent in a few other poems. The engaging
persona Wilbur creates in the title poem, ‘‘The
Mind-Reader,’’ helps that poem achieve more
dramatic intensity than is apparent in much of
his earlier work. He seems to be seeking even
firmer and more affirmative statements of the
need for order and responsibility; and his tone
in these poems is more confident, as if he is
assured that his own artistic life has been worth-
while, that he has himself maintained a balance
between reality and imagination. Wilbur’s per-
spective is concisely stated in ‘‘C-Minor,’’ a poem
about switching off ‘‘Beethoven at breakfast’’ to
turn back to the reality of the day: [....]
In 1977 Wilbur moved to Smith College,
where he remained as writer-in-residence until
his retirement in 1986. While continuing his
translating of Moliere’s work, he also produced`
translations of John Racine’s Andromache
(1982) andPhaedra(1986). In 1987 Wilbur was
honored by an appointment as poetry consultant
at the Library of Congress and poet laureate.
New and Collected Poems(1988) earned Wil-
bur the Pulitzer Prize for 1989. The new poems
include twenty-six short lyrics and ‘‘On Free-
dom’s Ground,’’ the lyrics for a five-part cantata
by William Schuman. This long poem was a joint
project written to mark the refurbishing of the
Statue of Liberty on its centennial in 1987. Wil-
bur may have had in mind memories of Robert
Frost’s impromptu reciting of ‘‘The Gift Out-
right’’ at the John F. Kennedy inauguration,
for he offers a variation of Frost’s theme that
Americans have gradually become worthy of the
land: [....]
In several of the newly collected poems Wil-
bur creates a persona who ruminates on his life
and achievement. He clearly has Frost in mind in
‘‘The Ride,’’ an extension of ‘‘Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening’’ in which the jour-
ney of the rider and his horse continues through
the night:[....] The poem seems a consummation
of a life-journey of creating and drawing on
intuitions and dreams that one must believe in
or fall victim to the grief that comes from think-
ing ‘‘there was no horse at all.’’ ‘‘Leaving’’ is an
indictment of the comforts in modern life. The
people at a garden party resemble the stone fig-
ures that border the scene. The question raised is
whether or not knowledge of the future would
have influenced the people’s decisions in life: [....]
Auden is a poem written earlier and pub-
lished only when Wilbur thought it was finished.
It is an impressive poem on memory’s lost
moments as much as a personal lament for
Auden: [....]
In ‘‘Lying’’ Wilbur begins by lightly invok-
ing a ‘‘dead party,’’ where a white lie ‘‘can do no
harm’’ to one’s reputation. The poem evolves
more seriously as the speaker explores the nature
of lying and reality, the imagination and illu-
sionary truth:[....]
He then turns the poem to the ordinary
experiences of a summer’s day metaphorically
likened to all days:[....] The poem concludes by
alluding toThe Song of Roland, implying the
superiority of the lie of the romance to the ordi-
nary fact of history[....]
Wilbur’s long tenure in academia is still evi-
dent in some poems. ‘‘A Finished Man’’ is a
portrait, perhaps wryly autobiographical, of a
man who has completed his career and is being
honored by the university. The enemies, friends,
and colleagues who knew his fears and faults
now either dead or fading in his memory[....]
‘‘Icarium Mare’’ is clearly an academic poem
with arcane references to the mythical figure
Icarus, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of
Samos, and St. John the Divine’s ‘‘geodic skull.’’
The short poems in the ‘‘New Poems’’ sec-
tion often seem to be merely sketches, but there
is always depth to a Wilbur surface. ‘‘Wyeth’s
Milk Cans’’ records the lucid simplicity of an
N.C. Wyeth scene but at the same time raises
doubts about the landscape’s beauty. ‘‘Shad-
Time’’ examines two events, the spawning of
shad and the blooming of the shadblow tree
along a river’s banks, and raises the old question
anew of how to make sense of nature’s bounty
and waste. The critic Bruce Michelson judges
this poem to be proof that Wilbur could produce
a postmodernist poem that goes beyond skillfulLove Calls Us to the Things of This World