Richard Wilbur died on October 14, 2017, at age 97.
Initially recognized by the then-Pulitzer Advisory Board in 1957 for an early volume (Things of This World, which also received the National Book Award), Wilbur received his second Prize in 1989 for his New and Collected Poems. His last volume of new and translated work, Anterooms, was published in 2010.
Read the jury report in support of Wilbur's 1957 Pulitzer Prize here. An excerpt from the jury report supporting his 1989 Prize may be read here.
Interviewed by Harrison Smith of The Washington Post, Robert Casper of the Library of Congress’s Poetry and Literature Center said:
If [fellow Pulitzer winner John] Ashbery invented a whole new kind of poetry, Richard Wilbur reminded us of the enduring power of tradition: that poems about the natural world and about love, written in classical, traditional rhyme and meter, would continue to matter going forward into the future.
Additionally, Poetry Prize winner Paul Muldoon characterized Wilbur as "the single greatest technician in American poetry of the last 70 years... it was a technique perfectly at the service of tenderness and terror."
Read Smith's obituary here.
Born in 1921 in New York City, Wilbur was raised in nearby North Caldwell, New Jersey. After receiving his undergraduate degree from Amherst College in 1942 and an MA from Harvard in 1947 (where he continued on until 1950 in the Society of Fellows, then designed as an alternative to conventional doctoral study for promising young scholars), he pursued the poet-academic career path common in the pre-MFA era.
Much of his career was spent at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he was a full professor of English from 1957 to 1977. In 1987, he served as Poet Laureate of the United States. He ended his career at at his undergraduate alma mater, where he taught as late as a decade ago. Wilbur also taught at Harvard (assistant professor of English; 1950-1954), Wellesley College (associate professor; 1954-1957) and Smith College (writer-in-residence; 1977-1986).
In addition to his poetic oeuvre, Wilbur was an avid translator of 17th century French drama, including over a dozen works by Molière, Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille; his 1963 translation of Molière's Tartuffe is widely regarded as the definitive English version. As a lyricist, he collaborated with frequent Pulitzer entrant Leonard Bernstein on his 1956 operetta Candide, adapted from Voltaire's canonical 1759 novella. For this work, Wilbur shared in a nomination for Best Musical with Bernstein and book writer Lillian Hellman at the 11th Tony Awards.
Over the course of his career, Wilbur was awarded several other prestigious literary awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships (1952, 1963), the Bolligen Prize for Poetry (1971), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry (1991) and the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation (1994). He also shared in the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical (1974) and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical (1974) for a revival of Candide. In 1983, he received a Drama Desk Special Award for his translation of The Misanthrope. He also received honorary doctorates from over a dozen institutions.