When Richard Wilbur, former U.S. Poet Laureate and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, ended his reading at Thursday’s Walt Whitman Lecture by sharing a few of his lesser-known children’s poems, some audience members were skeptical.
“I thought he was kidding when he said he was going to read the alphabet poetry,” said senior Ben Stevens. “But it ended up being really good and funny.”
Wilbur’s “Disappearing Alphabet” poems were only a small part of his multifaceted poetry reading, which also included short, long, rhyming and non-rhyming original poems, as well as a series of translations of Latin riddles.
The reading was the culminating event in this year’s Visiting Writers Reading Series (VWRS). The series, directed by Creative Writing Professor Katrina Roberts, brings celebrated authors and poets to campus to read their original writing.
This year, writers in the series have included Sam Witt, Carolyne Wright, Kim Barnes, Tim Marshall and Jon Clinch, and will conclude on April 24 with Christian Wiman.
Wilbur’s reading was the biggest of the year, and took place in Cordiner Hall, where an audience composed of Whitman students, faculty members, Walla Walla community members, and appreciators visiting from as far as Seattle welcomed him.
“It is true that my work has been useful,” said Wilbur before reading his poem “Two Voices in a Meadow,” which he said has been read at the funeral of a nun.
Wilbur, 87, has received the Wallace Stevens Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Frost Medal, the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two Bollingen Prizes, the T. S. Eliot Award, a Ford Foundation Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Edna St. Vincent Millay Memorial Award, the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award, the National Arts Club medal of honor for literature, two PEN translation awards, the Prix de Rome Fellowship, and the Shelley Memorial Award.
And, as Roberts said in her introduction to Wilbur, all of his many works are still in print.
“He’s a great poet. I thoroughly enjoyed the reading,” said sophomore Andrew Hall.
Past Walt Whitman lectures have included Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, and Billy Collins, among others.
thomas • May 1, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Wilbur is one of the finest poets of the English language. So it’s nice to see Joseph Pulitzer, Walt Whitman, Ben Stevens, Katrina Roberts, Sam Witt, Carolyne Wright, Kim Barnes, Tim Marshall, Jon Clinch, Christian Wiman, Wallace Steven, Aiken Taylor, Paul Mellon and Mary Conover Mellon, T. S. Eliot, Edsel Ford and Henry Ford, John Simon Guggenheim, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Harriet Monroe, Mary P. Sears, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Andrew Hall, Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, and Billy Collins finally getting a little recognition. Nice article.