About Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets of the World War II generation, Wilbur's work, often employing rhyme, and composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentlemanly elegance. He was acclaimed in his youth as the heir to Robert Frost, translated the verse dramas of Moliere, Corneille, and Racine into rhymed English, collaborated with Leonard Bernstein as the lyricist for the opera Candide, and in his old age acted, particularly through his role in the annual West Chester University Poetry Conference, as a mentor to the younger poets of the New Formalist movement. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1957 and 1989. When only eight years old, Wilbur published his first poem in John Martin's Magazine. In 1988 he won the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry and in 1989 he won a second Pulitzer, for his New and Collected Poems. In 1987 Wilbur became the second poet, after Robert Penn Warren, to be named U.S.
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