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Richard Wilbur
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Photo by Stathis Orphanos |
Born in New York City in 1921, Richard Wilbur is a renowned poet, translator,
literary critic, and editor. A veteran of World War II, Wilbur was trained
as an Army cryptographer and served as a front-line infantryman in Italy,
France, and Germany, including the Battle of the Bulge. After the war,
he obtained his M.A. from Harvard in 1947, the same year his first book
of poems was published, The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems.
An accomplished editor and translator, Wilbur has published translations
of Molière and compiled such anthologies as Poe: Complete Poems
(1959) and Poems of Shakespeare (1966). The winner of numerous
honors, including the Frost Medal, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the
Wallace Stevens Award, Wilbur's original collections include Things
of This World (1956), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and
National Book Award; New and Collected Poems (1988), which also
won the Pulitzer Prize; and the essay collection, The Catbird's Song:
Prose Pieces, 1963-1995 (1997). In 1987, he was named Poet Laureate
of the United States.
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