Richard Wilbur (3/1/1921-10/14/2017)

Dark news today in the New York Times--the announcement of the death of poet Richard Wilbur, a writer whose works both Joyce and I deeply admire. And love. (Link to Times story.)

I can't remember when I first read him--but once I did, I felt as if I always had. Over the years I've memorized a few,* so today, on this dim day, I feel as if a part of him is still alive in my wee brain.

A story ...

Back in 2005 my mom, 86 at the time, was still living on her own in western Massachusetts and regularly attended St. Stephen's Parish, an Episcopal Church in Pittsfield. Until his death in 1999 my dad had also gone there--had sung in the choir (oh, he had a wonderful, pure tenor voice). Anyway, one day I was talking with my mom on the phone about a Richard Wilbur poem I really liked, and she told me this stunning news: "He goes to our church."

Well!

It seemed a bit odd to me at the time: Wilbur lived in Cummington, Mass. (the same town, by the way, where William Cullen Bryant had lived), a very small town about twenty-five miles east of Pittsfield--a pretty good drive on a Sunday morning.

But I let that pass and got right to it: "Mom, if I send you some of his books, do you think he would sign them?"

Mom sighed. This was not exactly her "thing." But she agreed to ask him. I mailed the books. And not long afterward, here they came, inscribed in his clear hand.

Below, you see one of them--with the inscription ...

One of Wilbur's most moving poems, "The House," appeared in The New Yorker on August 31, 2009. His wife of sixty-four years, Charlotte, had died in April 2007. (Link to her obituary.) How could this poem be about anyone else?

THE HOUSE

Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes

For a last look at that white house she knew

In sleep alone, and held no title to,

And had not entered yet, for all her sighs.

What did she tell me of that house of hers?

White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door;

A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore;

Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs.

Is she now there, wherever there may be?

Only a foolish man would hope to find

That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind.

Night after night, my love, I put to sea.

"The House" is among those I've memorized; I rehearse it every week, several times. And every time I mutter it, while walking around the indoor track at the health club, that final line--that gorgeous final line--slices into my heart, and gently so.

As Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 18, "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, /

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Wilbur's words gave life to everything that fell under his gaze, that worked its way through his heart and mind and flowed from his fingers out onto the page.

*the Wilbur poems in my head ...

“Ecclesiastes 11:1”

“The House”

“April 5, 1974”

“Year’s End”

“Boy at the Window”